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4th Novemeber 2007
Bill Platt
Article marketing has been considered a useful
method of promotion on the Internet, since the
very early days of the Internet. By writing an
informative article, writers have been able to
get their sales message read by millions of
online consumers, through their resource box
that follows their articles. Until 2005, the
whole point of article marketing was for the
purpose of attracting huge numbers of readers
as a result of the articles being published in
ezines that had a large reader
base.
A New Kind Of Article Marketing For
Link Popularity
In 2005, Jason Bradley, owner of
Article Dashboard, released his free article
directory software. Websites that use his
software are commonly referred to as AD
sites.
During the same time frame, people began
turning to article marketing in droves, based
on its promise for building link popularity
with Yahoo, MSN, and primarily Google. Most
people who jumped on the bandwagon in 2005 to
endorse article marketing for link popularity
purposes promoted a very limited view of this
promotional technique.
Their thoughts went along the lines of "the
only purpose for article marketing is link
popularity." There was no other role for
article marketing, they said. And since one
only needed to type enough words to get a link
into an article directory, the most common
recommendation was that articles should only be
300-400 words in length.
It was also commonly recommended that most
article directory owners do not review the
content submitted to them, so it was not
important that the article made sense or
pleased the article's readers. After all, the
recommendation being made was not for the
possibility of generating traffic from
articles; it was only for the purposes of
influencing the search engine algorithms, which
are not capable of actually reading articles
for grammar or understanding.
People flocked to this new kind of article
marketing, and they were more concerned with
"quantity than quality" - quantity of links
that is.
Software Developers Rallied
With the mass deployment of websites under the
Article Dashboard software, and others since,
programmers jumped through hoops and developed
new article distribution systems that relied on
computers instead of people for the
distribution process.
Soon, these programmers had systems in place to
mass submit articles to the new breed of
article directories. They told the new article
directory owners that if they would add a
simple script to their website, then the
submission service would populate their
directories with article content.
Hundreds of directory owners flocked to this
new kind of article distribution system.
Early on, people who used article marketing to
promote their businesses were elated. They were
getting links all over the place.
The Realities Of Article Directory
Management Sank In
In September of 2005, one company bought nearly
200 domains and installed the AD software on
all of them. By May of 2006, their operation
had never actually gained a foothold in the
profit sector of the Internet, so they sold
their domains to another company. In early
2006, I had documented a list of 180 websites
owned by this operation. On a recent review, I
was unable to locate a single one of these 180
AD sites still running the AD script, and most
were offline completely.
In order to fully understand the job of the
article directory manager, the manager must
manually approve or reject every article
submitted to an AD site. Many AD directory
owners realized that the approval process was a
long and tedious affair, especially when they
were receiving hundreds of articles per day
from these automated distribution systems. For
testing purposes, I had set up my own AD site
and subscribed to receive articles from these
automated systems. I let go the approval
process for one week and returned to find 800
articles waiting for approval. It does not take
long to get overloaded with articles that
require manual approval.
After only a few months of operation, many
Dashboard sites stop approving articles for one
of two reasons: 1) it took too much time to
manage their article directory website, or 2)
the amount of income generated from the process
did not match the time requirements of the
directory.
The Clash Of Titans
Things really began to change in the AD
directory ownership game a few months into the
project. Directory owners began to realize that
in order for them to profit from their article
directories, they must do something that brings
readers to their websites and encourages
loyalty from their site's visitors.
Since most article directories rely on
advertising to drive their revenue stream, the
directory owners had to do something that the
other directory owners were not doing. They had
to distinguish themselves from the masses.
The AD owners who have survived the early
explosion of AD sites have generally taken the
attitude that they should focus on "quality
over quantity".
This one step has set the goals of the software
developers' article distribution systems and
their customers (quantity over quality) in
conflict with the best interests of the article
directory owners (quality over quantity).
Directory Managers Began To Implement New
Submission Rules
Early on, many of those article directory
owners who were intent on survival took actions
to reduce the garbage flowing into their
directories. Directory managers noticed trends
in the articles that consistently failed to
measure up to their new standards.
