Is Article Marketing Still Worthy After The Penguin Update

“I still remember what Google did last summer”. This would sound like the horror themed movie which almost every one of us has watched. Well, it was certainly horror for the webmasters and SEO experts out there when there were talks about the “Google Panda Update”. Targeting the low quality websites filled with poor quality content, the panda update made a revolution in search engine optimization. From the very beginning of 2011, SEO experts had to redefine the strategies frequently. Google Panda focusing on the quality of the content had directly hit improper article marketing strategies. Making a full stop to spun articles and copied spammy article marketing Google ensured that only professional article marketers spending huge time of research and writing top quality content and publishing it in the right spots got the rewards.

Entry of Penguin Update and impact on article marketing

SEO strategies had steadied a bit in 2012 as the Panda updates kept on refreshing but with only minimal changes. All of a sudden, Matt Cutts hinted about “Over optimization”, which lead the entire web promotion sector into a panic. SEO experts who were using article marketing strategy extensively were very much worried as if their websites were sure to be hit by the penguin update. Thanks to the clarification from Google. During the penguin update, it was mentioned by Matt Cutts, (head of Google Webspam team) that “If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you’d prefer. However, it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article. You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to use the noindexmeta tag to prevent search engines from indexing their version of the content.”

That being said, article marketing still works if you syndicate carefully instead of spamming the web with poor quality content. Here are some most important changes that you need to make with you article marketing strategy after the penguin update:

• Forget about “article submission” just think in the lines of “article syndication”: Gone are the days when you write an article and spread the same article with the links intact to all the article directories. Instead, the original article should be published in any ONE of the currently best article directory or blogs. You should be getting the article published and then spread the same article to the other article directories just by including the original article source in the resource box. Doing so will make the process as syndication rather than just submission

• Goodbye to keyword anchor texts – The penguin update has redefined the way how anchor texts are used. Earlier, we use the “money keywords” aka “exact match keywords” to link back to your website. Right now, after the penguin update, forget about the keywords. Use branded keywords or natural keywords such as “visit website” or “click here” to link back.

Just these 2 changes would change a lot on the effectiveness of article marketing. The bottom line is article marketing still works if the process includes a syndication done in the right way.