Recent Changes In The Google Algorithm

For those of you who have not heard by now, I wanted to fill you in on the recent changes in the Google algorithm that really effects and effected a lot of internet marketers. So what exactly was this change and when did it happen?

Before I talk about this I want to talk about some other posts that will help you with with your internet marketing career such as Internet Marketing Definitions And Terms, Internet Marketing Benefits and What Internet Marketing Is.

Well the change is that Google is going to start punishing content farms (well they were already doing this), so I should say that they have expanded their list of what they consider a content farm.  This change was made in middle to late February and has really shaken up a lot of people in the internet marketing world.

So why is this such a big deal? This is good that Google is punishing content farms and expanding their lists of what they consider a content farm? Not exactly, and not for all internet marketers. I would say that some internet marketers are happy about this, and a lot of internet marketers are not.

And the reason that this is such a big deal is because this recent expand in what Google sees as a content farms hit a bunch if not all of the major article directories, including EzineArticles.com which was the leading article directory on the entire internet, they were even one of the top 100 most visited sites on the entire world wide web – that’s HUGE traffic!

So when this change happened a lot of internet marketers were freaking out, and the owners of these article directories were freaking out even worse!  EzineArticles.com went into a frantic and started sending out e-mail after e-mail about all of the changes they are making to try and make Google happy (or as they stated, to try and increase the quality of articles).

Because quality content is what Google is after, it is what they have always what they have been after. They want to give the user exactly what they are searching for, and give them the best possible search results for what they are searching for, and the results that have the best quality content for what they are looking for. And that’s what this change is all about.

A lot of articles are submitted (at least WERE submitted) for two reasons:

1) To get links and link power. Internet marketers used these article directories to submit tons of articles. They would just spin article after article (basically the same article in different words) and keep submitting them to get more links back to their website – which gives their website more power in the search engines and gives them a better ranking.

2) To get traffic to their website. They would also submit article after article (a lot of them being spun articles again) to get the traffic to their website.

A good amount of the people who submit these articles do not care about the reader of the article. They are simply submitting the article for themselves – to drive traffic to their website and to get links back to their website in order to increase their search engine rankings for their specific keywords.

And this is exactly why Google made this change, and this is exactly why pretty much all of the article directories got hit, and hit hard.  The question is, is it even worth it to submit articles now?

Unfortunately I don’t have the answer to this question yet as I have to do some tests and some more research – the change happened to recently to tell whether it is still worth it to still submit articles or not. Because two things are certain about this change:

1) You will not get as much traffic from the articles you submit – as your articles will not rank nearly as high in the search engines for the keywords you are going after.

2) You will get little to no link power for the links in your articles.

So submitting articles definitely lost a TON of its appeal, but we just have to figure out if it’s worth it at all in order to even submit articles at all. If you are interested in learning more about article marketing you can check out How To Use Articles To Promote Your Site and What Is Article Marketing?).

A lot of the top internet marketers always said that content is king – and this is something that I highly agree with.

Even before this recent change in the Google algorithm, I had a hard time submitting quality articles to article directories, OTHER SITES. The reason I had such a hard time submitting quality articles to article directories is because I could use those articles for my own site instead of giving it to other sites. Why let them benefit from my hard work?

Well the answer to that question before was for a little less short term traffic for more long term traffic (because of the linking power we were getting from other sites). But now with this change, with the article directories being hit hard – it’s going to be even HARDER to submit quality content to other sites. Because we will be getting even less traffic, and even less linking power from them, if any linking power at all.

Now I will continue to do more research on exactly how much linking power we will be getting from these article directories, again if any linking power at all. But for now my conclusion would be that you are much better off using your quality content for your own site. Why give it to someone else when you are getting barely anything out of it?

Besides there are tons of other ways to get links back to your site (check out Different Ways To Generate Backlinks and Getting Back Links from Relevant Websites) than submitting a bunch of crap articles, spun and re-spun and re-re-spun, so use your quality content for your own sites and get your back links in other ways.  I recommend getting more back links from social bookmarking and social networking as this is the new wave of the internet and all of the search engines love social bookmarking and social networking – so spend more time here and less with article marketing (much less)!

I hope you enjoyed this post on “The Recent Changes In The Google Algorithm” – and remember that I got my start in internet marketing with Wealthy Affiliate and got my start in drop shipping with Worldwide Brands – my two top products for their respected areas of expertise. I highly recommend checking them out if you are not already a member of these sites. You can also check out Doba or The Rich Jerk as alternative programs.