Just wondering if article marketing will ever stop working? Here's my opinion. in a word? No. there may be different sites google favors, but article marketing will never stop working. Just like powerhouses such as yahoo, ebay, and things of that nature never fall, I don't believe article directories will fall either. Just my opinion though.
It might* considering the fact that theres tons of "spammy" articles out there now that don't really have much value. Article sites would prolly have to step up their content-filtering process.
No way it will ever stop. It may (and ill) change but it will never stop. I do have doubts about the article directories, or at least the majority of them, it is so easy to get a domain, install a script and add thousands of articles (the same as are on the other directories) with the use of a Db. I mean how long can we just keep multiplying the number of article directories with the same bunch of articles in them? This is not to say that all article directories fit this description. There are some good ones. In my experience over the past 2 years+ I have submitted large numbers of articles to over 75 different article directories. Guess how many of them I actually get any traffic from? If you guessed anything higher than 2 you would be wrong. In fact there is 1 article directory that sends me hundreds of visitors and one that sends a couple dozen. All the rest may send one or two occasionally, that's it. That is why I started dealing with only a select few article directories. Article marketing is a good way to promote your website, but the days of writing an article and submitting it to a gazillion different directories are gone. These days I use most everything I write on one of my own sites. For the most part that is the best use you can put your writing to. When I write an article intending to submit it to a directory I submit it to only one. Sometimes I will submit it to another a few weeks later.
My view is that it's not going to end, but I'm sure it will be devalued. I've never actually been a big fan of article submission and distribution, sure I've done some of it, but I just don't get the returns that I get with concentrating on great content and building backlinks other ways.
Very true. Unique, relevant content is valuable. It is one of your most valuable assets! Giving your work over to an article directory that doesnt deliver traffic is wasting your resources.
No I don't think it's going to stop, there's no reason. it's the best marketing at all time even in the old days people use articles to market thier product or services... hope this helps
"These days I use most everything I write on one of my own sites." EXACTLY. Seo your site/page and drive the traffic to YOU..not some other site...
I made some mistakes in the beginning of my webmastering days with submitting articles and now, still today, I am actually competing against my own articles in the SERPs for many different keywords. Do I want the searcher to find my Ezine article submission or my own website? 'nuff said. If I had known then what I do today this wouldnt be so much of an issue. Oh well anything worth learning hurts I suppose
IMHO, Article marketing is unlikely to go away. Article marketing is Content publishing. Without this, the search engines will not survive. People search for information all the time and that is the reason why search engines exist. As long as your content is unique, informational and SEO, your article marketing efforts will pay off. My articles have been read more than 200,000 times and have earned me huge sales so I can attest to its power! I have done article marketing for quite a while and there are some tricks to get your articles right at the top of search engines. You can read about these in my free report. See my signature.
I also believe article marketing will be around for a long time, but I believe it is already not quite a good as it used to be for traffic. Also like the other poster said, out of submitting my articles to tons of sites, I get traffic back from 3 at the most, with an occasional blip from some other low pr site. I don't find article marketing a great traffic source but it is a good source....... to keep a stream flowing....
Any and all of what you said can be applied to an article that a webmaster puts on their own site without having anything to do with an article directory. Are you suggesting that without article directories the search engines will not survive?
I don't know if it will stop, but it's not getting any better. As google becomes better at filtering out duplicate content, it will be harder to get as many backlinks from the articles that will mean something to Google.