Article Marketing - manual vs automated or both
-
Hi Mozzers,
Are services such as Article Samurai or Content Crooner worth the time/effort/money?
On one hand, I cannot see them generating high quality links. But , they may be able to help on the quantity side of the link building equation.
Does anyone have any thoughts or experience with automated article submission?
Thanks,
Peter
-
The problem with all of this is that "automation" can lead to just about anything depending on the service you use. It IS possible to get an effective number of anchor text and contextual links with the right set up, especially if you generate your own link network that only you use, but then you have the problem of dupe content. The RIGHT way to do it is far too time consuming to make it worth your while unless you can find a legit link builder/article writer on odesk that will make the time/cost problem go away, but even then they usually don't speak English as a first language and you end up spending a lot of time rewriting the articles because the grammar and syntax is absurd..
Also what does
"Searching for your exact topic in Google, and finding incomplete resources. Ask them for links" mean? I didn't understand what you meant by incomplete resources. Thanks
-
There are blogs out there on how to use code on Google Docs to pretty much automate most of this process.
-
I think this answer is spot-on and voices one of my deeper concerns that has been lurking in my mind: relevancy. Automated submission does not take this factor into account and non-relevant links will hurt in the long term as it is not a natural link profile.
I think the answer to off-load some work is outsourcing which if performed in proper fashion might be the way to go. All of your answers have helped point me in this direction. If I build a list of potential candidates, write the intro email etc...but outsource the actual sending of requests, this can help give me some extra hours during the week.
Thanks everyone.
-
Much better answer to the actual question!
-
I have a client where 95%+ of their backlinks are from low-quality directories, articles, and automated link-exchanges. They built all of these before I came on board. This has caused long-term damage to their backlink profile and the rankings are not better because of the time/money spent. Their quantity of links is high. Quality LOW. Not only am I building high-quality, legit links to the site, but I've been actively trying to remove some of low-quality links they had previously obtained.
I work with another site that is newer, music related. We do NOT have a high "quantity" of links coming in, but they are all extremely natural and relevant with lots of branded anchor text. We have pages with 25 domains linking in and we're outranking other pages (for very competitive terms) that have 10 times that. We've never done any automated link-building of any kind.
So for me personally and the things I've witnessed, it is a complete waste of time and money to be going for low-quality links.
And when I say "low-quality", I don't mean a low Page Authority or a Google PageRank of zero or only a handful of backlinks pointing in. I'm referring to web pages that have...
SPAM!!
- links that are easy to obtain
- links out to sites having anything to do with sofware stuff, web design, computer whatever, directories, loans, ppc, anything with "ads" in it, employment sites, insurance sites, etc etc
- backlinks based on automated services
But I have to say, if you do go this route, make sure you get plenty of branded anchor text, it will help you in the long run.
This is just my opinion. There are lots of people using automated services. Maybe an SEOmoz member can chime in with a recent success story regarding automated article submission?
-
If you use automatic submission you're faced with a problem. Duplicate content. If you want to get around the duplicate content problem then you're faced with another problem, you have to use article spinning. Both of which are not good. Aside from that, the majority of the sites the auto software's submit to won't end up giving you any links and your article will still read with visibile, non-working html code in it, of the ones that do give you a link it will be either nofollow, or pass zero of anything to you because it's spammed to hell with millions of articles for being one of the few article sites that allow follow links.
Now, there might be a few sites that pass juice, but that will be because of quality levels in what they publish. So submitting to them would have to be manual only, as there's no way any auto software would get your article into a site like that.
-
Thanks Ressler! All good advice in terms of manual submission. Regarding the duplicate content issue, I know Article Samurai guarantees this won't be an issue as they do have a spinning component as part of their service.
I'm just considering this as a way of generating quantity links while I work on the quality links using the methods you listed above.
Nothing's easy in this effort but if I can either automate some of this workload or outsource the quantity aspect of link building, I can maximize my efforts with a little bit of scale.
Thanks again
-
Article submission used to be the bees-knees (is that how the phrase is spelled? Anyway...). However, what you will really generate is a whole bucket load of duplicate content on the web. To make matters worse, it's unlikely your articles will get picked up.
A better use of time is:
- writing fantastic copy, citing sources with followed links (welcome back to high school!).
