Question for SEO experts. I have written a few decent articles that are relevant to my site, and I plan to submit them to some of the better known article distribution sites. Should I also put them on my own site? I spoke with an SEO guru once that said not to publish any content on my own site, if I was also distributing it. I am just curious what the penalties would be to my site by doing this. I assume that the article on my site would be deemed dup. content, but would the rest of the site suffer as well?
Yes it may. Well google is becoming quite smart these days! Well if you try to modify the article by swaping some paras that many do will still be considered duplicate content! The sites that use an article will still suffer the duplicate content issue.
What I do is create one article for submitting, and then rewrite it for my own sites, but I do more than just swap paragraphs around. I reword the entire thing. Or I add more points to a list, for example: an article I submit might be 5 tips to lose weight, then I post one on my site called 10 tips to lose weight. And I'll be more detailed with each point on my own site. It takes time, but I think it's worth it. And I've never been penalized.
While I am certainly not a SEO expert, I can share my experience. I have articles posted on my website that I have distributed to a number of article directories. My website is the one that currently ranks for all the article titles, even articles that were first posted on the article directories. I also receive search engine traffic for these articles. I assume my ranking is due to my website internal pages are generally PR3. That is much higher than the internal pages of an article directory. The only possible issue that I can see is that it reduces the overall uniqueness of your website content. I have read suggestions to limit the duplicate content to around 15%. I am currently around 12%.
I too write articles and post them to my own site, I tend to write two versions though - one for my site and one for distribution. I don't just switch paragraphs around, but write 2 versions of the majority of the content (although the basis is naturally the same). I have posted articles on my own sites without altering them in the past, but as Google gets smarter all the time I'd rather not risk it anymore. Bill
Don't do it, article submission is a waste if you're submitting to these large article directories. If you're going to submit the article to a site, submit it to a related site that is NOT an article directory that will take your article. If your site is a car related site find a decent car site that will accept and post your article, this is 100 times better then submitting the same article to a thousands directory sites.
It’s not a penalty you have to worry about its Google ignoring the article. You don't get punished Google, they just list it very low if they even list it at all. As long as its rewritten well, original content, and YOUR content you should be good. But if parts are taken from other sites or other articles on your site Google knows better. For some reason people think the can rewrite other sites content and they are safe, this actually is a really bad idea. All it takes is the original owner to find out and submit some paper work to Goolge, next thing you know, your adsense account is suspended and your site is banned from Google.
That's what I meant by penalizing. I have plenty of pages that are listed in the top 5 on Google for competitive search phrases, and these are articles that I've rewritten from articles I've submitted. And I'm not rewriting other people's content. I'm rewriting my own content. I'm using the same basic idea, but writing it completely different, not just rewording it.
You really need to have a strategy for producing unique content for your own site, and a strategy for producing uniquie content for other sites. Sometimes it's good to produce for article directories. Sometimes it's good to produce for other niche sites. It depends on your business model.
Thanks for all the comments. I have a couple of sites, and I have never really submitted articles to any other site. My site's content is truly original, as I either write it myself, or I pay dearly for it to be written by professionals. It is the uniqueness of my content that I do not want to lose, and every time I write an article to submit, I feel like I am giving it away, so I have always ended up just using it on my own site. @ConstantContent - I have used your site in the past to purchase content. What other sites would you recommend, should I decide to submit some my own content for distibution?
submitting an article to any article directory is risky for content penalty. It's typical and that's one of the reasons I don't do article submissions. Many people simply copy and use the exact content at their blog or sites. Sometimes Google can not recognize which is the original. It's scary.
Your site might get supplemental results if the article that you would post will also be posted on other directories. I do submit my articles to article directories and posted it on my blog but not on my sites.
Here is a real world example: I submitted an article on Nov 28, 2006 to ten article directories. Two days later I added it to my website. The page on my website has been optimized for the relevant keywords. The article title is six words long with four keywords relevant to the article. Here is my rank in Google: Title in quotes: #1 out of 45 (All copies or references to my article) Title without quotes: #1 out of 1,430,000 Relevant keywords in order: #1 out of 1,430,000 Relevant keywords in reverse order: #2 out of 1,430,000 First three keywords from title in order: #11 out of 1,370,000 Last three keywords from title in order: #5 out of 1,380,000 Article title in quotes: #1 My Article on my website #2 Area on my website that I posted article #3 Wikipedia page with link to article #4 Blog I posted article on #5 Article on article directory I submitted to #6 Reference to article on above article directory #7 Area on another website that copied article from my website (without permission or backlinks) #8 Article on above website - Supplemental Result #9 Article on article directory I submitted to - Supplemental Result #10 Second copy of article on above article directory - Supplemental Result #11 Article on article directory I submitted to - Supplemental Result #12 Reference to article on above article directory - Supplemental Result #13 Article on article directory I submitted to - Supplemental Result #14 Reference to article on above article directory #15 Reference to article on from website #7 It doesn't look to me like I am paying any type of penalty for posting my article on my website. I rank for the relevant keywords, I receive search engine traffic and I receive traffic from my Wikipedia link.
Here's an example for you. I publish articles on my 142 blogs network. One would think that my original site where the article is originally placed would be penalized somewhat. The thing that is amazing me is that site is climbing higher and higher in Google as days go by. Supplemental means jack to me. My network grows exponentially in traffic with 60% of it coming from Google even though 99% of the content is the same on each blog. I say go for it. My two cents. Col
If you want to use article submission for promotion and backlinks you should find niche sites (high traffic) that relate to your website. For example if you have a webmaster site you would want to submit to Sitepoint and other sites that people actually visit to read the articles. On these kind of sites the backlink will count and the traffic you get will be people actually interested. Avoid any directories that use free articles, poor articles, or sites that are JUST an article directory. The problem with this is you have to write a good article to be accepted, these places are not going to accept an article that was written for self promotion. As for this “penalty" you won't get a "penalty" for duplicate content, but what will happen is Google will start ignoring your content (not site), but the duplicate portions of it.