The Rise and Rise of Article PR: What are the Implications?

The Rise and Rise of Article PR: What are the Implications?
By Glenn Murray SEO Copywriter (http://www.divinewrite.com )
& Article PR Specialist (http://www.articlepr.com ) (c) 2006

Already a very popular method of achieving a high search engine
ranking, article PR (aka article submission) has now entered the
mainstream. As such, its popularity is increasing at a dramatic
rate. While this is great for SEO copywriters like myself, there
are some side-effects that need to be addressed if article PR is
going to remain a viable search engine ranking technique. This
article discusses some of those side-effects, along with how
they might be addressed.

But First, a Little on Article PR

Article PR is the process of writing 'free reprint articles' and
submitting them to the 250+ established article submission sites
on the Internet. An article submission site is simply a
repository of free reprint articles - a place where authors can
submit their articles free of charge, and where webmasters can
find articles to use on their websites free of charge. In return
for free use of your article, the webmaster includes your author
bio and its links to your site. Every time your article is
published, you get another link to your site and a boost to your
ranking. If the quality of your article is high, it can be
published hundreds of times.

The Rise And Rise of Article PR

Because article PR is such an effective way of generating a high
search engine ranking, it has now entered the mainstream. As an
SEO copywriter, I get several requests each week for quotes to
write articles. These requests come almost exclusively from
business owners and marketing managers who know little (if
anything) about SEO. They obviously didn't go looking for
article PR; article PR found them...

As a result of its newfound mainstream popularity, the number of
articles being written and submitted has increased by between
100% - 600% in the past year! Christopher Knight, owner of the
biggest article submission site, EzineArticles, tells me that
the number of article submissions to his site increased by a
staggering 600% from 2004 to 2005. In 2004, EzineArticles was
averaging only 1416 article submissions per month. In 2005, it
was averaging 8482 article submissions per month!

Similarly, at the end of 2005, when I spoke with Mel Strocen,
owner of GoArticles, he reported a doubling of article
submissions in the second half of the year. "In the last 6
months article submissions have increased by 100%, going from
about 1,000 submissions per week to 2,000+ per week," he said.

Jason Lynch, owner of ArticleBlast, reported similar increases;
between April '05 and January '06, submissions to ArticleBlast
increased by over 300%.

The web traffic to these sites tells the same story. According
to Alexa statistics, at the end of 2004, EzineArticles had a
reach of approx 100 users per million Internet users per day.
Just over a year later, the site is reaching over ten times that
many Internet users. (If we take the total number of Internet
users worldwide to be 964 million, EzineArticles traffic has
increased from around 96,000 per day to over 1 million visitors
per day.)

Alexa stats for GoArticles report similar increases in traffic.
At the end of 2004, it had a reach of approx 50 users per
million Internet users per day. Just over a year later, it's
reaching approx 10 times that number of users. (Again assuming
964 million Internet users worldwide, GoArticles traffic has
increased from around 48,000 per day to around half a million
visitors per day.)

Figures for ArticleBlast are more difficult to ascertain as the
site is younger and has lower overall traffic.

Even if Alexa's figures are a little inflated (as I think they
tend to be), they still provide a consistent measure for the
period. As such, the percentage increases should be relatively
accurate.

The Side-Effects of the Rise of Article PR

A number of writers have voiced the fear that article PR will
die through 'over-use', just as keyword stuffing and link farms
died. But I don't agree. Why? Because article PR isn't just
useful to authors and SEO copywriters. The success of article PR
is based on the premise that our articles are also useful to
READERS. So long as the majority of articles remain useful (i.e.
helpful, informative, and easy to read), readers will still want
to read them, publishers will still want to publish them, and
article PR will remain a viable link building method.

This is true no matter how many people are writing and
publishing free reprint articles. Frequent use of a tool doesn't
make the tool ineffective. (Just look at traditional forms of
advertising - millions of businesses engage in radio, print, and
TV advertising, and those methods remain very effective. The
fierce competition simply encourages advertisers to improve the
quality of their ads in order to stand out.)

No, in my opinion, there's no such thing as too many articles.
However, there is such a thing as too many BAD articles. Readers
want helpful, credible information; they don't want badly written
articles or empty words ('article spam') which simply carry a
link.

Just as importantly, webmasters don't want to spend hours trying
to find the right article to publish. At the moment, there are
literally hundreds of article submission sites out there. Most
of them are generic, fully automated affairs that involve no
human moderation. They don't distinguish between good writing
and bad, they don't cull article spam, and they don't categorize
their articles very well. As a result, publishers have to wade
through a sea of poor quality to find a handful of useful
articles.

These issues are the real hurdles that need to be overcome if
article PR is to survive.

Overcoming the Problems

The article submission sites will overcome the problems. Here's
how...

As mentioned above, readers aren't interested in bad articles or
article spam. This means that, in the long run, there's no real
value in publishing such articles (either for webmasters or
article submission sites); readers will frequent the sites that
publish useful articles and ignore those that don't. Likewise,
publishers will frequent the article submission sites that post
useful, easy-to-find articles and ignore those that don't.

This means we'll see an increase in the number of human-moderated
article submission sites. And once this happens, the article PR
landscape will change forever:

1) Human moderated article submission sites will offer a
higher percentage of quality articles, and those articles
will be easier to find;

2) Human moderated article submission sites will attract more
publishing webmasters, and, as a result, more authors;

3) We'll see a decrease in the number of un-moderated article
submission sites because they won't generate enough traffic
to make AdSense profitable;

4) We'll see a decrease in the overall number of article
submission sites (anyone can launch an automated article
submission site, but it takes real commitment, business
sense, and a dedicated budget to run a human-moderated
article submission site);

5) The spoils will be greater for the surviving article
submission sites, so they'll go to greater lengths to
ensure the high quality of their articles; and

6) We'll witness the decline of article spam and poor quality
articles simply because they won't be accepted at the good
article submission sites.

All in all, it's a positive outlook for authors and publishers
of quality articles.

Happy writing, publishing, and posting!

===
* Glenn Murray is a website copywriter (http://www.divinewrite.com ),
SEO copywriter (http://www.divinewrite.com ), and article
submission and article PR specialist (http://www.articlepr.com ).
He owns article submission service Article PR
(http://www.articlepr.com ) and copywriting studio Divine
Write (http://www.divinewrite.com ). He can be contacted on Sydney
+612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com . Visit
http://www.DivineWrite.com or http://www.ArticlePR.com for
further details, more FREE articles, or to download his FREE SEO
e-book.
===