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Is spinning & dup content penalties dead? Boy, I hope so...

by Chris Vendilli
10 replies
Recently Google has come out with some great ways to 'claim' your content including the rel="author" markup, which allows you to have your nifty little Google+ profile picture appear in organic search results along with your content (great for giving your CTR a little kick in the pants in organic results BTW) - like mine does in the attached example (pittsburgh-fanpage-designer.png)...

Another newer method of claiming content is adding the rel="canonical" link to your articles ON YOUR SITE to let search engines know this is the ORIGINAL and most UNIQUE version of the article in it's purest form and any other syndications or re-publishings or scrapes and spins are either just that, or spammers stealing content... yet another way to 'claim' content and tell Google it's yours...

With all of this being said and these new efforts to identify original content and the owners of content do you think that article "spinning" is going to be dead soon?

I really hope so for a number of reasons:

1. I think it's sort of spammy and allows unoriginal and lazy people to steal content when they want to take OTHER PEOPLE's articles and "spin" it to create what they THINK is unique articles for their own use...

2. It creates a lot of really crappy quality articles in most cases when people don't take the time to logically consider the grammatical outcome and the way the article will read by way of each unique combination of the words in the "spintax" - and we all know most people who spin are doing lowest quality to get the highest uniqueness and they just grab the different versions and post it all over the place...

3. Article spinning has killed several decent directories... how many times have you gone to post to a directory and seen a message like this: "Sorry the spammers have won. Our directory is closed."

4. This isn't really a new point, it's mainly a summation of the others: Article spinning allows people to post the same article spun into many different extremely low quality combinations to the same directories numerous times creating lots of crap that people, moderators, and websites in general have to eat which clogs up everything... especially our throats.

The link value from these low quality spins has to be next to nothing in most cases because the directories that except them likely aren't high quality contextually relevant directorie AND the overall quality of the content itself is low enough to set off Google's red flags I'd assume...

Considering there is now new ways to "claim" original versions of content using the rel="author" and rel="canonical" markups - do you think that spinning is going to be dead soon?

Do you think the "duplicate content penalty" is going to be a thing of the past so long as you CLAIM your content using the mentioned markups AND ensure that it is INDEXED on YOUR site prior to syndicating?

I think this is the direction things are heading...

Matt Cutts seems to hint that this may be the way things are heading as well in this recent video interview:


Please share your thoughts as I'm considering changing up the entire way I publish and syndicate my content which basically will allow me to publish a new article on my blog, wait for it to get indexed, and then syndicate the SAME EXACT article to nice directories to build some decent backlinks (of course only AFTER I ensure my published article on my site is indexed and I'm using the markups I've described of course).

This will allow me (and all of us who are in agreement) to create MORE high quality content by publishing and syndicating the same articles versus publishing a high quality article then manually re-writing to maintain a high quality level, or "spinning" that same article prior to syndication...

I really hope this is a glimpse of where SEO is heading and that spinning gets it's throat slit...

I won't deny that I've tried spinning articles using all the fancy pants spinning programs and tools out there but none of them create the high quality articles I'd like to put my name on - and I don't really see the point of using pen names with crappy spun articles because you still have to put your LINK on them - which is essentially your name... I want my name and websites to be associated with HIGH QUALITY and spinning doesn't accomplish this for me...

Anytime I come across any spun article that I toyed with in the past no matter whether it's using my name or a pen name it infuriates me to see the low quality content.

I recently caught a guy taking my articles, spinning them very badly, keeping my name and link on them, and posting them on his site! He was using poorly spun versions of my high quality SEO articles to try and get his own site to rank... I don't mind someone trying to rank - that's the point of all this - but don't make me look like an idiot by ruining my nice content in the process! Highly unethical if not outright illegal...

Thoughts?
#boy #content #dead #dup #duplicate content #hope #penalties #spinning #syndication
  • Profile picture of the author rooze
    Hi Chris,

    OK, I'll put my toe in the water with this one.

    First off, here's an article that I think will help you in managing your own web content Establishing Ownership of Your Content (Part II) – A SPN Exclusive Article | SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

    The key to all of what you've written is to start off by understanding what it is that you're trying to get out of your various strategies.
    For example, your latest plan is to syndicate your content after it has been indexed on your own website in pursuit of 'back-links'. This is erroneous. Once content has been established in Google index, subsequent repeats of that content are not going to pass back-link value. Why would they?

    So what you are planning to do is OK, but you're doing it for the wrong reasons. You submit multiple copies of the same piece of content in the hope that it becomes syndicated. The benefit of syndication is not back-link building it is in its ability to send targeted traffic. So now that you know why you are doing it you need to be prepared to 'adjust' your content to fit the purpose. Syndication articles need to be written slightly differently than your old back-link building articles (pre Panda) otherwise they won't be syndicated and you'll be wasting your time and effort.

