14 replies to this topic

[geoinct]

I’d like to get some input from others about results from article submissions lately

We keep getting prospective clients who are being sold by other SEO’s on article submissions as important.

Are you guys getting good results from them, in particularly are you still seeing them conclusively improving rankings or, as I believe, have they long since run their course?


Here’s what I find when I look into it with new clients -

The articles that were written for them were written by writers working for the SEO and are not terribly useful, in fact they are sometimes awful.

The articles are usually submitted to general article submission sites

When I check analytics I see absolutely no traffic coming in from these article sites

When I check incoming links to the site using various tools I have never seen any of these articles submission sites in the list of strong incoming links that are likely having an influence on rankings

I occasionally do see an article returned in high positions for searches on the topic and so there could be some branding value and possibly some click through traffic (but again I’ve not seen it for the clients I’ve researched)


So my question, Is this type of article submission process worth the time an effort? I don’t see evidence of it, but I’ve only looked at this closely for a couple of clients


BTW - What I do believe is worth the time and effort is writing quality, useful articles written by the client’s industry experts or even industry experts they hire. These articles can be used on their site, such as blogs, knowledge base articles (and promoted), or unique, useful article ideas proposed to quality industry sites.

[copywriter]

Hi,

Allow me to hop on my soapbox, if you will.

The articles that were written for them were written by writers working for the SEO and are not terribly useful, in fact they are sometimes awful.

Yes. This is very often the case. Which is one of many reasons why they get pitiful results, if they get any results at all.

The articles are usually submitted to general article submission sites. When I check analytics I see absolutely no traffic coming in from these article sites.

True. That's because the articles are awful and they never leave the article directory (AD) sites.

When I check incoming links to the site using various tools I have never seen any of these articles submission sites in the list of strong incoming links that are likely having an influence on rankings.

They aren't suppose to.

I occasionally do see an article returned in high positions for searches on the topic and so there could be some branding value and possibly some click through traffic (but again I’ve not seen it for the clients I’ve researched)

If done properly, you get more than branding out of them.

So my question, Is this type of article submission process worth the time an effort? I don’t see evidence of it, but I’ve only looked at this closely for a couple of clients

THIS type of article submission is all but useless. People don't get it. Article directories are like supermarkets. They house things that other people are supposed to come and take away. However, when you put crappy articles on AD sites, nobody wants to reprint them so they just sit there forever, unused.

BTW - What I do believe is worth the time and effort is writing quality, useful articles written by the client’s industry experts or even industry experts they hire. These articles can be used on their site, such as blogs, knowledge base articles (and promoted), or unique, useful article ideas proposed to quality industry sites.

BINGO! THIS is what article submission is all about. You nailed it. The other is just a bunch of fluff that article writers have done a good job of convincing other people they need in order to build link pop. They just left out the part about nobody wanting to reprint the crappy articles which therefore makes link pop wishful thinking.

Now, should be also clear up the misconceptions about duplicate content and article marketing while we're at it?

[geoinct]

Now, should be also clear up the misconceptions about duplicate content and article marketing while we're at it?

Why not

And while we're rolling you seem to be saying that if you post quality, useful articles on some of these submission sites they might get picked up and published elswhere where they really can do some good

Now I'm listening.

Do we need to figure out which submssion sites are best, possibly which are best for our client's industry/topic?

[copywriter]

That's exactly what I'm saying. That's how article marketing - when done the right way - works. It was never intended for the articles to just sit on the shelves of the AD sites. The whole process has always involved getting articles to appear on other, quality websites that had good PR (real PR, not just toolbar PR) and offered a full cup of link juice.

All the junk/bulk articles that have been flooding the 'Net are just a waste of time/money. If they aren't good enough to be reprinted on sites that carry some weight (heck! if they aren't good enough to be reprinted anywhere) they are offering no benefits (as you have recently found out).

