Ted writes:

Here…here!

Glad to see Ezines taking a hard stand. There are too many people looking for the “quick buck” that mass submisions of “vomit” seem to be going after, this in turn causing sites such as Ezines to lose all credibility and validity.
I see harder stands being taken in the future of all reputable information-submission sites.
Those who do things the way they are supposed to be done will not be affected. The wanna-be’s will be.

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Cynthia Pinsonnault writes:

I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your attitude about not promoting the SEO benefit. I work in the advertising and marketing business and as the Web has grown so has my business designing and developing Web sites.

I believe that the best sites, ones with the best information and a quality user interface, will find their way to the top of SEO ranking. What I hate is trying to convince a client, who has heard all the SEO hype, that tricks and gimmicks to raise ranking are not valid for long term, quality marketing.

It’s exactly as you say: Many people want to put some poorly written, badly developed junk out there because they are certain that all they need is high SEO ranking. When the customers and sales don’t come in, they cannot understand why.

And the good news is that search engines are getting smarter and smarter all the time. They’re beginning to differentiate between quality sites and the crap (not always, but it’s getting better).

Thanks again. I think your decision will continue to grow the great reputation of EzineArticles.

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Terri Zwierzynski writes:

Right on Chris! In the end, good content will triumph over any SEO “trick”. Too many unsuspecting solo entrepreneurs get pulled in by the hype of SEO and spend money and time that could be far better spent writing, or hiring a ghostwriter to write, excellent quality articles on their topic of expertise. I’m thrilled to see EzineArticles taking this stand!

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Marilyn Barnicke Belleghem writes:

Hurray for this stand Chris. I know that you have worked hard for a quality service and this is a very positive step!

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Phil Smith writes:

I am a novice, Chris, at article submission, but not as a writer. I’ve been working on a number of articles for submission but am wondering what you mean by saying that only 25 articles per year will be offered for syndication by others. Does that mean I only submit 25 to you or that I submit numerous articles and your team will determine which articles to make available?

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Marilyn writes:

Good for you. I noticed one individual who had posted at least 20 articles with slightly different names, but saying the same thing.

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JT writes:

I agree:

One of the reasons that I have been putting my energy into other channels is because of the spamming issues.

Many articles are simply promotional and a lot of the sites that publish articles from directories are simply scraping content wherever they can find it.

If more people accept a small amount of responsibility for quality, the spammers will move back into drugs, identity theft, or some other petty larceny.

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Bryan Knight writes:

Funny you decided to stop the SEO fake “experts” because I just received a sales pitch for software that anyone can use to create an article within minutes to submit to your site and to be declared an Expert.

The author boasted that he used his software (selling for $67) to send you articles on subjects he knew nothing about. He was proud to reproduce your thanks for his submissions and that EzineArticles declared him to be an Expert!

I guess this is some of the “vomit” you so eloquently wrote about :-)

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Richard writes:

Congratulations,
We have enough crap being created by script and software and you sure don’t need to educate newbies on how they can benefit from delivering empty content.

Strict rules will atract even more genuine writers who will do their homework anyways, because they understand the true benefits of delivering real and unique content.
Cheers!

Richard

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Edward Weiss writes:

I disagree with most of the blog comments here. Having good content is great, but it’s not enough! You do have to optimize for the search engines. Especially now when Google is dropping high ranking sites from their index (mine included) so they can advertise instead of reaping the free beneifts of organic search results. Watch out as more and more previously high ranking content sites drop off.

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Lance Winslow writes:

I completely concur.

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Phil Chandler writes:

A brave decision, but a sound one. Keep up the high standards and the site will be more widely known as a worthwhile resource. Let them drop and it will become worthless.

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Tim writes:

At this stage of the game, this move will only make search engines and readers value the authority of this article site!

