Has Article Marketing Gone the Way of the Dodo?

In my humble opinio
I don’t believe article marketing and all its benefits are dead but with Google’s latest algorithm update many sites have been penalized for. So it is now up to yourself to see which articles directories and the like are still working for you.

I have been running test on the top ten articles directories and found significant loss of traffic on several of these sites. This has also become apparent in the reduction of views that my articles and other submission are receiving on these now reduced traffic sites.

But having said that my article directory submissions that I have on others sites have increased in views and popularity since the Google algorithm changes I can only assume that Google now ranks these sites higher. Please Read On
Google recently completed yet another algorithm update and yet again we have a plethora of articles online stating that this is end of Seo, rubbish this is just not true.

I honestly believe that goggles algorithm updates is simply creating Seo best practices.

Okay what can we glean from all these algorithm changes, I believe sites that are overly optimized will always be a target, when people over optimize a site they make it irrelevant to their site content. How do you know what techniques Google employ to tag a site or blog as overly optimized, Simple YOU DON’T.

So what’s the solution? As always you must focus on the quality of your site not the quantity of articles, reviews, press releases, webinars and general site content. Don’t get me wrong you can also go for quantity but it must be relevant to your site. Remember Google will only promote sites that its readers find valuable and useful.

I suggest you go to take a look at Ezine Articles this is 1 site that has just been heavily penalized by Google for all the bad Seo practices you can think of. Basically Ezine has been downgraded for its spammy behavior, this includes plagiarized content, spammy links and less than ethical authors.

As far as Seo is conce
ed for your site unethical Seo practices will definitely get you penalized by Google.
Thing’s To Avoid like the Plague

• Unrelated Keywords

This is the common and easiest was to get your site blockedr
If your site or blog is about snowboarding don’t use keyword’s related to surfing for example. That is an unrelated keyword and will be penalizedr
If you don’t believe me email BMW yes BMW that just got penalized by Google for this very practice and were not visible in Google search results for 9 months, Yes that’s correct 9 months.
I wonder how much damage that caused the BMW brand.

• Duplicate Content

Some people believe that putting the same content on several different pages this just another method of trying to increase ranking and ill surely backfire.

• Article Spinning Software/Robots

This is the technique where a person writer’s 1 article then runs it through an article spinner, The software changes words and sentences to produce similar articles all based on the original. This type of software allows literally hundreds of different combinations of the original.

• Key word stuffingr
Is the practice of over suing the same keyword over and over again just to increase rankings it makes sites look and read very badly indeed and will be grossly penalized by Google
As I have said many times both in this article and on my blog theirs is no shortcut to success like any venture in life hard work will be rewarded with results. I cannot, list here all the bad Seo practices out there but these above are the main area’s you should be wary of.

Only use genuine White Hat Seo practices this will ensure slow but long term success.

I wish you every success in your efforts please feel free to contact me or leave a comment if you wish.

By Graham Drew
1st July 2012