Matt Cutts is on YouTube again. This time to answer the question, “What is Google’s current thinking about getting links from article marketing, widgets, footers, themes, etc.?”
Well, before we talk about this, let’s talk about the importance of articles and other forms of writings. Content, of which article is a major component, has gained tremendous importance since the Google Zoo updates (Panda, Penguin etc). Google has very strictly removed low quality content providing sites from SERP and frankly I support this update. When someone is searching, he sincerely wants to know something. What is the gain of telling him two lines of it and telling him why should he purchase bla bla things from the site? Let him know first, realise, judge and if impressed he will come back to the most authoritative site he found on the net. From the user’s perspective, nobody wants to open, skim through and close 5 pages before finding a really good and informative site.
Are You Getting Your Strategy Correct? Image courtesy : workwithdavidwood.com
Anyway, that being said, the SEO practitioners have responded to this change by adopting writings, more specifically articles in general, as a weapon. More and more articles are being written and submitted to different article directories and blogs. In return they expect when the reader is satisfied they will click on the link below the article and visit the site. But, in many cases, the searcher is only looking for info and not products to buy.
Cutts said, in a video released few days ago, how Google hates and doesn’t want low quality links. If you write a relatively low quality article, .. then at the bottom is two or three links of specifically high keyword density anchor text…then the sort of guy who just wants some content.. is not really editorially choosing to give that anchor text, is what he said.
Cutts says. “Those are links that typically we would not want to count as much, so either our algorithms or we do have manual ways.”
The signal is clear. Once more, Google, via Matt Cutts, is saying we care for and count only good quality articles. No matter how cleverly you are doing your SEO, please make sure you are providing good quality content. It doesn’t matter what tool you are using or where you are posting your articles or other writings, it must be of great quality, unique, useful and relevant.
The message is not new but this really serves as a reminder for us, especially those who keeps on forgetting the recent changes and often moves back to the old way which they practiced for long.
