Ok DPers, to this very day, there seems to be a lot of confusion as to what article marketing is about. And especially in light of Google Panda, it is even more essential to bear the following in mind: 1. Article marketing is about getting your content syndicated (picked up by publishers) on sites that have your target audience.This is what article marketing was originally about. 2. Article marketing is typically poor for getting PR backlinks. Articles on Ezine Articles (EZA) and most other directories reside on PR 0 pages even though directories' home pages might have PR. EZA's homepage itself is a PR 6 but all the articles I have submitted to them are on PR 0 pages. Marketers forget to tell you that PR is page specific - sites don't have PR. 3. Google Panda hit article directories hard so mass submitting articles as a way to get traffic is pointless. Very little direct traffic comes tier 1 directories let alone the tier 2 directories where most mass submitted articles reside on. 4. Forget article spinning. The SEO effect is negligible for the work involved to spin the article in the first place. Spun articles read like garbage and even if they read well, those articles still end up on PR 0 pages. Article spinning became popular because of the duplicate content penalty myth or scare. Duplicate content refers to having the same content on your site. There is nothing inherently wrong in having identical articles syndicated all over the place. If it were wrong, press releases, Yahoo, Google news -- all those big sites would cease to exist as they all publish content that can be found elsewhere. 5. You don't want to have your article in an article directory rank higher than the said article on your site. Once a visitor reads your article in a directory he is shown too many distractions that will significantly reduce the chances of him/her clicking on the url that leads to your site. Therefore, you want the article on your site to rank higher so that a visitor get to your site and sign up to your list or buy something. This is why I don't agree with building links to article directories or any other 3rd party site that links to your money site in the hope that your money site will get more juice. If you do this, you are building up another person's site -- not yours. Remember directories are there to facilitate syndication -- not direct traffic or SEO. 5.To get the most of article marketing, write a high quality article and put it on your site or blog first. After it is indexed there, submit said article to the top 5 directories. Your aim is to get that article syndicated. That is where the traffic lies. Do that for all your articles. 5. Check the SERPS to see the publishers that picked up your article. Contact those people and ask them if they'd like more articles from you. If they agree, add them to your publishers list. Also -- I wouldn't send those publishers unique articles either. Unique articles belong on your website first to build up your business. And besides, those publishers had no qualms about picking up content from the article directories now did they? In closing, I want to provide you with a link to a video of Matt Cutts of Google Web spam team. He was asked a question about 2012 but I think what he had to say is apt for anyone looking to purchase SEO services in 2013 and beyond. Ok guys -- hope you find some value in this post.
Very good advice, but article marketing does work for some people. I used to get around 1000 visitors a month from ezine articles at one time. I no longer use them because I am in a different niche altogether these days. But there are circumstances where it can work, so don't write it off completely.