Article Marketing — What Chances Of Success?

If you’re just starting out with marketing on the Internet, then you’ll probably find that the wealth of information out there is often overwhelming. What do you believe, and what do you not believe? There’s a lot of controversy swirling around about the effectiveness of articles which are targeted for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes.

Have the tactics of article marketing become extinct, just like dinosaurs? This is one point of view, but on the other side, folks say that when Google’s Farmer update swept through that it made no difference to their own marketing. Quite a few marketers get tons of traffic from their own back links and they believe the naysayers have continued to do it all wrong!

Both sides of the fence have marketers who believe that they are doing well, and that the Google barricade is no obstacle to them. This is all very confusing to new article marketers. What is the best way for you to promote your ladies golf clubs sets, or any other item which you are marketing? Is article marketing dead or alive?

So many millions of folks out there depend on promoting articles to earn their living, so this is a truly big deal. Should you make a few changes and go ahead with your concept, or should you get rid of it entirely? Some people bury their heads in the sand and ignore any controversy, and there are many variables regarding marketing articles, so here are a few pros and cons as well as opinions which can differ widely.

Article Marketing Has Gone The Way Of The Floppy Disk

Some fairly prosperous Internet marketers talk about article marketing being gone for good. They promote this point of view on their website articles and blogs. They are insistent that Google’s Farmer update wiped out all the parameters which they had been used to, and they believe that the concept of article marketing will never return. Even a Google insider felt that Google is not particularly fond of article marketing anymore.

Perhaps the most common method of article marketing is to mass-produce articles and submit them to hundreds of different article directories. High-traffic directories are supposed to get you back links and readers, and this supposedly puts you higher in Google ranking.

Another goal of placing articles on directories is to get the articles republished as often as you can, and this is supposed to help you provide more varied back links and direct traffic to your site. If the links come from high quality sites, then Google supposedly finds your site much easier when it searches. This theory is flawed because you do not have any control over the republishing of your own articles.

What do you think happens when a zero traffic site republishes your article? Nothing, of course. It makes no difference if you get 10 or 100 junk sites to republish articles, because your traffic is still zero. Anti-article marketing folks blame this all on the Google Farmer update. They say that Google targets duplicated content or lower quality sites.

In perhaps a majority of cases, article directories will publish content which are low quality. Ezinearticles.com has truly tightened up editorial guidelines for length requirement (body must be 400 words), and punctuation, grammar, usefulness to a reader, and material which is relevant to the title. In actuality, this only strengthens any article put up on their site. On the other hand, there are plenty of rambling and boring articles on that site, as well as good ones.

Anti-article marketing folks tell us that you do need to push out hundreds of articles on to directories in order to get any type of results. But, who could write that much quality material? Google does try hard to get rid of low quality content, but some article directories still have a lot of rubbish on there.

A lot of article marketers love to throw out tons of articles like they’re casting out chicken feed to a flock of hens. They will use spinning software and submit many of the same, automatically-spun articles across many directories. These are most often a total pile of garbage. Someone who knows the language of the articles, as well as knowing how to write, can manually spin an article and it will look as good as the original — and sometimes even better!

Google’s Farmer update focuses on content which is duplicate, and they therefore didn’t consider that the back links and articles in them were of high enough quality in their searches. The company does not believe that thousands upon thousands of people will be linking back to your site, when all of these articles have the same anchor text.

The anti-article marketing people, say that the article directories aren’t showing up in SERP results as often as before. You can check this yourself. You might see that these article directories aren’t being ranked as high or receiving as much traffic as they used to. The anti-article marketing folks feel that more shakeups are just over the horizon. They feel in their bones that Google is the casino owner and all article marketing is a game of chance.

Article Marketing Is The Bee’s Knees

On the other hand, there’s lots of proof that marketers remain high on the concept and that they get great results. Some even use the same shotgun approach and spray out their articles like seeding clouds. The method has undoubtedly taken a hit, but has not gone away.

Every time you try a search in Google, Ezinearticles.com still shows up in a lot of the top results. It’s down, but not out by far. Give them excellent articles and don’t go overboard on SEO, and the articles will show up in any Google search. It’s semi-easy, with a bit of practice, to get your own article on the first page of Google search results. This is like getting an Oscar for article marketers.

When Ezinearticles.com updated their editorial dos and don’ts, they admittedly did become much stricter. I’m sure most of us have encountered this and had to correct a lot of our articles to meet the new requirements. They seem to want to stay on top, and they’re doing their best to be so. Other article directories are out there of course, but they have to be checked individually and Ezinearticles.com is the major article directory on the web.

Pro article marketing folks say that there’s an easy way to get over the controversy. Just make sure that everything you write, or someone else writes for you, is in tip-top shape and of high quality. The longer the article the better, and about 1,000+ words is pretty good. Four hundred words is the minimum count for the body of the article. Make sure that your articles are interesting and as unique as you can make them, and full of material of interest to the reader. Traffic will be drawn to your website no matter where you place your articles.

Google is always changing its parameters so it can find the best content. Submit that, and you should be fine. Good article marketers welcome updates because it does cut out all the rubbish out there. Good articles remain well ranked and are left intact.

And on the other hand, people do realize that Google is not always the top guru of search engines. Always make sure your articles are written for people, and that the writing is excellent, and then Google will find you. If humans read your articles and find them interesting, then you’ll get traffic to your site.

Folks who are pro-article marketing say that any penalty believed to be put on marketing articles for duplicate content, is just a myth. Google does search for duplicate content but a lot of marketers will get good results even if they use software to spin with. And, they still get results if they do the shotgun approach as well.

Important Points To Think About

Have we confused you? Well, I feel like that a lot of the time, too. Article marketers need to figure this all out as soon as they can. Think about diversifying in order to reap the richly deserved benefits of article marketing, because it will give you a cushion. The Google update woke up many people and intelligent article marketers will not rely on one way of marketing their articles. Diversify to whatever extent you can.

When you talk about article marketing, know that it doesn’t mean simply sticking articles up on article directories. Put quality articles on authority sites pertinent to your own niche. Use ones with higher page ranking. Always, always, keep quality in mind when you write articles. If using a ghostwriter, hire an experienced one and a person whose native language, is the language of the articles you need.

Believe me, people reading articles know when the writer is not versed in that language, or is not a high quality writer. They can also tell the difference quite easily between a spun article, and one which is written by hand and creatively. Whether you believe that article marketing is dead or alive, it’s up to you to decide how you’re going to market your own articles.