Tim

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Phillip Davis writes:

Kudos all the way around. The whole idea behind article marketing is generating good karma so that readers and potential customers will get a postitive feel and want to do business. Much of the internet marketing has digressed to a “what’s in it for me” mentality that has people desparately grasping at short term tricks. “Give and it shall be given…” still seems to be what works in the long run. Thanks Chris.

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Mark Worthen writes:

Bravo! I agree wholeheartedly with your decision and reasoning. And I also liked your “call ’em like I see ’em” descriptions of the type 2 submitters.

The commenter who disagreed because he believes SEO is important is missing the point.

Of course, SEO is important to web site owners. The new benefits list doesn’t contradict that fact. The point is that SEO is not important to the majority of EzineArticles authors, particularly the ones that Chris wants to attract.

And I’ve yet to see Google downgrade web sites with lots of quality content, despite the rumors. Think about it–why would they do that? Poor search results would kill their business in a matter of months. It’s still their core business *and* the platform for the bulk of their advertising revenue.

Mark

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Kim Kia Tan writes:

While original articles contribution is part of the true nature of Internet community, I belive in give first before you receive.

I recently submitted my first article and get published by EzineArticles.com. I soon found that at least a blog had published my article with complete original resource box.

I felt encouraged to sbumit more original articles of my own experience and expertise of my field in best vitamin supplements guide and tips.

Chris, what EzineArticles.com does is definitely giving values to the publishing community.

Edward mentioned about SEO of website is important too. I mean providing original website content. This has to be done first before reaping the benefits of articles submission.

Let’s do both to boost our online credibility.

Cheers!

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Tony Masiello writes:

I am proud to belong to EzineArticles. I see a lot of cookie-cutter type article submission sites that will take anything. I just keep going. It reflects back on me where I have my articles posted and I only want to be associated with the best.

Thank you for standing up for all of us.

Tony

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Yaro writes:

Interesting stance Chris – worth blogging about!

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Scott Percival writes:

I concur as well Chris.

The web has a lot of self-generated and self-reinforcing SEO/web-promotion related fluff.

Somewhere, under all the layers of “how you can drive more traffic to your site so that you can tell people how to effectively market the best SEO systems which will generate viral buzz about the benefits of creating content about the newest marketing techniques, blah blah blah”, there has to ultimately be…

CONTENT RELATED TO THE REAL WORLD.

Marketing is fine, but when the marketing techniques become the product…what’s the point?

I’m a very new author here, and would also like to say keep up the good work!

Scott

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Phil S,

The 25 limit is our reprint rights limit for how many articles a publisher can reprint from us. It has nothing to do with how many you can submit. If you submit quality original articles that meet or exceed our posted editorial guidelines, there is a good chance we’ll accept them.

Bryan K;

As you can guess, we don’t endorse the behavior of article rewriting nor those who sell solutions to create fake-expert articles. It’s pretty sad indeed…

In addition to human article review, real-time and daily/weekly automated cleansing suspect-content identification, we receive reports daily about questionable author activities that are then investigated!

Scott,

You said, “Marketing is fine, but when the marketing techniques become the product!what’s the point?” Wow, that’s pretty profound! ;-)

One of our guiding internal mantras is to find ways to continually figure out how we can improve the user experience. If the articles are not really expert quality original articles, we’re going to lose the trust of our readership and this is a deal breaker for us. …so, an on-going challenge for us is how to determine who’s really an expert vs. who’s using one of those frankenstein article rewriters or is sending in store-bought bread instead of homemade original bread, I mean original articles. It’s not too difficult to figure out but does consume a large chunk of resources.

Yaro,

You sure are fast! I just read your entry: Article Marketing For SEO Purposes Encourages Content Spam

Thankfully the number of expert authors in the whitehat crowd who are writing quality original articles, significantly out-number those who try to abuse content.

All,

This whole discussion is all about what it takes to survive long-term…to win together over the long-haul.

I debated with myself and then our team for a bit this afternoon if I should send this blog post and email newsletter today because who the heck tells their customer what benefits they are removing from the marketing brochure? ;-)

Hopefully it opens up the discussion to help those who were on the edge to reconsider only producing original quality articles that you have an exclusive right to the content.

