@JamesMartell
Latest posts by James Martell (see all)
- The Simple Path To Google Rankings Success - January 14, 2013
- Google Rankings – The Gift That Keeps On Giving - November 12, 2012
- The “Business†Of Online Publishing - August 12, 2012
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Are you considering using article marketing as a potential tool to boost your website’s traffic? Are you already engaged (either casually or up to your eyeballs) in the process? Is all that effort you’re putting in really getting you the results you need?
You owe it to yourself to ask some hard questions about where your business is, where you want it to be, and where it needs to be before you decide to use article marketing:
- Are you looking to get the most “bang for your buck” with search engines, or are you just toying with Internet marketing?
- Do you have a concrete strategy for success in place or are you lost and grasping at straws, trying to find something that works?
- Are you doing “okay” financially but know that you could definitely do better in terms of marketing your products and services and getting those coveted conversions?
- Have you swallowed the article marketing “bait” that some “guru” is selling but can’t make your figures jive with the ones he promised?
I’ve never been a fan of article marketing. In my opinion the process is sold as a quick and easy way to get traffic, backlinks, and increased page rankings when there is no such thing as a quick and easy solution.
In fact, if you attempt article marketing without truly understanding what you’re getting into, you may be doing more harm than good!
What is Article Marketing?
Before we get too far into a discussion about whether or not article marketing is effective, let me define exactly what I mean. Article marketing is one of those vague bits of jargon that people throw out there A) not really knowing what they’re talking about or B) using a very narrow definition of the term to skew opinions in their favor.
I’ve always defined article marketing as submitting content (usually 400-500 word articles) for mass distribution to websites (sometimes called article farms) in the hope that some webmaster will find it, read it, like it, and publish it on their own website. The whole point of the process is so that the links you incorporate into the text will direct people and search engines back to your website (this is called a backlink). But beware-not all backlinks are equal!
In fact, most of the backlinks you’ll earn through article marketing are either completely useless or very nearly so. (Read on and you’ll find out how some backlinks can even hurt your website.)
Other people have other definitions but with so many individuals and companies out there selling one-size-fits-all article marketing packages (including automation software, pre-made content, and hands-free publishing) it’s hard not to define it as I have above.
Now that we know what we’re talking about . . .
Does Article Marketing Work?
That’s a question I get asked a lot. Every time it comes up, I cringe. I’ve seen too many good people with good intentions spend way too much time, effort, and money on article marketing schemes that just don’t deliver the same results that quality content does through targeted distribution.
So the short answer is yes, article marketing will increase your traffic and may even increase your Google PageRank (and that’s a big may). However, those results are often short lived and temporary. Article marketing is a “trick” or “quick fix” that far too many people rely on instead of concentrating on tactics for long term success.
I’ve been in the Internet marketing business since 1999. After I got hit with Google penalties twice (in 2001 and 2004) I resolved that I was never again going to waste my time with crappy content, crappy backlinks that only served to degrade my Google standing, and to concentrate on tactics that really work-and will work well into the future.
Someone recently asked Matt Cutts (head of the Spam Team at Google) what he thought about article marketing as I’ve defined it above. He was a bit more polite when discussing his distaste for the practice than I have been but the key thing to take away from his response is that the number one thing you can do to earn your PageRank is to add value to the Internet.
Article marketing just doesn’t do that.
Matt says that everyone should concentrate on “great content that naturally links, some good social media marketing so that people are linking to [the content] organically. . . .”
Why Is Quality Content So Important?
If your content isn’t good:
- The only websites that will publish it for you are low-quality ones.
- The content doesn’t add any value to your offer (whatever it may be).
- It will turn people off.
- Google may penalize your content and your website. (It’s true-they’ve changed their tune. More on this to follow)
I have posted over 400 content-creation projects on Elance (a third-party agency which connects content providers with buyers) and have seen far too many people pushing fluff. I recently placed a job out there for writers to bid on for a package of 10 articles on a single topic. When some of the interested service providers gave me examples of their previous work, the content was 400 word long pieces of gibberish.
True, the English and grammar were impeccable and the articles “sounded” okay but when you got down to the nuts and bolts the “content” was so light on content it was laughable. There were no facts, no figures, no quotes or interviews-nothing of value whatsoever. Just a bunch of doubletalk.
I recognized this right away and backed away from those providers-even though they guaranteed me their content was SEO optimized and was “designed to rank” in all of the major search engines.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re promoting Golden lift chairs, chiropractic services or even kitchen stools, if you want to build long term sustainable traffic from search engines (especially Google) stay away from this type of article marketing!
How many times have you read a short 400 word piece of fluff on somebody’s website? How many times have you stopped half way through and said “this is garbage! He’s not saying anything!”
Just Why is Article Marketing Bad?
There are five major flaws with article marketing that make it and its users doomed to fail.
1.) You Have No Control Over Who Publishes Your Article
Even if you craft the best article, the most informative and witty piece of marketing ever, when you submit it to an article directory you have no control over where that article ends up. Ideally you want it on a high-ranking, well respected website but more often than not it your fine piece of article excellence ends up on the worst websites around.
Why is that bad? If your website earns a backlink from a “bad” website, search engines may now penalize your website. Even Google has reversed its long standing policy on backlinks. (More on this a little later.)
Almost just as bad: the incoming traffic you might earn from that backlink will typically be low quality traffic that will most likely bounce right off your site without a second thought.
In other words-all that time and money you spent crafting your articles will be worse than wasted, it more than likely hurt your cause!
2) Duplicate Content Is A Bad Thing!
Google not only sees low quality content in a bad light, the search engines discredits duplicate content as well. That means if you’re submitting articles to directories and those articles appear on two, three, five, or even a dozen websites Google will actually penalize your website!
This process has been going on since Google added a duplicate content filter in or around-the experts aren’t exactly sure when it came online-2004-and it’s something they are perfecting even as recently as February and July 2011 with their “Panda” algorithm updates.
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what article marketing relies on-duplicate content. It’s just a bad model to base a business on.
- Write an article
- Submit it to an article directory
- Get a blip of increased traffic (that’s probably just a string of one-hit-wonders)
- Get filtered from search results when the engines pick up on your duplicate content
- Start all over again!
It’s an endless process with short lived results!
While people have made some solid money using article marketing in the past, they found out the hard way that Google isn’t playing around anymore. For years the search engine giant has been refining its algorithms to improve search results and every refinement took another bite out of the article marketer’s pie. The 2011 Google overhaul (designed to keep article farms and duplicate content from results pages) decimated the profitability of this process altogether and made the technique dangerous for website owners to use.
I’ve never used article marketing but even smart folks who have know it’s a bad idea. Paula and Wanda, two of my former students, have become extremely successful affiliate marketers in their own rights. While they rely on my PAD Technique to develop their traffic, they decided to toy with article marketing–”dipping their toes in” so to speak.
Thankfully, they had learned enough about how search engines and Internet marketing really works not to get fooled by the hype. Almost immediately they figured out that article marketing was a bad idea that could hurt their business. Not only that, the techniques they were already using were more efficient and produced better, longer lasting results.
They were smart to leave article marketing behind and I suggest you follow in their footsteps.
3) Duplicate Anchor Text Can Be Very Problematic
Duplicate content is not the only problem you have to watch out for when you’re effectively Xeroxing your articles.
Why? Because if you’re content gets into an article farm or even if it’s scraped off a website by some unscrupulous marketer and mass published across the Internet, the anchor text (I.e. Pride lift chair) is the same and links back to the same page on your site.
While you may think that’s going to get you a ton of traffic for that keyword, it won’t. What are the odds of even a few dozen webmasters randomly linking back to your site using the exact same keyword phrase? Zip, zero, zilch. Google knows that and they fix the problem by making sure your page never ranks for that keyword phrase.
4) Welcome To The (Bad) Neighborhood
Bad neighbors are low-quality websites that have black marks against them with search engines for deceptive practices, duplicate content, or other actions that mark them as unreliable content providers.
Google, and even Matt Cutts Google’s spam man who I mentioned above, used to tell website owners that their site would never be penalized or hurt in any way from other sites linking to them. There was seemingly no way to control who linked to who; therefore, it wasn’t fair for a search engine to penalize one website for the actions of a bad neighbor.
That’s all changed. Google and Matt both now emphatically state the search engine giant does place black marks against websites who are linked to by “bad neighbors.”
Why the change? Google is actively trying to weed out the garbage and bring solid, quality content to its users (Google is providing a service to customers after all). Therefore, they’ve gone after content farm, websites with duplicate content, and those using less than ethical linking practices to game the system.
They also know who those bad guys are and they know that article marketers are relying on those websites to get traffic and backlinks and boost their own PageRank.
You don’t want to link to bad neighbors (and most smart website owners don’t) and now you can’t afford to have them linking to your site either.
