Background on the problem:
Let’s first look at why I think EzineArticles.com was affected harshly from the recent Google algorithm changes that occurred in February 2011.
1) They were accepting lots of low value content
2) They were accepting content that the same authors had published elsewhere
3) Human readers complained to Google engineers that the high rankings that many articles websites like these (labelled as content farms) were not justified given the poor quality of the material as perceived by those human readers.
That third one is really the clincher. EzineArticles.com and other websites like it were on a collision course with public opinion. I guess over the long run, all that really matters is customer perception or what Google calls reputation. Google has always said that reputation is one of the most important ranking factors. They just updated their algorithm to more accurately reflect the true reputation of these websites and lots of the pages on them.
So what can be done to fix EzineArticles.com then?
I believe the vast majority of their problems can be addressed by reinventing their review process. They appear to be taking steps over the last few days to tighten their quality controls over the article approval process. Some of the methods they are implementing will definitely filter out more of the lousy articles that they have been guilty of letting through in the past. However, the one major fault with their methods is that they are going to get lots of false rejections from high quality articles written by above average writers. To me that is completely unacceptable. Why in the world would you ever enact anything to deter great writers from publishing their free content on your website?
1) The entire review process needs to be scrapped and completely rebuilt from the ground up.
2) A new review process needs to be put in place that uses competent humans to decide whether or not an article is worthy of being published on there.
- The human must be qualified to make an intelligent decision about an article
- The human must understand the subject matter to some degree
Based on these assertions I came up with some suggestions that EzineArticles.com or any other article directory for that matter could implement to substantially upgrade the quality level of their website. Here are those suggestions:
Implement a three stage review process
Stage 1 – Algorithmic review
Every article should be screened according to a basic algorithm that checks to make sure the basic guidelines have been met. Only very basic things should be checked here such as word count and inspecting for duplicate content. Once it has passed that initial screening, then it should go into a line where it awaits human review.
Stage 2 – Human Review by a qualified person – an author
During the submission process for new articles you would require that the author must perform a manual review of some other article waiting for review. The article would be pulled from the same niche the author is publishing in or from any niche that the author has previously published in. If the author is publishing in that niche, then it is likely that the author has a higher understanding of the subject matter in that niche.
There would be a series of quality measures that the author would rate on a scale of one to five.
- Grammar
- Article delivers on promise of the title
- Overall perception of the article
There would be a box asking whether or not this article should be approved.
- Yes or No
There would be a notes field where the author must explain why they did not approve the article if it was not approved.
Any article that is not approved would be sent to the EzineArticles.com paid employee review team where a paid employee can analyze the validity of the claims made against the article.
EzineArticles.com would track and monitor the voting history of the author to measure for accuracy as well as measure their article rejection rate. These statistics would help identify authors who are trying to get spam published as well as authors who are trying to prevent other authors from being published for whatever reason.
Stage 3: – More human review
There should be a rating scale shown to readers for every published article on the EzineArticles.com website that allows readers to rate the quality level of the article. It should be at both the top and bottom of the article so that it is clearly seen by readers. Any article that is flagged as poor quality by two or more readers should be subjected to yet another review process where it is scrutinized further. It would not automatically be removed from publication. It would simply be reviewed again to see if there is any validity to the negative feedback or if it is someone trying to manipulate the ranking of the article. When someone votes a zero, one or two on a scale of one to ten, a pop up would ask them if they care to leave a note about why they don’t like the article.
By judging the perception from both other authors and from the reading community, EzineArticles.com would be notified of any truly substandard content no matter the reason.
Offer Clear Guidelines On Preventing Bad Behavior Without Being Overly Strict
Authors should be given guidelines for writing a quality article. They should be given a ten commandments like set of rules that they must not break. There might be anywhere from five to ten rules set in stone such as these five:
1) No affiliate links period whether directly or through 301 redirects.
2) No links to bad neighborhoods (declare subject matter of all bad neighborhoods)
3) No irrelevant links in either body or resource box
4) All content must be 100% original and cannot have been published elsewhere.
5) Whatever other factors EzineArticles.com management insists upon.
Authors should be told to adhere to high quality standards according to good common sense judgment by making sure that the articles actually deliver on the promise of the article based on its title. These are some of the same basic intelligent rules that are already in place. Keep the intelligent ones and get rid of the ridiculous ones that are not true measures of quality.
Why this method makes sense
- EzineArticles.com does not need to pay authors for doing the reviews. It would be mandatory for all authors to perform reviews if they want to publish there. This would not deter the vast majority or writers so long as they are only asked to review one other article for every article they submit. Good writers are already investing a significant amount of time into producing their articles. Another five minutes spent reviewing other articles will not deter them from publishing there.
- This would virtually eliminate the lowest quality articles from slipping through the cracks regardless of which niche they were in.
- Higher quality articles means higher long term value for the website and brand.
- Higher quality means more natural link acquisition.
- 100% Unique articles means no duplicate content penalty from Google.
- Getting honest feedback from the authors and from the readers is the most effective way to judge quality.
Any mechanical system that does not extract truth as perceived by the readers is a system that is less than optimal. Why would you settle for anything less than that?
Your thoughts?