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Krista Goon writes:

Chris,
You are right. I think the pseudo-writers are churning out low quality articles which do not befit a site like EzineArticles. I am a big believer in quality original articles written by the real writers themselves and I have no respect whatsoever for those who use PLR articles or articles which are just fluff and no substance whatsoever!A few hundred words do not an article make if that article is pure junk. But I also realise that most readers are smart. Once they go over to the ‘author’s website’ by following the Resource Box link and finding some cheap site with no real information, they will leave and never return. This also reduces the site credibility too. Anyway, I’ve always thought EzineArticles as one of the better sites around and that’s why I am still here, two years on!

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Hugh Mooney writes:

As a recent submitter and member I aplaud you for your stance. Keeping the garbage out will do wonders for the site in the very near future. I thank you and appreciate what you are doing to make improvements.

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Soren Breiting writes:

Chris, I think this is a logical step to take from some point. On the other hand it doesn’t in itself change anything. Only your weeding out of inproper article submissions will do.
From the author’s point of view we have an even bigger problem with the socalled publishers who are just stealing our articles without any acknowledgement of the author and without keeping the proper links. I don’t know the percentage of published articles from EzineArticles but it must be quite high, like 30-40%.
– How can we handle that in the future?

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Maralene writes:

Chris, I so appreciate the “quality control” that you and your colleagues are providing. It is important to me and to others, I’m sure, that our articles are seen coming from the kind of quality site that you have developed. I’m all for it… thanks again…I’ve watched my own site benefit from posting on ezine and tracked my articles to other sites that I feel provide services that can use my content…

Maralene

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Buks Bruwer writes:

Hi Christopher,

I want to write. I have a couple of good stories the readers enjoyed and asked for more.

Is this the best place to submit them too?
Do I get paid for my stories.
Dies the reader pay me?
How much of what the reader pay do I get.?

How does my pay get calculated.
Who decide how much I must be paid.
Please tell me everything about the pay>
How often do I get paid.

Do I have to write according to a formula or do I use my own way of writing.?

I have some lovely stories that I can submit virtually immediately.

Please tell me everything about payment and perhaps my work will be acceptable, I don’t know.

Buks Bruwer
7 November 2006

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Buks,

Sorry, no, we don’t pay for articles.

No, the readers don’t pay you for them either.

If you need to get paid for your articles, you are looking for buyers of content of which we are not.

The way we pay our authors is via exposure and traffic back to your website.

Many of our authors tell us that after major search engines, we’re one of their highest traffic referral sources and that’s one of our goals.

Sorry, I think you’ve found the wrong place for your articles because of your need to be paid for them and I wish you the best.

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Lance Winslow writes:

On this page;

http://www.EzineArticles.com/benefits/

I think I, http://ezinearticles.com/?expert_bio=Lance_Winslow , can vouch for all of the benefits and the stats obviously speak for themselves.

And if removing some of the benefits which do exist, but you do not wish to promote, it should change your type of article author a bit. But the word is out that EzineArticles.com works and so, even if you ditch some of those benefits above, people still know they exist.

Still, all-in-all, I completely concur with your move to move away from those who abuse the article writing venue, which hurts the entire industry sub-sector. So, that is an additional comment.

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Hugh Mooney writes:

“Buks Bruwer” offers himself/herself as a perfect example of what Chris, and legitimate writers/members of EzineArticles.com, as I perceive them, wish to eliminate. I, for one, offer a great, “Thank You”, to Buks for pinpointing the issue so perfectly.

PS I don’t have a website I’m trying to drive traffic to. I just appreciate the opportunity to submit stories that someone might enjoy – that, to me, is my fulfillment, my pleasure and remuneration enough.

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Hugh Mooney writes:

Ok, finally, I get the point. Where I have I been? Chris is only removing the “Notice”, the “Pointing To”, of the benefits to hopefully eliminate abuse. The “real” benefits are still there for legiitmate writers. They just aren’t being “identified.” Am I on the right track?

