Over the last few days article marketing is a top conversation (and concern) in many online circles.
If you haven’t heard about the big announcement Google made on Thursday of last week about the change to article farms you need to know about this. Especially if article marketing is a part of your overall online promotions strategy.
The fact is, if you use articles in your marketing you may need to make some changes to how you market in the future – or not.
The change Google announced is designed to weed out shallow and low-quality content from its top search results.
Think about your recent searches. Chances are a lot of junk came up with the quality content more difficult to find by the day.
Unfortunately there are non-offending sites that are suffering the consequences of this change.
Nearly 12% of sites are affected, When you look at the number of daily searches this is a significant number.
For example, The British Medical Journal (a highly respected and long standing medical site) is one of the innocent victims.
Lots of directories many of us use on a regular basis were hit hard. Ezinearticles.com is among those hit.
Chris Knight, CEO EzineArticles.com, has instituted several changes to get back in Google’s graces, such as rejecting more articles, reducing the number of ads per page, and raising the minimum word count.
“Traffic was down 11.5% on Thursday and over 35% on Friday,” Knight wrote. “In our life-to-date, this is the single most significant reduction in market trust we’ve experienced from Google.”
Learn more about the change – CLICK HERE
Idea Marketer owner, Marnie Pehrson, says she has not been adversely impacted.
“Article marketing is not dead. Everyone just needs to remember to put the READER first and search engines second. Stop trying to guess what Google wants and create quality content. You’ll reap good results.” Pehrson states.
Find out more of what Marnie Perhson has to say CLICK HERE.
The announcement by Google is a great example as to why we must all diversify our marketing. To put all one’s effort in article marketing has never been a sound strategy. Moving forward this is more true than ever.
There are so many ways to market your business, get backlinks, build your SEO and gain market reach. Find out how you can build a successful business by accessing my free video at http://www.kathleengagetrains.com/six-figure
What are your thoughts on the Google situation?.
I am so very glad I have learned from the best, Jeff Herring, about article marketing. I have always gone for quality not quantity but even so I am effected because of the new requirements on Ezine Articles.
Lucky for me because of Jeff’s teachings the impact for me had been minor, example; making my articles longer.
I agree with Marnie “create quality content. You’ll reap good results”
I received my first rejection from EzineArticles this week. The resource box linked to an opt-in page. EZA accepted the article when I changed the link to a blog post instead.
Thanks for this update! I had just posted 3 articles to EzineArticles.com and noticed the word count minimum box. I hadn’t noticed that in the past and wasn’t sure if it was new or not. While an inconvenience for those of us who reach out through this medium, it should result in better quality content.
Kathleen, I think this bodes well for those of us that are focused on quality content, rather than search engine rankings. It’s always about the value we provide, first and foremost before what we get. Exactly what Marnie says.
For directories like Ezine Articles, it means that higher quality content is coming and less marketing – that’s a good thing too.
I support the trend of online business (and business in general) to be more about the quality and less about the numbers. As Marnie says, you’ll reap good results.
Thanks for the update Kathleen.
Hi Kathleen, thanks for the heads up on this, and yes I can see how something like EzineArticles might suffer until certain conditions are met. I saw one person listed as a top author with over 20,000 articles all written within a 2 month period of time.
Give me a break…
For more than 10 years I’ve written every single piece of material for my clients. I don’t farm things out, I sweat bullets putting together material that people will want to read and learn from reading.
That aside (enough patting myself on the back LOL!) I agree with Marnie, and since I haven’t seen your video yet, I’m off to watch and see what’s on your mind 🙂
Again thank you for great information as always!
I’m looking forward to the changes and am hopeful it will penalize those that distribute garbage article content, with no attention or care to quality.
I look forward to the day that I can type in a search term and actually find meaningful information, without having to weed through the garbage first.
I agree, Jeff Herring is one of the best on the subject of article marketing. Actually, if you missed his session for New Horizons, he rocked the crowd one more time. http://www.NewHorizonsTelesummit.com
Changes like these can often be the best thing that could happen. Anyone who has built their article marketing on quality articles has nothing to worry about and those who use PLRs with no change or spin articles do have something to worry about.
I’ve been reading the blast of posts in my network about this change and while its a change — anything that requires better quality for top ranking, is a good thing. Thanks for the update 🙂
Hi,
I like it. I assume I live in the room for improvement and appreciate the challenge to up my game.
dr.jim sellner, PhD.,DipC.
Kathleen, you always help to keep me current. I feel the changes will help the reader by ensuring quality content. As for the smaller article directories, they will have to improve or loose their relevance. It is really a win for the industry as a whole.
Thank you for what you do and keeping us updated.
Yes, I agree with Marnie and others whose comments followed hers.
For those of us who generate content-rich articles intended to bring value to the reader, there are likely no worries. (Excepting of course, the innocent victims as you mentioned.) I’m actually delighted that they are finally doing something about the absurd conglomerations of words created for SEO purposes the masquerade as articles. Their only purpose is to take traffic to their ads.
Yippee! I say. Now there will be more room for those of us who care that the reader can create value in their lives and work from the value that we offer.
The Internet is always changing and to be successful we must be ever ready to adapt or we will be left behind.
I like what Marnie Pehrson of ideamarketers said, write for people first and search engines second and you will be alright. ~ Lauren
Kathleen,
Thanks for the update. I knew that article marketing would be affected, just wasn’t sure how. I think this is a good step towards getting recognition for content that is higher quality. And, your comment about diversifying your business is well taken.
Thanks for this valuable info, Kathleen.
I shall take it to heart when I begin my article writing and submissions.
Ruby
I don’t have any hard numbers yet, but I’m cautiously optimistic that Google’s recent Panda and Farmer Ago tweaks will help those Bloggers that have built their Blog based on QUALITY v. QUANTITY at the git go.
My Alexa has seen a nice uptick in rank/score and my pagerank saw a mild bump from PR3 to PR4. I attribute both of these to the fact that I cater to a pretty savvy audience and if I posted junk, I’d not have a chance.
Like you Kathleen, I endeavor to deliver content that adds value to my readers. This post is a classic example of timely useful information. I think that’s why my avg. reader spend 9 minutes on my SMM Blog.
I think EZA and Hubpages et al got whacked coz so many IMers were operating on the principle
that having tons of links was the metric to shoot for. No mas!
Its common knowledge that a good video will outperform pretty much all other types of content on the Net. Sure glad I upgrade to Camtasia 7. Now if I could only get my Cam 7 skills up to par with the likes of… Stay tuned 😉
Thanks for the heads up, I was wondering what was going on with the articles I wrote. keep up the good work.
to your success
Juan
Thanks for the update. Great content, whether on our blogs, newsletters, articles, etc., or when speaking live, should always be our priority. I’m glad they’ve put in a “sifting” process. I had stopped doing searches via Google because it was too time consuming to find the good stuff.