Can article marketing still work with a strategy that respects Google’s mission?
Google basically doesn’t want imbalanced situations anymore. And some of our behavior has tipped it off to how the lack of algorithm changes have left the door open for certain predators to be overfed and quality content, quality user experience, to suffer.
Panda Update
So with keeping the above mind, how would you imagine that article marketing can be performed with success? If you’re familiar with what article marketing is and the SEO strategies themselves, you’ll likely have ideas of changes that could be made to the traditional strategy to see results again. It’s likely not very different from what’s actually worked for me and for others.
The ability to recognize what is needed in nearly every case is still in your hands.
Here’s a simple strategy that you can use to determine exactly how article marketing will work for yourself and for your clients.
- Understand which concepts are accepted and effective (on page seo, anchor text linking, posting on do follow directories).
- Have quality content on the site you work for which reflects the keywords you attempt to rank for (very important for small scale seo efforts)
- Experiment by implementing a common sense strategy which includes numbers one and two.
- Track what was done and recognize your averages; how much of such and such strategy had to be done and how many spots did I move up in the engines as a result?
- When you have a ratio, you’ll have a general expectation of how much you need to produce to get where you want to be.
The truth is that when it comes to article marketing, you don’t need a bunch of hidden websites, a spinner producing hundreds of articles a day or other tricks, although some may be doing just find with those right now…Others, obviously, have suffered. What you’ll likely need in the long run, and what Google is getting better at determining you have, is a creative and smart writer to do your research, provide quality content and weave in SEO in the ways that work, before posting the information on some of the most prominent article directories which will actually produce link recognition. And, of course, a good foundation is the best insurance. The better the site actually reflects your goals, your target keywords, the more manageable the job becomes with only a set of forthright tools in your SEO tool bag.
The following is true about the search engines and will likely remain true for some time:
- Unique content is still valuable.
- Quality content is still valuable.
- Content which provides information for the keywords it intends to rank for is still valuable.
- Giving the searcher what they want to find, being honorable with your use of keywords, both are still valuable.
- All well intentioned tools which are in line with Google’s goals, mentioned above, still work.
- Strategies which implement these tools can still work…
They might just need a little tweaking.
For more on the Panda Update from Google representative and leader Matt Cutts, hear his interpretation here.
Good luck in your SEO efforts.
