Where Did It All Go Wrong? (Article Marketing)

Like many SEO dependent internet marketers I’m having a rough time right now (thanks Panda & Penguin.) I’ve been in the internet marketing world for seven years now and for the first time since 2005 I’m in danger of being forced into the “real world” of real jobs and real bosses.  I certainly won’t go without a fight, but that’s exactly what it’s become. A fight.

Last summer things were doing just fine (example) but then some of my biggest money making sites lost their rankings and it seems like I’ve been in a decline ever since.

Some of the reasons for my current struggles are obvious (BuildMyRank.) But … it’s a bit complicated. Last year I actually stopped doing article marketing and started relying more and more on outsourcing (to a whole variety of different set it and forget it type SEO things – example here… but there are many others.)

I hired an SEO VA who could barely speak English. I hired quite a few different Warrior Forum related SEO experts (all of whom had glowing reviews on the WF… I’m now very suspicious of such reviews.)

Looking back; I see some obvious problems with everything I’ve been doing since I stopped doing my own link building (through article marketing primarily.) I’ve been getting a lot of really terrible content put out there with links back to me. Yeah.. it’s all easy and “push button” … but that’s the thing, eventually Google catches up to this kind of crap content, don’t they? They seem to be… The articles I put out there for myself were always 100% on topic and they were reasonably well written (and yes, I did spinning – but I did the type of spinning where nobody can tell that it’s been spun… not automated garbage.)

One idea I have is to cut out all of the automated stuff I have going on and go back to good old fashioned article marketing. I’m not convinced that it doesn’t still work (yes Build My Rank and some other networks got hit… but does that mean article marketing as a whole doesn’t work? I’m not so sure.)

I realize this is very rambling. I am not really even putting this out there for anyone but myself to read. I need to find a direction forward… fast!