Article Marketing Isn't Dead -- No Matter What's Happening at EzineArticles

Some article marketers are in an uproar over Christopher Knight’s recent blog announcement that traffic to EzineArticles.com has dropped significantly with Google’s latest algorithm change. One of the things he was considering was changing all the links in articles to “no follow” links – meaning the search engines wouldn’t follow from a writer’s article to their web site and pick up their site. In other words, the links would be useless.

He said, “My gut feeling is that those links [ie. The links in the articles and resource box] have carried no real value in at least 2-3 years now.”

It’s interesting that among the changes EzineArticles put into place, using no-follow links was NOT implemented. Why? My guess is that Chris (or those who advise him) believe his gut could be WRONG!

In fact when I read his blog, I knew his gut was wrong. Consistently, our regular contributors tell us that they get more traffic from our site (IdeaMarketers.com) than from any other site they contribute to. We never have set constraints on the links we allow contributors to put in their articles (as long as they are within reason). In fact, we encourage links and we’ve never used no-follow links. We even encourage our writers to embed youtube videos and audios into their articles! No one else does that, that I know of.

What’s more, IdeaMarketers.com was NOT adversely affected by the Google change. In fact, our traffic from Google searches has risen slightly.

My guess is that our set-your-own-pricing model for home page placement and our Expert 360 program is the reason. With these two systems in place, the cream of the crop is always front and center at IdeaMarketers. Quality articles are on our home page and our major categories.

The fact that we have quality content front and center with plenty of outbound links, indicates to me that this is more about quality than having “too many” outbound links. Also, for ages experts have been encouraging bloggers to create outbound links to great resources. If outbound links are so bad, why would it work for blogs and not for articles?

So before everyone panics and throws the baby out with the bathwater – saying that article marketing doesn’t help build backlinks to your site and is now a waste of time – consider that there are many other factors at work here.

Article marketing is not dead. Everyone just needs to remember to put the READER first and search engines second. Stop trying to guess what Google wants and create quality content. You’ll reap good results.

There are always fluctuations in traffic with sites. Season of the year plays a role along with dozens of other factors. You can't panic every time you see a fluctuation. Another thing to take into consideration is that if there is 15% junky articles in a web site and Google stops showing those articles, yes, it's helping web searches. But also, I'd wager it's helping the content directory because most likely those articles aren't earning any revenue for the site that hosts them, and they're just making the site look junky.

In my experience, more traffic doesn't always translate into more revenues. Sometimes less is more -- especially when that less is quality.

Comments

[Sharon Killion]

Great article Marnie! You really explain the situation really well. And Idea Marketers does shine.

Sharon Killion

[Karon Thackston]

I agree with what you're saying, Marnie, but I also want to make a point that most people have neglected. Article marketing is not about getting your articles listed on submission sites. It's about people who own top-quality, high ranking sites *in your niche* taking your article off IdeaMarketers.com or wherever and >>> republishing it <<< in front of *their* audience.

Marnie, you've worked really hard over the years to build in some truly creative and helpful tools for those who use IdeaMarketers. I applaud you for that as I'm sure do all those who submit to your site. But all those other 100s of article sites are not a thing like IdeaMarkers.com.

So (in the case of ordinary article sites) what's better if you are - say - a virtual assistant? A link from a site that will accept articles from any ole person regardless of quality or a link from a VA association, job board or highly respected VA trainer who read your article and thought so much of it they had to publish it on their blog?

Article marketing will never die, in my opinion. It's been around since WAY before the Internet and is a tremendous tool for building trust and earning targeted traffic. But you do have to play it smart.

[Kathleen Gage]

So glad to hear things are okay on your end Marnie. You've worked so hard for years to create a quality content location.

I agree with what Karen says about top quality, targeted articles are the best.

Cranking out article after article simply to put something on directories in no way compares to a carefully written, strategically placed and super targeted to an audience.

Great post Marnie.

[Denise Beins]

I agree - create good content and the rest will work itself out.

[Laurenamcmullen]

You are so right Marnie. Quality always wins and your site encourages quality content because people need to pay to get on the first page and they will not pay money to post junk.
I was happy to see that your site was not effected by the changes.

