Ezinearticles just published information at their blog in an apparently knee-jerk reaction to Google’s recent algorithm change… they’re going to add nofollow to all article links, even the bio-box!

Let’s back up a little. EzineArticles (EZA) are one of the oldest article directories. Authors favour EZA submissions as they are quickly spidered, indexed and a good source of traffic and backlinks.

Recently Google announced a slap for “content farms” which they say only “noticably” impacts 11.8% of their USA search results, yet traffic to EZA dropped like a rock (“Last month, we served 57 million unique visitors. Next month, that number may be in half.”). OUCH

Within TWO DAYS of the google announcement, Chris Knight, CEO of EZA announced a plan of action which, unsurprisingly, includes rejecting a higher percentage of articles, considering raising the minimum word count of articles, targetting “advertorials” etc. But the two interesting changes, to my mind, are…

“…evaluating ways to reduce the number of ads per page to improve the perceived user experience“.

Yes, that’d made sense because there’s nothing like five different Adsense blocks and extra, unidentified, “sponsored results” blocks to make a page look spammy!

“The rel=”NOFOLLOW” attribute will be added to all links on all articles very soon.”

What a peach! Did someone at Google lean heavily on EZA? Surely two days isn’t enough time to evaluate potential changes to your system unless you already know the change that need to be made.

In reply to people querying the reason for adding “nofollow”, Chris said…

“My gut feeling is that those links have carried no real value in at least 2-3 years now. I have no data to back it up. I do however know of plenty of competitor websites that have implemented nofollow already.”

Hmm. No data to back it up, yet his “gut feeling” is that the links have been worthless for years? OK. That wouldn’t be a cover for being leaned on to implement “nofollow”, would it, Chris? The fact that other directories have implemented “nofollow” does NOT mean that webmasters don’t like dofollow links, it means that either they were also leaned on, or they saw the writing on the wall and used nofollow to avoid getting Google slapped!

I would hazard a guess that Google probably suggested using “nofollow” way back in time, only for EZA to say that editorial checking of articles would be enough to keep out low quality content. But now Google have laid down the law, and EZA is going to comply. Sorry, chaps, no linkjuice here anymore.

As the linkjuice from EZA dies, the <strike>article marketers</strike> “content farms” lose juice and their Google rankings tumble, which was always the name of the game for Google.

Here’s what EZA said about nofollow when it was rolled out in 2005…

“We’re strongly considering using this new attribute…not only for the EzineArticles BLOG, but for the BODY of the articles within our site.

We will not use this technology for the RESOURCE BOX (as that is considered payment to the author for sending us their content), but we are strongly considering adding the rel=”nofollow” tag to ALL URLs within the BODY of any article.”

Times change, eh? So much for “payment” for the authors.

(note: links to EZA have been nofollowed on principle)

Eric Holmlund has posted a good video blog post on article marketing along with a great list of resources. Check it out.

Steve Shaw has answered the article marketing question… “Are There Only 3 Article Submission Sites Worth Submitting To?”

Support the good guys! Eric has a sale going on and Steve runs the excellent Submit Your Article service.

If you can find quality “Private Label Rights” articles, or, better still, a service that provides on-going PLR articles monthly, then it’s like having your own little goldmine.

Up until now, there have been very few quality PLR services. Fortunately, my friend Martin Avis has thrown his hat in the ring with a brand new top-quality PLR service called Kickstart PLR.

If you’re wondering what PLR articles are, let me explain… when you need content for your websites you have a few options…

1: write it yourself which takes a long time for most of us.
2: pay someone to write it for you which can cost a lot of money
3: use content anyone has the right to use such as from article directories, which “costs” you a link to the author’s website
4: use PLR articles from services such as Kickstart PLR.

With the PLR services you don’t have to link back to an author. In fact, you can put your own name (or a pen name) to the article and say you wrote it. You don’t get exclusive rights to the articles, but usually the distribution is limited to a specific number of members.

So, if you’re on a budget and can’t afford to pay someone to write exclusively for you, but you don’t want to use free articles from article directories and link out from your site, PLR is the perfect choice. Learn more at our Kickstart PLR review site.

One of the best SEO tactics of all time is article marketing. Distributing articles for links “the old way” was a 100% winner… until now.

My friends, Marc and Daniel at PLRpro are releasing a new system called “Article Marketing Automation” and, I can tell you from my tests… it rocks!

Their system lets you build…

On-topic backlinks within your articles using anchor text you choose drip-fed to your site over time… from a massive blog network.

This is the next step in article marketing. It’s huge.

Anyone who continues to do “old style” article marketing will get left behind.

If you can already see the power of this system, head over to the AMA site and sign up…

Here’s more detail for you…

1: Google knows the Article Directory sites. In November last year, their PageRank got slapped and so did all the sites who got links mainly from Article Directories… OUCH!

Solution: Use a big, distributed network of blogs for your articles. Marc and Daniel’s system has 2,000 blogs signed up, and it’s just emerging from beta. Daniel told me they’ll have 60,000 by the end of 2008.

2: Article directories don’t usually let you put links to your sites in the body of the articles, but only in the “author box”, which doesn’t look like a natural link.

Solution: Distribute your articles using a system that allows you to put links within the articles. The links look like “natural links of love” and there’s no “author box” at the bottom to let Google know these are distributed articles. This is what Marc and Daniel’s system does… the articles don’t look like “articles”, they look like natural blog posts.

3: Article directories send your articles out in one “blast”, which isn’t a natural way to get links.

Solution: Drip-feed your articles over time. Some article directories are moving to this system, but with Marc and Daniel’s system, it’s built-in.

4: If your article is distributed to many sites, Google will most likely not bother counting most of the backlinks. When you search Google for a phrase from your article and it shows 3 results and “click here to see more very similar results”, my guess is that Google doesn’t count links from those “very similar” pages, or rates them poorly.

Solution: Carefully craft your article with sentence replacement so that each version distributed is different, but still readable and of high quality. Again, some article directories are starting to do this, but Marc and Daniel’s system has this feature built-in… if you want to use it.

Article marketing has changed, forever. It’s no longer good enough to write an article, slap an “author box” at the bottom, blast it out and get backlinks.

Just as visiting each article directory was replaced by desktop software that allowed you to visit each directory and submit your article, and that was replaced by article distribution services, this is the future.

Now you can include your backlinks within your articles, lose the “author box” and distribute slowly, over-time to multiple on-topic blogs. If you like, you can even use the sentence-replacement feature to make the articles different from each other.

Just ask yourself… whose sites will get the traffic?

Will it be the people using the old system, or the new?

If you agree with me, Marc and Daniel, you need to start using the power of Article Marketing Automation.

Click here to get access now…

PS, when Allan Gardyne says, “This is awesome!” and, “Daniel calls this a “ranking machine, I call it brilliant“, you know the Earth has just moved. I’ve never seen Allan so impressed by a new system, but I do know why.

BTW, I’ve spent many hours chatting with Marc and Daniel about this system via instant messenger and Skype. These guys are smart. I suggest you sign up for this new system right now, and start building genuine, quality links into your websites.