There has been a lot of talk about this latest Google update, dubbed "Penguin". Much of it had to do with over-optimization. Countless websites suffered a massive and swift drop in search engine traffic.

Clearly, many webmasters feel that they were unfairly punished. I can certainly sympathize with them, but I do see what Google was trying to achieve with this.

One of my niche websites was hit (or at least I think it was -- you never can be entirely sure with search engines!). I was angry and disappointed at first but on second thoughts I realized that I was definitely over-optimizing it.

Firstly, I had several pages that had a common two word keyword phrase in the titles. Even though the content on each page was unique and different, this was a big no-no! That was pretty dumb in retrospect but I chose to include those words because they did reflect the purpose of the pages, and I was in a bit of a rush to build the site.

Secondly, I'd done a lot of article marketing for that website. I must have submitted about 25-30 articles in the last several months. These were all unique, and not "spun". I did vary the anchor text, but in retrospect I didn't do this nearly enough. I didn't endlessly repeat exact keyword phrases but I did use some words over and over again, even if they were in different combinations.

Thirdly, I didn't pay enough attention to the pages themselves. While they certainly had some useful and relevant information on them they were pretty general in nature. I should have spruced them up more and made them punchier, more specific and informative. I was always intending to do this eventually, but basically became fixated on getting lots of article backlinks because they really did seem to work well and my traffic was rising steadily.

I wasn't trying to trick Google, but I was certainly being way too overzealous with certain techniques. Clearly, there was an imbalance between the amount of work I'd put into the on-site content, and my backlink building. Google picked this up and slapped me for it.

It's been a good lesson. Basically, the main thing to remember is to keep focusing on the content of your site. As the search giant keeps saying, build sites for people, not search engines.

So now I'm going to pretty much forget link-building -- particularly via article marketing -- for a long while. Instead I'll be putting almost all my effort into writing lots of quality content for my websites and blogs.
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One place you can get a powerful backlink to your own website is the revenue sharing site Triond. It's like an article directory, but you don't put the links in an author bio-box. You can put them in the body of the article, and they are "dofollow" so they do pass on search engine juice.

Triond has various sub-sites that all have their own unique domains. One of these, Trifter, looks like a good place to submit something if you are seeking geo-specific traffic. It's the place for travel related articles, and there's a section for Australia.

Obviously, submitting something there would be most appropriate if you have a specifically location-oriented website such as an entertainment guide for a city or town. But other kinds of websites would still benefit.

You've just got to find a local angle. So, say you have a website for a surf shop. You could write an article about all the best surf beaches in that city.

The trick is to include information that is good, unique and relevant, and not just make your article a shameless puff piece. That way you're offering the reader something worthwhile, and the backlink you include is appropriate even if it isn't demonstrably useful.
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I've just done another search for Aussie article directories and found some more. One of them was intriguing in that it had categories for each Australian state. This is unusual. I certainly haven't seen any local (or international) article directories categorized in this way.

This particular directory is very new, with hardly any content. However it is hosted within Australia and is already ranking pretty well. So I suspect it will grow into a good local directory. And I think that it might particularly good for webmasters and business owners who are keen to get traffic in a particular state or city, rather than the whole country. The reason, of course, is that state by state categorization.
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One thing I have discovered from my experience with article marketing is that it's easier to compete if you are writing about a niche that's not already saturated. Of course it's common sense that this would be the case. But it's easy to forget.

The problem is to find out just what proportion of articles are in the niche you want to write about. It's just not something that is immediately obvious. You can look through the numbers of articles submitted to each category on the main pages of many directories, if they include that information.

This is useful, but a graph is better. That's why this article directory is worth looking at. In the bottom right hand corner of the main page it actually has a graph that breaks down the numbers of articles in each category. Of course these proportions would vary between directories. Still, it gives a pretty good rough guide that I think would hold true for a lot of them.
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I have often used article writing to promote my various sites and blogs. It definitely works well - and will continue to do so.

Howver, it does take time. So, for people who want to outsource this task, here's an Australian site to check out.
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