[Ruby Kamaka]

Thanks for your insightful article. Helps dilute the furor over what's happening at ezineArticles.
You've helped me to refocus.

[Kerry Hook]

Love it Marnie - great info. I hope you surpass Ezine. They are a royal pain to deal with. I love ideamarketers and believe you are much more professional than ezine can ever be. Thanks!

[Kevin]

Thank you for this article, you have answered questions I have been asking myself about article marketing and its usefulness in this post-change of Google's.
As for me, I think that IdeaMarketers is superior to all other article marketing directories.

Kevin

[stewart spencer]

Couldn't agree more with your comments, especially the bit about writing for your readers not search engines.

[Laurie@Affiliate Marketing Training]

Thank you for posting this, Marnie. I am glad to hear that Idea Marketers stood stable during this time. And I am also glad to hear you say that links are helpful! I definitely disagreed with that statement that changing links to no follows wouldn't matter.

[Steve Evans]

The last thing I want to see happening is for Article Directory sites to put "nofollow" on the bio links below each article, or within articles, and for the Directory sites it would no doubt hugely reduce their flow of new content, eventually leading to their gradual death due to lack of new material.

However, we maybe should look at what Google themselves do where they have a free hand, and no preconceived norms exist in quite the same way as they do for article directory sites, and that is in video sharing at YouTube. YouTube is enormously stingy about giving dofollow outward links, and the only outward do-follow link for users is one dofollow link per channel. If you consider the video description equivalent to an article's author box at the end of each article, which gives only a "nofollow" link back to the author's site, the indication is that (if they know what's best for a site in terms of visibility in SERPS!) it is giving minimum outward "nofollow" links.

If you need any convincing how highly YouTube ranks in the SERPS just look at the number of YouTube videos which appear in the SERPS these days! That would suggest to me that they are purposely holding on to the juice flowing through their site in order to boost their own visibility.

Even so, I agree with you and I agree that IdeaMarketers has it right to go for great quality and user experience which will win out in the end. Let's not get hung up on "nofollow" and "dofollow"!

[Felicia Slattery]

Marnie-
Excellent article! Later on Chris retracted his comments because of the uproar of so many of the authors that the links DO matter.

But like everything in business and communicating your message online it comes down to one thing: Awesome Spreads. Quality content is king. People will find it and Google will find it. Crappy stuff just fades away.

See you in Raleigh!
Felicia

[Stuseo]

The problem that you're missing isn't so much the links, but rather how Google will treat content it finds in multiple places or on sites it classes as farms.

I don't think it's yet been proven if links from such articles will hold any more or less merit than they did previously, however many article writers I know submit to multiple sites or to sites that syndicate and share content. These are the articles/sites Google will give a lower ranking to. However I've yet to hear from anyone with 100% certainty that links will definitly offer less value even if any article *is* ranked lower, and my articles for Ideamarketers do indeed appear to be ranking well, something I'm very pleased with! Either way, I do feel that anyone proclaiming article marketing as being dead is jumping the gun a bit!

[Marnie Pehrson]

Thanks everyone for your kind words of encouragement and support. I love hearing about your good results from the site! Stuseo, you bring up an interesting point about duplicate content.

For years I've been suggesting that people not mass submit the same article to dozens (or even hundreds) of places. Google has always paid attention to the copies found on the sites with the highest authority and ignored the others. It's best to make unique variations. For example, what you put on your blog shouldn't be identical to what you submit to an article directory. I'm sure we have duplicate content on IdeaMarketers - we don't require unique submissions -- kind of defeats the purpose of one of the main reasons people use article directories -- to find content they can reprint in their ezine, web site or print publication. We also syndicate content across the web.

So I'm not convinced duplicate content is the issue here. Honestly, who can really figure out what Google is doing? I gave up on that years ago. I'd rather focus on giving my visitors and contributors a good experience and trust that integrity, ethics and a win-win philosophy will pay good dividends. So far, it's worked. ;) - Marnie

[Terry Schierer]

Good quality well writen articles will always be in demand. It's what Google wants, your readers want and hopefully what you want. I feel Google did what it should of done a few years back.

Article marketing isn't dead, not by a long shot but it going through a much needed correction. Time to weed out those who provide uninteligent spun articles, looking for the fast buck and give us all a bad name'

Terry