So how do you protect yourself from bad neighbors?
Actively guard your content.
Make sure that it only gets posted on the web pages you want it on.
That’s not something you can do when you submit to article directories and content farms. Essentially, by using article farms and directories you’re actively encouraging those bad neighbors to link to your site. That’s bad business. Don’t do it.
5) Google Discourages Article Marketing (Even though people are still selling the idea)
Some website owners continue to believe that article marketing is an effective strategy to earn quality backlinks and traffic because there are so many advocates out there saying it still works.
It did at one time.
- So did anchor text stuffing
- So did link partnering
- So did low quality and duplicate content
- So did link farms
- So did scraper sites
- So did article spinning
All of those strategies should be avoided. The web and the people who use it have grown up and the search engines have finally realized that.
Don’t believe those people telling you article marketing still works-they’re living in the past and holding on to a dying technique.
Knowing that Google discourages article marketing, why would you do something the company doesn’t like?
Listen to what Matt Cutts (Google’s head of spam) has to say about it: ”Honestly I’m not a huge fan of article marketing. . . Typically the sorts of sites that just republish these articles are not the highest quality sites.”
Matt goes on to warn website owners to avoid “copies,” “mirrors,” or “duplicate,” content. He also says that if he had to make a “forecast about how Google feels or how search engines feel about [article marketing] general, the trend that I am hearing and the sort of complaints that I am hearing are that people are not huge fans of article marketing and don’t view it as an incredible value add in terms of the content that gets added to the web.”
Remember-create “great content” that people link to “organically.”
I Predict A Bad End for Article Marketers
People who continue to use article marketing will end up with the short end of the stick. They will continue to:
- Be penalized by Google
- Have their content filtered from search results
- Earn less and less
- And possibly even be banned from Google (it’s happened before and will again!)
Google is a company “selling” a service (Internet search) to “customers” (the people who use their website). They have begun to aggressively protect their product by filtering out garbage results in order to provide a better user experience.
In addition, Google is ferocious about keeping their algorithms effective and actively researches how people try to game the system. They are constantly upgrading, becoming more efficient, and-to some extent-more ruthless.
Can you blame them? Article marketing has flooded their search results with tens of millions of low quality articles and duplicate content. That makes their users angry. That endangers the goodwill they’ve worked so hard to earn. That endangers profits.
With this 2011 updates we’ve seen Google actively cleaning up the clutter and those creating it. Those still producing junk may be the next ones with their head on the chopping block.
So what, you say? You know all those powerful tools that Google provides website owners?
- Google Analytics
- Google AdSense
- Google AdWords
- Google Website Optimizer
- Google Webmaster Tools
All these free to use tools that have become absolutely essential for website owners, Internet marketers, and advertisers can all be taken away. Google is well within their rights to ban anyone, delete any existing account, and refuse the creation of new accounts to anyone it chooses.
Let that sink in for a minute.
And just like smart marketers keep an eye on what Google is doing, Google keeps an eye on marketers–they know what we’re doing.
Don’t think Google won’t ban articles marketers for using strategies it finds offensive. They’ve done it before.
A little over a year ago Google permanently banned over 15,000 AdWords advertisers for unsavory practices. They were spending hundreds of millions of dollars with the AdWords program but-overnight-they were banned, permanently. That’s a sobering message to those who think they have the upper hand.
But it is one thing to think in terms of faceless advertisers and another to consider them as individuals. I personally know a natural search marketer who was permanently banned from Google. He lost access to all the tools, data, and income–everything he’d worked so hard to create.
So, will Google ban article marketers and others involved in unsavory marketing schemes? Only Google knows for sure. . . . but I’m not taking any chances. Are you?
There is a Better Way
Professional Article Distribution, or the PAD Technique.
I “by accident stumbled upon” the PAD Technique in 2004 when link farms were all the rage. I had a sense that things were going to change in the very near future and that link sharing was no longer going to get the results I needed to remain profitable. I had to find another way.
I sent out articles to a select few of my own affiliates explaining one of the successes that my wife, Arlene, had with one of her affiliate websites. I was surprised to see that her website got a noticeable spike in high-quality backlinks because I’d included a link in that article. I saw the potential for targeted distribution right away and the PAD Technique was born. All I needed to do was refine it.
The key is to craft the best quality article you can which contains 2-3 anchor text links back to the web page whose rank you want to increase. Then you find a quality website that is complimentary to the products or services you’re offering and ask that site’s owner to publish your article. Just one good site. You don’t need to publish your article on a hundred crappy ones (Google will just filter them out and penalize you anyways). Develop a couple dozen articles each including 2-3 backlinks to your site. Then have each article published on a different site. Do this and you’ll have many dozens of quality backlinks, interested traffic, and what one friend of mine calls Google Juice to spare.
The quality of the backlink is everything. A dozen or two high-quality backlinks from well-ranked and respectable websites is worth way more than thousands of backlinks earned from low (or NO) quality sites.
I’ve been teaching others about the strength of backlinks for years. I’ve focused on backlinks in my trainings and podcasts (The Affiliate Buzz and Coffee Talk with James Martell) for years.
When you control where the content goes, you control the backlink and protect yourself from poor quality websites, search engine penalties, and crappy content.
The PAD Technique is incredibly powerful yet extremely simple. While it does take some effort, the rewards it brings with it in the strength of the backlinks and the quality of the traffic is well worth it!
What PAD Is and What It Is Not! |
|
Article Marketing |
PAD Technique |
| â–ª primary benefit: short term click-through traffic from articles | â–ª primary benefit: top rankings in Google |
| â–ª duplicate content quickly filtered by Google | â–ª resulting ongoing traffic |
| â–ª “click-through traffic” dwindles (due to Google filtering) | â–ª NO duplicate content (each article is original) |
| â–ª almost zero SEO benefit | â–ª “click- through traffic” (long term because these quality articles are NOT filtered) |
| â–ª usually placed on low quality sites - many no PR |
â–ª articles placed on quality sites (minimum PR3 home page) |
| â–ª duplicate anchor text (Google easily detects this) | â–ª varied, relevant anchor text |
| â–ª risky, no control over where articles are published | â–ª 100% control over where articles are published |
| â–ª known by many as JUNK LINKS | |
|
. |
|
A Shift In Attitudes
Google has gone out of its way in the past few years (most recently with the 2011 update designed to penalize content farms) to beat back spam and deliver real quality results to the people who use the engine. Whereas before Internet marketers relied on “tricks” or exploitation to get better page ranking, Google is making quality and added value the primary factors in deciding where a page ranks in the results.
But not everybody seems to understand just how revolutionary this paradigm shift already is. I just read an article by a well know marketer (who shall remain nameless) which was basically a long-winded rant about the low quality results Google serves up. Two paragraphs later, the author mentions that he’s trying out brand new article spinning software in hopes of getting better results!
He, like many Internet marketers, is saying that the game has shifted to quality over quantity but he isn’t doing anything about it. Does he really know what a quality article is? Not if he’s using spinning software.
These “marketers” spend very little time doing the research and planning required to create a good article and are still trying to game the system. They:
- Are looking for shortcuts
- Want everything faster and quicker (and are willing to sacrifice to get it)
- Want Internet marketing to be easy
- Aren’t willing to actually work for their results.
The time for crap content and tricky exploitation techniques is over! Content is still king and quality backlinks are all you’ll ever need to get better search results and more qualified traffic for your website.
Internet marketing is not rocket science but it’s not kindergarten either. You have to learn the basics, put in the effort, and build a system that’s effective, repeatable, and functional. For me, that’s the PAD Technique in a nutshell.
Success Isn’t a Secret-It’s a Way of Doing Business
Google is only going to get smarter and those folks who rely on dead or dying marketing techniques such as article marketing, content farms, scraped content, and spinning software will suffer greatly (many have already). It’s the right time to try something different, something that works and will continue to work, and put article marketing aside.
- How would you build backlinks?
- How do you now?
- What’s been your experience (if any) with article marketing?
- Do you have a legitimate alternative that you’d like to share?
Let me hear about it-I would really love to hear what you have to say.
You can learn more about the PAD Technique when you subscribe to my weekly podcast.
I definitely wasn’t looking at article marketing from this angle as i was relying on it heavily for my SEO. What i realized though, is that article directories doesn’t give you the traffic or exposure other methods do like guest blogging, but for me it’s still helping me with my rankings.
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Hi Davis,
I think you would find that if you eliminated article marketing and went entirely the guest blogging route you would see a ten fold increase in traffic. I would also caution looking to article marketing for SEO benefits is also very problematic, especially with respect to Google.
James
Best is to go with publishing the articles on niche related authority blogs instead, where they attract targeted visitors and blog comments so that the page where the article is posted will get frequently updated and do not lie dead and buried in an untargeted article directory category.
