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Home » The Famous Blog » Making The Most Of Ezine Articles Since The Google Farmer Update

Making The Most Of Ezine Articles Since The Google Farmer Update

April 15, 2011 - Last Modified: February 14, 2013 by Richard Adams 2,667

Google Farmer Update

There are two things that we know about Ezine Articles. The first is that up until the most recent Google algorithm update (known variously as the Farmer update or the Panda update), Ezine Articles represented a high-traffic, high-trust site in the eyes of the search engines.

Ensuring those articles linked back to your own website assisted both in direct traffic generation (from people finding your articles in the search engines then clicking on the link to your website) and indirect traffic generation (thanks to the links pointing to your website pushing you up the search engine rankings).

The second thing we know about Ezine Articles is that they’ve been hit hard by the latest Google Farmer update, losing up to 71% of their search engine rankings if the research by Search Engine Land is anything to go by.

As a result, Ezine Articles are rapidly tightening their belts, belting down the hatches, and trying to rapidly make changes to their site in order to regain the trust of both the search engines themselves and the writers like you and me who actually write and submit the articles that EZA publish.

So now that the dust is settling, what do we know about how these changes will impact your traffic as a result of using Ezine Articles, and how do you need to modify your strategies if you’re going to weather the storm?

What Has Changed At Ezine Articles?

First, it’s fair to say that it is still the early days, and a lot could change over the forthcoming weeks and months. It’s entirely likely that a percentage of your articles either won’t be ranking as high in the search engines as they once did or they may have been totally deleted by the editors at EZA. The lower the quality of the articles you have previously published at EZA, the more you’re likely to feel the pinch.

But the changes at Google are likely to impact everyone who uses EZA to a degree – even down to those individuals who work hard to create well-written, unique, and genuinely useful articles. Unfortunately, the “bad apples” have dragged you down. Guilty by association.

So what changes are EZA making to try to control the situation? First, they have increased the minimum article length to 400 words. Secondly, they have toughened up their editing and claim they will be increasing the number of rejected submissions by around 20%. Thirdly, they will be waging a war against articles which lack relevancy when all the areas – title, body content, bio file and link destination – aren’t in agreement. Lastly, they are launching a new “Diamond” level of membership to which the “best of the best” writers will be entitled to join.

Death Of An Article Marketing Tactic?

One interesting observation on these changes is that over the years many EZA authors have deliberately written an article about one subject and then linked to a website about one totally different.

The theory behind that concept is that by doing this, authors weren’t competing with EZA in the search engines for the keywords they themselves wanted to rank highly for. Their article would rank for one search term while the link at the end would help their website to rank for a totally different term.

However, the new EZA policies mean this concept is now dead in the water, unless users move to a different, less-rigorous article directory – though even these smaller directories may soon start to make moves in mimicking the example set by EZA.

How Do You Make The Most Of The Changes?

Assuming you’re planning on sticking with EZA as a viable way to promote your website, the steps for success are pretty clear.

  1. Focus on quality, not quantity. Write a smaller number of longer, higher-quality articles that have an increased chance of being accepted.
  2. Ensure every part of your submissions are in context. For example, your article is about a subject related to the website you’re linking to in your bio file.
  3. Expect that at least for a while submitting an article to EZA may not be a ticket to guaranteed traffic, so take the time to backlink your articles using blog commenting, social bookmarking, and so on to boost their perceived authority and increase their chances of ranking.
  4. Apply for a Diamond account as this too may be seen as a ranking factor by Google and so having approval may give your articles a certain boost in the search engines.
  5. As traffic is likely to be more difficult to come by for some time at EZA, work harder than ever to increase clickthroughs to your website. Test different bio files and the text in your hyperlinks. Use tried and true methods to boost the number of people who actually click through to your website when they finish reading your article.

Why This Could All Work In Your Favor

Google Farmer UpdateLet’s be brutally honest here for a moment. As useful as EZA was for us marketers, there *were* a lot of junk articles on the site. Many have now lost rankings or have been removed completely and this represents an opportunity for those of us who prevail.

It’s just as possible that over time EZA will regain the trust of Google and our articles will once again receive a boost from the site’s authority but with one major difference: Less competition.

These changes are going to scare some people away. Some, sadly, will be legitimate authors, but many will be the type of spammers who were slowly ruining the site. Without them, EZA will be better off – and so will you by association.

One more thought. Before the Google Farmer update, your articles were plastered with adverts that EZA made money from. Since sites with lots of adverts seem to have been hit hard in the changes, EZA is planning to reduce the number of adverts they display on each page of their site. Fewer adverts means fewer distractions for your visitors and – potentially – more people clicking on the link in your bio file and visiting your site.

