Google Penguin: Article Marketing and Article Submission
Google Penguin has made article marketing and article submission even more important than before. Google’s Penguin update is looking for more variety in backlink sources, anchor text, and landing pages, and effective article writing and submission can achieve all three. That is how.
1. Google Penguin update and backlink sources
What to avoid
The Google Penguin update will punish web pages whose backlinks mainly come from the same source. For example, those whose backlinks all come from EzineArticles will find that their rankings have dropped. Those whose links come solely from multiple Craigslist ads, Yahoo Answers posts, or basically the same posts will experience the same thing.
Some have written that Google Penguin is the end of article marketing, but they fail to see the big picture. Sure, it’s the end of article marketing if all our submissions are in the same directory, like EzineArticles or GoArticles. Some people have paid a membership fee for their submission sites and feel that all their articles should be submitted to that site. Bad move!
positive action
If you do that after Penguin, then your rank will drop! To avoid that, you should write multiple articles and submit them to multiple article directories. If most of your backlinks are coming from an article directory, Google will reduce your profit.
To avoid this, you need to generate backlinks from your published articles, not only from as many different article directories as possible, but also from other publication types such as ezines, blogs, and PDF directories.
Not only that, but use your homepage URL to answer questions on the various ‘Questions’ websites, to participate in forums, and even to advertise your services on Craigslist. Use web directories, even free directories, to get more backlinks.
2. Importance of Anchor Text in Article Marketing
What to avoid
Never forget that Google’s fundamental commitment is to those who use it as a search engine to find information, that is Google’s raison d’être, and those who forget it will suffer. It is not the AdSense users or the AdWords advertiser, but those who are looking for information that are Google customers.
Google understands that its users don’t want to see ‘Click Here’ or any other text on every link they find. Part of the intent of the Penguin update is to promote variety in anchor text for Google users, so that those looking for information have a variety of clickable linked HTML text, not just variety, it’s information, so the anchor text should reflect the landing page they’ll be sent to.
positive action
You should have as diverse an anchor text as you can. Simply using your home page name or ‘Click Here’ will not work. Try using anchor text related to your content. For example, the anchor text in the author resources section of this article could be ‘Google Penguin’, ‘article marketing’, and ‘article submission’ if submitted to three different backlink sources.
Even if you’re submitting the same article to multiple posts, you can at least change the anchor text for each one and, as you’re about to learn, the landing page attached to that anchor text as well.
3. Multiple Landing Pages When Submitting Articles
What to avoid
Another aspect of the Google Penguin update is landing pages. Many webmasters tend to promote only their home page. Google believes that its customers would benefit from having access to all the pages within a website, or at least more than one on the first click!
For that reason, those websites that typically promote only one page are likely to suffer in ranking. Although Google ranks only individual pages, your ranking position for any given search term is influenced by the quality of the website as a whole. If only one page is being promoted on that site, Google will likely list that page below the equivalent pages on multi-page sites with backlinks.
positive action
Promote several of your most important web pages on any website. Don’t focus primarily on one page. Analysis tends to indicate that if 50% of your backlinks in your article marketing are to your home page and the rest are split between other pages on the site, then you should avoid this aspect of the Google Penguin upgrade.
Summary
To avoid the negative ranking many have experienced with the Google Penguin Update, your article marketing campaigns should a) involve submitting articles to multiple post types, b) use multiple forms of anchor text in links, and c) direct these links. to a series of landing pages and not just your home page.
Article marketing and article submission are still very powerful means of achieving high listing positions, but they need to be applied intelligently and not with the Google Penguin update in mind, but with Google customers in mind.
