We’ve talked about the importance and benefits of article marketing which sends your articles with your link out into cyberspace to bring you backlinks, search engine spiders and human visitors. Now, let’s look at something else that an article directory can do for you…give YOU fresh content.
Just like your articles can be syndicated, you can use articles on your website that are written by other people. Choose good articles and you can bring people and search engines your way. If you’ve been doing keyword research and found out that you have a specific area of your niche that’s missing on your site, you can quickly fill this gap with free articles. This can definitely benefit you in many ways. There are a few things to keep in mind, though.
Things to Keep in Mind When Using Free Content
1. You must follow the t’s & c’s of the article directory with respect to how the article is published. This rule typically states that you must keep the article complete intact including the links. Not following these rules is against the terms of service for those sites and could either get you in trouble with your web host or cost you status in some of your affiliate programs (such as Google Adsense)
2. Because you’ll be linking in a post to a different website, have a good look at the article you choose to publish. Take a look at the site it links to. Is that a site you want to link to? Is it a competitor? What’s the page rank? Carefully considering all these factors can impact your site in many ways.
3. You’ll want to continue to put unique content on your own website. While it can be easy and a time-saver to use ‘guest posts’ or syndicated articles as content, If you do nothing but scrape other sites for content, eventually you’ll lose rank with Google and could find that you’re converting fewer visitors to customers on your site. It’s a good idea to ensure that the vast majority of your site’s content is unique and your own.
About Sean Rasmussen
Hi Sean,
Again this is something I hadn’t thought of using. I guess you would really have to check out the site the article came from to make sure you would want to link to them. Fortunately, there are lots of tools to help me get the information I need before making a decision.
Hi Sean
Are you saying an odd article every now and then from an article directory won’t effect your standing or page rank with Google? I thought if you used an article from one of these sites you would have duplicate content and get penalized for it?
Hi Sean,
I would also be a bit worried about being penalized for duplicate content, but if you are genuinely adding value to your visitors then you should not be. My thought on this would be to keep this as a minimal and keep creating your own original content. Very good point about checking all the outbound links – thanks!
Hi Sean,
A great idea it is to use syndicated article content as a “guest post” on my website from time to time. I’m pleased to read here that this is possible. I have a friend who is doing a similar thing with his website, and with great success.
He’s not always using article directories as content however he allows professional people to advertising on his site with links to their own sites. His idea is popular and he has requests for permission to appear on his site. The syndication suits both parties. It’s used successfully as a method to increase traffic flow to both people’s sites.
From time to time is fine Jill, just don’t overdo it