This article was published on Mar 21st, 2012

If you have been involved in internet marketing and have had to do it on a shoestring, at least in the beginning, then you will probably have heard of the popular blog network Build My Rank.  If you have, and as I assume you probably have and even used it, then you will know that Blog networks such as BMR were the best way for anyone without deep pockets to tackle the big guys, “mano al mano” so to speak and even beat them in organic searches.

That was then…  Over the past few months, ever since the advent of the Google Panda Dance, Google has been steadily moving towards a position where the importance of these types of network have been steadily put to test, so much so that it has become more and more difficult for the typical “Mom and Pop” to get any real bite into the profitable marketing market that organic search can represent for anyone with limited monetary resources.

Indeed, all it took, other than a lot of hard work was to distribute a well thought of article marketing campaign through blog networks such as Build My Rank (BMR cost $59 per month) and see your targeted keywords search through the various search engines, including Google.

But no more.

Google has seen to it that this type of “manipulation” can no longer be permitted to take place and as a result has de-indexed an increasing number of blog networks and you know what happens when Google de-indexes a site… A quick death, particularly if that site relied on Google for its traffic.  This is exactly what has happened to BMR and other blog networks such as Elite Link Network.

The perception in many circles is that Google targeted the Mom and Pops websites in an effort to “crush their dreams“!

Browse through the internet for the Build My Rank Deindexed keywords and you will get reactions such as:

Google is now crushing the income of millions of people.
Google will now be able to force businesses to spend more money on Google advertising services such as Adwords.
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

etc…

So is Google really the heartless monster that many a disgruntled article marketer would have you believe of is there something else at play here that has forced this Giant into taking actions that it knew would inflict hardship on some?

As someone who has used article marketing before, I can tell you that the way some people used the system put in place by these blog articles and hitherto tolerated by Google was becoming increasingly…  “aggravating”! (I am trying to stay polite.

Here are some examples of what caused Google to take such drastic actions.  (My opinion!)

  • Some marketers were posting hundreds of poorly spun copies of articles to these blogs a day.
  • Then they submitted the same articles over a period of several days to the same blogs.
  • Hundreds, if not thousands of newly posted articles leading to the same domain, with no keywords (anchor) variation.
  • A multitude of articles poorly written and riddled with grammatical errors.

And this just scratching the surface.

The important question that most of us is now asking is what is it that we should do?

Should we abandon Article Marketing?  My answer to that is of course not.  A good article with good content is still what Google wants to see in its efforts to serve a quality product to its customers!