ezine articles google panda new policiesEzine articles has been my favorite article directory on the web. Of course many have read about Google’s panda update and how that has affected rankings for sites such as Ezine. Ezine however is striking back in an effort to increase the quality of the content on their site. Ezine’s popularity as an article directory has over the years steadily increased, attached to that popularity is the negative fact that people (or should I say spammers) exploit that popularity for the purpose of gaining valuable backlinks. To this end Ezine became the hot spot article directory for spun content and authors who really don’t care about anything more than a backlink. As the duplicate, spun and shoddy content increased the eventual devaluation of a site such Ezine became inevitable.

Ezine Makes Changes Responding to Google’s Panda Update

Now Ezine is responding to insure that the quality of content they publish is top notch and offers value to people who are searching for it on the web. I have used Ezine articles successfully both prior to and after the Google Panda update. I will continue to use it as well, since writing comes naturally to me, I have found that Ezine has been (and will continue to be) a valuable directory for article marketing.

The lesson Ezine has learned is perhaps one many bloggers and website owners must learn. The pursuit of traffic to your site is a top priority, after all what is the point of publishing anything to the internet if no one is reading it? But at what expense do we pursue that traffic? Poorly written content gives readers the quick impression that you are either not in it to help them, or can’t help them, and they’re gone from your site, likely never to return. If the first five times you visited Ezine articles looking for some information and discovered articles that left you wanting, gave you nothing new, and were very poorly written, would you trust Ezine for information in the future? It’s doubtful. Google knows what has been happening with Ezine and their recent Panda update was designed in such a way that irrelevant, duplicate, and poor quality content would not rank high in the SERPs. It affected Ezine. Now Ezine is responding.

Quality Matters

Ezine first response has been to proudly declare that quality matters, to respond they’ve put five new protocols into action effective immediately.

  • Doubling the editorial review time. Editors are focusing on format, grammar, spelling and consistency.
  • Disabled the WordPress plugin and API
  • Deadlinks are unlinked much quicker than before.
  • Requiring harder work in a shorter time to achieve Platinum membership level.
  • A new minimum 400 word count on articles.

There are additional details that go along with the above changes and you can read those over at Ezine’s blog here: quality matters.

Will Policy Changes help Ezine?

The ultimate question for Ezine is will these policy changes help them in the eyes of google? Will Ezine be able to recover from their loss of readership and the general perception that the quality of content on their site is lacking? Do you think these policy changes will help Ezine? Are they a good move in general? Your feedback sparks discussion and I always reply to comments here at info carnivore!