Web…. everything is connected by sticky strings of information… or
“There is no such thing as bad publicity when you’re reading about yourself, unless its your obituary.”
One of our clients was concerned that their name and article was being associated with a ‘cheap’ discount domain name because their article was posted on a travel site offering cheap airline tickets, while they are offering a 4 star travel destination.
Unfortunately it is a balancing act, and a bit of a Catch-22. Protecting brand image is important – so the client does need to make the call whether to continue article spinning, but let’s review just what these articles are before doing that.
We spin an article to create a gazillion non-duplicated articles by inserting synonyms everywhere we can. Sometimes the syntax and grammar gets a little clunky, but we do make an extra effort to make sure the content reads well under all combination of wording.
These articles then get submitted through subscription services to either blogs or article directories based on subject category.
These subject categories are standard off the shelf categories – and while everyone has a different list, they’re basically the same.
Travel and Leisure
Travel and Leisure, Boating
Travel and Leisure, Aviation
etc
Within each category there are dozens of websites that will post an article with backlinks to your site.
They accept the article because they want content, and then they display Google Ads in the hopes that people end up finding the article.
So it is an exchange of decent RELEVANT content , we get a decent relevant backlink to the website
One way to gauge the effectiveness of article posting is to subscribe to Google Alerts for key search terms. The fact that these are showing up in Google Alerts is fantastic for a website. It means the content is getting indexed by Google and the backlink to the site is getting recognized and evaluated, and Google spiderbots will follow the link to your site too – checking relevancy, registering what your site is about based on the anchor text link and all the keywords it discovers. Also the fact that it happens quickly is very telling that Google respects the sites and indexes them quickly. You might notice some Google Alerts popping up for things that are dated six months ago.
Waiting six months is a lifetime on the internet. Not all directories and blogs are created equal, and Google is a bit random (by design) so the more exposure you get the better.
The primary purpose of these article submissions is to get the backlinks. This is what SEO and getting organic search traffic is all about. Backlinks mean value and quality score for your website. The article submissions are foundation building blocks for creating web presence for your site.
They are not really about what is to be presented to the target audience.
Having the articles read by people that follow the link, isn’t even really expected or intended. However they do, traffic does arrive directly from these sites, but it is not why we’re doing the article submissions. An extremely small percentage of people that see these articles are also looking for your site — but your site better have the relevant content on the site, and is getting indexed etc….
here’s some of the Catch-22 part:
So in the short run, there is an issue that people searching topics might actually find these articles rather than find your website, but then if you do the math it shrinks into a minuscule probability that there will be a negative connotation perceived by a target audience. Most of the odd-ball and undesirable content is in adword ads, that people disregard. The handful of cheesy domain names just don’t add up to much in the big picture.
Our articles are set not to display on adult, gambling, on-line pharmacy, or weight loss sites… but other than selecting categories to submit we’re at the mercy of sites.
I would stress that the benefits far outweigh the chance of any negative perceptions – exponentially. The Google Alerts mash ads and article together and tend to make us focus on those articles a lot more than anyone else does.
Concerns about protecting brand are valid and it is worth talking about. But these links are fundamental to having people find the
Web…. everything is connected by sticky strings of information…