Article marketing isn’t dead, it’s just changed. So stick with it, make the necessary changes, and I’ll see you on the other side.

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Filed Under: Link Building, Website Traffic

About Richard Adams

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Richard Adams is the author of the best-selling Lazy Link Building guide. You can vsit his blog for more tips and advice on building a business around your passion by going to Lifestyle Design Unleashed.

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{ 50 Responses }

  1. Santos Guardiola says:
    Wow! I just noticed how late I am; the last comment on this post is dated Nov 24, 2011. I just had my first article, which was submitted about three day ago, published by Ezine. I hear about Ezine determination to publish quality content so I did my best to produce a good article and it paid-off. I will continue to submit articles and hope that they bring more traffic to my blog. If Ezine ever denied the acceptance and publication of any of my articles, it would force me to up the quality of my work, and this is a good thing. great article! Thank you.
    • Jessica says:
      Me too, Santos. I just got my first article published with EZA. I had a bit of a learning curve with transitioning a blog post from my website into an EZA article but their team was glad to help with that. I'm looking forward to seeing just what their Google rankings can do for my specialized offerings.
  2. Cherie says:
    My problem is that these big portals offer great opportunities, but I have to advertise websites that are in italian, so I should write an article in italian, and I think that nobody would be able to read it, so my website do not receive any traffic. Any suggestions? - Cherie
  3. Tamalkrishna says:
    Your article has helped me a lot to learn about importance of submitting articles to Ezine article site. It is definitely a good place for submitting articles and getting some good backlinks. But it did not work well when i submitted some articles on this site. But i got some good backlinks.
  4. shan ali says:
    well i was considering writing few articles on EZA to boost traffic to my blog but after reading your article i m in 50-50 mind......
  5. Nishadha says:
    I think the cut down on quality is a good thing and as you have mentioned will benefit the one who worked hard on putting up quality articles.
  6. Mark says:
    Personally, I have stopped submitting articles at EZA because of the fact that they now disallowed one of the cardinal syndication rules as set forth by Google themselves...and that is linking to the original article in the article itself. Once they started doing this, they were useless to me...completely useless. That one change caused me to completely change the way I article market. I no longer "article directory market" which is completely different from article marketing which includes blogging, e-zine marketing and guest blog posting. All of these are much more effective ways to use your articles. FWIW. Great article, Richard. Mark
  7. Terje Sannarnes says:
    I am not sure about this, but I have noticed that EA directory is especially strict with newly created FREE accounts now. So, online marketers, who have registered their EA accounts to publish articles find it difficult to get their first articles approved by editors.
  8. Terje Sannarnes says:
    After Google Panda update it is more difficult to get article approved by EA. They have much stickter policy now. Also, the ammount of targeted content generated by EA directory has decreased signifficantly. But article marketing is not dead anyway. Following tips and recommendations provided in this blog post online marketers will be definitely able to change the situation with EA for the better!
  9. Pritam says:
    Yes, I can fee the difference in ezine behaviour because of this. They are so many of my articles were getting good traffic from ezine but suddenly the traffic is decreased. Moreover, publishing the article is difficult now a days as they have tightens their norms. I think it will take some time but they will definitely get the same rankings as earlier.
  10. teatree says:
    I'm not certain that Ezine articles will regain their position in the search results. And given the uncertainty and the fact that most of us are time poor, it makes sense to focus on other better ways of getting links, and only go back to Ezine once they have proved that they are indeed back in G's good books.
  11. Randy Pickard says:
    I just took a look at the Alexa statistics for EzineArticles. It appears they have lost about half their traffic. This is in pretty close sync with the results for one of my clients with a number of articles published on EzineArticle. Their referred visitors from EzineArticles are also down by a bit more thatn 50%. Of course, traffic stats alone don't provide much informaiton about changes in link authority being passed by EzineArticles, so it is challenging to evaluate the total impact of the Panda update. However, I'm in the same boat with other commenters that are moving away from Ezine Articles and the other article directories.
  12. Vijayraj Reddy says:
    Google panda update has made people to work on quality content.... its good...
  13. Kevin Tan says:
    Great overview on the recent changes in the algorithm. I've been monitoring the traffic ranking on EzineArticles and even if it's been dropping pretty steadily, I'm confident that they will pick it up again. I had no idea they were planning on removing ads, but I'm very happy about that. Thanks for sharing the info Richard!
  14. Selina says:
    Richard, I am so new to blogging but I have read about Panda and I can tell you that my blog traffic jumped about 50% after the update. I do focus on quality content since to not do so seems cheesy. My understanding is the Google is trying to come up with better content so searchers can find something of value. No more automated blogs spitting out trash, which I think will be good. Thanks for the update, Selina
