My mother used to tell me that I lived in a cave. I had no idea what was going on around me. Well, today that’s a whole different ball of wax. As an Internet marketer, I better know what’s going on around me because the news has a direct impact on my business. If you’re not keeping up with what’s going on, you are doing yourself a big disservice. And trust me, I’m not talking about just the obvious stuff either. This article is going to give some examples.

Everybody knows that Google rules the Internet. Deal with it…it’s not going to change any time soon. Well, did you know that just recently (after January 1, 2009) Google made some changes that directly affect how you do your article marketing. It seems that their process for deciding what article is going to get listed has changed drastically. For those of you who do mass submissions (submitting articles to hundreds of directories) once upon a time, there was a good chance that all these articles would be listed in the search engines. Well, you can kiss those days goodbye. Thank you to my friend Allen Graves for filling me in on the latest developments.

Essentially, what happens now is that Google looks at all the directories where these articles go, puts them all into a bucket, and then decides which ONE is going to be listed. So in a sense, mass submission to directories, for the purpose of getting your article listed, is a total waste of time. Sure, there may be some people who will see your articles at these directories, but for the most part, and now I am speaking from experience, the traffic you will get will be negligible. Point is, if you didn’t know about this news, you’d still be wasting your time on this activity.

What about pay per click? Did you hear the latest on that? Well, if you’re promoting affiliate products I sure hope so. Seems Google has made some big changes there as well. To make a long story short, if you’re sending your prospects to a sales page or cheesy landing page, you’re going to end up paying something like $10 a click or more. Google no longer recognizes affiliate marketing, at least the way we normally do it, as a viable and legit business model. So now, you need to send people to a full blown web site in order to receive a good quality score. If you haven’t been slapped yet, don’t worry…it’s coming.

And the list of examples goes on into eternity. Every single day, something is happening that directly affects YOUR business. And if you don’t keep up with what’s going on, you can find yourself in a serious hole by the time the day is done.

So don’t live in a cave like I used to do. Get out there and make sure you know what’s flying.

If you’re lucky…it won’t smack you in the forehead.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to discover the secrets of article marketing, pay per click, forum participation and a lot more? Check out My Secret Articles at http://www.mysecretarticles.com/ and turn yourself into a marketing expert.