It’s too easy to get addicted to link directories as sources of backlinks. After all, what’s easier than filling up a form, making sure the keywords are correct, clicking submit and seeing your article published after a short period of waiting? You get quick and easy backlinks this way. Unfortunately, what makes the process so easy and appealing is exactly what makes it so dangerous.
Google sounds like a broken record when it comes to link quality. Google has repeated its warning again and again and again. No other than Google’s head of web spam, Matt Cutts, has said on the record that if a link source doesn’t have an editorial system, it is probably not a high quality link source. It is too early to say that Google will categorically ban, or penalize or downgrade such link sources but you know where it is headed. You only need to put Google’s statements together to understand that it is probably a bad idea to use article directory link sources.
Unfortunately, a large number of people trying to build backlinks on the cheap disregard such warnings from Google. These are precisely the same people that disregarded Matt Cutts’ warning regarding link over optimization. What happened to these people? They got slapped hard by the Penguin update. Unfortunately, it only got worse from there. The reality is that Google isn’t wasting its time issuing warnings. It doesn’t want to look like a fool. Only a fool keeps saying the same warning again again and not do anything about it. Google follows through on its warnings.
Google said that certain backlinks like social bookmarks have low value. Guess what? They got deprecated. Google is on the record regarding guest posts for SEO. Guess what? Google handed out some penalties to whole lot of people who use guest posting recently. Google is not playing around. This is no joke. This is why you need to pay attention to Google pronouncements on article directories as link sources. This is not exactly new. Google has been saying this for a long time.
How Article Sites are Supposed to Work
Article sites, at least in theory, are actually based on a good idea. The idea is that you produce a high quality piece of content and submit it to an article site. The article site likes your content and publishes your article. You get a backlink. The article site has free content. More importantly, the people that visit the article site see the great content and benefit from that content. This is what you call a triple win. Forget win-win situation, this is a win-win-win situation. How awesome is that?
Unfortunately, things didn’t quite pan out like that. Why? Spammers. Early on, a lot of article sites started getting lazy. Either they got lazy or they just got careless. It is not hard to figure out why. In any given day, the most popular article directory sites probably got hammered with thousand of submissions. How can you stay on top of such volume? How can you even think of giving such a system under control? Even if you outsource, you still cannot manage such a system in a cost-effective way. As a result, article directory websites started publishing very low quality articles.
Article Site Abuse: The Dawn of Spun Articles
Since the article websites didn’t have the infrastructure to process such heavy article submission volumes, spammers really turned it up a notch. They would take one article and use software to create hundreds of thousands of ‘rewrites’ of that article. Each of these articles would have backlinks. They would then use software to submit these articles to hundreds or even thousands of article sites. Most of these article sites are completely worthless. They don’t have any authority. Nobody visits them…
…But it doesn’t matter, spammers were just trying to abuse the system. To them it’s all our numbers thing, if they want ten good backlinks, they would send out hundreds of submissions. They don’t care if the internet is gets polluted by such crap. All that matters is that they get their ten links.
Obviously, Google is not stupid. Google knows that this is happening and this is why Panda was rolled out. Google Panda penalized websites with low quality content. It is not surprising that some of the most popular article directories in the planet were slapped hard by Panda. It is still continuing now. Unfortunately, considering how easy it is to build backlinks with article submissions, too many SEOs still find article submission a bad habit break. The reality is if you still submitting articles for backlinks in 2014, you are doing something wrong. You are simply waiting for the other shoe to drop. If you do not want to find out the hard way that Google doesn’t like links that you are creating, it’s a good time to start looking at article directories from a different perspective.
The Right Way to Use Article Sites
The good news is that there is a right way to use article sites. Unfortunately for you, if you are looking for a backlink, this approach has nothing to do with links. The right way to use article sites is for branding and building purposes. You have to remember the main reason why people would want to read an article on an article site is information. This information must be credible. This information must build trust. If you keep doing this with all the articles you send to article websites, you build authority, you build credibility. By looking beyond the link you are generating and focusing on the value provided to the end-user. If you do things this way, you are doing yourself a big favor.
