Article Submission and Unique Website Content: Discussion

Hi,

I'm confused about article writing and adding content to your website. Everyone talks about one or the other but not how the two interrelate. I'd appreciate your thoughts on what is the right way to go about these topics.

I know that having rich content on your website is important. I know that articles are awesome for link building and getting your name and website out there as a trusted source.

I find that the articles I write are appropriate for my website visitors as well. I mean, articles are helpful info. Likewise, I create a page for my website and think that it would be a good article. I'm worried that I'll submit all these articles to article sites and give them unique content but not have enough on my site to keep people there. Or, my article at the article site has a better SE ranking than my site.

Should I be adding articles that I write to my site as well in a 'Learning Centre', 'Tools', or 'Articles' section? If so, would you change them up or just put them on the site? Is it okay to have the same article on your site as the article sites? The articles I write would be helpful to people on my site and since I wrote them it doesn't make sense to me to just post them elsewhere.

When I submit articles, is it better to submit to only a few good sites (GoArticles, Buzzle, EzineArticles, etc.) or to hundreds (including the good ones). Is it a danger to have that much duplicate content and is it beneficial or a waste of time? And that ties into the content on the website because if you're submitting an article to hundreds of sites, then the article content on your website isn't that 'unique' anymore!

So what's the deal with writing articles and having unique content on your site? Your thoughts are very much appreciated.

Thanks!

 

I've been reading about it all day and from what I understand (may be wrong or debatable), is that you should write the same article in different ways for each website, as well as placing your article on your site before submitting as so it'll get indexed first.
It's debatable on whether or not you can be punished for placing your articles on many sites instead of the big ones. I don't believe it can be harmful as many use it, I just don't know how efficient it is. I'd say stay with the big publishers for the best of both worlds.
Are you looking at building up links or traffic? (To judge if it would be a waste of time) If for traffic, yah it'll be a waste unless you start rank high with a keyword or go viral. If your link building, then no as the more the merrier (just remember to much of a good thing can be bad as well.)

I hope you got something out of that post.

And welcome to Digitalpoint, enjoy your stay!

kngavl,

 

I'd say there are two options that you should consider. One is rewriting (some of) the articles you post on your site for article submission. The second is that you add the articles you have submitted on your site, but in a directory not accessible to search engines. I wouldn't risk having too much duplicate content on your site, because the whole site could drop in SERPs.

 

What I'm getting from this thread is not have the exact same article on my website as submitted to article sites. Keep them separate. That is, change the article on my website so it truly is unique and then submit the "article" to the article sites. That seems like a lot of work when you write an article! You can see the dilemma though. Articles I write ARE unique content and should first and foremost go on my site, should they not? Then change them up and submit them to a handful of good article sites?

I do see this as a concern for a lot of people. I mean, if your site is about trees, an article you write about how to plant a tree is unique and applicable to your website traffic and would be great on article sites. I would think that that content should be added to your site so your site is unique but then you also want to promote the site itself. Confusion, confusion!

 

In my opinion you have to create a balance between having unique content on your site and submitting your articles to the major article directories.

I post every article I write to my blog first, then ping my blog. Then I submit to a few major directories. I used to spend time with a rewriting software, but I ultimately decided it was an inefficient use of my time since the process was quite long and tedious.

What I do now is first post the article to my blog, then when I submit that article to the major directories I include a link back to that blog post in my resource box. I read this would help as far as duplicate content went.

 

Jon,

Here is my suggestion to you. First put the article(s) on your site. Before you do anything else with them, let them just sit for a few days. 2-7 days.

Now, there's two roads you can take from here. There's the lazy $%% method and the super lazy $%% method. The lazy $%% method requires you to re-write each article by at least 40%. Now do this 5 times. Yup, that's right, 5 versions of the same article. All 40% different from the original. Next, submit 1 version to the top 5 article directories.

Why do this? Well, it will help all versions of your articles stay in the search engines, esp the big G, without getting the "search results omitted, yadda, yadda, yadda" duplicate content penalty. Plus, if someone takes your article from say ezinearticles.com and puts it on their site or blog and someone else takes your article from goarticles.com and puts it on their blog/website, they have different versions, which, again, will help you get the backlinks as opposed to the search engines seeing them as duplicate content.

The super lazy $%% method only requires you to make one 40% re-write of every article and submit it to the top 5 search engines. What you're gaining in time you're giving up in effectiveness. The same articles will probably wind up in the "omitted search results" section.

Here's another little trick I use which works well. Write one article related to the subject of your site. However, don't put it on your site. Then you submit that one article to as many article directories as you possibly can. Of course with a link back to your site. It will give your site a nice PR boost for a while. Until all the dupe pages get cut down. Every month or so, just do this, and you will be able to raise your PR and get a ton of backlinks.

To check to make sure your articles are 40% different, I suggest you use dupefree pro. It's free. It compares one article to another and gives you the amount of duplicate content found between the two of them in a % form. You can get it at www.dupefreepro.com (not an aff link, because it's free.)

Jason

 

Keep your sites articles and article directory articles separate. It doesn't matter if other sites get penalized for duplicate content. You still get the backlinks, but if you get penalized for duplicate content you only hurt your rankings.

 

This is great advice! It sounds like everything hinges on whether you put the article on your own site. If you do, then you've got to change it up a whole lot before submitting it (and just to a few article directories so you don't get penalized for duplicate content). If you don't add it to your own site, then it doesn't matter if you change it up as much and so you can go ahead and add it to as many article directories as you want (hundreds). Is this the general rule? How different is the article on your website compared to the one you're submitting?