- Emailing people in, or remotely in your industry (Real Estate Agent - property lawyer, house insurance, home inspector, etc.) and suggesting how useful this article might be to their clients.
- Placing article on Digg, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook hoping some news companies see it, and pick it up.
- Looking on Haro (http://www.helpareporter.com/) to see if anyone is writing about your topic, and needs a source.
- Searching for your exact topic in Google, and finding incomplete resources. Ask them for links
- Make friends in some news departments, try get them to link to you (give them a couple stories every once in a while, and they will help you out).
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Domain seo vs subdomain
when building links is it better to link to the main domain (www.aabbccarpetcleaning.com) or www.aabbcccarpetcleaning/carpet-rug-cleaning
Link Building | | dhanson240 -
Morally Right vs Strategic 404 Question
Hey, I bought my domain name not even thinking of the backlink profile advantages. However, now I have about 140 links back to my site delivering 404 errors. Some with DA only in the teens, but some more. What would you consider the right way to go about this? Should I redirect them to my homepage? Should I try to disavow them? Any thoughts are welcome.
Link Building | | Michael4g0 -
Manual Spam Action Revoked... Finally!
Just got this: Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www. We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://www. for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines. Previously the webspam team had taken manual action on your site because we believed it violated ourquality guidelines. After reviewing your reconsideration request, we have revoked this manual action. It may take some time before our indexing and ranking systems are updated to reflect the new status of your site. Of course, there may be other issues with your site that could affect its ranking without a manual action by the webspam team. Google's computers determine the order of our search results using a series of formulas known as algorithms. We make hundreds of changes to our search algorithms each year, and we employ more than 200 different signals when ranking pages. As our algorithms change and as the web (including your site) changes, some fluctuation in ranking can happen as we make updates to present the best results to our users. If your site continues to have trouble in our search results, please see this article for help with diagnosing the issue. Thank you for helping us to maintain the quality of our search results. Sincerely, Google Search Quality Team
Link Building | | sbrault741 -
Article submission web-sites and SEO
Does article submission web-sites have any impact to SEO in these days? There are a lot of good/not so good article submission databases, but does it really matter if you spend a time to write unique articles for them? I mean, is it a good way for link-building, or should I spend more time for other parts of SEO? There are also a special websites (for example SubmitYourArticle) which automate this process, does it make sense to use this services? Alternates? Lots of questions… Update Sorry, I found some good answers only after that I posted this question.
Link Building | | ditoroin0 -
Google+ Account for Authorship: Personal vs. Corporate Account
Hi guys, We are currently setting up Google+ accounts for our website www.troteclaser.com. We'd like to use them to indicate authorship of our content. As we provide content in 10 different countries, we have to set up a Google+ account for every office location. Here my questions: Do we have to set up two separate accounts - one for the authorship (for the person who wrote the texts) and another one for our office location (to link with Google places)? Or would a single (unpersonal) corporate account do the job, too? What's your experience with this? Thomas
Link Building | | Troteclaser1 -
Article Backlinks To Product Pages
I am writing a number of 500 word articles and have read that Top 10 lists are becoming more and more popular on the web. So my thoughts are to write an article about the the 'Top 10 Mens Grooming Products 2013' for example. My questions is - do I post this article on my own website with the 10 links to the product pages using the product name as 'anchor text', or post the article to somewhere like Squidoo containing the links to my product pages. Which strategy has more SEO value?
Link Building | | Ubique0 -
How do you feel about article directories?
Hello, I am a beginner in SEO and I have been reading a lot recently about article directories and article marketing. I have already started writing for article directories, ezinearticles particularly, but I still have mix feelings about it: does it really worth spending some time to write unique articles and to submit them to directories? How does Google feel about it? What do you think about small linkwheel strategies to give some weight to the content you create?
Link Building | | CamilleLG0 -
Impact of Panda Algorithm Change on Articles Base.
I am a published author and researcher. All my articles are original content and high quality. If I am looking for backlinks by submitting high quality original articles to Articles Base, how will the panda algorithm change affect me? Should I be submitting articles somewhere else? If so, where? I greatly appreciate any suggestions you may have.
Link Building | | DanManCastro0