And yes, you need to figure out which ones are best and it would be a wonderful idea to create a targeted list for each client's industry/topic. Don't mass submit. Mainly because you'll end up being listed on a ton of junky article directories that have 0 visitors (except for robots coming to submit articles) and you'll probably be added to many email lists in the process. (Who doesn't need a little more spam in their inbox??)

[Connie]

If your producing quality articles why not just include them on the website involved? Why give that valuable information to others?

[blackirish.ken]

yeah, article directory mass syndication links don't drive any traffic or leads. however, even though they're low value, the links do provide some semantic relevance and coupled with the flood of signal from mass syndication you can get a temporal rankings boost in less competitive verticals.

so article marketing isn't entirely useless.

that said, my strategy is to write quality, compelling content, which lives on my own Web properties. then, i spend 20 minutes and re-purpose that content (quick rewrite, change headlines and subheads, etc, so it's not dupe) and submit the re-purposed content to article directories. this way, i can milk more out of a piece of content.

so to recap:

• original, quality content lives on my site
• knockoff, rewrite lives on article directories

Cheers!
Ken

Edited by blackirish.ken, 02 February 2010 - 05:12 PM.

[copywriter]

And here comes the duplicate content stuff I was talking about

It is not necessary to rewrite/repurpose articles. I have never. My clients have never. Articles show up just fine. What actually happens is that you now have more duplicate content since you rewrote/edited the articles. Put the article on your site first, let it get indexed then submit it to quality sites. Not once have I seen articles filtered in the search results. I certainly have not done a search of every article title in existence, but I've done a great many.

It is simple to prove. Take any article and search for its title (not in quotes). If they were filtered, you would only see 1 copy of the article from 1 site. You don't.

Two examples:

Kirby Article
10 Don'ts Article

And these didn't even use the exact title. Just a search with similar terms.

[blackirish.ken]

It is not necessary to rewrite/repurpose articles.

hey, karen. i don't re-purpose b/c i want to or b/c i'm concerned about dupe content issues w/ my original article. i re-purpose b/c the sites i've used require unique content in the TOS. i've had articles rejected b/c the editor said they were dupe.

Ken

[copywriter]

Good! The first time in a long time everybody in a thread about article marketing gets it

[Maria83]

Hi,

Allow me to hop on my soapbox, if you will.



Yes. This is very often the case. Which is one of many reasons why they get pitiful results, if they get any results at all.



True. That's because the articles are awful and they never leave the article directory (AD) sites.



They aren't suppose to.



If done properly, you get more than branding out of them.



THIS type of article submission is all but useless. People don't get it. Article directories are like supermarkets. They house things that other people are supposed to come and take away. However, when you put crappy articles on AD sites, nobody wants to reprint them so they just sit there forever, unused.


BINGO! THIS is what article submission is all about. You nailed it. The other is just a bunch of fluff that article writers have done a good job of convincing other people they need in order to build link pop. They just left out the part about nobody wanting to reprint the crappy articles which therefore makes link pop wishful thinking.

Now, should be also clear up the misconceptions about duplicate content and article marketing while we're at it?

Thanks very much for this post -it was really helpful.

I just want to clarify a couple of things to make sure I'm on the right track and not being misled. I'm trying to understand the process of getting ranked on certain keywords and then checking to see my competitors who are ranking and looking at how many backlinks they have.

So let's say for my target keyword, competitor 1 has 30 backlinks (I'm looking for not too competitive terms here).

So now I go write an article on my site focusing on that keyword. Now it's my mission to get more than 30 backlinks in order to try and beat him for that spot (or am I off on that altogether?)

Now that I have that post up on my site, is it then beneficial to go and post that article on a variety of different websites (ezinearticles.com, hubpages, buzzle, etc) that also focus around that keyword and have them all hyperlinking back to that post on my site?

Wouldn't this then give me that number of links to try and beat out the competition? Or am I all wrong with this?

