As we prepared to move our 12,000 article database from one server to another and make a serious business of it, instead of the formerly free service, hosted on free servers and delivered by free email accounts, we took a serious look around at the article marketing business as well as the paid web content business to see what others were doing and test theories about the value of web content.
What we discovered, to our dismay, was that everyone now recognizes that content is king in search engine ranking. The trouble with everyone knowing how important web content is to search engines - is that it gets perverted the same way linking and Pagerank got perverted. Everyone realized how important links were to good search engine ranking in 1998 and 1999 when FFA (Free-For-All) link directories were launched.
The FFA insanity was finally recognized by late 2000 and early 2001 by the search engines as a perverted system and they first discounted those links in their algorithm, then began to penalize those links because they were dominated by sleazy players in the porn and pills industry. Although those FFA pages still exist and some otherwise reasonable people are taken in by them because they "heard somewhere" that they help your search engine ranking, most of us now know that posting links to FFA pages is a counterproductive waste of time for search engine ranking.
Along came links directories, linking directory software, and link building services to pollute the waters of linking even further. Webmasters hear that links are important for search engine rank and they dive into one or all of these linking schemes to increase their link popularity. Finally the search engines noted that millions of unrelated sites were linking to each other and that those links were nearly always reciprocal. So the search engines downgraded those links, reduced the value of directories full of reciprocal links to unrelated sites. It's been rumored that this too is a possible area of penalization by search engines.
I'm a long-time advocate for the value of web content in the form of free articles as a search engine strategy. I started an emailed article distribution service in 1999 to encourage site owners to write and distribute articles for free use on other sites to increase topical relevancy and coincidentally as a method of gaining one-way inbound links to their site from the resource box at the end of their articles. I have long used them to ghostwrite and submit articles for clients on a regular basis as a linking campaign resource for their site in place of the more common reciprocal link-begging done by so many webmasters.
Now article marketing is becoming polluted by overzealous marketers producing software and services to "Blast Your Articles to 50,000 Ezine Editors" with little regard to much more than selling a few thousand copies of their software. Ezine editors see articles blasted in shotgun fashion without regard to topic or industry as spam when they receive those random article submissions. It is only one of the perversions of the web content game now perverted by "blasts" of emailed articles to tens of thousands of ezine editors.
A further perversion is "SEO writers" who use this Shotgun Software to blast ghost-written articles (done for clients) to thousands of ezine editors and article distrbution sites, not just once, but over and over again. These maniacal jackals join article distribution lists under multiple pen names and use their software to submit those "blasts" to dozens of article distribution lists under multiple names, multiple times in the hopes of getting the articles published multiple times on the same sites. It has required us to write filtering software to keep multiple submissions out of the archives and ban the authors doing the multiple submissions from further submissions.
The worst perversion of the web content game is those harvesting articles from the multitude of free content sites and reproducing entire archives from multiple article databases and hosting those thousands of articles on dynamic sites without regard to topic or category. This watering down of the article relevance by random inclusion on hundreds of websites is destroying the value of the article marketing and diluting the value of the link to the author sites. Why? Because those articles are now appearing on thousands of sites that have no focus or relevance and link back to the authors from sites that have no apparent subject or topic.
Web content is critical to establish a topical relevance for all website owners, not simply for creating larger sites with more Adsense ads on them. Publishers need to focus on relevant topics and avoid reproducing random web content. The content at any cost mentality is killing the value of article marketing and diluting the reasons for distribution. Unless the article spammers stop "Blasting to 50,000 Ezine Publishers" we will see the value of article marketing blown to bits and reduced to the value of FFA links directories.
Copyright ? August 11, 2005 by Mike Banks Valentine
Mike Banks Valentine operates http://publish101.com Free Web Content Distribution for Article Marketers and Provides content aggregation, press release optimization and custom web content for Search Engine Positioning http://publish101.com RSS: http://publish101.com
home cleaning services Deerfield ..Been reading up on SEO? If so, you know that... Read More
Adsense is a program designed by Google to help publishers... Read More
Every day thousands of people join affiliate programs and yet... Read More
Write articles, be recognized as an expert, drive a surge... Read More
IntroductionThere are two ways to submit to magazine editors.One is... Read More
It is pretty obvious that content is king online. It... Read More
"But I've only been on the Internet 3 months! How... Read More
It is no secret among internet marketers that writing articles... Read More
Thanks to recent information that leaked by Google within their... Read More
Is Putting your Articles in the Public Domain really a... Read More
Submitting Articles for redistribution is the best way to get... Read More
Rejection is part of a writer's life. You must cope... Read More
When you create your articles in TextPad format, something like... Read More
I have a confession to make.I think in "articles."As a... Read More
Writing articles is one of the best and most effective... Read More
It is a well known fact that writing, distributing and... Read More
Article marketing works like this. The majority of webmasters are... Read More
By now you probably understand how important writing for trade... Read More
Article marketing-the simple act of writing one 400 word article... Read More
There's a new sort of ghost stalking the digital landscape.They... Read More
As you write the outline for your next article, there... Read More
Want your articles to get picked up and reprinted by... Read More
When I was first advised to start writing articles, this... Read More
If you write web content, it may be a mystery... Read More
Writing articles is by far the most effective online promotion... Read More
recurring housekeeping Highland Park ..This is a perennial question among writers and wannabe's. Many... Read More
Getting people to join your company can be hard work.... Read More
If you want to really make your article "SELL" then... Read More
Most business owners are overwhelmed with the day to day... Read More
What's the most powerful marketing technique on the Web? Search... Read More
Writing articles for publication on the Internet is, at the... Read More
Earlier, I published part 1 of this series, which contained... Read More
Anyone who's been in the business for 2 or 3... Read More
Find definitions from A to G! ~~~~~~~~~~~ A ~~~~~~~~~~~ About... Read More
Selling books online means that you need to get interested... Read More
A few years ago as a webmaster with no money,... Read More
Not writing articles yet? You really should try it, if... Read More
Writing an article is not an easy task. You have... Read More
Now that you know the secrets to writing great articles,... Read More
Online PR in the form of website and ezine article... Read More
What should be in your article summary? It's otherwise known... Read More
These 7 Important Elements are your Blueprint to Article Writing... Read More
How are you marketing your articles? As a writer prospecting... Read More
Here's a really simple way... to promote your online business... Read More
You have decided on a great idea and researched a... Read More
Your author bio is a vital part of your article... Read More
You've got to start somewhere, but once you've created your... Read More
Recycling your work is a lot like doing your part... Read More
Although this may sound like a funny metaphor, if you... Read More
The more you write, the larger your impact. If that's... Read More
Article Writing |