Recently we have seen an influx of search engine marketing (SEM) "experts" pushing article writing to achieve page 1 results on the search engines. This can boost you in the first few months (sometimes even for a year or two -- this is more rare). This type of trickery people continue to do as it does work in the beginning. Once you are caught by the search engines you will start to not only drop in your search engine ranking but more importantly be penalized for doing these "spam tactics" that were designed to trick the search engines. In this article, we are going to dig into what article writing or article marketing is and how it can hurt your business.
What is article writing and why is it bad?
Article writing is when you have an article that is written with keywords to try and rank well because of the number of keywords being used. These articles are often not found on your website but on other websites that are not part of your businesses industry. These articles routinely will have one link to not only your website but to other websites that are in the same industry as you to try and give them credibility and further try to trick the search engines.
Once the new article is created it is published to article directories, article publishers, article portals, etc. to try and gain more SEO juice from the information. This is what truly makes the Internet bad as it has all of this dis-information that has a sole purpose to lie to the search engines.
How ethical is article writing?
If you feel you can manipulate the search engines to your benefit you are deeply being misinformed. The search engines can be tricked for a short time but when they find out they have been tricked they have a good memory in knowing it was you that tricked them. By you we mean either yourself doing it or by hiring people that do it on your behalf. When you try and trick the search engines to your favor what you are doing is lying to them. They do not respond well to being lied to.
Is all article writing bad?
Article writing can be truly beneficial when done the correct way. The correct way is when you want to educate and inform your audience on the right channels that are specific to your industry. You are providing a positive value and answering the questions your customers want to have answered. You don't flood the article with keywords to try and garner top search engine spots because of it.
If it's not all bad what do I do?
In the simplest of terms, you write the articles on your own website to showcase your expertise and to inform your intended audience. You write the 90% of the articles on your website as that is where your business is. The remaining 10% you want to reserve for doing guest blogging on industry accredited sites that will further showcase you as an expert in your field.
Conclusion
Think of the time, energy, and effort you are using to try and "beat the system". If you used the same amount of time, energy, and effort to build your brand using proper and accepted search engine best practices you will not only get results but you will get long term results that will last the test of time.
Doing the right thing is never easy and often we are shown that there is a shortcut that will give positive results right away. As with everything in life to get the results we want you often to have to work for it and do the right thing.
If you want to work with a company that refuses to not do article writing, or any other "SEO Trick", and will only focus on the search engine best practices to give you long-term results than I encourage you to contact the team at JM2 Webdeisgners as that is all you will get from us!