And a somewhat related question, on Elance I've been seeing a number of people posting about hiring people to spin articles and post them on a huge list of directories. Is that beneficial for backlinks and boosting SEO rankings for a specific keyword?

Sorry...so many questions, I just want to make sure I don't have all this wrong.

[copywriter]

So now I go write an article on my site focusing on that keyword. Now it's my mission to get more than 30 backlinks in order to try and beat him for that spot (or am I off on that altogether?)

Now that I have that post up on my site, is it then beneficial to go and post that article on a variety of different websites (ezinearticles.com, hubpages, buzzle, etc) that also focus around that keyword and have them all hyperlinking back to that post on my site?

Wouldn't this then give me that number of links to try and beat out the competition? Or am I all wrong with this?

You're assuming that backlinks is the only factor with rankings. Not so by a long shot. There's a long list of factors within Google's algo. One of them is backlinks. And yes, this is an important one, but not the only one.

Submitting to article directories does you little good and should not be your primary goal. The point of submitting to article directories is so that other, more authoritative sites will see your article on the article directory, pick it up and reprint it on their high PR website that caters to your specific target audience. NOW your article campaign is work as it should.

That will only happen if you produce top-quality, information-filled article, not junky, fluff-filled articles.

As for spinning articles, I never have and I never recommend that my clients do. This is a practice people who are in fear of the duplicate content filter use. But, what happens is that - if you spin an article 5 ways - then you distribute all the articles across the Internet, now you have 5 times as much duplicate content as you did before. You 'd be better off writing a new, original, quality article than spinning existing ones. After all, the duplication filter is something for the article sites to worry about. THEY are the ones with duplicate content on their sites, not you.

[Maria83]

Thanks for this reply and sorry for my delay - my e-mail notification must not have went through.

That's much needed advice. From what I've been reading backlinks is a very large factor for rankings however? what other main ones would be up there? On page SEO and age of domain?

Sorry, that's likely a very basic question, I just want to make sure I'm not missing something major.

[Jill]

Maria, please see our Tips for Newbies articles which will provide you with all the important things one needs to do for SEO purposes with their website.

[Maria83]

Okay great, thanks. I'll have a read through some of those.

[nicolebeckett]

There are some awful writers out there. If your content is awful, you're right, it's not going to give you any good results.

Now, assuming you've got good, solid, unique content, article marketing can give you some great results. In fact, you never know when you're going to see results from your article marketing. Consider this - a friend of mine wrote an ebook a couple of years ago. She did alot of article marketing to promote it and got a decent amount of sales. After awhile, she stopped marketing it altogether (just had other commitments to take care of). A few weeks ago, she made 3 sales, all referred from an article that she published a year ago.

If that's not positive results, I don't know what is!

I’d like to get some input from others about results from article submissions lately

We keep getting prospective clients who are being sold by other SEO’s on article submissions as important.

Are you guys getting good results from them, in particularly are you still seeing them conclusively improving rankings or, as I believe, have they long since run their course?
Here’s what I find when I look into it with new clients -

The articles that were written for them were written by writers working for the SEO and are not terribly useful, in fact they are sometimes awful.

The articles are usually submitted to general article submission sites

When I check analytics I see absolutely no traffic coming in from these article sites

When I check incoming links to the site using various tools I have never seen any of these articles submission sites in the list of strong incoming links that are likely having an influence on rankings

I occasionally do see an article returned in high positions for searches on the topic and so there could be some branding value and possibly some click through traffic (but again I’ve not seen it for the clients I’ve researched)
So my question, Is this type of article submission process worth the time an effort? I don’t see evidence of it, but I’ve only looked at this closely for a couple of clients
BTW - What I do believe is worth the time and effort is writing quality, useful articles written by the client’s industry experts or even industry experts they hire. These articles can be used on their site, such as blogs, knowledge base articles (and promoted), or unique, useful article ideas proposed to quality industry sites.