Yes, well said “best is to go with publishing the articles on niche related authority blogs instead”. It seems like such a no-brainer to me. I am still stunned and amazed that in this new era of guest blogging why anyone would mess around with article marketing.
nice article. learnt some cool facts
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wow… It’s a long article but i stumble upon on it. I really don’t understand about it before, but i got some idea in my head right now. Thanks you. Basically, i agree with quality backlinks in our blog will take it to good SERP and PR in search engine. Just like Matt Cutts said about it.
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Internet marketing is the same as any other type of marketing; you have to keep up with trends and you have to communicate directly with people. People who use article marketing sites don’t take into account either one. If you want your articles to appear with backlinks on other sites, find webmasters in your same niche and communicate with them directly. You end up with higher quality backlinks, better visitors, and more control over your content.
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Twitter: porchswingsets
Hi James,
I couldn’t agree more with every single point you mentioned!
People are always lazy to take actions, thus article marketing become a short term technique which sometimes could be very devastating..
Jay
Twitter: seejoerun
You use the term penalize. Is there any written proof of this, anywhere, from Google or any other SE? I have no doubt about down grading links but I think the “sandbox” myth has been made too confusing.
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Hi Joe,
Yes I have seen this exact scenario happened repeatedly to those who stumble into article marketing. If the have an existing web-page that’s ranking for a handful of keywords — and they then blast out a bunch of articles, it is very common for them to lose those rankings.
As for new websites (or pages) many article marketers do a bunch of busy work blasting out a bunch of articles to the article directories. They feel because they’ve spent some money and done all of this “work”, that when they don’t see any movement with their rankings that they must have been “sandboxed”.
In reality they just shot themselves in the foot with a bazooka.
James.
Sorry, James, I’m not entirely convinced. I know article marketing doesn’t have any huge SEO benefits. But if what you are saying is true, then to devastate all of my competition, all I have to do is buy an article, or better still blatantly copy it from a competitor, give it to an outsourcing company, and have them spin the article (or maybe better not even to do this), and send the article out to 1,000s of the lowest quality article submission sites there are, all with 2 or 3 identical key-worded links back to the site I wish to displace. I could imagine this would be a pretty affordable strategy.
I can understand the site that published my dodgy, plagiarized articles being penalized in some way, by if the sites that they link to can also be so adversely affected, what is to stop anyone from using this as a tactic? Seems a lot easier than creating a linking campaign for one’s own site…
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I agree Tim. I think James makes some good points to think about, but I do not believe Google will penalize a site for getting linked from a bad neighborhood or even initiating an article marketing campaign.
If there is evidence that a site did that and lost rankings, maybe it wasn’t that they were penalized, but rather while they focused on irrelevant links from article sites, their competitors focuses on relevant links from good content sites.
I also see a difference between loosing rankings and penalties. If Google applies a penalty, you don’t just loose rankings, you disappear. You go to at least page 5 if not further down the SERPs.
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nice artical..i linke this and lernt from this..The 2011 Google overhaul (designed to keep article farms and duplicate content from results pages) decimated the profitability of this process altogether and made the technique dangerous for website owners to use.
Twitter: excitedbylife
I think this is great news for new people and businesses starting out online. It puts them on a level playing field with the big time marketers with big budgets who previously could wipe out any small player in any small niche. A small business does not have the time or the resources to mass outsource article marketing to the Philippines, or wherever.
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I like your PAD program James but the price seems a little bit too much for me at this time. There are a number of other blog networks that you can post to that provide lower monthly fees for the right to access the network. And they aren’t content farms as all material is unique and the blogs are promoted/building links.
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Hi Terrelle,
I have seen a few of the blog networks. (not all)
I have also seen the quality of the content being produced by them. They, in most cases, make a 400 word low quality article marketing article look like a masterpiece. The articles, if you can call them that, are usually in the 150-200 word range, horribly written and with a couple anchor text links embedded.
They were also neutralized for the most part by Google some time ago.
I would also suggest avoiding them like the plague.
The other thing to keep in mind is if you were to write 10 quality 600+ word articles and to then have each one published on an unique site you would have some great backlinks. If you were to include two links in each article back to two pages on your site — in total you would have two pages on your site each with 10 quality backlinks.
You could easily outsource those articles to be written for $15-$20 if you provide all of the research. That would run you $150-$200 per month if you were to do that.
It would also give you great SEO benefits and traffic.
Spend the $147 a month, plus the $2 they charge you for each so called article, then you would be spending $167 per month — and you probably with get little to no SEO benefit or traffic.
James
James, when you and I spoke at Affcon last year, we briefly discussed the difference between proper article marketing and article spam.
Don’t get me wrong, James. I don’t think anyone can argue with your advice to get content published on high ranking and authoritative sites.
But you’ll have to admit: It’s much easier advised than it is accomplished.
It’s akin to telling comedians (you’re as old as I am, you remember the 80s) that they should get booked on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. While it certainly was great for Jerry Seinfeld, Jeff Foxworthy and George Carlin – how many comedians could get that gig?
I’m not slamming any comedian, it’s just that the Tonight Show only has limited need for comedic “content”. Imagine one show a night, some 200 nights a year. But many of those nights were filled with musical guests, not comedians. Oh, and don’t forget, some of those nights were reruns. So let’s say 75 comedy performances a year – and that’s being fairly generous.
Then layer in the fact that Jerry Seinfeld did many of those, as did Bill Cosby, Joan Rivers, George Carlin, Jeff Foxworthy, Steve Martin, Phyllis Diller, Richard Pryor and a whole host of others. So how many slots each year were available to new comedians? A couple of dozen maybe? What would you have the other 5,000 working comedians do?
They work in clubs, bars, festivals, local TV, local radio etc. Is it as glamorous as being on The Tonight Show? Of course not. But they made a living. They raised their families and put food on the table. They built a following. Some, like Jon Stewart and Dane Cook became famous. Jon Stewart started his television career as a writer on Caroline’s Comedy Hour. Dane Cook built his following on MySpace, one fan at a time.
Too many people feel entitled these days. They aren’t willing to start small and work their way up. They expect a corner office, a BMW, and an expense account in their first job. Articles like this one feed into that mentality.
Don’t worry about building a following. Don’t bother getting known. Don’t hone your writing skills. Don’t get better at understanding your audience. Just expect your very first foray into what you call the “PAD Technique” to result in that article getting published on a high ranking and authoritative site. And not just that article or that high ranking website. Expect several articles to get published on several authoritative sites.
Well James, high ranking and authoritative sites do not have unlimited space to include every submission they receive. How do you suggest literally hundreds of thousands of internet marketers get “A dozen or two high-quality backlinks from well-ranked and respectable websites” as you recommend?
You say “I sent out articles to a select few of my own affiliates”. That’s terrific. You have some high powered affiliates. You’ve also, as noted in the article, worked for years on building a clientele for your site. You cater to affiliates, so it’s kind of not fair to imagine that every one of your readers will have such valuable resources at their disposal.
I worry that this article describes “article spam” but calls it article marketing. You even had to carefully wordsmith it when you said “Someone recently asked Matt Cutts (head of the Spam Team at Google) what he thought about article marketing as I’ve defined it above.” You had to use such language because article marketing “as you’ve defined it above” is actually called article spam, not article marketing.
You then turn around and describe article marketing as if it’s some new thing called “PAD technique”.Everything you’ve suggested is not new, it’s just article marketing. It doesn’t require proprietary lingo. It is what it is. This article should more properly be entitled “5 Reasons You Should AVOID Article Spamming Like the Plague”.
So yes James – it appears that we agree that article spam is bad and article marketing done right is a terrific approach. Wouldn’t it be easier to simply utilize a set of tools in order to enjoy the benefits you mention?
As we discussed between sessions at Affcon, my company DistributeYourArticles.com does everything necessary to eliminate article spam by alleviating the items you’ve called out as “dangerous” above. We absolutely agree – article spamming is bad. It’s bad for authors. It’s bad for site owners. It’s bad for searchers. It’s bad for the search engines.
At DYA, we’ve changed the face of article distribution services. We do things differently. DYA has hired native English speaking reviewers who read each article before it can be distributed. Our filters are among the strongest on the web, and effectively block spam, poor grammar, crap-spun and thin-content. Article spammers hate us.
The DYA Content Network consists of over 10,000 sites, each one owned by an internet marketing professional who doesn’t want crap content littering his or her domain. They monetize their sites with good, relevant content, and they provide solid, relevant do-follow links back to an author’s related sites.
Are they all PR10 sites? Nope. There are only 2 of those on the planet. One is Google. The other is FaceBook.
On the other hand, there are tons of PR0, and PR1 sites on the net. In the 90s, Google was just an idea in the heads of some college kids. Where was Facebook in 2000? Twitter? Flickr? These sites all started at nuthin’ and have grown. Unless you’re a soothsayer, you can’t predict which sites will hit the jackpot tomorrow.
