Article Submission and Unique Website Content: Discussion

Recently I made an interesting survey about duplicate content issue and how it happens to be in the real situation of article marketing.

Everybody tells - avoid duplicate content! but just see this survey - Are you afraid of duplicate content and make your choice!

 

1. Put unique content on your own site.

2. If you want to get involved in article marketing, try to spend more time on distribution outlets that will lend real credibility (unlike basic article directories), like niche sites needing guest content, content for niche newsletters, etc.

3. If you do insist on directories, don't give them your site content. Either write something unique, or at least alter another of your articles first.

Grand, duplicate content isn't just an SEO issue. It's a credibility issue. If most of the articles on your site can be found elsewhere, readers won't be as likely to believe that it's all your own. It also cheapens the value of your work. Why should people pay top dollar to advertise on your site once there's nothing (or not enough) unique about it to be a real draw for visitors. The biggest mistake people can make with a site is to rely too heavily on search engines for anything... for traffic, for income, etc. Never model your business practices after someone else's... always focus on your readers / customers / etc. first and making sure you have a well-rounded business model that can whether any storms (ex algorithm changes).

 

That's a good point, and in my mind it boils down to what best fits the goal you're working towards with the content you're creating.

If your goal is to build more on-site quality content, then that's where you'd publish it.

But if your goal right now is to work at improving SERPs and traffic, then publishing the articles on platforms that have a real human readership and are 'trusted' by search engines is what you'd do.

It isn't a question of "which is better" to do with your content, but rather what are you trying to accomplish when creating it.

I hope that helps.

 

This is a great conversation. Very helpful and I'm sure it will help many people.

jhmattern, I agree with you to keep unique content to yourself so that your site truly offers something unique. I just find it very strange to write great content for someone else even if it's got my website link in the resource box!

ScottBannon, I get what you're saying except I'm confused with your two different goal approach. I don't get why you wouldn't always want to "build more on-site quality content" AND "work at improving SERPs and traffic" at the same time. If I work on only building more on-site quality content, I'd be losing out on advertising and increased traffic from article directories and likewise if I focused on improving SERPs and traffic I'd have no unique content for that traffic I'm bringing to my site!

It's a real dilemma because in my view you want that unique content on your site but also to get that content out to places where people will read it if they haven't heard of your site in the past.

If I write an article, it's going to be on my site. That's just logical to me. I'm the author for pete's sake! When I submit it to you, you're duplicating me. You're just getting a copy. The issue of duplicate content shouldn't be an issue for the author. It should be based on who puts the article up first - whoever gets indexed first takes 'ownership' while any other copies indexed thereafter are 'copies'. Of course what happens when a slow ass SE indexes the article directory first even though it's been on your site for a month?

 

Never submit an exact copy of your webpage as an article or vice versa. This hurts your webpage search engine positioning and does not add value to your website. If need be, create a modified summarized version of your webpage content as a teaser article and submit to create interest. That's what I do and I get great results with that!

 

What would you say about a site like bestfreecontent.com? They boast a solution to duplicate content and that google respects them. They have a humungous list of 70,000 publishers and yet no dup content worries!!!

 

I understand what you mean, and you're absolutely correct that building quality on-site content and improving SERPs/traffic shouldn't be separate goals. But, my experience has been that unless and until your site becomes trusted or recognized as an authority the best approach is to treat them separately.

And when I say "best", I mean that as in quickest path to desired results with regards to SERPs and traffic.

A quick example: if I write a good article targeting a specific keyword phrase that has what I consider mid-level competition (50,000 to 100,000 competing pages for that term), and publish it on my site without creating any supporting articles to distribute elsewhere, I'm going to be lucky to get my site page to show on the first 3 pages of Google for that term, no matter how well written the piece is.

However, if I publish that same piece on my site and distribute a handful of supporting articles (all supporting my site page for the targeted keyword phrase) among trusted sites, my site page will likely still not reach the first 3 pages of results initially, but within days I'll see my articles appearing on the first page or two of Google for the term, and over a short period of time they'll start slowly dropping down, but my site page will begin climbing up at the same time.

Please don't ask me why it happens like that, I have guesses but it really goes beyond my knowledge and understanding of search engines. Personally, I think it's butt-backwards and counter-productive to how search engines should work, but in my experience these are the hoops to jump through to gain SERPs and traffic for a site that hasn't gained its own trust yet using articles.

Of-course there are other ways too, but this thread has been about article submission and on-site content so I've kept my comments to that topic. However, articles shouldn't be the only tool someone uses either. They're just one of many to help support and raise your site's strength and trust.

 

The discussion is very interesting ... but at some points really becomes confusing,

Let say it simple:

- The best content I have goes to the website. Readers should stay and read.

- But what is a good website if noone comes?? So I make excerpts following the "tomatoe example"

Good articles at the right place can really push you up.

 

For some reason I just can't get my head around excerpts from my article or supporting articles. When I write an article, I have my customer in mind. What would be helpful to the people on my site? I just don't see how you can cut up and change an article that is helpful in the way it was originally written (other than going through it and changing the order of points and changing up words).

Writing a teaser about the actual article on your site isn't an article that can be submitted in my opinion. If the article is 'how to tie your shoe laces', that is the helpful article that should be on your shoe site. Anything else and it's a different article altogether which should be on your site too! But how can you change up the article really? If I shorten it, it's not a good article anymore. And it can't be changed because there's only one way to tie your shoe laces.

I've also been reading that duplicate content isn't really a problem. News sites don't get penalized. Duplicate websites are the problem. In that case, does it all really matter if article sites have some of the articles I wrote for my site? I mean, people reading the article on an article site will visit my site and find a whole bunch of other articles from their 'expert' writer. They won't care that those articles are out there on articles sites too.

Anyways, fun, fun!