Search engines & content questions?

[ladystrange]

Some of you remember me I purchase articles and also write.
I am new to writing & content. I am wondering if anyone as any inside info or a system for getting traffic concerning articles giving away free content ( I know Bad word here) for publicity. I have questions like the following.
1. If you give away content, should you have different content on your site? Will the search engines read that as a duplicate site?
2. Are you better off giving away the keyword rich articles or keeping them for yourself?
3. Where are some of the best places to give away your content?
4. Then I have a question for constant content- Here the requirement is that articles are not listed or duplicated elsewhere. Does this count for free articles too? Because most sites where you write for publicity do not require that they are not posted elsewhere?

I would like to develope a system because I am going at this blindly and sporatically. I need to get a routine going because it is making me insane to not have a plan.

Thank you so much I know you guys here are always so helpfull

[mattsterrr]

Duplicated content is always considered duplicate content and you will get penalized for it. You only need to change the structure of the sentences around and remember to obviosuly include a static text link to your site in the article.

Keyword rich articles should be used for the free articles but this doesn't mean you shouldn't also use keyword rich articles for your own site.

Check out this link http://www.info-sales.co.uk/index.php?page=article for a database with hundreds of article submission sites.

You can post duplicate content in the free and you can also charge for a usage.

That's my take on it all anyway.

[another_mother]

Hi Ladystrange,

1. You definitely want fresh, original content on your own site. SE's do penalize for duplicate content, and any content that is used on more than one site is considered duplicate. Like Matt mentioned, a quick re-write should do the trick.

2. Keyword dense articles that are relevant to your site or product are good for your site, as long as you don't overdo it. Using them too many times in short articles is a definite no-no. Using a keyword about twice per every hundred words (or 10-15 x in a 500 word article) should be sufficient. Keywords should also be incorporated into the article in a way that makes sense and offers something informative or interesting to your visitors. An article should not read like a list of search terms instead of an actual article. You can certainly give away keyword articles (with links) to other sites as well.

3. There are all kinds of "article mills" out there that will accept free articles with links. Type "free content" or "free web content" into your favorite search engine, and you'll find a huge list of sites looking for free content.

4. You can post duplicates (reprints) here at CC. You just can't sell them under a unique or full rights license. You can sell them under a usage license or post them for free.

Hope this helps,

~Sherry

[ladystrange]

Thanks for being so helpful. I never really thought of re-wording them a little, that is a good idea. I am also exploring the site link you sent me there seams to be a lot of related information there.

[mattsterrr]

As far as promoting websites goes, using article submission sites is pretty effective. It can compliment a link building campaign nicely if you have a popular topic and a well written article.

Best of all, of course, it's a lot cheaper (free) than paying someone to get hundreds of links. I hate link building, it's so dull..

There are sites that can check whether an article contains areas that are deemed to have been plagiarized but you need to have had one article published and indexed before they will work and they're not entirely foolproof (some of the more unscrupulous writers (otherwise referred to as 'those who bring the profession a bad name' as well as other names I can't mention) know how to beat them with very little effort but the work still gets penalized. They're the kind of writers that frequent other boards and sites though, I'm sure).

Copyscape is a popular free one, but if you want a more effective one you will have to pay and it's not really worth it, because hopefully you can trust yourself not to plagiarize.

[constant-content]

Duplicated content is always considered duplicate content and you will get penalized for it. You only need to change the structure of the sentences around and remember to obviosuly include a static text link to your site in the article.

This is debatable, I would say duplicate content doesn't help you but it won't necessarily hurt you.

Now that said I think posting articles to free article directories is a complete waste of a good article and a complete waste of time. It is a big misconception thinking submitting articles to article directories will bring a large amount of traffic and great backlinks.

So your article is on one hundred sites with one hundred links, but the links hold no weight since this is just duplicate content. The traffic you get from these links is minimal since they are just a bunch of free article directories.....

If your going to submit your article to websites, choose one or two large ones that will use your article and that have REAL visitors.. This way you get a link that counts and you get real traffic from people REALLY interested in your article.

[mattsterrr]

Fair enough. You undoubtedly know more than me, you are after all a webmaster yourself.

That said, I've gained quite a number of backlinks from sites that have picked my content up from article submission sites and many of the people I write for use articles in a similar way on a regular basis with new websites.

Even if they only carry the weight of a PR2 page, the effort of writing one article and submitting to ten decent content sites is much less than getting backlinks from similarly ranked pages through a link building campaign. If you want PR4 or higher you have to start looking at paying for the links in many cases.

Why do webmasters use the free content that is published on this site?

[Matt makes a mental note to tell his customers that they are wrong.]

[constant-content]

Why do webmasters use the free content that is published on this site?

Many people are still under the impression any content including free content is good content. A perfect example of this was all the free article directories that sprung up all over the place. Webmasters looking to make a quick buck on free content. They soon realized it was a waste of time... thousands of pages of content an not making much at all. Now if that content was unique, that's another story.

Even if they only carry the weight of a PR2 page, the effort of writing one article and submitting to ten decent content sites is much less than getting backlinks from similarly ranked pages through a link building campaign. If you want PR4 or higher you have to start looking at paying for the links in many cases.

The question is are you getting traffic because of those backlinks? You can look at your logs or any decent stats program and see where your traffic is coming from. I'm willing to bet you want see much if any from these directory sites.

[ladystrange]

Weather it hurts your rankings or not. Articles keep visitors on your site- If you keep them interesting. To me the longer a visitor stays the more chances that they will make a purchase. Some articles I write, are keyword driven, but some are for pure entertainment or consumer information. I notice the ones that are not keyword driven get more visitors because they are interesting to the consumer. I think it is a balancing act.

Once I was under the impression that a duplicate page would penalize the entire site but that I do not think is the case. I read somewhere that google lists the first copy received and the others loose rank but it does not affect the site as a whole.

Well I guess I opened a debatable can of worms but thanks for the feedback