    There are various posts around here referring to writing articles for syndication.

    As for your spun content - they had a purpose, and the purpose was/is backlinks and nothing else. If you're embarrassed by the end result then don't do it, but the point is they won't get read much anyway.

    As for the Matt Cutts video, it's critical to understand what he's saying. The issue of original content and content ownership is a massive issue going into this current shake-up that Google is putting is through. You'll note that he admits to not having a solution to the problem, it isn't resolved by canonical URL's nor is it resolved by the rel=author tag. Why? - because of the slow rate at which Google indexes the web and the relatively low percentage of content it has in its index. That's why the notion of publishing it on your own website first to claim 'ownership', is nonsense - Matt Cutts says as much in the video and I've been spouting that around here for ages. But there are things you can do to establish ownership and the article in the link above will give you some good ideas for that.
    As for your other questions, I think they mostly fall under what I've just said.
    Cheers

    Rooze
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    • Profile picture of the author Chris Vendilli
      @Alexa Smith - thanks so much for the thanks! I haven't been on the WF quite as often as I was when I was first getting started about 6 or 7 years ago (before the "thanks" system was in effect here at the WF) so every little bit of thanks counts and I really appreciate your's as you're pretty well-recognized as an article marketing powerhouse from what I hear .


      Originally Posted by rooze View Post

      Hi Chris,

      OK, I'll put my toe in the water with this one.

      First off, here's an article that I think will help you in managing your own web content Establishing Ownership of Your Content (Part II) - A SPN Exclusive Article | SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

      ...
      ...
      ...
      That's why the notion of publishing it on your own website first to claim 'ownership', is nonsense - Matt Cutts says as much in the video and I've been spouting that around here for ages. But there are things you can do to establish ownership and the article in the link above will give you some good ideas for that.

      Rooze
      This is a quote from the article you linked:

      ---Begin Quote from Article---
      Proactively Marketing Your Content
      If you are a proactive content or article marketer you're familiar with the process. You write an article and submit it to your own site first and wait until it appears in Google's index. Then you submit the article to various directories in pursuit of back-links, traffic and possibly syndication.
      ---End Quote from Article---

      I've never seen this article you linked me to before but it says almost EXACTLY what I'm talking about in my original post. I'm not saying to JUST publish and wait for it to be indexed... I'm saying to that in addition to using the markups I mentioned like rel="author" and rel="canonical"

      I also disagree that G is slow to Index/crawl pages. If you qualified that a bit more to say "Google is slow to index pages and sites that DO NOT routinely post high quality content on a fairly consistent basis" - THEN I'd be more prone to agreeing with you...

      New blog posts on my site are usually indexed within a day. If I get in the habit of posting unique articles on my blog then syndicating the same unique articles the following month while also posting new articles on the blog, then from months 2+ I practice writing high quality content on my blog and syndicating the previous months posts - how much more efficient is that vs writing articles and spinning them all the time?

      I understand the theory of submitting high quality articles for hopes they get syndicated to pass on traffic - and also understand the theory of furiously building backlinks with lower quality spun content... but you almost made my point for me:

      Wouldn't you rather spend more time writing high quality, useful, and valuable content that can be dual-purpose for the hopes of BOTH backlink building and syndication?

      I think and hope that's where we're heading with all this...

      I'd rather have 50, or even 20-30 great backlinks from high quality and hopefully contextually relevant directories using my identical article that's published on my blog (after it's indexed and claimed on my blog first of course) - versus 1,000 backlinks from crappy spun articles and low quality directories.

      I understand that people will be less likely to re-post the high quality versions if they're already claimed by me on my blog but who's going to re-post crappy spun content?

      There are other benefits to syndicating an article too besides hoping to get that article to rank - such as keyword density and other on-page factors so I think people will still re-publish and now when that article shows up in SERPs despite being posted in the same exact verbatim format on numerous blogs, YOUR post will appear at the top of the SERPs because you're the original author and posted it "first."
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      • Profile picture of the author rooze
        Hi Chris,

        Just to go through your response -

        Originally Posted by Chris Vendilli View Post

        This is a quote from the article you linked:

        ---Begin Quote from Article---
        Proactively Marketing Your Content
        If you are a proactive content or article marketer you’re familiar with the process. You write an article and submit it to your own site first and wait until it appears in Google’s index. Then you submit the article to various directories in pursuit of back-links, traffic and possibly syndication.
        ---End Quote from Article---

        I've never seen this article you linked me to before but it says almost EXACTLY what I'm talking about in my original post. I'm not saying to JUST publish and wait for it to be indexed... I'm saying to that in addition to using the markups I mentioned like rel="author" and rel="canonical"

        The article refers to what people do, but it isn't saying that it's the most productive way of doing things.

