Google’s Matt Cutts: Article Directories Won’t Help SEO

If you’re still writing blog articles and distributing these articles to other sources to help build backlinks to your website. Stop right there!

Head of webspam, Matt Cutts has spoken out again and has confirmed that article directory submission is no longer an effective tactic: “Article directory submission is a link building technique that fell out of favor with webmasters many years ago.”

What is an Article Directory?

It’s basically writing an article and including a bio at the end of an article with anchor text that includes a few links back to your website. Then it’s taking that same article and submitting it to article directories, places where people can buy or download your article to publish on their own site. The act of doing this is for other people to publish your content, see your bio, and hopefully visit your site to learn more about you. It’s supposed to help you build backlinks to your website and help you rank better in Google.

Why Aren’t Article Directories Working for SEO?

Short answer is duplicate content filters and link penalties. Google is realizing that while the theory behind seems great, the practice is spreading crummy spam-ridden content all over the web. In Matt’s opinion, due to the nature of this practice and new updates to Google algorithms in the last year, article submission won’t be as effective as it was and it’ll continue to fall off as a tactic that brings success to content marketers.

The Solution for Web Marketers

Instead, the most useful practices that webmasters can do right now with article directories is to use them as jumping boards for coming up with blog topics of their own. These can be helpful places to find what to write about in your own words for your own website. They just aren’t helpful for submitting and spreading content anymore.

Here’s’ the full video of Matt’s explanation: 

If you need help coming up with ideas to create some compelling content marketing, take a look at a few content ideas we put together.

About Small Screen Producer

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