article marketing question...

Alexa is right to say that unique content is not the same as original content.

If you write an article and then put it on your own website and nowhere else the content is both original and unique. If, once it is indexed on Google, you put the same article on ezinearticles, it is no longer unique but it remains original.

Google and the article directories are not just looking for unique content. They are looking for original content.

I hope this helps.

Philip

I'm saying nothing.

(Comparatively speaking: meaning "I'm saying only 1,000 words instead of my usual 2,000" ).

My point (above) about "original content" and "unique content" should have been better, and more helpfully, worded: sorry. I might have said "The problem with these two terms is that people use them with completely different meanings, some people don't distinguish between them at all and use them indiscriminately; others understand them to refer to two entirely separate things" and they'll continue to cause confusion, for that and other reasons, every time they're used.

For myself, I find it really helpful to talk in terms of "previously published content" and "previously unpublished content", for two main reasons: first, everyone understands the same things when you say that; secondly, it enables me to make clear, simple, factual statements such as "Article directories do not require previously unpublished content" knowing that nobody - not even someone selling spinning software and seeking to profit from all the confusion about this - can contradict me about that, because it's both incontrovertible and irrefutable.

What matters is what (a) Google and (b) EZA (and possibly, arguably, by extension, "article directories in general") mean by them.

The main points - it seems to me - are ...

(i) As explained in all but glorious technicolor in this post, EZA doesn't care in the slightest whether the articles you submit to them have been previously published elsewhere in identical form, as long as the name/pen-name under which they were published elsewhere is the same as the name/pen-name under which you submit them to EZA;

(ii) It makes far less sense to submit content to EZA without first publishing it and having it indexed on your site (and anywhere else you like) than it does to submit it to EZA for its first publication;

(iii) "Duplicate content" is "multiple copies of the same text-file within one website". It's explained particularly well, with quotations from Google's WebMaster Central Blog, in this post and explained, with the customary bit of heckling and nonsense thrown in, in this thread;

(iv) EZA don't want to publish very similar copies of articles already in their directory (of course - who would? That really would be "duplicate content" in Google's eyes, even though there are no "penalties" for that as people wrongly claim), and understandably they'd rather have content not already published there, so they'll reject articles for what they call "lack of original content" if you try that;

(v) "Degrees of uniqueness" is a silly non-issue dreamed up by people with an interest in promoting spinning/mass-submission software; we can all see that it suits them if everyone imagines that there's some potentially dire consequence they can avoid by "spinning" their articles (which there isn't), and as we've seen in countless other threads, they'll carry on saying that, however many Warriors are making their full-time livings by having "un-spun" syndicated articles published and attracting both high quality, relevant backlinks and targeted traffic with them;

(vi) The linkjuice value of any backlink, on any given page of the web, isn't improved in any way if the content to which it's been attached is deemed by Google to be "unique".

For myself, I'll continue saying "previously published" and "not previously published".

ya that makes sense, no sense in debate because it ultimately is going to fall back on whose site it is and what their policy/rules are.

thanks.

John, your signature rocks.