But no one denies this: having your content already indexed there is like getting in on the ground floor of something big. It’s a no-brainer.
At the same time, DYA Members have the option of blocking the content they write from distribution to any site on our list. For the vast majority of sites, they can even recall their articles AFTER distribution is completed. While very few take advantage of these controls, they have it just the same.
An author’s articles are syndicated to only a few sites at a time, where they are featured on the home page for a few days or a week. Each site is topic focused and relevant to the article being sent there. That’s good for everyone – the author, the site owner and the search engines.
Once the article slides out of the featured position, it is sent to another topic focused site. If they’ve utilized SmartSpin, it’ll be a completely readable, interesting, unique article, with a unique anchor link, and potentially linking to a different page or relevant site. This is a Smart Strategy used by professional article marketers to extend the visibility of a site and get more (relevant) pages indexed by the search engines more quickly.
Yes, that’s right! Authors can choose to use a variety of anchor links so that they don’t have the same anchor text everywhere. They can even use the entire URL as the link text, as this is another Smart (and little known) Strategy to get a new site quickly indexed by the search engines.
And here’s the best part: Everyone can participate.
Because DYA Members take advantage of the established relationships we have with site owners, they don’t have to spend their time contacting publishers to be included on a relevant blog or focused content site. Because we have an established, broad, and deep network, we can provide long-term backlinks, built over time, across many many relevant sites.
I agree with everything you’ve said in this article, James – except that the evils you describe are called article spam, not article marketing. Getting content on valid, relevant, live sites that are topic focused is a great way to build your business. And article marketing can be done right, when one approaches it the right way.
Go Forth and Prosper!
Chris Ellington
CEO, DistributeYourArticles
Hi Chris,
Nice to hear from you. I do recall our conversation at PubCon.
I do recognize there are many forms of “article marketing” This is why I included the section right up front in the article called “What Is Article Marketing to describe exactly what type of article marketing I am referring to.
In my experience article marketing by my definition is the type of strategy that is running rampant throughout the Internet. It’s a mess, and it is harmful to those engage in the practice, especially to those who are just getting started and don’t understand the ramifications.
From above …
What is Article Marketing?
Before we get too far into a discussion about whether or not article marketing is effective, let me define exactly what I mean. Article marketing is one of those vague bits of jargon that people throw out there A) not really knowing what they’re talking about or B) using a very narrow definition of the term to skew opinions in their favor.
I’ve always defined article marketing as submitting content (usually 400-500 word articles) for mass distribution to websites (sometimes called article farms) in the hope that some webmaster will find it, read it, like it, and publish it on their own website. The whole point of the process is so that the links you incorporate into the text will direct people and search engines back to your website (this is called a backlink). But beware—not all backlinks are equal!
In fact, most of the backlinks you’ll earn through article marketing are either completely useless or very nearly so. (Read on and you’ll find out how some backlinks can even hurt your website.)
~end~
The style of article and the method of distribution is miles a part for the service you describe.
I do understand why you may not like me using the word article marketing and would prefer me to use the word article spam. The problem is that the style of article marketing I defined is by far the dominant method being taught.
The 400 word say nothing articles that were being accepted by the article directories who were (and still are) actively promoting article marketing as a viable strategy did not require much in the way of quality. In fact, after the first Panda update they were frantically telling everyone they needed to improve the quality. No kidding. They should have been beating that drum from the very beginning.
As for getting published on “content published on high ranking and authoritative sites.” It is also not that difficult, especially in the new guest writing era. I am not saying it doesn’t take work. Clearly it does, but the rewards far outweigh the efforts if it’s done right.
And the blogs that are actively seeking guest writers are not hard to find. In 2-3 hours a webmaster should be able to find 20-25 blogs where they can contribute.
If the new blogger doesn’t feel up to the task of creating the quality of content needed, they can focus on doing the research for the article and then hiring a professional at Elance to to the writing.
Chris you also mentioned “high ranking and authoritative sites do not have unlimited space to include every submission they receive. How do you suggest literally hundreds of thousands of internet marketers get “A dozen or two high-quality backlinks from well-ranked and respectable websites†as you recommend?”
I have found that the words “high ranking and authoritative sites” throw people off. A nice little 600+ article that is well researched and well written published on a nice website that has some PageRank (PR3+) and some traffic is more than sufficient.
As for the “hundreds of thousands of Internet marketers” getting a dozen or so quality backlinks. I am not sure, but the ones engaged in article marketing as I defined it, are spinning their wheels, wasting their money and polluting the Internet with tens of millions of crap pages of content.
And keep in mind, it’s the article marketing crowd is the ones that have given many, especially those just starting out, the impression that you need hundreds, if not thousands of backlinks, to get any real SEO effect. It’s simply not true, unless you are in a hugely competitive topic.
It really isn’t that difficult to get a highly quality article published on a website that is actively seeking guest writers. It’s more about getting organized and committed to the task.
As for coming up with something new as the “PAD Technique”, keep in mind I have been successfully teaching this strategy in my ebooks, podcasts, workshops and bootcamps since 2004, years before guest writing and posting became all the rage.
I would think in your case, and for your services, a much better word would be article syndication. You clearly understand that quality matters.
I did have a look at your service. I’ll admit that it does have some interesting components to it, but I am surprised to see your offering article spinning. Don’t you think that is problematic?
You also mentioned “The DYA Content Network consists of over 10,000 sites, each one owned by an internet marketing professional who doesn’t want crap content littering his or her domain. They monetize their sites with good, relevant content, and they provide solid, relevant do-follow links back to an author’s related sites.”
I see absolutely no problem with that. If the other webmaster has a quality website and ultimate control over what gets published (or not) on his website then things should be fine. I wouldn’t though, from an SEO perspective, be publishing duplicate versions of the same article to many times.
James
Twitter: LiveUrLove
I have to agree with Chris here as far as the article marketing – article spam goes. What you describe is article spam and no one should do it.
However, article marketing where you actually write a well crafted piece is pretty much still working. Spinning articles and submitting to hundreds of small directories is not real article marketing.
As far as this PAD goes, that is the plain ol’ guest posting.
Hi Brankica,
I think you both may have missed the point here. The style of article marketing I am referring to is the same style of article marketing Matt Cutts described in his recent video.
http://comluv.com/google-thinks-article-marketing-sucks/
It’s easy to say that there are other styles of article marketing. Sure there is, but the one I am referring to is the style that has been sold to the masses. To most “Spinning articles and submitting to hundreds of small directories is not real article marketing.” is exactly what they understand article marketing to be.
I do agree as well that it is “article spam”, the challenge is many still see it as article marketing. Not my word, there’s.
As for PAD being “plain ol’ guest blogging”. Sure, but the strategy as I have been teaching it even pre-dates WordPress.
I cover this all more fully in my podcast below. I invite you to listen.
Thanks for your comment.
James
James,
Great stuff!
I have already given up my article marketing efforts sometime ago. Your post is giving lot’s of reasons why article marketing is not a long term strategy.
Although I’m not into article marketing anymore, it helped me to form one good habit: writing on a daily basis
One question though: Isn’t your PAD strategy one sort of guest posting? You write great content and try to get it published on another website, in front of people, who are interested of that topic of yours?
Anyway, your strategy makes sense – quality over quantity.
Timo
Timo Kiander recently posted..Part time blogger: How to utilize the most out of your limited time for blog content creation
Hi Timo,
An associate of mine coined the phrase “The PAD Technique” (aka professional article distribution) back in 2004 — long before guest posting became popular. The strategy was (and still is) to write a well researched, well written article and offer it for publication on another website.
So yes “PAD strategy one sort of guest posting? You write great content and try to get it published on another website, in front of people, who are interested of that topic of yours?”
Good luck with your efforts.
James
Didn’t some of these types of marketing get hit hard by Google after recent updates? I never really researched it too much. I did read a lot of people complaining about article marketing getting hit hard or penalized by google. Guess if it is done right it would probably be alright. Maybe it was the folks that were pushing it all that had a problem.
Ray recently posted..Annoying Frequent Software Upgrades
Yes, the got whacked big time by Google.
Twitter: buildwebsites1
Hi James
(don’t take offense, but I have a different view)
Are you now “coining the term” Article marketing? Who defines it meaning and how can you say that other definitions are wrong?
I agree article marketing used to be just what you have said here 400-500 word article submitted to an article directory.
We have evolved with the changes as we always have and submitting an article is “submitting an article”. Pretty much the same as what you have done here, “submitted an article” on someone else’s website for marketing purposes.
