As recently as last year, Ezine Articles and E-How, and other article directories such as these, enjoyed a top ranking with Google Search. They earned top SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), mainly due to their well-known name, as well as their high number of individual web pages. However, in 2012, (and partly in 2011) Google implemented stricter search filters for SERPs, and began penalizing article directories (and other sites) for having too many low quality pages.
Ezine Articles and E-How, along with many other sites, were humbled by Google’s new algorithm update. Millions of dollars have been lost, and sites are still scrambling to get their SEO work optimized for Google’s higher standards. Article directories are now facing the heat, and many sites are actually now going through their archives and deleting articles or pages that may be hurting their overall rankings.
In the midst of all this, blogs have actually been rising in SERPs and traffic. Perhaps years ago, the idea of a company blog was underwhelming to search engines, since blogs were known to be company-sponsored and hardly objective. However, it soon became evident that companies were debuting their best work on blogs, not article directories. And that’s why in 2012, in a post-Google Penguin world, blogs now count as quality links (provided the blog is regularly updated and has quality content).
Does this mean that you should concentrate all of your efforts on blogging instead of article directory publishing? Not necessarily. Article directories are still good sources for objective and basic information, and you will still see article directories come up in various search results.
A new question to consider is this: are you diversifying your linkbuilding campaign by focusing on blogs, magazines and articles? Now is the time to diversify your links and benefit from a stronger overall web presence.
