Article marketing – An inbound link tactic turned sour
[2014 Addendum: Google came down hard on article marketing after this was written and guest blogging took its place as a way to manipulate rank. The two aren’t that different, but with guest blogging you have more control over where your post (article) will appear. Because of that, done right, guest blogging can associate you with the right crowd and do much to increase your authority and following in your field. But it too has been abused, and as of January, 2014, Google is pulling the plug on it as an SEO signal. To what degree we don’t know yet.]
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We all want those precious inbound links (also known as link juice) to boost our position in Google, but they are not easy to come by, particularly because most of the time we rely on others to link to us, and they might not be too interested in what we have to say. And so along came article marketing to the so-called rescue.
What is article marketing?
Article marketing is not new. For decades businesses have been using article marketing to their benefit as a form of advertisement. As an example, a landscaper might write an article on native plants and submit it to the local newspaper for printing just before the growing season. In exchange for the article, the newspaper would print the landscaper’s contact info along with the article. The arrangement is a win/win for both parties; the newspaper gets free content to publish to its subscribers and the landscaper gets exposure and gains credibility in the community.
Article marketing made its way to the internet in the early part of this century. At first it was a win/win arrangement. Instead of using newspapers where it was often hard to attract attention, article marketers posted their articles in article directories where tens of thousands of publishers hung out in search of content for their websites. Along with their article, the author could include a bio and byline or resource box that included a link to their website. That link coming in, particularly if it came from an article directory with a high page rank (see Best Article Directories), brought valuable link juice that pushed the writer’s website up in the organic listing.
Article directories as syndication tools feeding the frenzy for inbound links can also bring qualified traffic.
As mentioned, article directories distribute your article to other sites hungry for content and this is really why they became the darling of the “black hat” SEO world. In fact, unscrupulous SEOs started building their own article directories and link wheels for the sole purpose of proliferating inbound links for their clients. While syndication gives you the writer additional exposure, since Google says they will not index duplicate content (though I’ve seen evidence to the contrary on occasion), you will not get the benefit of additional inbound links coming from those duplicated articles. The exposure, however, can lead to more click-thrus, and that in turn can lead to more inbound links that your visitors will then place on their sites – not to mention qualified traffic that can then turn into customers.
Syndication without link proliferation is not good enough for Black Hat SEO
As mentioned, even though one of your articles may get syndicated to multiple article directories, only one – along with its link back to you – will make it into Google’s index. What could have been a goldmine of link juice gets filtered out.
But what if there was a way to turn your one article into many, each one different enough from the next so that Google sees it as unique and indexes it and every article spun from it?
Enter “article spinning” software
Article spinning is defined as rewriting the SAME article using word substitution to avoid duplicate content penalties. Anyone can do this by hand but that’s too much work for so little return for black hat SEO. So software has come on the scene that will take your article and spin it hundreds of time to make hundreds of articles out of just one, each article different enough from the rest so it slips by Google’s duplicate content filter.
Here’s an example of spun copy – first a quote from the original article:
The other day I logged into MySpace to see if any of my favorite fellow writers were online, as I wanted to discuss my latest upcoming novel. However, I was kind of awkwardly surprised when I discovered a new friend request from, believe it or not, The Devil. That’s right, old Satan himself has now joined the ranks of millions of others and created his very own MySpace account.
And now the spun version using article spinning software:
The alternative day I logged in to MySpace to see if any of my the one preferred associate writers were online, as I longed for to plead my ultimate arriving novel. However, I was kind of awkwardly astounded when I detected a brand brand brand brand brand new crony ask from, hold it or not, The Devil. That’s right, old Satan himself has right away assimilated the ranks of millions of others and combined his unequivocally own MySpace account.
Not all article spinning software is that bad. Some now use what’s called “Latent Semantic Indexing” to get better results, but no matter how good the counterfeit articles may be, a spun article is still an unnatural attempt to get inbound links, so you can be sure that Google is working hard to filter them from their index.
Ok, so what is the recommendation for article marketing?
If you were fishing for crab, would you put out just one pot? No. You need to put out many pots in as many locations where crabs are known to feed as you can.
Likewise, you’re fishing for exposure and few people are actually on your website, so go where they are. There are many high quality article directories that receive a lot of traffic, provide a valuable resource of information, and are hungering for good content.
Even if you don’t gain much in the way of link juice because Google does not index duplicate content, or your backlinks are no-follow, the additional exposure as a result of your content on another site can add to your credibility, establish yourself as an expert, and bring in more traffic. You can’t complain about that.
However, most websites snatching up articles for the sake of just having content are most likely low-quality sites and offer little value in terms of high-quality links or traffic. So, unless you can find a site to take your article that you would be proud to be a part of, I’d say don’t waste your time. Besides you shouldn’t be doing anything to try an manipulate Google rank because it can come back to bite you.
Good content will obtain inbound links naturally, so my recommendation is to put your time and effort into dev1eloping content that is original, unique, compelling and remarkable and forget the article marketing.
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