Article Marketing: It's Not For Everyone

[David Jackson]

One of my favorite methods of promoting my business is article marketing. I truly enjoy writing, and usually write at least a couple of articles every week. Done properly, article marketing is a very effective way to promote your business.

However, despite all the hype surrounding article marketing (and I'm one of its biggest cheerleaders), it's not for everyone. Though it may be hard for some people to face up to and admit, not everyone is capable of writing quality articles.

Unfortunately, there are a lot people writing articles that, quite frankly, shouldn't be. As a result of this, there are a lot of low-quality, incoherent, gobbledygook articles rampant on the Internet.

That's why article directories like EzineArticles is deleting thousands and thousands of previously approved articles. And it's only a matter of time, before other article directories follow suit.

Also, if you don't enjoy writing, you shouldn't engage in article marketing. Why? Because you won't stick to it. It's a psychological thing. Most people simply don't commit long-term to things that they don't enjoy.

And make no mistake, article marketing requires a long-term commitment of time, energy, dedication, and discipline that most marketers simply don't possess. Yes, you must be totally committed to article marketing, or it simply will not bear fruit.

So what does being totally committed mean, in regards to article marketing? It means that you must write articles - even on days when you don't necessarily feel like writing. You must strictly adhere to your writing sceddule.

Believe me, there are lots of days when the last thing I want to do is write another article. And it's easy to come up with all kinds excuses not to write. Either I don't feel well...there's something else that I'd rather do...I have writers block...etc., etc., etc.

There are a million excuses that I could use. But instead, I buckle down, and write. Why? Because I'm 100% committed to article marketing. And when you're committed to something, you find a way to get the job done - no excuses.

One last thing, if you're going to write articles, don't try to be all things to all people. Only write about things that you're knowledgeable about. I'm knowledgeable about marketing, so that's what I write about.

I don't attempt to write about aquariums, or animal breeding, or french cuisine, because I'm not knowledgeable in those areas. And if I tried to write about those things my lack of knowledge would be exposed.

Your writing will be much more credible, if you only write about things that you're truly knowledgeable about. If you do otherwise, not only will your obvious lack of knowledge be exposed, you will also be doing a terrible disservice to your readers.

And when it comes to writing articles, your readers should always come first - always!

David Jackson

 

[djbaxter]

If you're going to put that much effort into writing, why not use it to populate your own website or blog rather than someone else's? If you truly have something to say that people are interested in reading, in due course you'll find that you'll start to acquire organic incoming links.

 

[David Jackson]

If you're going to put that much effort into writing, why not use it to populate your own website or blog rather than someone else's?

Actually, you should do both. While you should definitely publish your ideas and opinions on your own website or blog, if you have knowledge and/or information that you feel can help other people, you should also share that knowledge in topical forums, where members exchange all types of ideas, information and opinions.

David Jackson

 

[djbaxter]

Actually, you should do both. While you should definitely publish your ideas and opinions on your own website or blog, if you have knowledge and/or information that you feel can help other people, you should also share that knowledge in topical forums, where members exchange all types of ideas, information and opinions.

But posting part or even all of your article in a forum is rather different from submitting them to article directories, isn't it?

 

[David Jackson]

But posting part or even all of your article in a forum is rather different from submitting them to article directories, isn't it?

That's actually a very good question. It depends on what you mean by different. If you're referring to link juice, I would much rather have an inbound link from a quality authority site like 5 Star Marketing Forums, than from an article directory - any article directory.

Inbound links from article directories have been degraded over the years, because they will literally publish anything. As a result, most article directories are full of low-quality, garbage articles.

That's why article directories like EzineArticles are deleting thousands and thousands of previously approved articles. They're literally taking out the trash. And it's really only a matter of time, before other article directories follow suit.

I actually didn't intend for some of my recent threads to become articles. Although, that's what they eventually turned into, I started out intending to write just a couple of paragraphs. But once I started writing, the creative juices kicked in, and my threads evolved into something much more substantive.

David Jackson

 

[ClumsyNinja]

That's why article directories like EzineArticles are deleting thousands and thousands of previously approved articles. They're literally taking out the trash. And it's really only a matter of time, before other article directories follow suit.

David Jackson

hi David,
Were did you see this? I'd better go to my ezines account and make sure all my articles are still there!
The key to article marketing success (IMHO) is to write quality articles and only spend your time with quality directories (like ezines)... and understand this is only a piece of the overall puzzle.

 

[David Jackson]

hi David,
Were did you see this? I'd better go to my ezines account and make sure all my articles are still there!

Hi ClumsyNinja:

Here you go: EzineArticles.com is Cleaning House.