        I also disagree that G is slow to Index/crawl pages. If you qualified that a bit more to say "Google is slow to index pages and sites that DO NOT routinely post high quality content on a fairly consistent basis" - THEN I'd be more prone to agreeing with you...
        Chris, it's not necessary to quantify the statement. If you watch the Matt Cutts video, he is basically saying that Google is too slow to establish originality and content ownership. If you consider the fact that google only has maybe 30% of the web in its index anyway, how can Google assume that when it encounters 'new' content it doesn't already exist? The fact is that it cannot make the assumption and does not.

        New blog posts on my site are usually indexed within a day. If I get in the habit of posting unique articles on my blog then syndicating the same unique articles the following month while also posting new articles on the blog, then from months 2+ I practice writing high quality content on my blog and syndicating the previous months posts - how much more efficient is that vs writing articles and spinning them all the time?
        First let me say that much of my business comes from article syndication, I'm a proponent of it. The strategy you've outlined above (I made it blue) is a good strategy.

        I understand the theory of submitting high quality articles for hopes they get syndicated to pass on traffic - and also understand the theory of furiously building backlinks with lower quality spun content... but you almost made my point for me:

        Wouldn't you rather spend more time writing high quality, useful, and valuable content that can be dual-purpose for the hopes of BOTH backlink building and syndication?
        Please don't miss the point that multiple copies of the same content don't pass link benefit and that it is better (not essential) to write an article for the specific purpose of syndication.

        I think and hope that's where we're heading with all this...

        "I'd rather have 50, or even 20-30 great backlinks from high quality and hopefully contextually relevant directories using my identical article" - see my last comment


        I understand that people will be less likely to re-post the high quality versions if they're already claimed by me on my blog but who's going to re-post crappy spun content? - Not necessarily. I find a lot of syndication sites do ask for original content, but there are many too who do not.

        There are other benefits to syndicating an article too besides hoping to get that article to rank - when you syndicate and article you want it to rank on your own blog/site but not on the site(s) of your syndication partner(s). If their version ranks above yours, you're giving away your traffic to them. This is the point from the whole debate about establishing content ownership.

        ...such as keyword density and other on-page factors so I think people will still re-publish and now when that article shows up in SERPs despite being posted in the same exact verbatim format on numerous blogs, YOUR post will appear at the top of the SERPs because you're the original author and posted it "first." Not fully understanding the thought process here but I think what you're saying is OK, apart from the "Your post will appear at the top of the SERP's" comment which is often not the case.
        I think we're on a similar wavelength with most of this issue.

        Your fundamental premise (as I understand it) is that your time is better served writing unique articles, submitting them on your site first, then submitting the same articles elsewhere in the hope of attracting syndication, versus driving spinner software and churning out junk for submission to low quality article directories. - with this I wholeheartedly agree, subject to it being undertaken in a way which maximizes your time and effort.

        EDIT - I should have mentioned that I wrote the article I gave you the link to, in case it wasn't obvious.
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        • Profile picture of the author Chris Vendilli
          Originally Posted by rooze View Post

          EDIT - I should have mentioned that I wrote the article I gave you the link to, in case it wasn't obvious.
          Well, in that case I guess you read it :-).

          I appreciate you taking the time to weigh in... I know this is a topic that's been bouncing around for some time especially thanks to the helpful links to past threads by Alexa...

          I just wanted to re-kindle the conversation a little bit after coming across the video I shared in the OP from Web Pro News. Although that videos is several years old I thought it was interested to watch it again with the knowledge of these new markups that help determine "ownership" to Google and see what Warriors here thought of all that...
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  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Originally Posted by Chris Vendilli View Post

    I'm considering changing up the entire way I publish and syndicate my content which basically will allow me to publish a new article on my blog, wait for it to get indexed, and then syndicate the SAME EXACT article to nice directories to build some decent backlinks (of course only AFTER I ensure my published article on my site is indexed and I'm using the markups I've described of course).

    This will allow me (and all of us who are in agreement) to create MORE high quality content by publishing and syndicating the same articles
    Many of us, here, have been building our businesses in exactly this way for quite a while, with considerable success.

    My own syndication-method is described in this post: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5035794

    Originally Posted by Chris Vendilli View Post

    I really hope this is a glimpse of where SEO is heading and that spinning gets it's throat slit...
    The general consensus here, among the article marketers, seems to be that that's already happened ...

    http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5410377

    http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...-articles.html

    http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...necessary.html

    http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5068872

    Originally Posted by Chris Vendilli View Post

    With all of this being said and these new efforts to identify original content and the owners of content do you think that article "spinning" is going to be dead soon?
    I think it depends on how you look at it.

