Is it a waste of time to publish articles from directories on your site?

[madison_avenue]

I was wondering why do webmasters publish articles from directories such as EZA on their websites. We are always being told about the duplicate content penalties, we must all have unique content etc. So why do webmasters publish articles which they know will be published on hundreds of other sites? Are they getting any ranking or seo benefit from them? From what we are told surely it is waste of time to publish articles from directories?

[Kelly Verge]

They are providing content for their readers.

A friend works for a relatively large local accounting firm. They publish monthly newsletters - one internal and one for their customers. They often pull articles from article directories to save time - often seasonally relevant topics having nothing to do with accounting.

[Steven Wagenheim]

1. The duplicate content myth is just that...a myth. It doesn't exist. Google
themselves have verified this.

2. These webmasters don't have the time and/or the skills to write themselves
and don't want to pay for content to be written for them, so they use
the directories.

3. In the process, they are providing content for their viewers of their site,
which in turn brings in more traffic and increase their SE rankings.

That is why they do it.

[madison_avenue]

If they are a large firm they probably have sufficient unique content on their site to achieve good search engine rankings. So seo is maybe not such a priority for them.

[Ivancho]

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

1. The duplicate content myth is just that...a myth. It doesn't exist. Google
themselves have verified this.

2. These webmasters don't have the time and/or the skills to write themselves
and don't want to pay for content to be written for them, so they use
the directories.

3. In the process, they are providing content for their viewers of their site,
which in turn brings in more traffic and increase their SE rankings.

That is why they do it.

Great Point Steven.

[madison_avenue]

Yes Steven I think your third point is crucial and one that many miss. They do it, to provide good content, this generates visitors and hence boost rankings. It is all about about providing good content for visitors, who will then come, Google follows the visitors not the other way round. If you want a successful site you had better be providing great content for your visitors who could care less if the content is "duplicate" or not.

[marin7]

What I have read about this is that Google does not penalize for duplicate content, but rather filters it. Meaning anytime the article is published after the first time, it is considered a duplicate, so what happens is Google favors the first publishing of your article. Also, the duplicate article listings are then supposed to be archived quickly, which I think means it's even less likely to show up in search results.

If this information is good, then you'd have to know which article posting you want to come up first in Google results before you start posting them. I read all this in an interview with an internet marketer named Titu, from Marlons Sanders' Evergreen Dashboard.

She recommended publishing your article first on your own site, and then going ahead and publishing it in other places. Although I'm a little confused by this last part, since I thought you had a better chance of being higher in search results with a directory article. It seems most people post their articles in directories, then might post it to their own site.

Edit: Sorry, I just reread the original post, I went off-topic a little there.

[Steven Wagenheim]

Originally Posted by marin7

What I have read about this is that Google does not penalize for duplicate content, but rather filters it. Meaning anytime the article is published after the first time, it is considered a duplicate, so what happens is Google favors the first publishing of your article. Also, the duplicate article listings are then supposed to be archived quickly, which I think means it's even less likely to show up in search results.

I'm sorry, but this isn't true. Go look up a number of keyword phrases
at Google, take a look at the first page of results for those phrases that
point mostly to articles and you will find, many times, the exact same
article reprinted at every site.

This will especially happen for keyword phrases that don't have a lot of
competition. Google needs to show something for results, so they'll show
every article printed...even if they are duplicates.

[Rebtl]

Steve, Thanks for this extremely valuable info. Knowing that you can use article directory articles to make niche sites makes life soooooo much easier.

Though of course you still have to market your site corretly, but still that knowledge is amazing.

I wish you were on DP. (Maybe you are and I dont know) but over there all they do is stomp on everybody who says duplicate content is a myth or overrated.

Anyway thanks again

[marin7]

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

I'm sorry, but this isn't true. Go look up a number of keyword phrases
at Google, take a look at the first page of results for those phrases that
point mostly to articles and you will find, many times, the exact same
article reprinted at every site.

This will especially happen for keyword phrases that don't have a lot of
competition. Google needs to show something for results, so they'll show
every article printed...even if they are duplicates.

Okay, just reporting what I read... Steven, then it makes no difference if you have a self-authored article to publish it to your own site first? I'm assuming from what you wrote the answer is no, but I'd like to make sure. Sorry to the OP if this is too far from the original question, if so could you PM me?

Thanks,
Marin

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by madison_avenue

It is all about about providing good content for visitors, who will then come, Google follows the visitors not the other way round.

"Build it and they will come" only works in Kevin Costner movies.

[Melody]

I sold a site this past summer - about 350 indexed pages - for 5 figures - it was PR 5 - with only a few inbound links - and it held #1 spots for countless highly competitive terms. About 75% of the content were relevant articles from various directories.

It was a hand built/html directory-style site - with tightly focused categories
and relevant content in each category, and Google loved it.

I tend to focus more on onsite SEO and a well-built user friendly site rather than original content and Google has been very good to me over the years - got slapped once for a couple of weeks - but that was pretty much it for any content site I have built.

Melody