Forum Moderators: not2easy
Here are my conclusions for the articles I have submitted:
1. My articles are picked up quickly by scrapper/RSS feed sites. The links back to the source and to my site is almost always deleted.
2. I rarely see one of my articles show up on a “quality” site. When it does appear the link is not attached.
3. In the end, all I expect is a link from the article directory itself.
On the other hand, as a webmaster I am always looking for content and here are my conclusions:
1. Most of the articles on these type sites are of questionable quality and often lead to low quality sites.
2. When I do find an article that I like, I am somewhat hesitant about putting it on my website. Even without considering the duplicate content problems these articles create, I just feel like these type articles cheapen my site.
My two question to my fellow webmasters:
1. Do you still submit to the popular article directories?
2. Do you use any of the articles on those sites for your own websites?
Thanks,
Bilal Qayyum
[edited by: tedster at 1:42 am (utc) on Feb. 11, 2008]
I'm hosting an article publishing feature on my website, and these things are good to know. Thank you for your insight.
Sincerely,
Devin T.
[edited by: digitalghost at 1:22 am (utc) on Feb. 11, 2008]
The only advantage I can think of for submitting articles to such sites is name recognition and branding. If some of the spam blogs and crummy sites that pick up the content get some pageviews, your name or brand will get some exposure (even without links). The value of this is questionable, though, both from a traffic volume and quality association standpoint. I wouldn't recommend it.
The lack of responses led me to think that article marketing is dead.
No one responded that article marketing is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Neither did anyone respond that it is a scam.
After I posted the above, I did an extensive review of one of the most popular sites looking for content. The stuff I found was either short promotional articles of little use or longer articles full of errors. I decided to move on. Since I didn’t feel comfortable using any of their content, I assumed other quality sites feel the same way.
Therefore, I think I will look to other methods of obtaining links and other ways of getting quality content.
Thanks again,
bbd2000
My question is if I now want to use them on my site since they seem to be doing so little good where they are at how do I do that without being penalized by the Google or Yahoo for having duplicate content?
Is there a procedure for removing them from the article site? Though even if there is, they could be somewhere else too.
Possibly you'll have to rewrite them enough that they wouldn't be seen as duplicate content. But how much that is, I don't know.
There's nothing wrong with, say, contacting quality sites related to your topic and offering to provide an article or two as long as you get a brief bio and link. It's a win-win, and you can customize the content to avoide dupe content issues for both sites.
1. Do you still submit to the popular article directories?
Not once since 1995 have I ever submitted an article to another site. And yes, I do have a site where our members do submit articles but they are few and far between.
Here's what happens. You write this killer article. You submit it to these resources. The first one to get indexed is usually the leader at that point. If the original article hasn't already been indexed under the author's website, here comes one challenge. There is no need to submit to these resources since many are going to scrape your site anyway so it is a natural process and doesn't need manual intervention. ;)
2. Do you use any of the articles on those sites for your own websites?
Absolutely not. I may extract a snippet from the article and link to it with the snippet surrounding that link but I'm not going to republish the entire article, that doesn't do me much good and it adds to the duplication factor.
Articles have become a commodity just like links, search engine submissions, directory submissions, etc. Really good articles are hard to find. And, when you find them, you want to link to them, don't you? ;)
Yes, I know, how do you get them noticed? Ah, that's the million dollar question and the reason why we are all here. There is a very long list of todos when working with articles. Multi page articles are killer performers if done properly.
I'd say keep your articles to yourself. Set up an RSS feed. Let them come to you which they will do eventually. Its a matter of time, patience, and planting seeds in just the right places. ;)
Thank you for a great reply. I’ll print your post out and put in my lessons learned file.
Rogerd,
I have been on the receiving end of this. Several people have contacted me and offered unique articles for a link back to their sites. So far they have all been high quality and I happily published them.
Firstly submitting to engines that will then scatter your work anywhere won't help you much; you are much better to have you own site and RSS - and then use the syndicators who provide a link to your article on your site without repeating the whole content. If people like the taster they'll go to your site; if they like the site they'll come back.
Secondly if you want exposure then approach biggish similar sites write a couple of articles and have your biog with links sat next to your article (as mentioned above); you may prefer to make a name that way in any event.
Finally there is so much content now that duplicate articles (like duplicate CVs) just smack of desperation. Don't re-use.
I also don't use content from article directories. The amount of duplicate content out there is amazing. When I do a search on Google I find myself looking at tons and tons of duplicate content with different urls, so I tend to scroll down until I find something that looks different.
On my major websites I create all the content myself, because they tend to be sites that cover subjects I am interested in and know something about. I do occasionally buy filler content for some of my sites but it's from writers that I have been working with and know, and I know the content will be unique and good quality, plus I edit it myself.
Of course this approach means that it takes me longer to build and populate my websites, but at the end I like the result and I'm proud to be associated with it. And i have found that indexing seems to work really fast sometimes. For example, I built a website using Drupal two days ago and added some articles I had written. When I went to look at my logs yesterday, there were already hits from search engines!
Once you see how they actually set it up you’ll realize at best you’ll end up with is a few links to your site. Oh, they’ll provide you with a mass article submitter for sure. No matter what you believe the bottom line is you can you can get as many links in a day from a few legitimate FFA sites than you’ll ever get from any article site in a year. Plus it’s a lot less work.
I do sometimes use article directory articles on my site, but I am very, very selective about what I post. I make sure the content is good enough for my site. I have also found some directories to be a great place to find new writers to develop a working relationship with. Then you can by-pass the directory! You just have to learn to use the directories to your benefit.
Multi page articles are killer performers if done properly.
Can you elaborate on this? I have several multi-page articles, but I am not sure "if they are done properly" so to speak to be a killer performer for me. I would love to hear a little more of how you do this right.
As far as I'm aware and concerned, unique content will always win over submission sites anytime.
Jacs.
[edited by: engine at 4:14 pm (utc) on Mar. 26, 2008]
[edit reason] see TOS [/edit]
mktgpro
What's more, my article comes up first for a good search term, albeit not on my site. It does teach me a lesson, but not that duplicate content penalties are in the way (an article with several hundreds of copies is at #1), but that I'm going to try this next -
Write a quality article (the one I am referring to was good quality) about a topic. Link from the article, in the resource box or within the article or both, to a page on my site on the same topic with even better, more detailed content and this time, using deep-linking with the right anchor text.
Time will tell if this works or not. Just wanted to share my experience with my article published 3 years ago. It does drive traffic to my site. It did generate backlinks, but not on any good search term. The duplicate content did not incur any penalty. It was good enough to get picked up on a few good sites and as far as I can see, at least quite a few sites kept the active link intact.