If this it true:
Matt says that everyone should concentrate on “great content that naturally links, some good social media marketing so that people are linking to [the content] organically. . . .â€
Then why can’t you submit great content to a well respected article directory and make it successful? Great content is the only thing Google wants. Isn’t this right?
And you say people reproduce these articles but whats stopping them from reproducing any content on the internet? I have my content republished all the time (from my websites) and I have no control over that either.
Do we really need all the drama of “avoiding article marketing like the plague” when we could simply say that quality original content now wins out hands down?
Mitz Pantic recently posted..How I Make Money online with WordPress Websites
Hi Mitz, no offense taken. I appreciate your input.
And I’m not defining the word article marketing. I am simply providing my definition because there are many to skin the cat so to speak, and article marketing means many things to many people.
The guidelines laid out by the typical article directory were for 400 words. They didn’t seem to care much what the article said or the level of detail provided only that it must be spelling and grammar checked. As a result the vast majority of article were 400 words and very thin in content.
I would say by all indications that this is the primary reason they got hit so hard. It seems the owners of those directories think so too because they quickly modified their guidelines say they want quality, non-duplicated articles only.
It’s all well and good for the article directories to say that, but what about all of the content that they encouraged the masses to spend their time and money creating articles for them. It was a sham in my mind right from the very beginning. I can’t give the article directories all the blame though, because it was the many, some knowingly, and most unknowingly, that this was a short term strategy. (Google has been on the hunt for low quality duplicate content for years)
And I agree submitting a quality article to another quality website is a great strategy providing it’s not an article directory. I would also not call it article marketing in the traditional sense of the word because article marketing to the masses has been the creation of a 400 word low quality article mass submitted to the directories in the hope that other webmasters would pick it up. (never a good idea because there’s no control)
As you say…
If this it true:
Matt says that everyone should concentrate on “great content that naturally links, some good social media marketing so that people are linking to [the content] organically. . . .â€
Then why can’t you submit great content to a well respected article directory and make it successful? Great content is the only thing Google wants. Isn’t this right?
==
I am not sure which article directories are “well respected”. Therein lies the real problem. Not know. And from the reports I have seen I wouldn’t want my sites associated in anyway with them. Talk about a bad neighborhood. Here’s just on of them:
http://searchengineland.com/who-lost-in-googles-farmer-algorithm-change-66173
You say “And you say people reproduce these articles but whats stopping them from reproducing any content on the internet? I have my content republished all the time (from my websites) and I have no control over that either.” I agree, it is a problem. The scraper sites are none for this. So are the content aggregators some of which are also mentioned in the report above.
And Google is definitely all over this. They have been for a while.
I would guess that the main reason the article marketers, by my definition, got hammered is because in a way, like the article directories they are promoting the distribution of low quality duplicate content on mass. Those engaged in the process were taken out.
I do know many did (and still do) submit *quality* articles to the directories. I am just not sure why they would take the risk of getting caught up in a bad neighborhood, or submitting quality articles in a sea of bad ones.
I would love to see is the article directories’ Google Webmaster Tools reports to really see how deep into the sh*t list they really are with Google.
As for “Do we really need all the drama of “avoiding article marketing like the plague†when we could simply say that quality original content now wins out hands down?”
I would say yes, because way too many people still feel this is a viable strategy.
It’s not.
There are still oodles of courses pushing this a great method of building traffic. It’s not. In fact, the typical 400 word article mass blasted is down right harmful.
Yet people still sell courses teaching that, software that do the blast and so on so I don’t feel that simply saying that it has “evolved” without a very clear, to the point, discussion on the topic.
If the word “article marketing” is going to be used, it’s going to need a very clear, very strong new definition of what it WAS, and IS now.
And the first strep is getting people engaged in a conversation. This is why I wrote the headline I did. I wanted to get their attention, and because I do feel that people should avoid the strategy altogether.
If article marketing now means researching and developing a well written article that provides value to the reader that is published by a human on another website (not an article directory), and includes a couple backlinks to your site, then I am all for it.
…but I call that “The PAD Technique” and have been using and teaching it very successfully since 2004.
James
PS – Why don’t we all just go guest write on quality blogs? That’s what I do. It’s simple, safe and provides value to the blog owner, reader (most important) of course to myself, and is in NO way offensive to Google. It’s something Mitz you already do a great job doing.
Twitter: buildwebsites1
Great response James
My problem is that you answers are too firm and leave no room for anyone else’s opinion. I respect what you are saying but when you make statements like:
“Article marketing is one of those vague bits of jargon that people throw out there A) not really knowing what they’re talking about or B) using a very narrow definition of the term to skew opinions in their favor.”
You say that and then follow by giving what you see as the correct definition. This only gives the perception that you think everyone else opinion is wrong.
I believe that you are committing B) yourself right here in this article.
You say “I am not sure which article directories are “well respectedâ€
Ezine article still has a PR 6 and Alexa 206, Articlebase has PR6 and Alexa 627. How do you gauge a well respected website?
They are genuine well ranking websites that have worked hard to get where they are…They took a blow from Panda but they are coming back. Why are you labeling all article directories?
Hi Mitz,
Sure. It’s been my experience and opinion that the way I defined article marketing is the way most people understand it to be. It has been the norm from what I can see. It is the type of content that was being accepted by the article directories up until very recently.
It has also been the pitch of those selling article distribution services.
The big issues to me are the 5 I mentioned above.
As for the issue of “As for choosing and gauging a well respected article directory. I don’t know how someone could do that. It’s been well documented by many in the SEO world that a number of the big ones lost as much as 90% of their traffic.
Ezine articles does have a PR6. It doesn’t mean those with links from articles are getting backlinking credits. Google has had the ability to eliminate the effectiveness of links from sites that make it easy to get links from for quite some time now. All you have to do is look to those sites who are selling links. A link from many of those are said to be worthless — and I agree — even though they are still display good PageRank.
As for labeling all article directories. I am not, but what I am saying is the article marketing strategy (as I defined it) is dead. It’s my opinion for all the reasons I listed in the article above.
The whole premise of an article directory was to submit an article to them in the hope that someone else would grab a duplicate copy and paste it on their site. There’s no control in who publishes your articles — and giving up that control is never a good idea.
James
Really great post. I’ve done some work on articles for submission and never really thought about the negative impacts of the submissions– only the positive ones! The fact that I have no control over the article once I send it off is a little scary. Do I want my (company) name associated with certain sites? I think there are definitely benefits to article submissions, as you say, but when you think about the amount of time that is often put into article-writing versus the time it takes for other avenues of Internet marketing it does make you wonder if you’re utilizing your resources most effectively.
Brian recently posted..Making Your CPA Website Mobile-Friendly
Hi Brian, it is a good idea to look at the possible “negative imp[acts” of engaging any marketing strategies. There are also many still not believing that links from bad neighborhoods can now hurt you. This wasn’t the case in the past, but it is true now.
James
Hi James, I find that most of the articles I have written do not appear or get rejected from so call reputable article websites. eZine causes the most frustration. Can you recommend any decent article websites. I would to generate some income from article writing, any tips would be great. Thanks, Steve
Hi Steve, I would personally stay away from the article directories. Instead I would suggest rounding up a half dozen sites that accept quality guest posts. It’s cleaner, free of controversy and can have lasting impact for your business.
The article directories are clearly on Google’s sh*t list. I would suggest avoiding the strategy completely. Guest writing on reputable non-article directory websites is the way to go.
James
Twitter: grandmainternet
Hi James;
I agree that there is a lot of very poor content in many of the article directories. I wonder why it is that there has to be such a mystery about what Google will accept and what they won’t accept. I think many of these poorly written mass produced articles would disappear if it was clearly stated that Google will not accept any duplicate content period. For many of us it is confusing when one “guru” says Google only penalizes if you have duplicate content on your own site. After the Google slap at the article directories it will be interested to see what happens next.
Pat Tate recently posted..SEO for Senior Internet Marketers
Hi Pat, nice to see you.
It’s not so much that Google has an issue with duplicate content. I have no problem at all posting a duplicate article on another quality site. In fact, I do it every week. I publish my podcast along with a descriptive article that details what we talked about during the show. I then also publish the article on another quality site.
I don’t think Google has an issue with it either because they typically rank both pages, even though they are duplicate. If you do a Google search for affiliate marketing success stories you will see they both rank in the top 10 results.
The real issue as I see it — is the mass distribution of low quality “say nothing” articles to low quality websites — who then offer up more duplicate copies of them to anyone and everyone who wants to use them. I would suggest that is the problem.
James
I hear what you are saying and I see what matt c has said too but I have always used article marketing to get myself a boost in the search engines. I think that if you are near the top, perhaps just outside of the top 3, then a decent article marketing campaign seems to be really effective, I dont think it works so well on new sites thought.
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Hi Danika, if article marketing is working well at all it would also work for new sites. The challenge is that it is not working well … and in my opinion, those with new sites who have been using on the strategy prove this to be true because they are NOT getting the results.
