brand marketing blog

As with most SEO practitioners, I’ve frequently advocated the use of article marketing as a means of generating keyword targeted content with the potential for good backlinks. Until recently this has been the case, but Google has now thrown down the gauntlet on this form of content and backlink creation.

Their most recent ‘Panda’ or 'Farmer' algorithm update has targeted ‘spammy’ content sites, which include article marketing sites. This change has been implemented to ensure that only relevant and genuinely popular content is shown in Google SERP's (search engine ranking pages).

In a recent video post, Matt Cutts, Google’s head of spam elimination, expanded on the undesirability of articles generated through article sites. Whilst he doesn’t definitively disclose Google’s official position in this regard, he may just as well have done so. For when Matt Cutts talks, everybody listens (or ignore him at your own peril).

So it looks like another tool in the SEO armoury has just flown out the window. I stick by my belief that Google will slowly strangle SEO until the art is simply that of accurately identifying page content for indexing purposes. It will continue to become more difficult to appear on Page 1, other than through paid search AdWords. I’m not convinced that profit by way of CPC is driving the latest anti-spam strategy, but it certainly plays into the game of having to part with money to have your content appear in Google search. More on the subject in this recent post.

Take a look at what Mr Cutts has to say in the following video...