Should You Delete All Your Online Articles?

Is article marketing truly dead? Has this marketing strategy
become totally ineffective, especially in regards to SEO?
But perhaps, what you should be asking yourself…

Should You Delete All Your Online Articles?

I have always been a great fan of article marketing and have
hundreds of articles on the web on various sites. Along comes
the Google Penguin Update and these articles/backlinks may now
be considered webspam in the eyes of Google. In other words,
instead of helping others with your articles and content, you’re
now creating unnatural or inorganic link schemes with these articles.

Penguin slaps your site into oblivion and unless you remove the
majority of these inorganic links flowing to your site, it will
stay in no-mansland. This poses a serious question:


Should I Delete All My Online Articles?


Since Penguin, many webmasters have done just that, closed any
article directory accounts and removed all their articles. These
webmasters have also contacted other sites displaying their articles
and have asked for the articles/links to be removed. Some major
sites, Buzzle comes to mind, have removed all articles from their
sites, users can still submit content but without links.

Removal of all your articles may not be the best move if those
articles are still bringing in traffic to your site. Sure, Google
is probably not counting these articles/links for ranking purposes
but is the traffic flowing from your articles worth more than your
previous Google search traffic? That’s the main question here,
if your Google traffic numbers were much greater, you may have
to consider removing all your articles.


Shouldn’t You Wait For The Google Disavow Link Tool?


If my traffic from my articles are too beneficial to lose, couldn’t
I just wait for the promised “Disavow Link Tool” and keep my articles
and traffic, while dismissing those backlinks in Google? Wouldn’t
this be a much better route to take, especially if you have been
building up your article traffic for years?

Bing has come out with a “Disavow Tool” but that doesn’t mean Google
will also give us one. Google and Matt Cutts are all on record saying,
such a tool is coming in the next few months. I am keeping my fingers
crossed because, while I have no problem removing articles/links which
bring in no traffic, removing articles which bring in targeted leads
and sales is not a good marketing strategy. Besides, removing all
these viral articles is a complete nightmare and almost impossible to
do, especially when sites hosting your articles refuse to remove them.

My only other dilemma, I like article marketing… it is a great way to
introduce yourself and your site. Plus, for years, article marketing has
been a vital part of my marketing funnels… present a well written and
well informed article in article directory like Ezinearticles and you
get a steady stream of potential targeted customers/clients flowing
into your site and marketing funnels.

In addition, a well written unique article on other high quality sites
is still a great way to get traffic and valuable one-way links. And no,
I am not talking about article spinning or using scraped content for
the sake of getting links. Spun articles, for the most part, are usually
unreadable and a complete joke. You should not be doing of this in the
first place.


So does article marketing still hold any value at all?


Perhaps the biggest question, does article marketing still hold any value
as an SEO strategy? Yes, I believe it needs to be repeated, a well written
article or post on a related quality (non-article directory) site is still
a good way to get traffic and backlinks. Just make sure you’re not using
the same anchor text in these article and try to keep the backlinks from
any given site to one or two links – just to play it safe.


Is article marketing still effective in Google?


Where Google is concerned – probably not! And in some cases, it can now
do your site serious harm or damage. Google has to look at patterns and
write formulas /restrictions to its algorithm to weed out what it believes
to be link schemes and sites manipulating its index, if a few high quality
sites or content get affected or thrown out in the process, Google doesn’t
really have to worry UNTIL web searchers STOP using Google and quite frankly,
that is simply NOT going to happen any time soon. So you simply have to play
by Google’s rules, or go home.

Here’s a Matt Cutts’ video from a few years back warning of the pitfalls
of article marketing.

Do you recommend article marketing as an SEO strategy?

s
Helping People Succeed Online Since 2002!

Kind Regards,
Titus Hoskins

www.bizwaremagic.com

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