The reality is that eventually article directories’ SEO benefits will completely evaporate and I’m surprised that it has completely not evaporated by now. But its going to happen sooner or later. What is important is to use article directory sites as a way of building rapport between you and the reader. Believe it or not, a lot of people still visit article directory sites. These sites still have a lot of traffic. In fact, according to alexa.com, one of the biggest article directories, Ezine articles, still ranks as one of the top thousand websites on the planet in terms of traffic. That’s serious traffic! The right way to use article sites is to produce a high quality article that is original and that fits the needs of people looking for that information.
Brand, Brand, Brand
Learn to bet your content quality speak for itself. When you submit to an article director. Your article should produce so much value that the end user will follow you and follow your brand. Of course, it does not happen overnight. Of course, it happens over a long period of time and with many different articles. If, however, you play your cards right, this is worth doing. Article websites just by their sheer size would still have some direct traffic. More importantly, some bloggers and other types of researchers would read their materials and you never know what would happen regarding backlinks that you might get if they blog about your content. Do not count on backlinks from the article websites. Instead, focus on what kind of possible backlinks you might get from somebody blogging about the stuff you wrote.
While I’m not prepared to say that article directories are completely toast, they are definitely on their way out. Don’t look at them as link sources. Instead, look at them as brand link platforms. The more brand link platforms you have, the better it would be for your online business. You still have to follow the rule of return on investment though. Make sure you target only article websites that have the best return on effort and return on investment. Writing quality articles is not easy. It takes time.
Even if you outsource article writing, it still costs you. Make sure you stay focused on ROI so you don’t end up wasting time and effort with a particular article directory. In most cases, it only makes sense to submit maybe ten or five article to publish. The rest is just simply not worth your time.
Annie Marie Peters
I agree with you, Lewis. Although article directories are not completely irrelevant, it’s been several years since I’ve used them as part of my SEO strategy. I’d say there are definitely better ways to spend your valuable time that give a much better return on investment.
Alex London
Yes, unfortunately article directories have been so abused that Google pretty much ignores them now. It’s hilarious that we are now back to talking about article directories for their original intended purpose. As a platform to help increase your brand recognition.
Diane Bourque
I don’t even know if this is good or bad.
There are always better methods.
Thanks for the information.
Daniel Major
For what it’s worth I recently had a site given a site wide penalty for unnatural link building and removed what appeared to be a negative seo attack only to be told that my site still warranted a penalty. I then removed what appeared to be the most obvious manual linking but again I was told that my site warranted the penalty although this time the reviewer was kind enough to leave a note highlighting 4 year old articles posted at goarticles and articlesnatch as being problematic. I personally read this as google is now penalizing sites for using article directory links, even if they are from a time when it was an accepted practice to use them!
Lewis Crutch
4 Years!!! That’s incredible. I’ve heard of people being penalised for actively using article directories these days but 4 years is shocking seeing as these sites were legitimate and more important acceptable ways of link building and part of SEO as you mentioned.
Hopefully people read this and therefore look at their backlink profile for the lifetime of the website and not just since the algorithm updates of late if they are unfortunate enough to experience a penalty from Google.
Daniel Major
In all fairness, I don’t think the links from the article directories were what initially triggered the penalty so I’m guessing that they are not a primary algo trigger. However, unfortunately I do believe and with good reason that once a site starts to be reviewed for reconsideration it then becomes a manual process and that is when your back-link profile is closely scrutinized. So…yes Lewis, I agree…time to clean up our back link profiles which for some of us is going to be a gargantuan task!
Khuram Dhanani
Thanks for sharing your info. I really appreciate your efforts and I am waiting for your further write
ups thank you once again.
Lewis Crutch
Cheers Khuram! Glad you enjoyed the read.
Daniel MajorD
Here’s an update……..I removed or disavowed all the article links to my main domain (not subdomains) and low and behold, two weeks later my sitewide penalty has now become a partial penalty targeting incoming links only and not the pages they’re pointing to! Success!! As a result, all my sites have returned to the serps although slightly down on their previous positions (between 2 and 10 places in almost all cases) but I class this as a result. As a side note, I do have links from personal blog networks and other smaller networks that are still pointing at the sites so that’s a big thumbs up for those types of links…when done properly and sensibly.
Conclusion: Avoid red flags that trigger manual reviews of your site by checking your link profile regularly and removing any obvious problem links, in particular any signs of a negative seo attack! (Yes…they do exist!!)
Lewis Crutch
Nice work Daniel! Cheers for keeping us posted.