Google Algorithm Change Kills Article Marketing

Warning: The recent (02/25/11) google algorithm change could spell disaster for you and your business depending on your internet marketing model.

Let’s take a closer look at the changes made, what effect they seem to be having on the search engine results and some ideas we can use today to take advantage and/or protect our traffic.

Google Algorithm Change Announcement

Google has been rumoring for a few months now they have been quietly working on a new algorithm change to help eliminate “content farm” site pages from ranking high in the SERPS (search engine result pages). Yesterday the published an update on their blog to announce they had, indeed, made this algorithm change and has claimed a 11% improvement in the quality of their search results. See Finding More High Quality Sites in Search.

…we’re very excited about this new ranking improvement because we believe it’s a big step in the right direction of helping people find ever higher quality in our results. We’ve been tackling these issues for more than a year, and working on this specific change for the past few months. And we’re working on many more updates that we believe will substantially improve the quality of the pages in our results.

A LOT of pages that used to rank on the front page of google two or three days ago… now are nowhere to be found. And pages that previously didn’t seem to exist have popped up now on the front page.

So how were you affected?

Here are a few things I’ve noticed within the search realm of “mlm marketing“, “internet marketing” and “affiliate marketing“.

• Ezinearticles, Buzzle and other major article directories have dropped significantly in the SERPS.
• Squidoo and Hubpages have dropped significantly in the SERPS.
• Authority sites like eHow and About.com have dropped significantly.

Which means article marketing – as we used to know it – simply is NOT working as well as it did last week.

The idea behind article marketing, previously, was to simply write great content and submit that content to an “authority site” (a site know to rank high on the SERPS) and promote that new page by getting a massive number of backlinks to the page. A week ago it worked like a charm. Today… many of these “authority sites” are no where to be found on the front page!

Google Algorithm Changes Article Marketing

So does this mean article marketing is dead?

Perhaps. We’ll actually have to wait and see because at first glance it DOES APPEAR that google has put most of these “authority sites” into the basket called “content farms” – and this includes virtually every site where we can content free AND where the “authority site” made their money via Google “adsense” program.

For example, visit any ezinearticles page like this article of mine for “mlm tips” which has been ranking #1 since early November. Today it sits #6 on the SERPS. But visit the actual article and you’ll notice EzineArticles makes their money by displaying all the Google Adsense ads above, around and even under the article itself. Hubpages, Squidoo Lens, eHow, About.com and virtually every other article directory follows the same monetization model.

So that is our biggest clue right now as to how google might be classifying a “content farm.”

So What Now?

Even though I have focused virtually all of my efforts in the “article marketing” arena the past few months I’m not in any kind of panic BECAUSE I’ve also been posting a slightly re-written copy of the article submitted to one of these authority sites to 0ne of my own websites or blogs AND these pages have all seen a dramatic rank increase. Why? My guess is because they are not associated with being a “content farm” DUE TO the fact there is more to each of these pages than featuring adsense.

Meaning, for now, I won’t be changing too much in my promotional model. I’ll still write content and submit it to the “authority sites” because, frankly, I think they will come back in full force here after a few weeks.

But, that said, I will be focusing on getting more backlinks to my own content pages first and foremost and backlinks to the article directory pages will take second seat for now.

In my opinion… the jury is still out.

 

 

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