Article Marketing is Out, Guest Posting is In?
Tell you something, there’s started a big debate after the Google Panda update in 2011, regarding whether article marketing is out and guest posting is in. When Ana Hoffman says, article marketing still works, although crafted in a clever way, a SingleGrain.com article strongly purports that guest posting is in.
If you ask me whether article marketing is dead, I would say – article marketing is dead (IMO)!
Why? I am not going into some research stats here. Just use your common sense.
When you search for anything on Google, do you see any article directories’ articles? NO.
Did the PageRank of the famous article and content directories decrease? YES.
Are the links from the article directories do-follow or no-follow? Do-follow.
I have already written an article on article marketing after Panda update. You will find the answer to your questions.
But here are some facts which might give you some food for thought.
Recently, I was checking for article marketing vs. guest posting on Google Insights. And what do I find? Guest posting doesn’t even come close to article marketing. Look at the image below.
For every search of “guest posting”, there 20 times more searches on “article marketing”. Is article marketing still being sourced and supplied? As a writer, an answer to that will be enlightening in my business endeavors.
I checked again in Google Trends. I get the same answer here. Although you must remember that you don’t get the actual numbers here and the graph is on a 0-100 scale. Still it shows the extent of impact of both these keywords.
One thing you must note here, while article marketing seems to be popular in the Eastern region (primarily Pakistan, India, Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia), guest posting seems to be there only in USA.
If you ask me, I won’t rely on the searches from the Eastern Region. Why? …Because they are not the consumers, rather mainly the producers, not counting the handful businesses that starts up there. So, more the search number in the Eastern Region is, the higher the supply, which ultimately brings down prices (not feasible for quality writers!).
On the other hand, guest posting seems to be popular in USA. For every 20 searches on “article marketing”, there are 100 searches on “guest posting”. What does it mean? Well, you cannot really draw any concrete conclusion from that, but there is inclination towards guest posting in US. Why? Is it the future trend? Well, the current graphs on Google Insights and Google Trends doesn’t really help in that hypothesis, with the flat graph of “guest posting”.
Even in the Google Keyword Tool, there is a HUGE difference between the number of searches for “guest posting” and that of “article marketing”.
Exact matches:
Phrase matches:
If you ask me what is happening, I will say, article marketing, in the true sense of the term, is dead but the term “article marketing” isn’t dead yet. More word play, eh?
Okay, in a simple manner, I believe people relate article marketing to content marketing, since articles are the primary forms of content over the intent. In fact, some of the people out there regard guest posting as a form of article marketing. And true it is, in a way or so. So, what do you do?
Remember, content is KING, not that article is KING. So, keep promoting your content, whether that’s in the form of articles, pictures, audios or videos. And along with that, go for guest posting. In fact, article marketing was started as a platform to facilitate guest posting only.
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