Twitter: georgegijo
There are better options than article marketing. Guest Post is a unique way to grab those backlinks from high ranking blogs.
George recently posted..Google Plus, Redfining the Search Business
Hi George, I so agree. Guest posting is the way to go.
i agree that article marketing is a real pain. But these days, article marketing coupled with many other methods is what boost your rankings in google mainly and drive more traffic to your site. But yes, you need to care about duplicate content, and article spinners wont work good and google can easily detect duplicate content these days. So if you have to start writing a unique article for every directory, it will take so much time. But it yield the long term results
robin recently posted..Weaning
Really?
You said; “I agree that article marketing is a real pain.”
I didn’t say it was a “pain”. I said it should be avoided like the plague.
You said “So if you have to start writing a unique article for every directory, it will take so much time. But it yield the long term results.
Not likely. Bad advice all round.
Twitter: vinayagaonline
Hi James!
Fantastic write up with what and why and the solution. It’s been a long time since my eye balls glue to a long post such like this, I admit this the best post I have read recently. I always have doubt on article marketing after seen Matt Cutts explaining in his video some time ago, in fact I never written to any article to article directories yet and I will do in future though. Thank you for such convincing post.
Rammesh Perumal recently posted..How to Make Google Index Your Site Quickly
Let me get this right. Your take away from reading the article is “… I never written to any article to article directories yet and I will do in future though. Thank you for such convincing post.”
You may want yo give it a reread because it’s the complete opposite of what I am recommending.
Twitter: commentluv
wow, amazing interaction on this post James! thanks for being a great contributor!
Andy Bailey recently posted..Guest blogging brings great results at ComLuv.com
Hi Andy, thanks. It’s a topic near and dear. It is great to see you have such a lively bunch. Your visitors are great. I love the interaction. I find it makes for a great learning experience for everyone, myself included.
I can attest to the PAD technique as a powerful means of getting top Google rankings. As a follower of Jame’s technique, it has provided me with the ability to become a full time affiliate earning a living solely from using PAD.
Dan Maynard recently posted..How to Play Supertramp Piano
Hey Dan, thanks for chiming in and sharing your successes using the PAD technique. Your comments are greatly appreciated.
James
Twitter: thebitbot
Great article James and spot on.
However, I would like to make one small comment about your definition of “article marketing”.
I think your rant was actually about “article directory marketing” or “content farm marketing”.
Article marketing is much broader in scope and includes a variety of things such as “guest blogging”.
Just wanted to clarify that peoples definitions differ in important ways.
Thanks,
Mark
Mark recently posted..How To Warm Your List And Monetize It At The Same Time
Twitter: jimbaker10
Agreed Mark.
Guest posting is a form of article marketing and it is one of the best ways of getting high quality links to your site.
Jim recently posted..Napoleon Grills Ultra Chef 405 Series Gas Grill with Rear Burner
Hi Mark, yes I agree. I did give the definition to make sure everyone understood the style of article marketing that I am referring to. I never meant it to be “The” definition of article marketing. Guest blogging is a great strategy. The best in my mind.
James
Strangely I never though so muich about article marketing but reading your post brought all my vision about article marketing down. You are true with your experience. Thanks for this awesome share of your experience.
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Hi Ashish, thanks. I am glad you enjoyed the article.
I have a different criterion to judge article marketing. When was the last time you used an article from an article directory to find out serious information or to settle an argument? Probably never. Because you know that almost all the articles out there are fluff. Very few articles have any substance. Almost all are written to get Google’s attention, not to talk seriously about an issue. I agree article marketing is either dead or on its last legs.
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Hi Noo, very good point. I would say that there are a percentage of articles in the directories that are well researched and written. It’s too bad they are published in a sea of low quality cr*p.
Hey James,
Some very interesting discussions going on here. Nice to know input from both sides of the fence. I’ve always considered article marketing to be one aspect of link building but my view is that guest posting is one aspect of article marketing that will help your site heaps.
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Hi Susie, I agree it is a great discussion. I also share your view of guest posting being “one aspect of article marketing that will help your site heaps”. The only problem I have with it is the phrase “article marketing” is that most look at it as crappy 400 word articles blasted out to the article directories. I personally wouldn’t call guest writing a form of article marketing. It is such a superior strategy I wouldn’t even compare them.
An interesting article, but IMO a little overstated. Article marketing still has it’s uses as long as it’s not the only egg in your basket, and more importantly, as long as you’re not spamming.
Duplicate content gets a bad rap. Yes, duplicate content delivers diminishing returns, but it doesn’t get penalized. It’s also a good idea to loosen up on the anchor text. Don’t make every link an exact match keyword to your site. A near match is more effective anyway.
The trick is to offer high quality content. I agree that this is VITAL. Bad content gets picked up by bad sites, and that limits the value of your links.
You have to take official SEO tips from Google with a grain of salt. When Matt Cutts announced that sites would be penalized for dark-side backlinks one of my more aggressive competitors blitzed us with links from link farms and syndication services and it hasn’t put a dent in our rankings. I’m confident that as long as you don’t link out to these sources you’ll be OK.
Google hates article marketing. That much is true. But it’s still a good way to put yourself out there. Don’t expect any SEO value from your links in Ezine Articles, but from time time your content does get picked by an authority site, and not only do these links have value this can also be leveraged into a relationship with a publisher in your niche.
That’s an interesting take on article marketing. Never thought of it that way. I guess it’s true, article marketing is slowly losing value, Google will make sure of that. You were wise to distance yourself from it so early.
I’ll also have to take a look into that PAD Technique…
Martin recently posted..How to Become a CDL Instructor
Twitter: imagineworlds
“If your website earns a backlink from a “bad†website, search engines may now penalize your website.”
Nothing you do outside of your own domain will get penalized by Google. If websites were penalized for “bad” links then people could tank their competition by link spamming websites from adult directories but this doesn’t happen for a very simple reason – incoming links can never hurt your website.
Mira recently posted..All Free MMORPG and MMO Games List 2011
Hi Mira, you may want to do some research on your claim “Nothing you do outside of your own domain will get penalized by Google”. It was true in the past, but Matt Cutts from Google officially retracted that state… saying (and I paraphrase) indeed you can now be hurt by other sites that are linking to you.
This idea of “Nothing you do outside of your own domain will get penalized by Google”. is the primary reason many think it is okay do do all kinds of spammy things elsewhere on the web. They think it won’t effect their sites. They couldn’t be more wrong.
James
Twitter: imagineworlds
I’ve search through Cutts’ blog and there is nothing there that says incoming links can hurt you blog.
It’s logic. If incoming links could hurt your website then all anyone would have to do is spam link your blog. So obviously incoming links can’t hurt you.
This is very basic knowledge, I cannot believe that you would even argue.
Mira recently posted..Free MMORPG for Kids and Teens
I have to agree with Mira on this one. I totally believe that Google would bluff on this one, but one of my competitors recently hit my site with a slew of bad links in the hopes of bringing a penalty down on me and it didn’t hurt us at all.
I’m not calling you a liar. I totally believe that’s something Google would SAY. And while I don’t recall seeing the article you mention I have heard other knowledgeable SEO professionals make the same claim. And of, course, there’s the spam attack on my site that suggests my competitors heard the same thing and considered the information reliable enough to act on. But where SEO is concerned Google and Cutts have often been known to indulge in misinformation in the name of spooking naive SEO’s away from using techniques they don’t approve of. But penalizing sites for incoming links is completely impractical. Like Mira says… it’s simple logic. It would make the system easier to game than article marketing does, and destroy the quality of their search results by allowing the most viscous spammers and scumbags to rise to the top of the listings by sabotaging competitors sites with spammy links. Love them or hate them nobody can say that Google isn’t fanatically dedicated to providing high quality search results.
Twitter: selfishyayun
wow… here too long comment…
1 comment like 1 article.. i think this is not good
I really feel for all internet marketers who mostly used to do article marketing. Even i was used to do it but currently i have to do spinning work so at least 80% of article are unique when they are published onto other sites.
minik recently posted..Indian Style of losing weight fast
Thanks James! Its rly nice article! Im read all it, but im dont understend few moments:
1)”Google may penalize your content and your website. ” if i create original and interesting contant how google can penalize my website? I think its almost impossible..
Mitchel P. recently posted..Kay Jewelers Coupons
Whoa, I just felt doused with cold water by your post James. I just read a recent WSO promoting the use of article marketing from a reputable marketer (or so I think) and here you are stating the opposite. You made me think. But I agree with the PAD approach and have been hearing about its power. Thanks.
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James,
I guess my biggest complaint is that this article adds to the confusion, without helping to clarify. The difference between article spam and article marketing has been known for ages. And yes, a lot of people make the same mistake you’ve made: They describe *article spam* while calling it *article marketing*.
