Around 6 years ago, article marketing has been a rather popular SEO technique. The primary idea behind this concept is to write an article on the topic, as related to niche and then submit the same to multiple online directories for articles. Some marketers have tried using article spinner for generating unique content automatically, based on any particular unique article you have written previously. Then, you will receive a link back to your website.
Article based marketing by submitting to directories was no doubt popular for a good reason then, and it actually worked. But, this hasn’t been the case for much longer. Right now, submitting articles to multiple directories and even the popular ones, is nothing but pointless. It can actually turn out to harm your site. Well, you don’t just have to believe in words. Just simple points mentioned below are enough to clarify the points.
Chances are high that your articles might be of poor quality:
It might be a harsh reality but it is true that most people are poor writers. Thanks to the latest algorithm updates all the way from Google, poor quality contents will now not be entertained at any cost. There are some webmasters, who believe in their capability to outsmart Google by posting various articles to multiple directories. For that, they need to hire some of the cheap writers with a promise to offer unique and quality articles for lowest rates possible.
In most of the cases, you will receive poorly written and formatted articles, leaving you scratching your head to understand what the writer actually meant. In some other instances, the work will be nothing but completely plagiarized. In this section, the writer will lift a current article from a web and change few works to make it their own. Trying to use such articles for covering SEO practice is waste of time and your precious money. To top it all, poor plagiarized content will serve high rated penalties from Google.
Some of the article directories are repositories of some poor quality contents:
Sometimes, you might manage to write crisp, meaningful and superior quality content. You constructed a unique, highly engaging and interesting content. It means your created articles will be posted on websites where good quality is more like an exception and not a norm. Want some proof to this point? Just go through the articles from the same directory where you are planning to place yours.
- You will come across articles with grammar errors and spelling mistakes. There are other contents, thinly veiled for advertisements for the website author is trying to promote in their links without presenting readers with any needful information.
- Mainly because of this reason, multiple search engines like Google will have a low opinion of the article directories. So, if you ask any expert from Lancaster Digital Marketing, they will not approve the fact of submitting hundreds of articles in the directory for growth. It won’t help in any way.
Articles directories surely know ways to give bad user experience:
Mainly because of the thin quality content, very few articles in directories can prove to be a tad useful to human readers. They might find some basic answers to questions they are searching for. They might gather very less information on the particular topic they are quite interested in. Therefore, Google makes it clear to present quite little values to article directories. If you are planning for a query now, you are highly unlikely to find content from directories on the very first page of your search. You may find one, only if you are searching for any specified or obscure keyword.
It is true to state that duplicate content is an absolute no-no:
It is not unknown to the majority of webmasters that duplicate content is quite harmful to SEO. Similarly, posting the very old and same article multiple times on various sites with links can degrade the SEO ranking too. To get around this service, some might plan to use article spinning software. This tool will introduce simple and subtle changes within the text to make them seem unique. But, the formed article will have no meaning to it and will degrade the rank of the site more.
This tactic of using a spinner tool might have worked back in the year 2009, but won’t work any longer. The most recent algorithm from Google is able to detect all the spun contents and the ones, which are “nearly identical.” This might force the site to be penalized in rankings. Therefore, using duplicate content in SEO is no less than a major crime.
Multiple links within content:
Rules relating to the links you can include in the article are subject to vary from one said directory to another one. Some points might allow for around one or two links, and there are others, which will have no limit on the backlink number. Chances are high that some webmasters might abuse this use and fill articles with links, backing up to their official website. What will be the result? The finalized piece of content will give rise to an unprofessional mark by being only an SEO piece of content.
Nowadays, Google is way smarter than before. They can easily detect multiple links within one content, mainly the ones which aren’t making any sense to the reader. So, putting up dozens of links to your article gives rise to practically nil benefits. It is just a waste of time.
Better places for posting content:
Only because article directories are not that promising these days that does not mean content marketing is out of business too. Google and other high notched search engines love informative, high quality and original content. If you can produce some such contents, avoid uploading those in article directories if you don’t want to waste it. There are so many other places to upload your article to, which in turn, will bring SEO benefits and adding traffic to your website. For a change, try starting your own blog. It is a fresh start to SEO ranking, only if you keep on updating it with fresh contents from time to time.
