Internet Marketing Coach
The Article Marketing and Duplicate Content Argument
August 26th, 2007 | 9 commentsI’ve written several articles on article marketing and duplicate content and blogged about the effects of mass article submission. I’ve partaken in several heated discussions at the Warrior Forum on the matter as well. I’ve even written an article marketing ebook about it.
I’ve done so much testing on the matter than my head spins just thinking about it. My ultimate determination is that mass article submission is no longer effective. I’ll still submit an article to article marketer every once in a while and test it against a similar article submitted to only the top few article directories. About 75% of the time, the articles that are not “mass submitted” drive more traffic than those that are mass submitted.
But, I just came across one of Andy’s articles on duplicate article content, which pretty much goes against what I’ve determined, and it’s one of the better arguments I’ve seen so far.
Referring to the #1 best selling book in the world, the bible, as an example, Andy explains why mass article submission shouldn’t be looked at as a negative thing, but more of a positive thing.
It is a very interesting article and Andy makes some very good points. In a perfect world, I think he would be 100% correct. My argument though, is the fact that the SE’s know what type of syndication tools we marketers have in our arsenal. They know that any joe schmoe can pay a few bucks and have their article, whether it’s quality or rubbish, distributed all over the web. My point is, although the bible is all over the place, in most cases it’s in these places by choice and not because someone paid a small fee to distribute it to everyone and their brother.
I believe that when services such as Article Marketer and Isnare first hit the market, mass article submission was extremely effect. Now that the SE’s know what’s going on, it isn’t nearly as effective, as they have tweaked their algorithms to prevent pretty much anyone from getting loads of visitors to their articles that may very well be trash.
Jack Humphrey also wrote a piece on his opinion of the duplicate article content matter, speaking of how Matt Cutts addresses the matter.
I’ve read many of Matt’s posts on the matter and I’ve seen a video or two from Vanessa Fox (formerly in charge of Google Webmaster Tools)
Google doesn’t give out any type of penalty for duplicate content. What they do is if they see the exact same page on the same website, they index one copy. If you don’t specify which one you prefer by restricting the one you don’t, their algorithm will choose.
So, mass article submission really isn’t “duplicate content” but that doesn’t mean it’s effective!!
This is just my opinion of course, but I believe that mass submission is looked at as a light form of spam. Most of your articles will get indexed but the links you obtain will be of low value and they will not rank as well as they would if they were to be submitted to only the top few article directories.
These are my thoughts on the matter, as a result of loads of testing. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
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26th August, 2007 at 8:46 pm
You are missing out on link attribution and article directory linking structure.
I publish original articles on a site, wait a few days or weeks, or even take some 6 month old content.
Then I would publish the same content as an article for syndication, with a link back to the original on my site.
Of course, if all you are doing is publishing articles purely through article directories and none of them get any backlinks, the ones on Ezinearticles will get the majority of the traffic, and possibly you can also get some traffic from goarticles and further syndication if something gets picked up.
I have never seen anyone else other than me highlight the need to link back to the original article on your own site. That is the article you want to rank, not the one on EzineArticles.
Supplemental results is from lack of pagerank - my article on Ezine Articles is in supplemental, on other sites it is not.
You will find that article is in the main SERPs on Article Alley and a few other places, but most likely supplemental on Ezine Articles.
If I published more articles (in my name) on EzineArticles (500+) and got in their top lists it is possible that older articles would have more juice and rank better.
26th August, 2007 at 9:03 pm
I know by only submitting to a few, I’m missing out on a lot of links, but the majority of those links are of very low value. I know EzineArticles.com doesn’t accept articles from mass submission sites, other than external software that others create to do so, but they don’t do it voluntarily.
I link to internal pages of my sites that are relevant to the article, but I don’t put the same article I submit to article directories on my site as well.
I’m sure in some cases articles on some of the better sites like ezinearticles will end up in the sups but I haven’t seen that happen with many of my articles, none that I can think of actually but I may be wrong, I haven’t checked them all.
What I have seen many many times is this.
John writes an article “10 best dog training tips” and puts it up on his site. He then submits it to ezinearticles and a few other good directories.
A few weeks later, sometimes sooner, the article on the article directories outranks the article on his own site. Ironically, I just did a google search for that term and an EzineArticles article comes up at #6
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=10+best+dog+training+tips&btnG=Search
I think it really depends on how high your site ranks. If it’s close to the “authority” ranking, your article will most likely outrank the article. If it’s a MFA site, whether white-hat or not, it’s not going to have as much ranking and your articles are going to outrank your own page.
If I were going to publish articles that are already on my site, I would do as you though. It should at least be indexed on your site first.
27th August, 2007 at 10:00 am
Josh, the key is the link to the original article.
That is how Google determine the original source, and why for instance I am so negative about Wikipedia using Nofollow, because they are not allowed to publish original research - the original research loses the link that lets Google do its thing.
