Google Thinks Article Marketing SUCKS

There are some VERY compelling statements made by Matt Cutts (head Engineer at Google) in a recent video.

I strongly suggest that you watch this YouTube video right now.  It’s a huge wake up call for anyone who wants free traffic, especially if you have ever used article marketing in any way:

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As you can see, Google doesn’t look at article marketing as being a very high quality form of marketing, and backlinks that come from articles are most likely going to get very little link juice when it comes to SEO.  Moving forward it is best to publish quality content on your site.

When you hear Matt Cutts explain the Google mindset when it comes to article marketing, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how Google might weigh different things when it comes to SEO.  I know the notoriously elusive Google Algorithm will never be cracked by any one of us, but when you start to think like Google – maybe our SEO answers aren’t too far away.

Article Marketing = Duplicate Content and Duplicate Anchor Text

Article banks like EzineArticles have been flooded with outsourced articles and spintaxed articles that make absolutely no sense at all.  Why on Earth would Google reward people for creating more garbage on the internet?

In a way I feel like this is a great move on Google’s part.  My hope is that people will actually work a little harder to provide value instead of taking shortcuts to get quick results. Word on the streets is that article directories are starting to lose page rank, and their articles (and links) are beginning to get indexed less and less.

I Confess:  I am Guilty of Cheating with Article Marketing

I’ll be the first to admit that I have outsourced article writing to someone else.  These article “writers” always claim to be veteran, published Ezines-authors.  Of course they run the articles through a “rigorous” editorial review before delivery.  You think you are going to get something worth submitting as your own work, but what you get is a 500 word piece of you-know-what 😡 !

By the time you edit the outsourced articles so that they actually make sense, you have spent just as much time as if you had just written the article yourself.  My advice:  never outsource your content to anyone.  It just isn’t worth it.

If you buy some sort of spintax software or purchase some sort of automatic article publishing service,

you’re also wasting your money. Most of the time these article posting services publish your content on terrible, low-quality sites – and they never get traffic or ♥ Google love ♥.  Using spintax always generates a terrible rendition of the original article, and it is obvious that the article was spun.

For those of you who have never heard of spintax, it is a way of writing articles using a certain code.  You basically place synonyms for various different words in brackets.

For example:

Original sentence:  Google thinks article marketing sucks.

Spintaxed sentence: {Google|The #1 search engine} {thinks|ponders|wonders|believes} article {marketing|promotion for sale|advertising} {sucks|is bad|Nickleback}.

When spintaxed articles are used for article marketing, certain services and programs will take entire articles written like this and then convert them into THOUSANDS of variations automatically.  It saves time, but you usually get articles that do not flow in a natural, obviously human way.

Would someone ever write, “The #1 search engine ponders article promotion for sale is bad” ???

I don’t think so. 😉

If Article Marketing is Dead, Now What?

By writing quality content on your site and getting backlinks when other people share that content, you are far more likely to get free, high-quality traffic from the search engines (especially Google). Even if you don’t know anything about SEO, always remember this: Google rewards those of us who provide real value to the people looking for information online.

Make sure you are publishing great stuff either on your own blog, or as a guest blogger somewhere else (Thanks CommentLuv!!)

Ultimately, take pride in your work.  It may take a little while longer, but slow and steady wins the race!

Keep this in mind as you work to build a marketing strategy for your website or blog.  What are some suggestions you have for increasing traffic and building a good reputation online?  Do you think quality content = quality visitors and comments?

I think Google is wise to filter out those who deserve to be online from the dregs of internet marketers.  There will always be people trying to slide through life the easy way.  I sat next to a bunch of them in high school and college (sigh).  At least Google is trying to keep us honest.  Maybe this will force people to start working a little harder.  Regardless, article marketing should be definitely be left out of the equation.