A couple things today before I get to the meat of the content delivery 🙂
I just watched a funny video. It's good because it covers something that we're all apprehensive about but it also highlights some neat technology and covers some solid ground.
Watch it–you'll enjoy it. Love the uncanny resemblance of the nemesis to Steve Jobs. I wonder if that was intentional…?
On to the subject of the Title! Is Article Marketing Dead?
I'd say no, but it's clearly lost its favor among the many ways to drive traffic to your site and get valuable backlinks. Whereas a few months ago, if you were to publish a series of articles on Ezinearticles.com, your site would have gotten fair traffic and quality backlinks for doing so, now you're left with a much devalued backlink portfolio.
This is what happens when you don't OWN your own content.
You place your fate in the hands of an article directory that stands in good stead with the search engines and then–BAM!–the search engine or engines take a disliking to your article directory and all of a sudden, your backlinks suck.
Ezinearticles.com used to be an authority–get a few backlinks from it and you were sitting pretty. Now, those backlinks, while they still count–don't count for nearly as much.
It's as if your "referral quotient" went from Dr Drew to Dr Kevorkian.
So, is there a reason to even do article marketing any more? Sure. But your strategy and tactics must change. More in a later post.
Here's another–more informative and less entertaining–video from none other than Google God, Matt Cutts: