How important are articles today for getting ranked on Google? How important is the Farmer Algorithm from Google? There are many views on it, and some of them are really confusing. Let us have a look at each one of these ideas to get an unbiased view on this issue.
The First View: The Concept of Unique Content
According to some of the conventionalists, Google have always wanted unique content – and the article directories were making it tough for the search engine. You could post your article in 100 directories, and get 100 back-links – which meant that the links were of little or no value – no matter how good your content was.
This might be one of the reasons why Google does not want to consider the article directories anymore, and this includes some of the most popular article directories too!
Shady SEO
Online popularity will always consider the number of back-links to your site as an important factor as to how important your site is, and how relevant the content on it is for the searches made. However, shady SEO tactics practiced by SEO experts (take the JC Penny Case for an example) have made Google reconsider how much it should consider the article directories.
Shady SEO experts can create 100s of article directories everyday which they can use for posting 1000s of articles regularly. Shady tactics like article spinning, rewriting, and even quoting popular articles can be used by these companies and SEO Firms.
What happens next is that these article directories become article farms, very similar to link farms. These sites hold articles that contain no unique information (even if the content is unique), as the articles are rewritten or “spinned”. This makes these sites and the information they contain totally useless for visitors and of very low quality.
Google’s Business Tactics?
Another reason that experts are putting forward is that Google doesn’t want SEO companies to spend money on article marketing that generate valueless online content. Some online marketers have pointed out that Google would rather have marketers to spend money on Adwords and other internet marketing services offered by Google.
In that way, Google can get people to carry out ethical internet marketing, and earn money out of it as well.
So how seriously should article marketers take Google’s Farmer Algorithm today? No doubt there are a number of other strategies available for SEO professionals other than Adwords and paid services from Google – like Local Listing, Social Media Marketing, etc.
As a professional SEO company in Orange County, we have definitely taken a note of the Farmer Update, which is why we have decided to focus on Social Media, Local Listing and a number of other strategies that we have been working with since a long time. Lets see what the future holds for article marketers!