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Lance Winslow writes:

Hugh, yes this seems to be the main point. Of course those are good benefits, but those who abuse the system, those are the benefits they would want the most. By not advertising them, perhaps they will not be attracted to post BS crap, vomit articles or junk, which would in fact dilute the credibility of the site and take away from all the GREAT writers and article authors who really are pulling thier weight and doing some spectacular things out there. I mean when reading some of these articles it is almost immediately obvious that there are some Heavy Hitters here who really are top of their fields and well, having them all in one place, well who but EzineArticles can claim 36K authors sharing their best articles? Hmmm? I cannot think of another place to go to find it all under one roof. Pretty excellent use of the Internet and the sharing of human knowledge and expertise if you ask me?

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Hugh,

I think you may have missed the point. Buks is trying to make money directly from his content as a freelance writer. He’s mis-understood the EzineArticles.com model of contribution for exposure and traffic.

I think you thought that Buks was trying to figure out how to share knowledge for sharing knowledge sake alone. This isn’t the case because he only wants to share knowledge when he can get paid for that knowledge.

People who do not have a profit motive for writing and submitting articles do make us pause and question their intentions.

There is nothing wrong with not having a profit motive, but 98-99% of our authors have a profit motive and they are easier for us to understand their intentions.

Yes, Hugh, on your 2nd comment, you have figured out better what this thread is about. :-)

I like what Yaro wrote in his blog when he said:

“Instead they are now focusing on promoting the raw traffic pulling power of EzineArticles.com itself, regardless of whether your article is syndicated to other places or not. Simply put, EzineArticles is getting a ton of traffic and having your articles at the site means you get some solid exposure.”

Yep, that sums it up.

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Dina writes:

Since the course of this conversation has turned to site metamorphosis, I will say that I’m seeing a similar shift in priorities over at Lockergnome.com. To be honest, I was comfortable with their technology niche and can’t quite focus on whatever they’re trying to achieve. I think they run the risk of losing readers this way. Don’t make the mistake of being all things to all people. Although I don’t know why I’m dishing out advice. Chris, you’re like the last person that would ever need it, you slick marketer you. It’s interesting to watch you uhh, shall we say change your clothes right out in the open.

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Phillip Davis writes:

As a branding guy, I tell clients that a company needs to exhibit certain identifiable attributes in order to stand out from the crowd. In the case of EzineArticles, I recognize one of those attributes as integrity. It can build client confidence to the point where the company serves as a gatekeeper. Since I’ve dealt with Chris and been exposed to his writings, I’ve come to trust his judgment. At a certain point, I begin to accept some actions and decisions just on merit alone, without a lot of supporting detail. And that’s a great type of energy to build in a company… a culture of trust. It’s also why I don’t use submission software to blast out articles to whoever takes them. I’ve come to selectively post on just two sites now… EzineArticles.com and IdeaMarketers.com, both of which have demonstrated a hands-on commitment to the long term interests of their client customer base.

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Dina,

It’s cold and I feel a breeze… someone throw me a towel. ;-)

Transparency is needed to keep offering our members the confidence that their voice is heard and that they can see the issues we’re dealing with to offer appropriate counsel.

Phillip,

Thanks! Yes, it is largely about trust.

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Vicki Flaugher writes:

As an SEO trained internet marketer, I couldn’t agree more with your stand on article content. Any SEO expert worth their weight will tell you that content–good, engaging, informative, and relevant—is THE most important thing.

I use my SEO skills now to promote my own woman focused website and I can assure you that these ladies do not want BS. Modern people have busy lives and if you speak to them in a voice they are drawn to, you will get traffic. Sure, keywords are important but they aren’t the product. Knowledge and enjoyment are the products. People must love you to want to do business with you and proliferating good quality content to relevant sites is key to getting known and being heard. Bravo to you for your contribution to making the Internet better!

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