David Jackson

 

[ClumsyNinja]

hi David,
Thanks for the quick reply. Interesting article. And after reading it, I guess I have been "hiding under a rock" (since I never heard about this).
Anyway, I checked my ezine account and all my articles are still there. Woo Hoo!
The article you linked to is from October, so I wonder if the article "purge" is done. I for one think it's great if they are removing junky articles. More room for our "nuggets of wisdom" that way!
Thanks again.

 

[David Jackson]

hi David,
Thanks for the quick reply. I checked my ezine account and all my articles are still there. Woo Hoo!

The article you linked to is from October, so I wonder if the article "purge" is done. I for one think it's great if they are removing junky articles. More room for our "nuggets of wisdom" that way!

Hi ClumsyNinja:

I'm happy to hear that all of your articles are still there. However, be advised, as of a week ago, the purge still continues.

David Jackson

 

[ClumsyNinja]

Hi ClumsyNinja:

I'm happy to hear that all of your articles are still there. However, be advised, as of a week ago, the purge still continues.

David Jackson

the purge still continues... LOL

I guess we're not out of the words yet!

 

[Jack Wevers]

Hi David,

Thanks a lot for posting this. It can really help newbies like me to reconsider my
point of view when it comes to article marketing!

Do you also spin your articles so you can submit them to several directories?

 

[David Jackson]

Hi David,

Thanks a lot for posting this. It can really help newbies like me to reconsider my
point of view when it comes to article marketing!

Do you also spin your articles so you can submit them to several directories?

Hi Ines:

You're quite welcome. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Also, don't ever spin your articles. Article spinning is primarily done to gain an unfair advantage, and manipulate the search engines. In other words, it's cheating. I suggest you read this article by Dr. Ralph Wilson, Why Article Spinning Deserves an "F."

Don't spin your articles - or anyone else's either. It's just morally wrong.

David Jackson

 

[Bryan Zimmerman]

Make sure you check your articles to see if they are still indexed as well. Even though they may show up in your author account at Ezine, a ton of articles have been de-indexed. Put the URL into google search box and see if it brings back your article. If it doesn't............well, you know.

 

[David Jackson]

Make sure you check your articles to see if they are still indexed as well. Put the URL into google search box and see if it brings back your article. If it doesn't............well, you know.

Actually, just because your articles don't appear in Google's main index, doesn't mean that they're not in any of Google's Indexes. Your articles could very well be in Google's Supplemental pages.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Google's Supplemental pages, I suggest you read this article about Google's Supplemental Pages.

David Jackson

 

[djbaxter]

Actually, just because your articles don't appear in Google's main index, doesn't mean that they're not in any of Google's Indexes. Your articles could very well be in Google's Supplemental pages.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Google's Supplemental pages, I suggest you read this article about Google's Supplemental Pages.

That's a very old article. The supplemental index was one of Google's transitional measures for managing the huge amount of data they've collected and indexed over the years. When it was first implemented, Google used to provide only very skimpy listings for pages in the supplemental index, sometimes consisting only of the URL.

These days, the whole issue is really much ado about nothing. There may still be a supplemental index of some sort but it really doesn't matter a whole lot to the average searcher because it's transparent. For any given query, Google first looks at those pages it considers most important, authoritative, or current and then goes to any supplementary pages if the search query cannot be satisfactorily filled. But either way, if your page is indexed, it will show up if you do a very specific query, as Bryan Zimmerman stated. If it doesn't, then it's not indexed.

 

[David Jackson]

These days, the whole issue is really much ado about nothing.

While Google may have removed the supplemental label, do you honestly believe that Google now puts everything into one big index, and treats everybody's content the same? You can believe that if you want to. I don't - not for a second. Sometimes, you have to exercise a little common sense.

Also, just because something isn't indexed in Google doesn't mean that it's not indexed on Yahoo or Bing. I've found listings in Yahoo and Bing that weren't in Google, and vice-versa. When checking to see if your content is indexed, you should check multiple search engines.

David Jackson

 

[djbaxter]

While Google may have removed the supplemental label, do you honestly believe that Google now puts everything into one big index, and treats everybody's content the same? You can believe that if you want to. I don't - not for a second. Sometimes, you have to exercise a little common sense.

Please re-read what I actually said, David. That way you won't waste your time and mine debating a straw man.

There may still be a supplemental index of some sort but it really doesn't matter a whole lot to the average searcher because it's transparent. For any given query, Google first looks at those pages it considers most important, authoritative, or current and then goes to any supplementary pages if the search query cannot be satisfactorily filled. But either way, if your page is indexed, it will show up if you do a very specific query, as Bryan Zimmerman stated.

