Article marketing has long been a key traffic strategy and link building strategy. Then along came the Google Panda Update of 2011. This hit the article marketing industry very hard. Why is that?
Many article marketers used the shotgun approach. Many would write a single article and then run it through article spinning software. This would typically produce a hundred versions of the same article, all with slight variations. These would get placed on a hundred different article directories. Each article had a link back to the target website.
For a long time this was a very effective link building method that would get great results. Then along came the Panda update. This changed everything. The duplicate versions of the articles were discounted and de-indexed. The links stopped counting and traffic to the article directories tumbled. Many claimed that this was the end of article marketing.
Content is still king; just not multiple copies of the same article. Article directories have had to change too. They can’t just accept these duplicate versions if they want their sites to attract traffic.
Article marketing in this post panda time is different. Articles need to be original, informative, interesting and unique content. It is no longer a numbers game. It is about writing and publishing quality articles and placing them in key directories.
Many article directories today will no-follow any links in the articles. This is great for them, just not for you. This helps boost their popularity but passes no link popularity onto your website. Use article directories like featured-articles.com that will do-follow all their links.
In summary, what should your article marketing strategy be today?
- Focus on article quality not quantity
- Submit only original, unique articles with great informational content.
- Submit to 3-4 article directories, not just one.
- Submit only to directories that will pass the link popularity through to your site.
- Submit 20-24 articles per year.