Warning! This article is to be nothing but one big huge RANT about whether article marketing is dead or not? Lately on the Internet I have seen strong opinions about this subject, however my views are extremely different.
Are you one of those people that will think the way I tell you to or do you have your own opinion?
The problem is, I am happy to listen to other peoples opinions, as long as they listen to mine as well. I also will not force my views upon you so read my article and then share your views below.
Who really defines what article marketing is?
We all know that article marketing used to be simply submitting an article to an article directory. These articles were not always the best of quality, and most likely would never be anything close to what you would put on your website. But what is article marketing now days? Is it still submitting an article?
If article marketing is not about submitting an article to another website then what can we call it when we submit an article to a blog we have, a Squidoo page, a Hubpage, a friends blog, and so on? We have guest posting, but isn't this a form of article marketing. If you are using an article to promote your website then it must be article marketing. What else could it be?
Why don't we call it writing an 700 word essay with anchor text links leading back to our website, submitted for search engine optimization and traffic purposes. That is a massive mouthful so I call it article marketing. What do you call it?
Who are you to say?
Is there an official Internet marketing dictionary out there and who is going to develop it? I personally believe that the Internet marketers right here, right now, are paving the way in developing the language of Internet marketing. We are all innovators and should be allowed to have our say on what we believe. We alone can define what article marketing stands for in relation to our own businesses.
Stand up and have your say. Stop being a YES man.
What tests have you done to prove that Article marketing is dead?
If you are going to say that the article marketing is dead it would be nice if you could use your own experience to make that statement. Many people choose to interpret Matt Cutts as stating that article marketing is dead but I think he is really saying is that bad quality article marketing is dead. We all know that there is no debating that Google loves quality content.
Over the years, I have adjusted my article marketing from submitting articles to article directories, to submitting to a far wider variety of websites. I will still submit an article to Ezine articles, however I will not make this my one stop promotion shop.
For a typical article marketing spree to promote a post on my blog, here's what I do:
- submit one article to Ezine articles
- submit one article to a guest posting blog
- submit one article to my Blogger blog
- submit one article to my WordPress blog
- answer two questions on Yahoo answers etc.
All of the articles I submit are original and well worth the read, even the ones on Ezine articles. Many Webmasters would have a similar marketing system but we all need to see what works for us and go down that path. I have written many articles about generating traffic and SEO techniques that I use and none of it is new or even a big secret.
I am a full time blogger that makes money from promoting my blogs with many forms of article marketing. I do not sell my services, I am not a freelance writer, I am simply a blogger. How can I believe that any form of article marketing is dead? If you generate quality content how can you be punished for this?
If you say “article marketing is dead” are you trying to sell something else?
If you are taking advice from people that are trying to promote their own products by using statements like this then I feel sorry for you.The Internet is full of people like this. Every man and his dog is promoting something and you have to keep your eye open and be aware. Is what they are telling you swayed by the fact that their product relies on the failure of article marketing?
Trust in yourself and do not blindly believe everything you hear.
Conclusion – Is article marketing dead?
By all means give your opinion about the question “Is article marketing dead?” but please to not force those opinions on others to swallow. We all have our own experiences and methods, and you will know if article marketing is dead for you or not!
Now it's your turn to tell me..Do you believe that article marketing is dead for you?
I don’t think article marketing is dead, it still works perfect for me, but, as a lazy bloggers, I don’t do this frequently, just for most important promotion.
Same here Jenni
But when I do get time and do it properly it rocks.
I definitely do not think article marketing is dead but bad content is dead!
Totally agreed with you. In additional, I’ve found a new tool that help you do article marketing easier and save you a lot of time: http://www.intenseblog.com/reviews/automatically-backlinks-digi-article-blaster.html
Hello Mitz, thanks for bringing up this sensitive topic. As we have recently seen, Google has made changes in estimating which site deserves to appear first page and which doesn’t and accordingly has dramatically dropped the rankings of websites which where based on article marketing exclusively through article directories. What was the problem with AD? As you say, usually, AD were of bad quality but the biggest problem of all was that bloggers would submit the same article in hundreds of directories. We used to call this “article marketing”. And yes, this cheap tactic is dead. Google doesn’t love it, it doesn’t work anymore, so it’s dead. There were also online services which do that for you. Google awards quality and hard work. Personally, I started a website last autumn, and I worked all winter to do “Article Marketing” the hard way. I guest posted in 70 quality blogs using specific keywords as my anchor texts. One month after Google Panda, my website started ranking first page in Google for almost anything that I would post; targeted traffic and income have raised substantially.
