About the whole "publish on your own page (first)" thing...

[JPriest]

Hi all,
I recently joined the forum and have read a few threads. Lots of great info here.

There is one thing I don't understand, and I'm hoping someone can explain it. I'm not trying to pick a fight here, just some clarification.

Practically everyone indicated that when you write an article about your product/niche, you should post it on your own site and then post versions of it to EZA and other directories afterward.

My question has nothing at all to do with your EZA article outranking your original or anything like that. I have a different question entirely: Why post the article on your main site at all?

I mean, if the idea behind writing this article and getting it "out there" is to make your own site look like an authority, isn't it better not to have the article on your own site? Sure, it means your site has less unique content, but it also gives more of an impression that some other site (unaffiliated with you) has linked to yours as an honest vote in favor of your site.

If your own site has its own copy of that article, I would think it would just look really fishy.

These remarks do not apply to the case where you have a long article on your site and a summary pointing to it...that looks more believable. But two versions of the same article, one linking to the site that has the other just seems like it would be too obvious.

Help me out.

[Istvan Horvath]

Why post the article on your main site at all?

I am not an article marketer expert by any stretch of imagination but... maybe exactly because it is YOURS?

If it's yours, you are in control. The 3rd party site can die, can ban you, can delete your stuff - while on your site you are in control.

Plus, you want to build your own authority, not theirs.

I am sure the experts will show up shortly and will enlighten you better

[Dustin_M]

When you post an article to your own site you get 100% of the 'actions' performed by your visitors. When you publish on EZA, getting 30% of the 'views' to even come to your site would be considered good.

[entrepreneurjay]

First off you want to publish the article on your site first because your building an asset - which is your website, or blog. What if ezinearticle went under and you lost hundreds off articles you posted? All that hard work in vain.

2. You always want to build your business first and not there's period. When you submit a copy of your original article you should rewrite it too make it unique and change the title of your article to make it a little different from the original published on your site.

3. Are you doing video marketing as well? Video marketing is really where it's at they take less time, and have the exact same benefits. Look at how many people view youtube video's everyday millions....

I have had 75 hubs from hubpages disappear ( built up over a few years ) because they changed there terms of service a while back after the last Panda update. I had affiliate links in them which they allowed at the time. Guess what they decided they no longer were allowing affiliate links. I lost a lot of past work. If you put your content in someone else's hands you are gambling! They can do what they want with your content and maybe even delete it entirely if you violate their ever changing tos etc....

Look at free blogger blogs. You would have to be crazy to build a business with a free blog you do not control. My point is protect your content, build a real online business by always publishing your content to your own sites first, they can't take that from you. That is why smart marketers tell you to publish your content to your own site first.

P.S It will also help with your google serp rankings too you want to try to build your site to be the next ezinearticles in terms of rankings, and power. Build your own authority site.

Oh, and I hope you have your own self hosted website.

[grover69]

What entrepreneurjay said is what you need to listen to and take to heart. I don't know how many assets I built on other properties when I starting out. And so many of them just tanked lately. Hubpages included. Your websites are where you have the most control. Build those out first and make them the highest priority!

[Rod Cortez]

JPriest,

You ask a fair question and you've been given some solid answers.

Here's another reason: I can sell my own site at later date, trust it over to a relative or spouse when I die, and my list as well, I won't be able to sell EZA or any other 3rd party sites or the content on them.

Secondly, you're also building links back to your site and the articles on other websites and blogs are going to be pointing back to a webpage on YOUR site (whatever page you want and that can always be changed). Everyone does this differently, but end goal is usually the same, you want as much traffic to finally END up at your website, a piece of virtual property that YOU own and control.

RoD

[JohnMcCabe]

Another reason for the pile...

You mentioned building authority. If the article is posted on my site first, and later syndicated to other sites, it does build my authority. It says 'here's a piece of content so good that other site owners chose to publish it rather than create their own content on the subject.'

One thing about doing things this way is that you would never link from the syndicated article to the same article on your site. That would be silly, as people you enticed to click through would quickly see that they were reading the same thing they just finished reading and smack that back button.

[kindsvater]

Someone finding your article on another site may only find that article. On your site you can have an index of all your articles, giving the visitor a lot more to read.

Nothing "fishy" about that.

.

[laurencewins]

All of the above is very true. Regardless of what your business is, you should be writing content for your site so you get more natural rankings in Google. You also have more credibility if people visit your site and see that you have written quite a few articles.

