A few "principles" of SEO that have been bothering me for some time...

by culvers

Posted: 16 years ago 15 replies

Over the last few months I have learnt so much from a combination of reading this forum, taking action, and experimentation. I have thought about different ways of promoting my site, and there is something that keeps bothering me that I can't figure out. People seem to have mixed opinions on this, and I was hoping a warrior could give me some insight.

My problem related to article marketing for link building purposes. I used to be of the opinion that you should only submit unique articles to article marketing directories, or else the link would be near worthless. The thinking was that by submitting new unique articles every time, it was somehow a strong link.

My thoughts then changed, as i got thinking about popular articles. If you produce a good article and its reposted all over the internet with links back to your site, thats a good thing right? So how can the links be worthless if people strive for this kind of attention? Surely its a good thing to have your content reproduced in as many places as possible with links back to your site?

So my next thought was why the heck am i spending time producing only unique content? Why dont i just create aricles, and then submit them to every single article directory I can find. Where as before I was submitting a unique article to ezine, why dont i submit it to ezine and 100 other directories and get 100 times the number of links. I should point out that I am writing articles about everything and anything, creating them solely so I can place a link to my site. So they are very rarely related to my keyword, therefore I dont post them on my website. (they have nothing to do with my niche sites)

Im sorry if this is too long winded or does not make sense, basically what im trying to figure out is - do you really need to bother writing unique articles every time? Is it worthwhile publishing each article in as many places as possible? Will google index it if it sees the same article all over web 2.0 properties and article directories? Basically I have created about 100 unique articles and sent them to ezine so i can have 100 backlinks = should I sent them to 10 article directories and get 1000 backlinks? 100 article directories, blogs etc and get 10000 backlinks?

If you read this, thanks for taking the time. I really want to put this one to bed, and stop debating it with myself.

#bothering #principles #seo #time

bgmacaw 16 years ago

There are basically two article strategies.

First, there's the article blast method where you shoot out as many low quality articles as you can to as many article directories as you can. In this scenario you're depending on getting a lot of links from a lot of directories. The weak part of this strategy is that article directory links often aren't seen by the search engines since they don't spider the whole site and, when they are, they're usually low quality links.

The second is the targeted article method where you produce a quality article and only submit it to a few of the top article directories. In this scenario, you're counting on getting the quality link plus direct traffic from the article site as well as having your article syndicated to various blogs and other auto-content sites that preserve your link. The weak part of this strategy is that you have to be able to produce quality articles that people want to syndicate and that you're depending on your link being kept intact.

Either method will work to some degree but the second typically produces better results if you put the work into it.
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- SlavaRybalka 16 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by bgmacaw
  
  The weak part of this strategy is that article directory links often aren't seen by the search engines since they don't spider the whole site and,...
  
  just ping them ))
  
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Happy_Balance 16 years ago
...article marketing for link building purposes...

Hi culvers,
So many other people do this, how could it actually help you?

1) Google does not literally have anything named "the duplicate content penalty" (need proof / google it :p)
That info (above) is straight from a Google Inc blog post.

2) If you copy a sentence out of an article which has been posted in multiple places, then you get this type of result from google. Which site is being penalized for duplicate content?

(Keeping in mind standard SEO is well over 50% BS)
- You want to produce truly unique content (for example), if you are looking to build a following of people who enjoy your original contributions to the Internet.
- Article sites might be good to gain you some exposure, but the back-links can be 'discounted' by Google, so then they don't really help much for SEO.
I hope this helps clear it up.
Have fun.
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culvers 16 years ago

thanks for the replies. So you think article marketing for link building purposes is not very effective due to this discounting that takes place?

By link building, i mean churning out articles on many different topics solely so you can place a link in the resource box. For example, i have a site about kites, yet i write 100 articles about everything from cars to travel to food, and link back to my kite site in the resource box.

Secondly, in the above example, would it be worth submitting those 100 articles to as many directories and web 2.0 blogs as i could manage?

I should point out, my articles are still pretty decent (not junk), they are just not on the subject matter of my niche sites, as the niches are so micro, that its difficult to produce more than a handful of unique articles on them.
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BobJutsu

16 years ago

Well, they should be about the site you are linking to...thats just a given.

First, there's the article blast method where you shoot out as many low quality articles as you can to as many article directories as you can. In this scenario you're depending on getting a lot of links from a lot of directories. The weak part of this strategy is that article directory links often aren't seen by the search engines since they don't spider the whole site and, when they are, they're usually low quality links.

So you are saying that if you send your article to lots of places, it is, by proxy, a low quality article? And, that the SEs won't see the link because they don't spider the article directories?

The second is the targeted article method where you produce a quality article and only submit it to a few of the top article directories. In this scenario, you're counting on getting the quality link plus direct traffic from the article site as well as having your article syndicated to various blogs and other auto-content sites that preserve your link. The weak part of this strategy is that you have to be able to produce quality articles that people want to syndicate and that you're depending on your link being kept intact.

And now you are saying that if you fail to submit it to more than a few directories, it is a quality article? And that, since it exist in fewer places, more people will syndicate it and more of the links will be seen and followed?

Seriously folks, an article is an article. The entire premise is that you keep writing and keep a constant flow of content being birthed into the interwebs. Yes, article links will start to drop off fairly quickly when they are being blasted out, but that is why you keep writing. Write, blast, write, blast, write, blast, write, blast. I'm not saying to write crap articles, or even to blast to every directory you can find, but the concept is to keep as many articles as possible going out so you are creating links faster than they are dropping off and being discounted. The life expectancy of an article and it's link is only a few months at best.

