SEMMY Awards: Why No Article Marketing Category?
I’ve been following Matt McGee’s SEMMY Awards competition with one eye since I first heard about it. I know I’m not in the running for an award and have no real reason to expect that I would be. But I do like to keep up with what is going on in the SEM arena since that is what I do. Many of the articles in all of the categories are great articles. In fact, I’ve noticed that the finalists in all the categories have one thing in common (they may have more than that, but I haven’t read every article) - they have titles that grab your attention.
Without fail, the article titles of the finalists are excellent, attention-grabbing titles that, even if they weren’t finalists in a contest, would make me want to read them. Obviously, that’s one of the criteria for judging (and it should be). Here is a sampling of those article titles, just to show you what I mean:
- Five Reasons To Aim Low When You’re Just Learning SEO - SEO Category
- SEO Linking Gotchas Even The Pros Make - SEO Category
- How To Lower Your AdWords Minimum Bid - PPC Category
- NUDE: AdWords Keyword Data Exposed With Google Analytics! - PPC Category
- The 10 Second Rule: How To Write For Diagonal Readers - Blog and Blogging Category
- 10 Ways To Hurt Your Blog’s Brand By Commenting On Other Blogs - Blog and Blogging Category
- Help! I’m New, I Need Links, What Can I Do? - Link Building Category
- Social Media’s Direct Influence On Search Engine Ranking - Social Media Category
- How A Pretty Face Can Push Visitors Away - Online Marketing/General Category
- Google Punished My Site For Selling Links - NOT! - Google Category
Honestly, if you weren’t asked to vote on these articles and pick a winner, would you click and read them based on these titles? I would. Without exception, they are attention-grabbing titles, which passes the first rule of good writing. Of course, that says nothing about whether the articles themselves are worth reading or as high a quality as the titles that got me to read them.
My Beef With The SEMMYs
My beef regarding the SEMMYs, of course, is not with the articles, the authors, or even the categories, although I do wonder why Google needs it’s own category. Why doesn’t Yahoo! have it’s own category?
I understand the idea behind the SEMMY Awards is to recognize authors who have contributed to writing articles on SEM. I also understand that SEM has different definitions depending on who you talk to. Many people narrow the field simply to paid search methods, which would eliminate SEO. Obviously, that’s not Matt McGee’s position. Others have a broader view of SEM and include SEO. But I would think that the broad view definition would include article marketing, which gets to the heart of my beef.
Why isn’t there a category for article marketing? There’s a category for SEO, a category for social media, a category for small businesses, a category just for Google, a category for reputation management, a category for link building, a category for viral marketing, and even categories for local search, rants, and funny stuff. Why not article marketing?
Article marketing is one of the earliest search engine marketing strategies there is. It’s been around longer than blogging and even longer than Google. It was here before PPC and will likely still around long after PPC has run its course. It’s older than social media marketing and even was used by Internet marketers before anyone ever used the term SEO. Article marketing is useful for all sorts of purposes related to every one of the categories listed in the SEMMYs, but it doesn’t have a category of it’s own. People have used, and still do, article marketing for:
- SEO
- Link building
- Viral marketing
- Reputation management
- Local search positioning
- Social media marketing
- Small business branding
- General online marketing
- And blog promotion
Heck, I’ve also seen articles used to exploit powerful rants and to make people laugh. And I’ve even seen PPC links right smack dab in the middle of articles used for marketing purposes. Yet, there is no article marketing category in the SEMMYs. I’m sure it’s just an oversight, but I urge Matt to include an article marketing category in next year’s SEMMYs. Even if I’m not one of the nominees.