  15. George says:
    So far, the traffic from Ezine articles has not fallen down for my websites. But since this is the initial stage, it might drop in the coming days...
  16. AJ Clarke says:
    Nice tips. I definitely agree that it's all for the greater good. Now you will see less spam-like articles on Ezine and like you said less competition. It will simply open up a window for those who truly add value to the site and you may even see more traffic from the articles as opposed to just "link juice".
  17. Bryan says:
    Hey Richard, I don't believe article marketing is dead. There are heaps more article directories on the internet that can draw your attention and get people to click on links within the articles itself. IF you write good quality articles, you should be fine. But I must say, that I still find Ezinearticles quite unattractive to read an article. One thing I do notice since the update is, eHow is showing more and more on the first page. It does seem like a much aesthetically pleasing site to read anything IMHO.
  18. teatree says:
    It's going to take a long time for Ezine articles to recover. When Squidoo was slapped in 2007, they didn't really recover till 2009. If EZA are really serious about cleaning their site of all the spam, they'd get rid of 25% of their articles. They are no where close to doing that yet.
  19. Johannis Kraut says:
    I'm glad that there was a major change by Google with this update. I get tired of seeing the same article sites with high rankings, which serve only the marketing purpose. But I am sure that marketers will find new strategies to defeat that and Google will also find other algorithms and change the rules again and again...
  20. Chadrack says:
    Hi Richard, Love your closing remark, "Article marketing isn’t dead, it’s just changed" and that truly is what happened, the game has just changed. And thanks for this insightful article. I think we can make good use of this.
  21. ZK says:
    For the article marketing ...You should watch the video of Matt's here -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5xP-pTmlpY&feature=youtube_gdata
    • ZK says:
      Matt is not a huge fan of Article Marketing or Article strategy as SEO.
  22. John says:
    Hi Richard, This update appreciate quality & authentic contents, I think Google was aware of content farming, Google's team understand that people are miss using the article directories just for achieving key word ranking. That's why they remove all content farming sites from search result. It will improve quality of article's in terms of content, author bio or resource and it doesn't mean that article marketing is dead. It is the minor error or missing point of Google's search result terms and conditions. Now we are getting more quality content result on search query. Thanks for sharing Post John
  23. Bilal Ahmad says:
    Hmm thanks god i am not independent on EZ. I have worked hard on guest blogging for my blogs links building that is why i am unaffected by the new google update. Of course content is also unique..
  24. Charles says:
    I haven't been a fan of article sites because of the low quality articles that are approved. Duane Forrester from Bing said “don’t do the article marketing stuff” at SMX West, and it appears that Google and Bing don't think links from article sites are very valuable. It seems like guest posting is usually a better way to go because links are more editorially given.
  25. Alex says:
    Hello Richard, I know that everybody was worried about this update from EZA, but the fact is that I am glad, because it now means that EZA it's only accepting quality content and the search engines will think of the articles from EZA as high quality. But, there is also a downside, we know have to go through a rigorous testing procedure to get our articles published which may mean longer times before publishing and a lot more work.
    • Richard says:
      Hello Alex, Thanks for your comment. I know quite a few people have reported longer times for EZA to accept and publish submitted articles but speaking personally I haven't seen any slow down. Anyone else got a viewpoint on this? Warm regards, Richard
  26. Ileane says:
    Hi Richard. It's nice to see you put a positive slant on this subject. I use Hub Pages and I noticed that they are tightening the reigns too. I agree that a nice mix of social bookmarking, blog commenting, and even guest posting should be included as part of everyone's strategy.
    • Tia Peterson says:
      Agree with Ileane! I've actually been strongly looking at creating content with Powerpoint and Youtube videos. Finally, I think the focus is right where it should be, which is on good content and not on mass numbers of links. Hopefully the trend for mass link development will start to come down. It gave me a headache! :)
  27. Fran Aslam the Onlinewriter says:
    I was very eager to see someone write about EZA after the Google Panda, launch in Feb,2011. Finally I got to read one blog post here. Well thought, and well planned blog post here. But still I do not see that EZA will ever go where it was. Even EZA knows it. Thanks for the post.
  28. TJ says:
    Great Post, I never was a fan of EZA anyway. There content is smeared with ads. Thanks
    • Richard says:
      TJ, "Smeared with ads" it may be but a lot of marketers have made a lot of money by submitting content to EZA. Until the Google Farmer update EZA held such a degree of trust with Google that getting your content featured there significantly increased the traffic you could generate from it. Personally I have also found it very useful for getting new sites listed in the search engines. I submit a unique article to EZA and within hours of it being published my site is being crawled. Warm regards, Richard
