If I have 50+ articles that have been submitted in the last 1.5 months, is it quite common that it has had no real effect on my SEO? Because my SEO has gone downhill since I submitted the articles. I realize google changed its algo on the 31st. But I also am wondering --- do those articles not have much linkjuice if there is no PR on the article pages? Will they grow stronger in time?
Articles are a good way to build backlinks and not that much link juice for PR unless another website decides to publish it. If that website has good PR, it often flows down to that article and the article can rank (it happened to me). Another note, try not to post your articles on your own site. I know many have said post there 1st, wait a while then submit your articles. I don't take that chance anymore as that content can be consider duplicate and won't give your site any authority or link juice for that page. Is your site mostly composed of your articles or is it unique content to the artciles you submitted?
the articles you have submitted will impact your seo. they usually help with serps. thats better then getting a higher page rank. Try to make the articles on the same topic different and use keywords in the articles your sites about/uses.
when you submit an article initially, it is obvious that the page where your article is posted will not have any pagerank. however, if it is a popular and high PR article site and based on how their linking structure is for new articles, some of the articles will have their own PR over time. they dont have to have pagerank however to give you link juice. yuo will get backlink regarless if the articles are indexed and if the site is dofollow but how much that will help depends on your article submission practice. you mentioned that you have submitted 50+ articles over the past 1.5 month. how many directories they were submitted to? if they all were submitted to a lot of directories, then you might be doing too much submission for which you are experiencing a drop in your ranking. take a slow and steady approach and dont just follow one specific link building method, utilize other link building methods and come up with a mixed link building campaign which will look more natural
When it comes to SEO all links from quality sites count. But links from relevant pages and authority sites tend to give more seo benefits than links from a regular page. If you are submitting to ezine articles, you might have noticed that the articles which get most page views will get linked from their high PR page. This in turn will get better search result position for that page and tis will again increase your page views because of the search engine traffic. The key is optimize your title of your article.... -Neo
There's no duplicate content penalty for article submissions. Read this article http://driveconvertmonetize.blogspot.com/2008/10/i-want-to-submit-articles-to-increase.html
I didn't say duplicate penalty, what I'm saying is the page on which you posted the article on your site maybe considered duplicate. Take for instance you post an article on Ezinearticles first, then they as an authority site will have claim in the Google bots eyes as the site that owns it. Your content on your site can then become a duplicate and become filtered therefore you lose the benefit of being the owner of the article i.e. you are not the authority and your page loses SERP compared to the Ezine article. No penalty, but definitely little benefit from the page on your site.