So, I think article marketing is not dead, but article marketing through article directories is. I’ve also seen other bloggers who chose the hard work of guest posting they now thrive and others who went the easy way, are now almost disappeared from the search engines. My answer is, quality results require quality marketing.
I totally agree that “quality results require quality marketing”! Love that line!
But I do not want to count out the article directories because I have submitted excellent articles there and they are still doing extremely well! Some have PR 3 and also send me traffic.. Its not the article directories, its the content on them…
I have a website that lost traffic from Panda. It was not that I had duplicate content, it was ill formed and un-SEOed. (ha ha my new word) It was my first website.
I repaired the website and gained so much more traffic than I had ever had. I am sure the big article directories can do this also.
If article marketing is dead..then blogging is dead also..right..think about it?
“Black Seo Guy “Signing Off”
Thats exactly what I think!
Blogging is a bunch of articles and we promote our bunch of articles with more bunches of articles. The web is just a whole bunch of articles.
(maybe a bit overboard) 🙂
So true… I don’t think article marketing is dead. It’s hard to penetrate into the core business, that I’ll have to mention it but i don’t think it’s dead
I still believe in Article marketing and I will always encourage it.
All you have to do is dont Publish any Submitted on your Own Blog.
Very true Joseph!
Google will never punish original content! 🙂
I’m pretty sure that article marketing isn’t dead. I’m pretty sure that LOW quality article marketing IS dead. What we are really talking about here is using article marketing as a SEO technique. With Google’s Panda update, we have seen how content farms took the big hit. I personally believe that as long as you can stay out of the content farms and can write engaging, original articles, you are good to go. Maybe Guest Blogging on quality blogs like this one is the new weapon of article marketing.
Hi John
There are always many weapons to use and I like to use them all! I totally believe in diversity and if there ever is a problem I will be ok.
You got it. Diversity is the best weapon. Thank you for a great post that will surely be useful to me and scores of others.
Mitz,
Wow, I could feel your passion in this post.
“Stand up and have your say. Stop being a YES man.” WOW
I like the way you share the framework for your “Article Marketing”. I use sites like Squidoo as well. I have recently found sites like Tutorialized a great source of traffic for my more technical articles.
Yeah I said “Stand up and have your say. Stop being a YES man.” so people would not just agree with me because I am writing the post. I wanted to see real opinions. I really love to see what others think.
I use Squidoo as well. Tutorialized sounds great but haven’t managed to get there yet…Thanks for the reminder.
Hi Ben
I was sick of everyone saying “article marketing is dead” when there are actually many forms of it… My real opinion is that quality content will never be dead.
Your right when you say that whatever your form of marketing you will find that powerful…I actually have my hand in all types of marketing (that I know of) and I always give it my best try.
Nicely said Brankica! 🙂
What can I say, hmmm 🙂 As you know, most of the time “we” or someone, likes to put names on things, label it if you prefer, like a pseudonym.. Article marketing has always been labeled as “submitting” articles to the so called article directories, and in my opinion, they are not dead, but rather not as effective as it once used to be. This is speaking only for the sake of SEO, as there are still some benefits that you can get out of it, provided it is done properly. The problem lies with quality content (another label?), where most directories in lieu of traffic, compromised quantity over quality, to generate revenues.
There are way too much crap on article directories and even if you submit a “good” one, it won’t probably get noticed because it simply disappears in the middle of that vast “ocean” of garbage. Since it is no longer as effective, many prefer to say it is dead.
Guest blogging is also a form of article marketing in my opinion, I mean, what do we write but articles, or is it now, content… thus replacing Article Marketing to Content Marketing. Anyway, and if the guest blogging hype continues on, soon someone will say it is also dead. Why, because everybody is doing it, perhaps not for the sake fo providing value but for … you know 🙂 Obviously, there are those sites that stand out as it all depends on who owns the site and how they choose to publish quality articles only. BBT is a perfect example of that 🙂
What about those multi-author blogs? If they are not careful, soon they also will be dead? Much to debate on, but the bottom line is I no longer submit articles to directories like I once did.
