Is Article Marketing Dead, Post-Panda Update?
The dust is beginning to settle in the post-Panda world. SEO specialists, who have seen their creations plummet down to page 80, are slowly fighting their way back up again. Was the Panda update the end of the world? No, but it certainly changed the landscape.
First of all, the Panda update (also known as Farmer update) was a modification of Google's site indexing/ranking algorithm that was first announced in February 2011. Its main purpose was to target content farms, fight spam and make the Web a better place. Google's Search Quality group, lead by Matt Cutts, identified that a lot of spammers are using article spinning software to create thousands of copies of low quality content filled with backlinks and keywords pointing to their advert-rich websites and posting them on content sites like article directories, Web 2.0 sites, blogs, document sharing web sites, etc. This gave the spammers high-ranking spots in Google's search results and a huge chunk of web traffic as well. The Panda update ended all of that but it also hit respected article directories such as EZineArticles, which reported a drop of up to 21% in organic traffic.
The biggest losers of this update are definitely low-quality websites that used dishonest means such as article spinning and mass-submission software to get a higher page rank. The people who won are both the users, having to deal with less spam, and authors who focused on creating unique, genuinely useful and engaging content on their websites. This also meant that marketing specialists, who concentrated only on article marketing, must now create a more comprehensive and varied approach in order to get traffic. Panda also had a huge positive effect on Google's Q2 earnings.
Now, in order to maintain a strong article marketing campaign, a person must keep in mind the main rule of the post-Panda world: quality content is king. This means that well-written and unique content will drive traffic to your site. It also won't get flagged as spam and receive penalties from Google. It is worth noting that Google is able to somewhat "read and evaluate" content (in terms of quality, written English, etc.), because if you used its Advanced Search features, you will find search results are marked as Basic, Intermediate and Advanced. And although Google is not as strict as Copyscape, it does have its own filter to determine if an article is a duplicate or not.
Next, the content should gain authority points by being posted on a respected site somehow relevant to the topic of the article. This also means that the same content should not be submitted to more than one site since Google may mark it as copied content. Another way to ensure the success of the campaign is to integrate social media into the marketing strategy because people want to share quality content with their friends and colleagues.
All in all, article marketing is alive and kicking, even post-Panda. While the update has made SEO a little bit trickier, it pushes Internet marketers to create top notch content that actually has value for search engine users. Content sites like EZineArticles are now more strict with approving articles - they have also increased the editorial requirements, such as increasing the minimum word count to 400 words. As far as Google is concerned, the battle against spam continues, and they have just announced the roll-out of Google Panda 2.0 in July.
About this article
Search Engine Optimization (Wiki: SEO) is all about having increased visibility in the search results by improving your website's relevance and trust factor. As the world's most popular search engine, with up to 90% market share in certain countries, it is no wonder that most SEO effort is focused on Google. Hence, when Google announced a major algorithm update like Panda, it shook the entire SEO industry to the core. This article was written by SEO Company, a Malaysian-based Search Engine Optimization company, whose clients include Singapore Press Holdings, Edelman, Knight Frank, Popular Holdings and iProperty.com.
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