You not only incorrectly characterized the actions of article spam as if it were article marketing, but you’ve proposed adding yet another label to the mix – and that’s what further confuses the matter. I would be happier – and I imagine others would as well – if you helped to clarify article marketing vs article spam, and if you would avoid making things murkier with yet another label. “A rose, by any other name…”
To summarize the PAD Technique:
Don’t send unreadable, mistake-ridden, useless/fluff content and don’t post your articles on sites engaged in black hat techniques.
Provide useful information to a target audience of interested readers and allow them to click a link (or links) to whatever it is you seek to promote.
Conclusion: PAD Technique is just another name for Article Marketing, which is not the same thing as Article Spam.
In fact, James, this article demonstrates everything that article marketing is: a symbiotic relationship among all partners:
The author: gets exposure to a target audience. Traffic to their promotions is what drives their economic engine.
Specifically: You have reached an audience at comluv.com that you can’t otherwise reach on your already popular site. You’ve included links so that people can come check you out, and potentially become regular visitors to your site.
The publisher: gets valuable content to include on sites or in newsletters alongside their ads. Eyeballs on ads is what drives their economic engine.
Specifically: Andy is using your article to increase traffic, and even recently commented on how much discussion and community you have provided with this content. Andy’s “Featured Links” box is one way he monetizes this site.
The reader: gets valuable information and connections to other relevant information. That information solves whatever problem caused them to investigate the topic.
Specifically: readers have been exposed to your opinions and ideas about article marketing/article spam/PAD technique. They can make decisions now and potentially change behaviors.
The search engines: get fresh material to present to web searchers alongside their ads. Eyeballs on ads is what drives their economic engine.
Specifically: I came to this article from Google+ while others came from searches. Most of use were exposed to a mixture of advertising on the way here.
As you can see, article marketing delivers on each of these objectives. Article spam does not accomplish anything for anyone.
If this article had been unreadable junk spam, it wouldn’t result in new visitors to your site, wouldn’t produce in comments and community for comluv.com, wouldn’t help people make a decision and wouldn’t help the search engines.
That’s the key differentiator between article marketing vs article spam. If there are differentiators between article marketing and PAD technique, I would like to hear them.
Hi Chris,
Thanks. I appreciate your comments.
It seems for the most part we agree. The bone of contention appears to be my use of the word “article marketing”, which I will say at best is a vague phrase that can mean many things to many people. It is the reason I included the style of article marketing I am referring to.
If I may here’s the definition I included in the article above. Please keep in mind it was never meant to be “the” definition of article marketing.
==
What is Article Marketing?
Before we get too far into a discussion about whether or not article marketing is effective, let me define exactly what I mean. Article marketing is one of those vague bits of jargon that people throw out there A) not really knowing what they’re talking about or B) using a very narrow definition of the term to skew opinions in their favor.
I’ve always defined article marketing as submitting content (usually 400-500 word articles) for mass distribution to websites (sometimes called article farms) in the hope that some webmaster will find it, read it, like it, and publish it on their own website. The whole point of the process is so that the links you incorporate into the text will direct people and search engines back to your website (this is called a backlink). But beware—not all backlinks are equal!
In fact, most of the backlinks you’ll earn through article marketing are either completely useless or very nearly so. (Read on and you’ll find out how some backlinks can even hurt your website.)
Other people have other definitions but with so many individuals and companies out there selling one-size-fits-all article marketing packages (including automation software, pre-made content, and hands-free publishing) it’s hard not to define it as I have above.
==
The “article marketing” is tainted at best. As for this article adding to the confusion, even Matt Cutts defines it in this way… and he also calls it “article marketing”.
http://jamesmartell.com/matt-cutts/google-seo-tip-120-do-you-recommend-article-marketing-as-an-seo-strategy/
It’s unfortunate the article spammers have tainted a good phrase.
I agree fully when you say “If this article had been unreadable junk spam, it wouldn’t result in new visitors to your site, wouldn’t produce in comments and community for comluv.com, wouldn’t help people make a decision and wouldn’t help the search engines.
That’s the key differentiator between article marketing vs article spam.”
Again it seems to me that the primary thing we are disagreeing on is the phase “article marketing”. The problem with the phrase is there are many definitions of the phrase. It is too vague.
You asked “If there are differentiators between article marketing and PAD technique, I would like to hear them.”
I would say by your definition of article marketing it seems to the the same in many ways to my PAD Technique. The big difference I would say though is that I teach it in a step by step fashion. It isn’t vague. I am very clear on how to best roll it out and implement it.
I would guess another way to say it is “article marketing” is an umbrella strategy that encompasses many different styles …some very credible, others not.
The PAD Technique is a detailed strategy that I have been teaching since 2004.
James
Hi James,
It sounds like you and I agree on the basic definitions of what is article marketing vs that which is – in reality – article spam.
I don’t think there’s anything vague in the way the DYA Review Team strictly enforces quality content for use in an article marketing campaign while rejecting crap content as article spam. It is clear. It is definitive. And spam simply doesn’t go out through our servers. End of story.
I’ve already acknowledged that many (too many!) people incorrectly apply the term “article marketing” to that which is actually article spam. Your example shows where Matt Cutts has done it.
Don’t get me wrong. I get that Matt speaks from a bully pulpit. I, however, don’t feel that that forgives him this error in terminology. If he said ‘That ain’t a good approach for youse ta use” would his standing as an employee at Google forgive him the error of proper spelling and grammar? I would argue (in fact, I *do* argue) that it does not.
Matt Cutts, and everyone commenting about article marketing, ought to differentiate between article spam (bad) and article marketing (good). But he/that do not. And fly-by-night shysters also do not.
That means that it’s up to the upstanding citizens like you and me to … well, be upstanding. My belief – and based on your responses to everyone’s comments, your belief too – is that article spam is bad, while article marketing is good.
Don’t you feel that Matt Cutts ought to help people understand the difference between good content – as James has provided with a good content article here on comluv.com – vs. thin-content, synonymized spam being promulgated around the net? Maybe you can help me as I work diligently to correct the error of his ways.
James, my request to you is simple. Please do not add fuel to the “article marketing sucks” fire. In reality, you and I both know that article spam sucks, while article marketing is terrific.
I propose that you and I move forward together, and that we work diligently to help people understand what qualifies as “article marketing” and what makes a block of content “article spam”. After all, its pretty obvious.
In fact James, I am even going to be so bold as to publicly ask you to rebrand “PAD Technique” as “Article Marketing” so that – as we fight shoulder-to-shoulder to help newbies understand the distinction between the two – there isn’t a confusing ‘extra choice”.
I believe in my heart that the more you and I – and people like us – can educate the public on proper article marketing techniques, the more we will discredit article spam in the world.
I will also be looking to you to back me up as i take on (even if I have to do it single-handedly, unarmed, a small “David” against the “Goliath” known as Google) this propaganda against publishing well-written, good content on a site that doesn’t engage in black hat techniques. Would you stand up and support that with me?
How about the rest of you? Are you with me?
Don’t get me wrong. I get that we can’t get rid of spammers (oh how I wish we could!) but if the PAD Technique is re-labeled as article marketing, it would be very similar to getting the German government to select someone other than Adolf Hitler to become Chancellor in 1934 German. Imagine how different the world could be now.
Please… everyone who is reading this… do everything in your power to shine the light on article marketing as a valuable approach for small businesses around the world, while denigrating those who promote article spam. Together, we can make a difference that might just prevent a catastrophe as violent as an online WWII.
Are you with me?
And the rest of you too? I’ve been mostly directing my comments to James – but many of you are commenting on this article, and you have opinions.
Are you willing to join the Article Marketing movement? I’ve just set up the DistributeYourArticles fan page on facebook If you understand what I’ve been saying, and if you support “article marketing” over “article spam”, I invite you to “like” the DYA fan page. (http://www.facebook.com/pages/DistributeYourArticlescom/212908858720342)
We support well-written, interesting content, published on sites that don’t engage in black hat techniques.
I’m starting a grassroots movement. Will you join me? Do you “like” the concept?
Chris Ellington
CEO, DistributeYourArticles.com
http://www.facebook.com/pages/DistributeYourArticlescom/212908858720342
Chris Ellington recently posted..Say no to already been done, thin content. Original, interesting articles win hands down. Put some effort into your writing! #copywriting
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Chris, I am with you on this one.
I saw that video that Matt Cutts did about article marketing. He made the mistake of saying article marketing when he really meant article spamming. Then people like James go around spreading more bad information (whether intentional or not).
What people need to realize is the context in which Matt Cutts said that. He is the head of Google’s anti-spam activities. Therefore you have to assume that whenever he speaks about any techniques of promoting websites he is looking at it from a different perspective.