I work as a writer so this is my craft. While I don't drag people to my site, I do use it as a reference point if people want to know more about me. They can see that I didn't just start yesterday and I have written on a range of different things.

They can see I am a real person and not some article spinning bot.
The can also put a face to a name and article if they choose.

I also pick up work because people check my site out from links in forums, emails, etc and see that I can help them.

[AnniePot]

Maybe reading this earlier thread will answer your question. It contains posts from most of the top article syndicators currently contributing to the Warrior Forum.

[absolutelee]

It really has to do with whether you're doing this just for linkbuilding or actually to drive human traffic. If you're interested in driving human traffic from EZA to your own site, then sure, having the same thing on your site would look stupid.

[Ryan David]

Personally, I take a different view on where to put articles. I have some articles only for my site, some articles only for syndicating. I don't place an article on my site that goes into syndication.

That's just me. I like the stuff on my site to be completely unique. Plus my concerns are validated by some people I respect.

Plus, it just makes sense to me. It's in the search engines best interest to get rid of duplicates i.e. filter the pages (with links) out of the index. I don't think they are there yet, but I'm willing to take some extra steps to future proof my site. I don't trust computers to get everything right...and I definitely don't trust the "appeal process".

For me, small price to pay. I've spent 6 years building up my main website. I don't feel the need to jeopardize my rankings across the board in order to get some more mileage out of some content. I'd rather just produce more. Perhaps if my site were a little younger and I wanted to get aggressive, I might go syndicate what goes on the site.

[JPriest]

Hmmm....

Maybe I did not make my OP clear enough.

My question was "Why post on my own site at all?" but my question was really what I elaborated on later in the post: "If I"m trying to create the illusion that some third party (anonymous writer of article posted on other site) thought my site was worth linking to, then isn't it weird to have a similar version of the same article on my site?"

Maybe I'm thinking about this whole thing wrong, but I thought the whole point of building backlinks from other domains was to suggest that other people were linking to my site. That seems like a pretty hard myth to sell if the page pointing to my site is similar to a page already on it.


You don't have to tell me about all the good things that happen based on having quality, original content on your own site. That is not what I am asking. What I'm saying is "If the point of creating backlinks is to make engines think your website is deemed important by others, then having a version on your own site seems pretty silly."

It's like reading a great letter of recommendation and then finding out it was written by the applicant's brother.

[JPriest]

Originally Posted by AnniePot

Maybe reading this earlier thread will answer your question. It contains posts from most of the top article syndicators currently contributing to the Warrior Forum.

Thanks, Annie, but that is the threat that led me to write this one. It did not appear that people on that thread were talking about what I'm discussing here. Everyone on that thread was worried about which page an engine would favor in SERPS and whether you could outrank EZA and which site engines would consider original, etc.

That is not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about creating the illusion that other people are linking to your site...and I would think that illusion is rather compromised if google sees a similar version on your own site.

Just to be clear: I'm not talking about syndication here. Obviously, syndication is wonderful and all that, but I'm talking about spun articles for, say, hubpages, etc. Consider 2 cases:

Case 1: Article on hubpage talks about my topic and links to my site, which contains an article similar to the hubpage article. Isn't a search engine likely to say "Oh, that hubpage article probably was written by the same guy and does not really represent a vote for the webpage"?

Case 2: Article written on hubpage is devoted to my topic and links to my site, which does not contain an article similar to the hubpage page. Then, it seems the engine is more likely to think "Oh, someone wrote a hubpage on a topic and considered this other webpage worth referencing."


(It seems like you get the best of both worlds by putting a summarized or heavily digested version on hubpages, linking to the original article on your own page, but that is besides the point. I'm only discussing the two options of similar articles on two different pages or just one.)

[JohnMcCabe]

Go back and read post #7 again. I answered this question directly.

Here's the sequence:

> Write article, post on your own site.
> Wait for article to appear in index.
> Post article on other sites, whether through syndication or on pages you control (Hubs, lenses, etc.)

SE finds article on other site, says 'this looks familiar, here it is, it was on this site' and determines that the content was good enough for other site's owner to post it on his site also. Follows link back to this site and finds more related content (not the same article).

What you're reasoning is missing is the timeline.

Admittedly, this works better if you are building an authority-type site rather than a microsite of only a few pages. And if that link to 'this site' comes from another authority site, it's an even better endorsement.