Thanks for all your responses so far. I've felt the need to quote all of your responses and reply to each in one post rather than individually.
I have not gone that route in some time, never seemed to pay off very well for me. If I remember though, blogspot/blogger was the one I used the most. And Weebly.
Honestly Wordpress.com shouldn't even be on the list. They do NOT like marketing, promotion or backlinks. I've learned that one a few times. They are quick to delete blogs.
That is very true, they don't like affiliate links and when people create a Wordpress.com blog purely for that reason. That said, there are many many BIG Wordpress.com blogs that have been going for years and they bring the owner much traffic to their site from them. Not all Web 2.0 blogs are created purely for backlinks/SEO. If everyone of your blog posts have outgoing links in them then it will raise flags and bring your blog into question. But there are many many old Wordpress.com blogs out there that use them as a blog and they have many many followers because they don't post affiliate links / links to their site etc in all of them. They don't post stuff that is a blatant promotion of something.
Here's a good example of a Wordpress.com blog in the beauty niche that's been around a long time
https://makeupmorsels.wordpress.com/
I didn't know that people still did this. Back-in-the-day, though, I used to use Blogspot because it's owned by Google. I figured what better way to get ranked in the SERPS with the least amount of effort, right? Some of the other sites I used to use for that stuff don't exist, anymore. They got acquired. Plus, they would always be changing the rules on you and stuff. I don't think the free version of Wordpress (that creates a sub-directory) allows you to use affiliate links, either. After so many algorithm changes and stuff, I just learned that I needed to control my own stuff. Even if the site is small, you'll make back your initial investment in a year and then some -- even if you're lazy.
Joey
That is true too, it's the same with blogging on any platform that is free like Wordpress, Blogger etc, it doesn't "belong" to you and they can take it down or close for business at any time. Anyone remember Posterous.com? That said, it can still be "utilized" if you do it cleverly and only post informative articles that aren't spam to it or simply for using an extra face to your early business (brand awareness).
None of them. If you want to create your website, invest some money and create your own blog, don`t create a free blog just for the free hosting and the free domain. You will cry when one day your website will be closed down without too much explanations. Maybe I didn`t understand the question and you are talking about Web 2.0 submissions, which again is a stupid concept. These submissions didn`t work in the past, don`t work now and won`t work in the future.
I disagree, I wouldn't create a blog purely because its "free", and when I do create a blog on one of those sites, I know all along that it could get pulled down and deleted at any minute. That's the risk you take.
But these Web 2.0 sites rank highly on their own, so sometimes you can get one of them to the front page of Google search result just on their own for certain things without even having to SEO them. I don't know why you say "
these submissions didn't work in the past" because they
have worked for me in the past and still do to this day. Perhaps they didn't work for "you" though which is perhaps why you call it a "
stupid concept"?
Is article marketing a stupid concept?
Or is it that what didn't work for you is stupid?
It's not all about using them to rank with, sometimes it's just about having an extra platform to have your voice on. Even if it doesn't have any links in your posts to your site or anywhere that's still brand awareness that you're creating through having it. Plus a lot of them don't mind links and you get a dofollow contextual keyword link from it, so worth having really.
I still have some old Web 2.0 blogs up from about 5 years ago that are still there and ranking today.
I still remember when the web 2.0 site that I loved to use (Squidoo) started changing the rules and started locking peoples' "lens" (articles) because of how the algorithm was set up. Man, that stung -ha! Once they started that, my income (and a lot of other peoples') started drying up. That's really what made me "see the light."
Joey
Yeah those were the days Joey! I remember that too. More fool them if you ask me because people stopped using them then and they would have lost out on that themselves. But your point is valid.
Still, web 2.0 blogs will be with us for us long as social media sites will be probably so better to make use of them while they exist imho.