  29. Alexis says:
    This is a good and very serious topic because all serious marketer sare concerned. I managed to have one article approved at Ezine Articles since the Google Updates but It was hard. I'm not even planning to add another one shortly. The rejected it twice so I corrected it twice before they Finally approved. To have an article approved now there it has to be very well written.You've just given more perspective now that might help me to prepare myself for the new area of EZA .
    • Richard says:
      Alexis, Could you share more details on *why* EZA rejected your article twice? Perhaps we can all learn something from your experience... Warm regards, Richard
      • Alexis says:
        Of course I'll. The first rejection was because it was less than 400 words. I quickly added some more content to make it more than 400 words. After submission I was surprised to have it rejected again. The reason was that I mentioned "ad swaps" in my article. The article was about List Building. I cited some "ad swaps" strategies to build lists. They send me an email saying something like: " Unfortunately, we are not able to accept content which refers, promotes, or links to information on this practice...."I hope this helps! Alexis
  30. John Soares says:
    I only have a dozen or so articles on EzineArticles.com, but I've already removed one of them and I'm strongly considering removing the others. Why? I plan to wait a couple of months and then repost them on my own site. My traffic to my main site nearly tripled after Panda. I'd rather get search traffic coming directly to my sites rather than to EzineArticles. Most of the people who read my articles on Ezineartices don't click through to my site.
  31. Dennis Edell says:
    All for the best eventually, watch. It's my understanding EZA was becoming a spammers paradise.
  32. Jane says:
    Hey Richard, What a wonderful perspective! I used EZA before the Farmer update, but my usage was very minimal. I didn't find any of my articles getting lost or hit by the storm. But you give a very good point here - less competition. That makes me think if I should start using EZA more. Cheers, Jane.
  33. Natalie says:
    I am really surprised to read the they lost a lot of their rankings. After all lets face it, they were not exactly free and easy in the first place.
  34. Sreejesh says:
    Loosing 71% of the traffic at once is really a big blow for ezine articles. However, my organic traffic has risen 20-30% since the panda update.
  35. Suresh Khanal says:
    Great post Richard and this must console to some who were much worried and I can see some light of hopes in your article. What I can not understand is EZA required 400 words article. Does it mean longer articles and worthy than the shorter in search engines? If you have a long page, should it rank higher in SERPs? I feel EZA lacks the purpose for any regular visitor. I open yahoomail.com to read my mails, nepalnews.com to read about recent happening in my country, log on to blogengage.com to see what the fresh blog posts appeared and famousbloggers.net to read about wonderful posts and communicate with bloggers. Why should I open ezinearticles.com? Do you think anybody opens the site for any purpose other than to submit his/her article there? The primary slogan itself is something useless "Submit your high-quality, original articles for more exposure, credibility and traffic back to your website." When website itself has nothing to serve for readers why should search engines rank them higher? I doubt if anybody visits EZA to read the articles. It is worthless for search engines to rank them until EZA adds some value - that ONE REASON for what I will type its address on my browser.
    • Richard says:
      Suresh, In my experience longer articles won't always rank better than shorter ones but in many cases they do. When I look at the articles on my sites that draw the most traffic they are in many cases 1000+ word monsters. However whether that's due to the search engines directly, or from more "likes" from readers isn't totally clear. Richard
      • Suresh Khanal says:
        It might be Richard, because you have large readership or on longer articles, crawlers find many keywords to index. Could it be the reason?
  36. karan says:
    Well, I have been using article marketing as you suggested to do after the Panda update.. Never submitted unrelated stuff, always wrote about blogging and linked to places that really helped(most of the time my links) and this has really helped me get past the update safe and sound. I am still enjoying the traffic and the backlinks I made. :D
    • semmy says:
      Hi Kara same here. I still build backlinks using ezine and try to get traffic from ezine also.
  37. Steve says:
    I agree that there will be less competition since there will be less articles published. And having less ads on a page is great for us hoping to get traffic back to our sites were our ads are. One more thing I feel the update has done is level the article directories out. There used to be 6 or so that stole a lot of the traffic. Now those 6 have fallen closer to the traffic of the less popular ones that were not penalized.
  38. Rison Simon says:
    I think its better to leave ezinearticles. If you need to write that high quality articles for a site which give so much less in return is a bad idea. In my opinion, write those articles for your own site or guest post in your niche. That will give you a better return.
  39. Karen Pierce Gonzalez says:
    This is a great article, thanks. I'm actually glad to see the changes coming. Too many articles have been 'fluff' . Raising the bar so that there is more accountability is good. As a former journalist, I appreciate relevant content and as a public relations specialist, even more so! Thanks, again.

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