Should You Submit Articles?
October 15, 2008 By: Justin | 7 commentsAlthough I’ve discussed article submissions multiple times, people still seem to have a concern about the quality of these links. Someone asked in a comment about it, so I thought it was best to address article submission in a post.
It is important for me to say that I do not have any secret special access to Google. I cannot tell you exactly how the algorithm works. What I can do is simply share my experiences and my results. I do my best to share what I know, but nothing can be guaranteed by ANYONE. Unless you are a Google engineer, you never know “for sure”. I do well at SEO and have been successful at it, so I want to share that information here. I’ve reached page 3 for the highly competitive term “SEO” in just a few month. So I’ve done some SEO work =P
The truth about link building is that Google doesn’t like it. Regardless of how you’re doing it, Google doesn’t like people manipulating SERPS. The type of link building they like the most is link bait, which are links to good content that you achieve “naturally”. I agree that quality contextual links are best, but a lot of the sites many internet marketers run are very hard to link bait.
So can you be reported and receive a penalty for using low quality links as your base? Yes you can.
Can article marketing links be consider spam links? Maybe. Depends. And sometimes yes.
If you do a mass submission of 100’s of articles to 1000’s of sites and they all link to one page with the same anchor text, you are spamming. No judgment there, but that can get you in trouble. It all comes down to what degree you take the link building.
In addition, you should have other link sources for your site. If the majority of your link profile is obviously self generated spam, than you can get slapped. I hope that you take my advice and spread out your links. Try to get them from multiple locations, and actually make an attempt to receive legit links.
But do I think article marketing will get you in trouble? No
I think article marketing should be used as a part of your link building strategy. I have submitted several articles for this site to article sites. I use them to obtain anchor back links to my home page and subpages. It allows me to vary my anchor text. It also allows me to obtain links to deep pages with long tail keywords.
In comparison to all the other types of “free for all links”, I consider article marketing to be the “most legit” and “most organic”. Of course links from the directories are FFA links, but I consider any link I obtain from someone publishing my article to be a legit link. I am receiving a link because they liked my content. They wanted to use my content and willingly used it knowing I would obtain a link.
Keep in mind that many people do article marketing and Google has adjusted their algorithm to handle it. With article marketing, you will see your articles experience duplicate content penalties. The result is that many copies of your articles will not be indexed. Google will “notice” the link, but will not pass you a significant amount of juice. In addition, article marketing links will experience the effect of diminishing returns. Some of the links are very low quality. I’ve talked before about if “low quality links are worth it“. And I say yes.
You can play in the margins where Google is not perfect. First, Google isn’t 100% at duplicate content detection. They are not 100% at discounting links. The result is that some links may pass more juice than Google intended them to. Lastly, weak links does not mean the same as “no links”. Of course, these links won’t push you to page one for any competitive niche, but I have seen sites hold ranks 1 through 5 on long tail keywords using nothing but article submission links. The reason is that nobody else is receiving any juice for that keyword. Even though it’s weak juice, it is the only site working it. Once you get to the point where you’re working hard niches, you’ll know enough methods for links you won’t be stressing article marketing so much.
I’ve done like 10 article submission for this site. That is like 100 to like 1,500 links pointing to this site from article marketing. I sit firmly on page 3 for SEO. I haven’t seen any negative effect from submitting articles to article directories. I have several other link sources though. I have several links that are totally legit from people who like my content. I have friends who link to me. I have theme links. I have many comment links. I have blog roll links. Article submissions are just a small percentage of my link base. I’ve done most of the work I’m going to do on the home page with article marketing. From this point on, I will use them on specific posts where I want to work a long tail. They don’t pass massive juice to those posts, but it does help me get indexed for the keywords I want to work on those posts.
So I do suggest using Article Marketer for getting links.
Filed Under Link Building |
Tagged With article marketing, article submission
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Hi Justin,
I just subscribed for hostgator through your link…:)
Hi Justin,
I found your site just a few days ago, though I’m not where sure I found, either through Griz or maybe Court…
Anyway, I’ve been devouring your blog like crazy, man! You’ve got tons of neat posts throughout and I found something of use from nearly all of them. Good job.
I have a question pertaining specifically to article marketing.
Okay, a few questions, really…
1. When submitting one article (or several spun versions of the same article) to a lot of directories, should I change my user/author/registration information for each directory? Or maybe change it in batches, say for every ten directories, change up the user account?
2. If I have ten different articles that deal with the same niche/keywords/website to submit, should I submit those ten to the same directory, spreading them out over time? Or would it look funny to have ten different articles by the same author dealing with the same subject on the same directory?
3. When submitting articles involving different niches with links to different websites, I don’t want everyone in Googleland to know that all the different links for the niches all point back to me. I want to keep all of my “personas” separate: Is just changing my pen name for the accounts sufficient or should I re-register my new “persona” for its own, independent account?
I’m sure I cold talk/type your ear off all day if you’d let me, but I don’t want to take advantage of your hospitality here (though you’d never know it what with my windbag comment!).
I do hope you can make heads and tails of my questions and I thank you for anything you can clarify for me.
You’ve got a great blog here!
Congrats on your latest ranking.
I do not understand how google can slap you for linking from low quality sites when anyone can link to your site, you cant stop them. If someone wanted to link to your site from say a porn site, you cant stop them. I thought it was only bad when you linked to “bad” sites?
There is debate about the effect that external links can have on your site. Some say it has no impact, but I disagree. And as always, I try to base my views on some type of authority. Either by experiencing it or reading from an authority on SEO.
There are a few things I would suggest reading.
First here is an article on Forbes where Matt Cutts says:
“I won’t go out on a limb and say it’s impossible. But Google bowling is much more inviting as an idea than it is in practice.”
http://www.forbes.com/2007/06/28/negative-search-google-tech-ebiz-cx_ag_0628seo.html
So according to Matt Cutts, it is hard but possible.
Then you can read Google’s Official answer:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en-uk&answer=34449
It uses the wording “almost”, which leads me to believe that there are things that competitors can do to harm your site. So I believe external factors “could” harm you.
And lastly, check out this post by Slight Shady SEO:
http://www.slightlyshadyseo.com/index.php/why-is-negative-seo-becoming-more-common/
And if you’d like to learn more, just google “Google Bowling” and “Negative SEO” and you’ll see several posts about it.
I am under the opinion that external factors can play a role. The basics of SEO are the same, but internet markets may disagree over some of the finer details.
I think that first of all it’s simply a matter of Google’s algorithms either discounting or ignoring the links from lower quality sites. If they were initially counting 50 links from Scuttle sites or article directories and then they all got discounted/removed, your target site would see a drop in SERPS although it wouldn’t be a direct penalty on your site. It’s just that the sites with the links aren’t passing any juice.
If your site suddenly has 10K new links overnight with all the same keyword, crosses a ‘Google bombing’ threshold or something else that raises red flags it might get algorithmically flagged for visual inspection while having a minor, short term, penalty applied. That is, unless you’re on the Google ’safe list’ of top notch authority sites.
After that is where manual review comes into play. This is when a Google engineer takes a break from their normal workday routine of free massages and espressos and takes a minute to look at your site and its links. If they don’t like what they see, say for instance you’re mentioning something called ‘keyword sniping’ often, then *click* you’re dead and buried on page 100 of search results.
I don’t think that Google will apply a algorithmic penalty directly to your site for a reasonable number of incoming low quality links. Some thresholds on what’s a reasonable number may depend on who old your domain is or if it’s in a highly competitive niche. However, if low quality is all you’ve got and you get a visual inspection your site may be toast.
Yes, I do submit and it has gone up