So I guess the question is, why wouldn't you want to add it to your own site? If it's about your site, why wouldn't you want to add that unique content? When would you not add it?

 

Nice username I asked a similiar question...

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=191445

Since then I have gotten into the habit of creating 2 different versions of an article; 1 strictly for my site and the other for article directories.

The only time I wouldn't add an article on my site is if it is about my site.

 

That is REALLY weird John84 that we have so similar user names and asked almost the same question! Is this the Twilight Zone?

 

You're right about unique content on your site and that if you submit the same article to directories you won't have unique content anymore. Posting the article to your site first and getting it indexed before article directories does help a bit but after a while you'll still just land up having duplicate content (even though you were the 'first').

If you're writing all this unique content, I recommend keeping it to your site alone. If it would make a good article for a directory, rewrite it and make it as different as possible. Use different wording and change up the order of any points. Alter the title and intro too. I have a big problem with this as I find myself arguing, "the original one was the way I wanted to present it!" It's like George Lucas presenting his latest Star Wars movie and then having to rewrite it with different characters just so there's no duplication! Oh well.

Anyways, if you maintain a clear distinction between articles for your website and articles for directories, you'll always have unique content on your website while at the same time promoting your website with important content you've written.

 

My 2 cents worth, based on my experience, is that even if you wait for the content (article) to be indexed from your page before submitting it to article directories, the trust/strength/whatever factor of some article directories can still trump your site or blog, and suddenly your page is in the supplemental index and your article (on an article directory) is gaining in the SERPs.

My best suggestion is if you write something really good, put it on your site and then write 4 to 6 supporting articles around it to submit to directories, all with a link back to your page with your keywords in the anchor text.

I wouldn't waste time trying to rewrite your page content into articles, because the overall message is still going to be the same then, and while it might pass okay against a duplicate content filter, it's going to frustrate any human traffic that reads your article and follows the link to your site looking for more information only to find the same information being regurgitated to them.

That's why I say write 4 to 6 supporting articles around your site content for submitting to directories.

HTH

 

Good tip, kinda like a teaser article for the main article.

Weird indeed. If you're from Winnipeg this could get very frightening.

 

What exactly is meant by supporting articles? I mean, if an article for your site is like "5 Ways to Grow Tomatoes", how do you write supporting articles? Those 5 things are a great article. You could talk about topics around it, like gardening (or whatever, I'm just making this up), but these 5 things are helpful to your website traffic and for article directories to show people you know the magic 5 things. And if you're changing up the article to be different from the one on your site, how do you 'change' the 5 ways which are THE 5 ways? LOL. That's confusing! I think you get my drift though. Your thoughts?

John84, a Winnipegger are you?

 

Some would encourage you to submit articles only to a few article directories. But I can tell you that even if you do submit to hundreds of article directories, it wouldn't hurt. On the contrary, you can get huge traffic coming in. The duplicate content story is overplayed actually. When you search online, you do sometimes find duplicates appearing side by side and even ranking high together. If duplicate content kills, then this is strange. Likewise, imagine if you write a solid piece of article and a webmaster decides that it is helpful to his visitors and post it on his website, so is Google going to penalize your content as duplicate?? Nay.

Unique content do have staying power in the serps. Concentrate on writing quality articles. Post them to a few article directories, and to hundreds of them. Alternate such postings. You should see a lot of traffic coming everyday when you mass post. I have been doing that quite a fair bit.

I have written some secret techniques on article marketing for huge traffic in my free report. You can download it through my signature.

 

By supporting I mean supporting to the keyword phrase you're targeting with your site content, and supportive in driving targeted human traffic to your site from the article directories.

For instance, using your example we'd assume the phrase is "ways to grow tomatoes" since it isn't likely the number 5 is part of your actual keyword phrase.

So you create your on-site page posting, "5 Ways to Grow Tomatoes". You've got your keywords in the title, you've also included them in the opening and closing paragraphs of the posting.

Now it is time to write the articles. So you have to find additional ways to include the keyword phrase in those. For example, "Ways to Grow Tomatoes Indoors", "Ways to Grow Tomatoes on Limited Land", "Ways to Grow Tomatoes Larger", and so on. Some of those are clumsy, and if this wasn't just an example I'd put more time into them, but I think the point is clear.

Each of these can then be used as titles for your supporting articles. You'll include them in the opening and closing paragraphs of the articles. And your resource link pointing back to your site page will include the key phrase, "ways to grow tomatoes" as well as a call to action. Something like "Learn more ways to grow tomatoes!"

Now you have supporting articles. They support your on-site keyword targeting, and they support your human traffic efforts because anyone who finds and reads these articles on the article directory sites are already interested in "ways to grow tomatoes", so targeted to your topic and likely to click your link at the end.

Hope this helps.

 

A very thorough explanation! Thanks.

 

Good content always attract visitors. A good informative thread

 

awesome thread. I think I understand more now.

 

It's coming together but I still am slightly confused. The 'supporting' articles you mentioned ("Ways to Grow Tomatoes Indoors", "Ways to Grow Tomatoes on Limited Land", "Ways to Grow Tomatoes Larger") are good articles that would be good content for your site as well. If your site is the tomato website, I would expect to find information there on all these things and not just the general "5 ways to grow tomatoes". It's ALL good stuff!

So the question comes up again - now that you've created even more great unique content with supporting articles why wouldn't you add that to your website? Why are you adding it to article sites and not your own site? If I want my website to be THE resource for tomatoes, I want as much helpful content as possible so that people don't go elsewhere for it. I think that all those supporting articles should be on my site! Or is this information already on my site in a different format (not an article?) Ahhhhhhhh!