Secondly, as far as hoping people are going to use them...well, a few may be picked up by some really good sources, but if the link is in tact it was probably scraped. And nobody scraping article directories is reading the articles first, or gives a crap what it says so long as it fulfills the keywords. Hell, even when scraping content the links are going to be scrubbed out a lot of the time.

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bgmacaw

16 years ago

Originally Posted by BobJutsu

So you are saying that if you send your article to lots of places, it is, by proxy, a low quality article? And, that the SEs won't see the link because they don't spider the article directories?

It won't necessarily be a low quality article but, as an overall strategy, most people use lower quality spun articles for this purpose.

Also, article directories that get a lot of submissions and aren't authority sites won't have all of their new content spidered. That is, unless the person submitting the article takes the time to ping the new article and to do some minor backlinking to the article.

These are things you can observe if run an article directory.

Originally Posted by BobJutsu

No, that's not what I was saying. Go back, re-read and try to understand the post rather than trying to be a confrontational know-it-all.

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culvers 16 years ago

sorry but why should an article be about your website? If you are only using it for backlink methods? Surely a writer promoting his writing website would write a whole host of different topic samples, although none of his articles will actually be about "writing" so to speak. Equally, why should articles used for building links to a kite site be about kites?

This thread proves why I am so confused, 3 replies, and 3 different answers
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- c0rv3tt3 16 years ago
  
  I am curious about this as well.
  To make things simpler for everyone, Culver is creating micro niche sites. He is probably doing the xfactor method of solely using articles for backlinks. He is simply wondering if he can write articles and submit them to more places then ezine to speed up the process. Will he be punished for submitting the same article to mutiple directories?
  
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  bgmacaw 16 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by c0rv3tt3
  
  Will he be punished for submitting the same article to mutiple directories?
  
  No, this is called syndication just like news services do.
  
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  SlavaRybalka 16 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by c0rv3tt3
  
  Will he be punished for submitting the same article to mutiple directories?
  
  Only Google knows.
  I would add 2-3 sentences at the beginning and at the end, with a keyword, plus some minor variations just to increase my chances.
  It works.
  
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  4morereferrals 16 years ago
  
  Why one would solely use article directories as a backlink source - and all that hard work, approval, account registration, copyscape, limitations where the backlinks can go - how long it will take to go live on the site, and then the directories adsense ALL over it and other links to their offers in your content ????? and the fact that there is literally 100+ outbound links on nearly all EZA articles ... - can that be a good thing? I dont know - doubtful.
  
  I think the whole discussion boils down to .. will Google index my duplicate content .. AND stick it in cache [ which logically represents the best known probability that we are getting some credit for the backlink ]
  
  The answer is yes google will. What type of weight or discount they may or may not apply to the links contained inside this deuplicate content is debatable. Other say zero - other say - same as most anything else.
  
  Links in dupe content seem to hit the supplemental index of google after it indexes about 170 pieces of it or 10x17 pages of serp results. [ when viewing results at a time ]
  
  I did one experiment with the panic attack blog. Google stopped showing results of my exact dupe content on different domains and sub domains after about 17 pages. The it was - "click here to see the duplicate results we omitted from the results" [ supplemental index ]
  
  As with anything SEO these days - your mileage may vary.
  
  Best of luck ...
  
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  culvers 16 years ago
  
  so basically, nobody knows
  
  I think its time for a brain cleansing where i forget everything I have read, and move forward using only what I experience first hand as a guide...
  
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Gary Becks 16 years ago

First off there are much easier and more effective methods of getting backlinks than writing articles. You are really spinning your wheels and going nowhere writing articles for backlinks. I would rather find some high pr pages to get blog comments than spend all day writing articles. They have had very little effect on my serps in the past.

Anyhow, if you do choose to go this route I would get a good spinner. I use Magic Article Rewriter. Write the article once, spin the hell out of it (70% or higher) and mass rewrite. You can have hundreds or thousands of unique articles at a time. Then submit these articles here Free Traffic System - Increase Targeted Website Traffic with Free Unlimited One Way Links. I would also recommend you use Web 2.0 properties as opposed to article directories. Name your blogs on these properties accordingly so they have keywords similar to your site. You will see a lot more links sticking using Web 2.0 sites then article directories. Not only that but you are not limited to 2 links in the resource box by these sites.

As I said though, I would bypass Articles altogether, the only reason I even bother with them is because they are very easy to get on a mass scale and sometimes you just need a higher quantity of backlinks.
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SlavaRybalka 16 years ago

From my own experience as a SEO consultant I have found out that there are several different key points in your question that should be considered separately.

1. I've submitted articles to different directories and what I found out is that if you want real traffic then ezinearticles is the #1 source of it. GoArticles and other article directories have never sent such big amount to my websites as ezine does. Never.

2. If you are concerned about the number of incoming links as a ranking factor of your website, then I'd say that you should try to get at least 1 indexed link from every article directory available on the Internet. So, make sure you post at least 1 article to every directory.

3. Finally, if we are speaking about the uniqueness of the content it's enough to write first 100 words just from your head, copy 2-3 passages from somewhere else, write a couple of sentences from the end. Voila, you've got indexed.

Hope this will help.
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mikkosant 16 years ago

Focus on starting out with high quality links from niche sites and directories, then move on to all the standard linking practices. Like others have said, take press release syndication for example...You write one unique article and it gets published on hundreds, if not thousands of news sites and blogs. This can only gain you credibility and help improve the ranking of your site if done properly.

Check out this thread.
http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...eza-first.html
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