 

[David Jackson]

There may still be a supplemental index of some sort but it really doesn't matter a whole lot to the average searcher because it's transparent.

That's exactly my point. It smells fishy. Why have a supplemental index at all?

David Jackson

 

[djbaxter]

That's exactly my point. It smells fishy. Why have a supplemental index at all?

There's an old article by Matt Cutts explaining that. Basically, the idea is to return the most relevant results as fast as possible. When the total number of indexed pages was on the order of 4-8 million, that wasn't a difficult task. When it passed 8 billion at a high rate of speed, it became more difficult.

Thus was born the concept of separating web pages according to layers of importance, authority, currency, etc., placing those pages which are most important, most crequested, most authoritative, most current, etc., in a primary index where they can be retrieved very rapidly, and others in an index (or quite likely an array of indicies by now) where retrieval is slower but the pages are still accessible if the search request cannot be filled from the main index. This really isn't a novel concept - it's the sort of thing that wholesalers and retailers do all the time: Things that aren't often requested go to the back of the warehouse.

All of this fits in with the evolution of search in general and the evolution of Google search in particular. What Google has done isn't the only way to deal with the problem of an exponentially increasing number of pages on the net but it works for them for now.

 

[djbaxter]

More information the the supplemental index, although some of this is getting quite old and, as noted, search technologies don't stand still:

Google Hell?
By Matt Cutts
Tue, May 1 2007

Andy Greenberg wrote an article for Forbes entitled Condemned To Google Hell about supplemental results... It?s easy to read the article and come away with the impression that Google?s supplemental results are some sort of search engine dungeon where bad pages go and sit in limbo forever, and that?s just not true.

I did some quick searching, and this post from January includes a pretty good rebuttal of the ?you get into supplemental results for spamming or duplicate content, and then your pages stay there for a long time? idea. I?ll quote the most relevant paragraph:

As a reminder, supplemental results aren?t something to be afraid of; I?ve got pages from my site in the supplemental results, for example. A complete software rewrite of the infrastructure for supplemental results launched in Summer o? 2005, and the supplemental results continue to get fresher. Having urls in the supplemental results doesn?t mean that you have some sort of penalty at all; the main determinant of whether a url is in our main web index or in the supplemental index is PageRank. If you used to have pages in our main web index and now they?re in the supplemental results, a good hypothesis is that we might not be counting links to your pages with the same weight as we have in the past. The approach I?d recommend in that case is to use solid white-hat SEO to get high-quality links (e.g. editorially given by other sites on the basis of merit).​

That statement still holds. It?s perfectly normal for a website to have pages in our main web index and our supplemental index. If a page doesn?t have enough PageRank to be included in our main web index, the supplemental results represent an additional chance for users to find that page, as opposed to Google not indexing the page.

Infrastructure status, January 2007
by Matt Cutts
January 10, 2007

As a reminder, supplemental results aren?t something to be afraid of; I?ve got pages from my site in the supplemental results, for example. A complete software rewrite of the infrastructure for supplemental results launched in Summer o? 2005, and the supplemental results continue to get fresher. Having urls in the supplemental results doesn?t mean that you have some sort of penalty at all; the main determinant of whether a url is in our main web index or in the supplemental index is PageRank. If you used to have pages in our main web index and now they?re in the supplemental results, a good hypothesis is that we might not be counting links to your pages with the same weight as we have in the past. The approach I?d recommend in that case is to use solid white-hat SEO to get high-quality links (e.g. editorially given by other sites on the basis of merit).

I think going forward, you?ll continue to see the supplemental results get even fresher, and website owners may see more traffic from their supplemental results pages. To check out the current freshness of the supplemental results, I grabbed 20 supplemental pages from my site and checked out their crawl date using the ?cache:? command and looking in the cached page header. The oldest supplemental results page that I saw was from September 7th, 2006 (and I only saw 2-3 pages from September; most were from December or November). The most recent of the 20 pages was from January 7, 2007, which shows that supplemental results can be quite fresh at this point.

Matt Cutts: Supplemental vs. Duplicate Content

Duplicate content doesn't make you more likely to have pages in the supplemental index in my experience. It could be a symptom but not a cause, e.g., lots of duplicate content implies lots of pages, and potentially less PageRank for each of those pages. So trying to surface an entire large catalog of pages would mean less PageRank for each page, which could lead to those pages being less likely to be included in our main web index. I'm not aware of an explicit mechanism whereby duplicate content is more likely to be in our supplemental results...

One fine point to make: when people see the "show duplicate results" link at the end of search results and click it to add "&filter=0" as an extra parameter, the new results you see are not all from the supplemental results.