Here is something interesting for you.
That same biblical article was syndicated on WebProNews, and actually has a toolbar pagerank of 6 - that is because it was near the front page on WebProNews at the time of the last export.
The copy on my site published around the same time initially was buried in the serps, because my domain doesn’t carry as much authority. However after a time Google works out its links going back to the original content, and my post wins in the SERPs, and in fact the article in WebProNews is in supplemental because it has now become buried.
27th August, 2007 at 2:19 pm
It’d be unfair for SE’s to penalise duplicate content, because anyone can just rip your content off and you’d suffer as a result. It’d be an easy way to take out a competitors website if they penalised it!
27th August, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Mass submission of articles creates back links, but its the quality of the article and the content on the link the article points to that creates ranking. You could submit an article to the 1,300+ directories of all different Page Rank, but if it points to a crappy site or blog, you still won’t rank well no matter how many back links you have.
There’s a lot of variables to consider before you judge whether mass article submission is good or bad. The above is just one of them.
There’s also competition. A lot of people make the mistake of trying to rank high for a key phrase with a lot of competing sites, but with low daily search numbers.
Then there’s submission relevancy. A lot of the submission software and services on the market won’t let you choose the deepest category choice. The deeper choice you can make gives you the best relevance and thus the highest value toward your site’s ranking.
So there’s three variables right there that place conditions on your analysis that can skew your findings.
Now there’s something else that most people don’t realize. Most of the article directories “hand moderate” their intake. So the more popular, higher ranked sites get more articles in on a daily basis and thus take more time to get your articles posted.
The lower ranked ones have less article intake so are more likely to post your articles that much faster. Though you don’t get the power of their ranking, having your article up on a site quickly can afford you the opportunity to submit those posts to social sites to give you a quick boost to your site’s ranking while the other, more popular and higher ranked site gradually come around to posting for you.
The end result is you get back links that happen gradually over time. You get the initial boost from the lower sites that’ll post quick (sometimes immediately as in the case of Niche Master Directory style sites), and then you get these higher ranked sites “picking up” your article as time goes on.
So even though you mass submit today, it’ll take upwards of a month or two before all the article directories you submit to carry your article creating a nice “natural” flow.
27th August, 2007 at 5:53 pm
Andy,
Good point, I’ve never tested that. In regards to one of your previous comments, it is hard to test articles because you don’t know the direct effect the links have on your rankins (traffic). What I’ve tested though is the direct traffic through the actual articles (resource box) and those mass submitted, in most cases, provided far less traffic. I’ll give your advice a shot though, it does make sense and it couldn’t hurt. Thanks for your comments!
Danny,
I won’t hurt a site if someone rips off their content but the content they stole will never rank well. So actually it’s opposite. When someone steals the source code of a site they thieves site will most likely never rank well. But, if the thief put a lot of work into it and actually promoted it well, in the long run it could cause harm. Think of what the SE’s would think about 2 sites, both with alot of quality links pointing to them, with the exact same content. Who knows, I’d say the thieves site would stop getting indexed at some point in time.
28th August, 2007 at 4:17 am
I post all of my articles to my site first. After it is indexed, I have three rewrites written with the exact same paragraph structure as the original article. I don’t use an automated program. I use a real person to make sure each rewrite has the same paragraph structure and each paragraph expresses the same thought / idea in all the rewrites.
I use Article Post Robot to submit my articles. It includes a feature that lets you place all four articles in a directory on your computer. As you submit, it mixes and matches the paragraphs, titles, and summaries.
So for 4 very unique articles with 6 paragraphs each, you can get (6 x 6 x 6 x 6) 1296 articles that are AT LEAST (1/6) 17% different than the others.
Of course, most are going to be more unique than just 17%. I’ve ran copyscape on several of my articles. It isn’t able to find any copies.
On another note….
Do you allow webmasters to post copies of your articles as long as they include a link to your site? I’ve been surprised at the number of webmasters using nofollow when linking back to my site.
Good Luck,
Brent Crouch
28th August, 2007 at 5:18 am
Some really good points. I’ll continue to go off of my own testing results but these replies give me more ideas. It nothing else, more things to test and try out. I wouldn’t say any of us are dead wrong. The fact is, “there is more than one way to skin a cat.”
You have two main article marketing methods:
1 - Article Marketing for direct traffic
2 - Article Marketing for links
Most of my testing was with method #1 and I realize method#2 will result in traffic further down the road, so I definitely won’t say it’s worthless by any means.
20th September, 2007 at 1:28 pm
I have used Article Marketer in the past and when Google still used the supplemental index, I could see that after a few weeks 95% of all pages with copies of my article were in the supplemental index.
And if I am not mistake, links from supplemental pages don’t count as a backlink.
Now I use only Ezinearticles, Goarticles and Article Dashboard.