The person who was asking him that question about article marketing was not asking about article spamming. Yet, Matt gave an answer that applies to article spamming.
Now people are picking up where Matt left off and distorting the meaning of article marketing even more.
The only people who think of the term “article marketing” as article spamming are people who have engaged in article spamming before. If you take someone who has never done any spamming and ask them to define article marketing, they will tell you what the real definition is. It has nothing to do with spamming.
In an interview I saw over at Eric Enge’s website StoneTemple, Matt Cutts came right out and said that it was perfectly acceptable for people to write helpful articles for publication on other websites. It is fine so long as there is some kind of editorial decision as to whether or not the article will be published.
Matt Cutts denounces spamming. He does not have a problem with using articles to promote your site.
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I think that the PAD distribution is the greatest link building method ever created. Period.
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I think it depend what you call artcile marketing. If you do article marketing right, there are huge benefits.
Also, i do not buy the duplicate content thing. If that was true. then Google wouldn’t give this much value to article directories that are basically publishing thousands of exact same articles!…
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I have sent allot of articles in the net. I sent all of them in article directories with Pr 3 and above.. I sent the original ones to Ezinearticles..it did great i see improvement in my site.. But when i tried it in my other site it did not work as good as the other one. I just felt bad maybe my articles are not that good.
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I used to do article marketing when I started learning SEO and worked in some way but after the panda update the traffic to the articles died. What I am doing is guest blogging and have been getting decent results and the links appear to be getting stronger with time something that I noticed was not really happening when I was sending the article to multiple directories.
I still do some article marketing but I post only on some specific sites and I write original articles for each directory. Its mostly for the benefit of having more domains linking to my site because personally I think that the domain authority from most directories was crushed by the panda update so the articles themselves are getting next to no traffic. Of course, this has been my experience. Everyone has had different experiences and has a different opinion.
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James,
I like most of your material, but not this post. I think you are contributing to the problem by defining article marketing the way you did.
You said:
Article marketing is one of those vague bits of jargon that people throw out there A) not really knowing what they’re talking about or B) using a very narrow definition of the term to skew opinions in their favor.
I say: You are definitely guilty of doing point B.
You define article marketing that way so that you can claim this different method – PAD method – is superior.
In reality what you did is distort the real meaning of a simple term like article marketing so that you could use some imaginary “Super smart PAD marketing technique” as if it was somehow different than regular article marketing.
Article marketing is purposefully crafting and publishing articles in the public domain in an effort to generate publicity for your brand and/or website. There are good ways to do it and spammy ways to do it. You distorted the definition so that you could make a point.
There is nothing special about your PAD method that you stumbled on when link farming was popular back in 2004. (Jesus man. Whatever! Like that was some major breakthrough discovery -) Come on dude. The people that read this blog are smarter than that. What you describe as some major discovery is normal article marketing. Most people do not mass distribute articles. They write one at a time and publish at specifically chosen locations.
Mass distribution of an article is a spamming technique, not a traditional marketing technique.
You should re-write this article and title it – Why You Should Avoid Article Spamming Like The Plague
The way you approached this article is BS and it has tarnished my impression of you a bit. You could have and should have done it differently. I thought you were better than this. Not cool man. Not friggin cool.
Ted recently posted..Do You Bother To Check The Comment Policy Of The New Blogs You Comment On
Ted,
I agree that this is an important distinction, but I don’t think James is that guilty. He is basically denouncing spammy techniques, which everyone here seems to agree with. Maybe if he had phrased it as 5 Reasons You Should Avoid Article Syndication it would make more sense.
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I never really liked article marketing. Most the people using the articles would just leave off the links completely and the article directories never really did much for me as far as I could tell. All for guest blogging, but starting to wonder a little about that too.
I agree with a lot of what your article says. Quality content is the only way to go and article marketing is going downhill. I am new at Internet marketing and will have to check out the PAD method that you have mentioned. Thanks for the great content, will be checking back soon.
Twitter: conver2sales
It amazes me that there are still a lot of people doing article marketing and many “gurus” recommending it. I haven’t jumped on that bandwagon and I’m not likely to do so now. Thanks for posting such a well-thought out and researched article that so clearly articulates how I have *felt* about article marketing but haven’t really been able to put into words. Now, I don’t have to since I can just reference your outstanding article! Thanks.
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I think your predictions have come true.
Google has been slowly but surely penalizing crappy backlinks and that’s coming to fruitition with their latest Google Panda and Penguin updates, over the last few weeks, months.
From what I read of your post, this PAD method sounds essentially like Guest Post blogging or st least has the same effect.
Moral of the Story: if you need Google Love, provide high quality content, avoid the flavor of the month spam backlink methods and network with sites in your niche. Oh and use CommentLuv too
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Hi Martin, it does seem the final piece of the puzzle was Penguin. Amazingly enough there’s another article that was just posted on ComLuv that is recommending article marketing as a promotional and backlinking strategy. Amazing.
I also covered this in my podcast below.
Maybe we should all go back to exchanging links. Only kidding.
Twitter: GeekandJock
Yeah James, I read that guest post, as well as commented too.
I know the author, Jon, has reiterated a number of times that he writes for just one Article Marketing site and writes quality and non-spun content.
That being the case, maybe there is some worth. For me, I’ll be avoiding those sites like the plague
I’m starting a few other strategies, that only involve quality content, sharing, comments and targeted guest posting. I want more Google love
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Since he’s an engineer, my brother knows nothing about marketing. He’d written an amazing, detailed, in-depth answer on Yahoo Answers. Pretty sharp guy, but he’s an engineer. So I suggested he expand it a bit and post it on Ezine Articles. For 15 minutes work, (mostly editing it down to size) he was attracting a long-term stream of traffic you’d otherwise pay hundreds of dollars to get.
Clearly, that won’t work anymore.
Since some of my YouTube videos have done well in the past, I said, “Let’s do a video on the same subject and see what happens.”
He answered some questions, showed some charts, we edited the video, and put it on YouTube. The resulting video not only attracts viewers, but the viewership continues to grow over time instead of fizzling out. Another started getting about 20 to 40 views a day. That’s cool. It kinda went viral.
So I kept experimenting. Every experiment got me better and better results until I posted a video which, on a fluke, got about 4000 hits in a single day. Since it’s a YouTube video, you can use a link to drive traffic to other videos. The next day, I drove 380 viewers to another YouTube video the next day.
So now I’m thinking, that’s real engagement. You can write off the 4000 views if you want, but over 300 people watched this video to the end, and liked it enough to click on the link to see what’s next. 50% of those watched for over 2 minutes. That’s got to be over 300 dollars of traffic in a day, right?
So by essentially video-recording my regular, good old articles using a screen capture program, I was getting good traffic, and giving the YouTube audience a preview of the experience they’ll get at my video blog.
Instead of guest blogging, I was tapping in by using
Someday, I hope to make a living driving traffic to help good ideas get discovered.
The adventure continues.
One more thing. Remember how I said my videos have done well in the past? Well, I wrote up a PDF report for my cousin to explain to him the formula I used to get over 300 thousand YouTube views with just a few hours work. You don’t need to to opt-in to an email list to get it, mainly because I can’t figure out how to get my lightbox popup thingy to work. I thought I should call it something fancy, like the “Viral Hit Formula.” It’s got bold parts and yellow highlighter because somebody told me that makes it easier to read.
I didn’t want to guest blog about it until I got some feedback, but even though it’s been downloaded hundreds of times, nobody will tell me what they think, so now I’m not sure if guest blogging is for me. Maybe my ideas are too dangerous or ahead of their time, but I’ll never know unless somebody reads it and tells me whether they like it or not.
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It all depends. Article marketing broken down to the purest form is totally fine with Google and your blog.
Article spamming is the “wrong” thing to do. Never do that. There is the difference.
Plus if your article is published on a “bad” site, then that site will get the kick from Google. People need to be informed fully on the difference and what is right to do.
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I haven’t tried marketing my articles. Part of it is that, like Groucho Marx, I wouldn’t want to be a member of any club that would have me. Your article convinces me that if I write for other sites, I should go for quality sites ranked above PR3.
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James, I understand where you are coming from regarding this article, great article by the way, but may I just add the following. I started a website in Feb 2012 and only concentrated in writing original, 700 word articles and putting on an average of about 3 new articles per week. Some articles were purely informative and some were affiliate orientated. I did not bother using any Article Directories but only used a variety of Social Media for promotion. Obviously I did some On Site SEO for each article. Today less than a year later I am raning in the Top 200,000 websites in the world and recieve an average of around 1000 visitors per day. In my opinion it is giving Google what thy ask for and dont bother with Article Directories to generate your traffic
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts and helping us understand more about article marketing. We’ll have to move on to other ways of marketing as Google can change everything overnight.
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