It is funny that you mention “What about those multi-author blogs? If they are not careful, soon they also will be dead?” as I am thinking this too.. but….
Now Google has supplied code to make sure the real “author” is clearly known. It is also recommended that (of course by google) that the authors Google Profile is linked to for verification.
Google also wants to put an authors avatar in the search results.
This is going to be crazy as there will be no hiding behind aliases if you want to get known.
See this post on Yoast http://yoast.com/highlighting-wordpress-authors-search/
It gets deeper than that though..
So now I am thinking that this is another way to stop the spam and reward real people with traffic. This could also mean that it could become the “who’s publishing content” and not “the where”.
That’s true mitz, Goole and search engines are pushing for using the rel=”author” tag to identify better the author of the article. As you said it will be important the who, but I still believe that the where will be because it does nt make sense for example to write on a site that is or could be tagged as spammy.
Totally agree not to post on a site tagged as “spammy” but the question is who is doing the tagging.. ???
You got a point about “who” is doing the tagging, as this is quite important. Just to clarify, if we are on the same radar here, what do you mean exactly about the “who” is tagging? Could it be that someone can deliberately “tag” an author falsely? Can this be used for “evil” 🙂
Anyway, last week, I finally managed to work around the rel=”author” and rel=”me” thing and got myself verified by Google. Do you think that this was a good move?
I think that verifying yourself with Google as an author is the only way to go for the future. I see this as a real pain in the bum for people stealing content… I am not rushing to verify myself but I know it has to be done…
I am not too sure about tagging an author falsely. I would never say this could not be done because if a hacker wants to do something they will…It all rests on whether they have the need to do that? Lets hope they don’t!
Great to hear Ahmad
So I am! 🙂
No. Article marketing is absolutely not dead and NEVER will be.
That would mean that information exchange is no longer relevant.
That being said, “article directory marketing” took a hit, but is by no means down, just stumbling a bit.
As marketers, we’ll just make a few adjustments and keep on writing.
Great article Mitz…:)
Mark
Artical marketing is just a way to get backlink that help to get better ranking in search engine to drive traffic . I am using this to increase the ranking of my website and it is useful for me after panda update
Firstly, as you correctly pointed out, every form of backlink building that involves writing is a form of article marketing. It does not necessarily have to be Ezinearticles or Goarticles for it to be actually article marketing.
But the general perception about Article Marketing is:
1. Either submitting quality (this is a rather vague term) articles to top directories like Ezinearticles, Goarticles, Articledashboard etc.
2. Mass submitting content of obviously dubious quality (very definitely low ) to gazillion fly by the night directories.
I have tried the former but did not get the results I was conditioned to expect. I cannot say that Article marketing does not work, but I can definitely say Article marketing did not work FOR ME.
Good one Amanda
At least you are not saying that it does not work for others! Everyone’s experience is very different and there a million ways to promote a website.
Hi Mitz, I think article marketing is alive!. If people read good information on your articles, you will get traffic to your website, this is a good thing in my book. Maybe google is giving little weight to backlinks on articles, but website marketing doesn’t only go around Google ;).
True Jose!
Everything does not revolve around backlinks and Google. You can also build a reputation or get website traffic.
Although I use many website SEO tactics, I personally have not yet tagged Ezine articles as a “no go zone” yet as my articles on there are doing great!
I have tested very specific SEO strategies and when I include Ezine in the mix I get better results…even today, yesterday, and last week..
I haven’t worked out if Google is giving less weight to them or not…??? I will figure this out though..(with testing of course)
I don’t think that article marketing will die out just like that. There are many ways we can do article marketing. You cannot stop people in saying what they want to say. I guess they are only trying to clear out bogus articles and irrelevant post that is only written just to cheat the search bots.
Hi Melinda
I do not want to stop people saying what they think but I wish they would base their views off experience and real proof.