The owner of Invisible MBA, an educational
article directory, told me that he had to
review ten articles to find one he wanted to
use. He also regularly complained about people
who did not follow even the simplest
instructions about appropriate content on his
website. He eventually resorted to banning 70%
of the people submitting articles to his
website, including the automated article
submission services, because they simply could
not follow his category guidelines for
submission.
His whole issue is a common complaint among the
article directory managers. They insist that
writers should take the time to appropriately
categorize the articles they submit. Since it
takes so long to approve articles manually and
to select the correct category, directory
managers have resorted to deleting articles
instead of categorizing those articles for the
writer.
Article Dashboard, Article Garden and many
others have taken the step to prohibit the
submission of articles that only point to
affiliate websites. Article Express had gone
one step further to prohibit affiliate links,
even if the affiliate programs are advertised
from the writer's domain.
Across the board, directory owners have stomped
on Private Label Rights (PLR) articles. When
article directory managers began to realize
that their websites housed dozens of copies of
a single article, each of which had been signed
by different people as the stated author, they
realized that they had a serious quality
problem. They instinctively knew that those PLR
articles created a trust problem with their
readers. When one article has been claimed to
have been written by twenty people, it makes
one wonder how the website owner can claim to
have a quality website. And if the trust factor
has already been raised as an issue, why would
the reader want to trust anything else on that
website?
Lee Asher who owns Articles-Galore and a couple
of other AD sites was one of the first to come
down hard on software submissions to his
website. His guidelines state in no uncertain
terms that if someone uses software to send
articles to his websites, the person will have
all of their articles removed from his
website.
Some AD site owners have implemented minimum
word count guidelines as a measure to break
some of the junk article peddlers. After all,
the people focused on writing articles for link
popularity are driven by the concept of 300-400
word articles. I have seen word count
restrictions that include the minimum of 500,
600 and 700 words. 80% of what is submitted to
my AD site does not even have the number of
words I require.
<b>Proper Category Placements Is A
Consistent Issue For Article Directory
Managers</b>
Article directory owners want to impress their
readers and the search engines. But, they need
the properly categorize articles primarily for
their human readers, who are looking for
specific information on their website.
In order to help their website visitors, the
directory managers frequently update their
category arrangements. For example, on my AD
site, I provide several well-defined
subcategories for the health category. In the
cancer subcategory, there is a wide range of
cancers that needed their own child categories.
Since the AD software only shows 30 articles
per listing page, and since there is one writer
who has written more than 400 articles just on
the topic of mesothelioma, it made sense to
subdivide my cancer category so that it was not
an advertisement for only one writer.
One of the main problems with the
auto-submission software is that the software
does not accurately address the up-to-date
category hierarchy for each article directory.
This creates a real quality issue for the
directory owner and managers. In order for the
directory manager to stay true to the
formatting of his or her directory, he or she
must either complete the category selections
for the auto-submitters or delete the articles
submitted through them. Manual deletions take
as much time as manual approvals, unless the
manager has to choose the category for the
article, then it takes longer.
Article Marketing Still Works For Those Who
Care About Quality Over Quantity
If you still like article marketing for its
ability to get your business seen by ezine
readers, then it is as effective as it has
always been. If you only like article marketing
for its ability to influence your link
popularity, it can still be effective, if you
do it right.
It is true that those automated article
distribution services can get your article to a
lot of websites, but on a percentage basis, how
many of those submissions are getting
approved?
For my own use, I use my own article
distribution service to reach ezine publishers.
And for mass directory submission, I prefer to
submit articles to the directories by hand,
because hand submission permits me to get the
category right every time, which in turn
permits my articles to get approved more
often.
In the end, it is a karma thing - if I treat
the directory managers right, they will treat
me right by approving more of my articles.
Since it is not uncommon for me to spend six to
seven hours to write an article like this one,
it makes a lot more sense for me to spend the
extra time to get a wider reach for my
articles, by honoring the desires of the more
substantial article
directories.
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