    From the perspective of "the value of spinning", I think it's already dead, now.

    From the very different perspective of "the promotion of spinning", I think, sadly, it may be a whole different story. There's a very large "spinning lobby", with its own commercial/financial interests at stake, that makes enormous efforts to propagate and perpetuate all the SEO theories of the "Urban Myth School of internet marketing" and pull the wool over people's eyes, in this regard. I don't expect the "pro-spinning voices" to subside any time, soon, I'm afraid.

    Perhaps the best that can be hoped for, on that front, is that people will do their own research, keep an open mind, see what authors of the latest editions of established, authoritative textbooks are saying, check original sources (meaning, mostly, Google, of course), and verify things for themselves by testing.

    Originally Posted by Chris Vendilli View Post

    I think this is the direction things are heading...
    I share almost all your thoughts about spinning, but I'm a little less optimistic than you are about that. The vested interests involved are still numerous and vociferous.

    In spite of all the information like this, there are still people with financial motives of their own who will try to convince people that there are duplicate content penalties, that duplicate content includes syndicated content, and that spinning has great benefits. Their number and their voices are perhaps slowly and gradually reducing, but the key words here do seem to be "slowly" and "gradually".

    Meanwhile, of course, many also agree with you ...

    http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...-articles.html

    http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...-articles.html

    http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...-articles.html

    http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...explained.html

    http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...-question.html

    http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ifference.html

    http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...mith-myob.html

    http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...e-wonders.html
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  • Profile picture of the author kalens99
    Article spinning has always been pretty useless. If the article is in the supplemental index then any backlink you get is pretty much worthless. Why waste your time on it? Also, using spinners with automated submission tools may be perceived as a black hat tactic that could get you banned from the index or have your accounts with any directories shut down.
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  • Profile picture of the author YasirYar
    Duplicate content has been around, is around and will be around in the days to come. As Matt Cuts said in the interview that there are many loopholes in the process of syndication and people who are busy writing original content don't have a lot of time to spend on catching goons who are out trying to copy ideas and spinning content so there isn't much anyone can do about it. But unique content speaks for itself and public in my opinion is wise enough to find out who is copying and who is original.
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  • Profile picture of the author Russell Barnstein
    Chris and Alexa are exactly right and anyone who argues otherwise doesn't have their facts in order. But let's be clear that there are two types of article marketing:

    1.) Internet Article Marketing, which describes the practices mentioned above. Most people - especially here in the WF, just syndicate crap to junk directories. But the best practice is to write valuable, meaningful, relevant content that is well-polished and properly presented. When this content has been indexed, then it should be syndicated.

    Now, if you don't have a website, then you can syndicate articles to the directories, but here again the source credit is going to go to whomever gets the piece indexed first, so it is important to choose your directory or publisher carefully.

    Spinning articles is one of the major problems on the web today and people who do it will one day reap what they sow; and I'll smile all the way to the bank. It's spam, people. Anyone who says otherwise needs to have their head - or their motives - examined.

    2.) Traditional Article Marketing - This has been around for about 200 years. You write a high quality piece and you request inclusion using accepted protocols from editors at publications directly related to the work in question. When done right, this method can result in...well, a lot of money. A LOT of money. Real article marketers are doing this and making a killing and becoming widely known for doing so, and everyone wonders what their secret is. There's no secret, people.

    Try submitting a spun article to a live editor at any publisher and see what happens. Hopefully you'll get one of the more scathing editors who will be happy to blast you a new a$$40le and do it using perfect grammar and spelling...and probably some choice words you've never heard before. We can only hope.

    It's not a matter of secret weapons and "killer" programs and strategies to dupe the search engines. It's a matter of not being lazy, not producing crap, and of taking pride in what you do.

    If you're spinning articles you have no pride (or you're just ignorant) and therefore will get no respect from this quarter.
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  • Profile picture of the author HeySal
    Well I've been in enough threads on spinning that I don't even need to comment on that part -- what I am interested in is the "mark ups" Chris is talking about. I'm not a tech and never heard of those before. So what I thought was going to be nothing more than a rehash thread that was almost it's own form of a spin -- I got some new info that is really something I wanted to know.

    Thanks for telling us about those mark ups, Chris. IF there was one thing that made this forum worth tuning into today to read it was your OP. This could have been just another rehash about spinning articles and why it's worthless -- you came up with a unique post out of a subject that's been beat to death. That's what real writers do instead of just spinning the same old hash forever.
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