Unfortunately I investigated a few people that bagged out “all article directories” and some people had maybe two articles on Ezine articles, some had zero. (Ezine is just an example)
How can they know if this works when they have not tried it thoroughly? Sure they may have aliases but I did not find any other authors with links pointing to their websites..
People may think I am crazy for wasting my time with this but I see people taking other peoples opinion as “gospel”. You really need to “walk the walk” to “talk the talk” …:)
Excellent way of explaining this Nettie..
HTML, that’s how I started out!
I have been in business many years and evolving is always what gave me success. “Moving with times” “Rolling with the punches” “Jumping new hurdles” Ha Ha made the last one up! 🙂
Article marketing is not dead but the way it is being used is changing. Most marketers now use spun content to link to there supporting sites and for there main sites they go for article directories like Ezine. I don’t think it will ever die but I think they might have a lesser impact on rankings.
We all knew that spinning articles was wrong, but some Webmasters based their whole business around this.
I think the only way to make your article marketing effective is to only put out good content.
If article marketing is dead , one limb of online marketing is paralyzed.
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This method is down because of recent Panda update by Google…But they keep changing their algorithm all the time..May be the next update will again make the use of article marketing effective
I can’t say article marketing is dead, but if wisely done it it is quite effective. I am doing article marketing and blog commenting and both are working fine for me.
hi Sanjay,
I did not stop any promotions. I always do a mixed batch of stuff, including some article marketing and it works well for me..
I agree with Robin that most of the time article marketing works, however google doesn’t count all the articles you submitted to article directories and it is due to the large number of articles received by these article directories.
Well it would seem like ezine articles website is seeing plenty of traffic and decent pagerank. People are still using article marketing sites. What kind of luck with it they are seeing I don’t know. Like you mentioned I do think of guest posting as a form of article marketing. It continues to be popular and people say they see good results from it. I don’t think article marketing is dead yet.
Hi Ray
Ezine articles was one of the most respected websites and they will be back in no time…In fact they probably are…
I still see a continuous run of posts being published, even with the stricter rules. That means they are building up new original quality content very quickly.
I believe the only reason that myth gets circulated is to keep the competition down.
Article marketing is absolutely alive and well 🙂
I agree Larry
The whole thing is a bit much to digest. I have also seen people saying article marketing is dead so they can promote a new way they are selling.
Article Marketing will never be dead. It will just evolve into different forms. Where sites like ezine and ehow are taking a hit, there are other websites enjoying high traffic. Squidoo is an example of the new wave of article marketing. Web 2.0 stuff full of info and images and rich media.
I agree Thomas
Everything is just evolving and even the websites that were hit by Panda will evolve.
I agree article marketing will always bring traffic and help on SEO, it might have changed from conventional article marketing (submitting articles on article directories even though it still works) to the growing guest posting which is one of the best ways to get traffic and helps on
I can surely say article marketing is not dead, it’s the quality of the content that counts in google eyes. Not those rehashed, spinned articles that blackhat softwares throughs out. Those articles can be better thrown away in the garabage bin. Google loves unique and original content. Yes many article directory got hit by google panda but that is because they all accepted those spinned/rehashed articles. Just write your own articles and all will be fine.
Well in my opinion article marketing is not DEAD. As long as you use unique articles and not spinned articles all is fine. It’s about the quality and not the quantity that counts. I have seen higher serps on my site because of article marketing. Try to start with Ezinearticles then Goarticles and the others.
To me it’s not dead. It just changed. Some things don’t work well anymore, some things do.
As with SEO we have to addapt to a changing environment. But the people who have been delivering quality from the start, no duplicate or poorly spinned content distributed to countless article directories.
But as with Seo if you focus on real people, delivering quality/something useful to them, then you will always be fine.
We are still using article marketing to promote our site and business and it is working for me . So I would like to tell that it is not dead .
I don’t thing Article Marketing is dead, or bring no value to SEO strategies, It’s just that spinning articles won’t work if its done in the wrong way.
Yep, it drives me mad, and a lot of the so called ‘Article Writing Is Dead’ nonsense is rattled out form people who ‘heard someone else mention it’. The entire SEO industry is Chinese whispers. If something works, it is therefore not dead. QED.