Article Marketing: is the spin really necessary?

For the sake of accuracy, I should update this, as my last 2 WSOs did each contain a little about spinning. However, I didn't use spinning as a sales point for on, but for a Twitter related WSO, I do offer spun text for some Tweets.

One thing that's important to note is that I almost always spin NOUNS, not adjectives, which is what most people that spin do. One reason for this is, most search queries are for nouns. The other main reason is, I want to work in as many secondary keywords as possible.

So, for example if I have content about camping, I want to work in as many nouns concerning camping equipment, brand names and camp grounds as possible.

I also use spinning (in this context) to break up n-grams and text vectors, which I believe Google uses to determine doop content, as well as to add some diversity in things like anchor text, URLs, article titles, etc.

I'll post some of my other report here, so people can judge on their own my concepts of spinning. The info below is part of a report War Room members can get there.

First, they're not "duplicate links" or "unique links". They're "links attached to unique content" or "links attached to syndicated content". A subtle but very relevant distinction.

Secondly, why and how should a search engine distinguish between the two? Or even want to?

Thirdly, members here who have worked on search engine algorithms say that they don't, shouldn't, wouldn't, couldn't, and so on.

Fourthly, all the standard SEO textbooks I've read (and that's quite now a lot, because I've been trying, over the last year, to educate myself rather better on this subject, now that I've worked out that the "quality-controlled", "peer-reviewed", orthodox publications on the subject are so much more reliable than 99% of the stuff one reads about it online), say the same.

Fifthly, all my own experience, as well as that of others with whom I've discussed it, point in the same direction.

Since you ask.

Oh well ... I tried.

Having nothing to promote/sell, myself, on this subject, I'd have appreciated and (as I explained) been willing to learn something from an honest discussion based on integrity.

A shame - but fair enough - I was just offering, really following Paul Myers' observations to me. But understood and accepted, of course.

Some people are instinctively interested in the potential for learning something they didn't know; others, apparently, have "zero interest in the offer".

Don't worry - I won't keep asking: you made your point clearly and I heard it, and will remember it.

I didn't ask you any.

You still seem - dare I say "increasingly"? - to have a little difficulty distinguishing between statements and questions, here ...

No reason that I know of, other than the fact that one of them has no significant SEO value for most people, for all the explanations so many article marketers here offer on a daily basis for article directory marketing to have been declining over the last couple of years, for directory backlinks to be non-context-relevant, PR-0 backlinks, for it being a bit silly and wasteful to put any effort at all into promoting other people's sites rather than your own, and for the other reasons which you know as well as I do that I could illustrate with links to a dozen other threads none of which you'd actually click on because you've just clarified so expressly that you have "zero interest" in trying to learn anything. :rolleyes:

Sorry if I sound unympathetic to that stance: I do actually appreciate, given your financial interest in spinning, how very fed up you must be of seeing so many people successfully making their livings from article marketing decrying spinning over and over and over again.

It's very apparent indeed that most people who fail at "article marketing" tend to fail in more or less the same way, and it's a way broadly characterised by (a) depending on article directories for traffic and backlinks and (b) using "spinning" and/or "mass-submission" software.

You can be sure, too, whenever you see one of the ever-increasing plethora of threads we regularly have appearing here with titles like "Article Marketing Doesn't Work Any More" or "I'm Not Sure About Article Marketing Any More" (we've all noticed those, right?), that the person starting it off has been doing those things.

We see that evidenced here unambiguously, typically several times every week. This is simply factual.
There are reasons for that.

Others - having found something far more beneficial - have largely turned their backs on that. Especially after Google's recent update - even though many of us regarded it as "too little, too late" - has finally knocked the SEO value of the article directories for six - as even their owners have so openly and repeatedly commented.

Too little, too late, for some of us, perhaps - but on a brighter note, Google does say pretty openly that "there's more coming along soon, from where that one came from".

Thanks for the suggestion, Annie! And to everyone else, I'm still learning from the discussion so thanks some more!

Hey Annie, just wanted to pop in here and say thanks. I am glad you found it helpful and that you think it was worth sharing with others.

As for duplicate content... there's no "penalty". It's just that Google will only show so many results of the same thing. You aren't punished other than if they think that where your version appears is less credible (less authority, less backlinks, newer, etc...) you'll get lost in the 'omitted results'

As for me, I use original articles for each publishing.

I'd be happy to entertain you with my syndication process. First of all, I am a professional writer and marketer with an established network of 25,000 syndicated outlets for my articles. These outlets include authoritative and context-relevant websites, blogs, niche ezines, and offline outlets such as print magazines, trade journals, professional newsletters, newspapers, etc. Nearly all of my offline publishers also have highly ranked online components. It's these assets that dislodge the competition from their lofty perches in the SERPs. The real beauty of syndication is that you can write once and use the exact same article over and over again for tens of thousands of publishers without spamming.

I'm not really an "expert" in anything except for a rather short professional career in economics. Almost all of my writing is done inhouse with a staff of some part-time and full-time researchers/writers. Articles are distributed through RSS feeds, autoresponders, websites, direct email, fax, and even postal mail for a few publishers. Once these articles are distributed, traffic is fairly consistent for several months or even years from the high ranking sites. I get 3-5 new publishers everyday to add to my ever-growing network. By submitting a few articles every week, new traffic records are reached each month, with Google and SEO being totally irrelevant for marketing in these heavily competitive niches.

I hope you just omitted to mention that first and foremost, your initial task was to publish all that content to your own websites / blogs.. :rolleyes:

I agree...We just need to add one more situation which we'll call 1B in this list: The words in close proximity to the anchor text.

Of the 4, anchor text, close proximity text, page text and html and site-wide relevancy, I'd rank them in the order I just gave or:

In order of importance:
1. Anchor
2. Close Proximity (same sentence/same paragraph)
3. Page
4. Site

There's some other factors, such as link age, site/page age, if the link is contextual or clustered, do readers have access to the page (making it possible to add their own content/links), etc.

All of these pretty much have to do with relevancy more than authority (generally speaking) but should give a good idea of what Google's looking for.