What is article spinning and why should you avoid it?
This article will answer both these questions and make sure you don’t fall into a common SEO trap.
What is article spinning?
Article spinning is taking content such as a blog post and putting it into a bit of software to produce multiple versions of it.
Why do people do it?
Article spinning saves time and money. Imagine you had an article on small business marketing tips for example. If you’ve written this yourself, it will take you some time to write another 10 versions of the same article.
If you’ve paid a copywriter to do it and want 10 versions, they will obviously charge you for their time spent doing this.
There was a time (before Google got wise) when people would use article spinning services to get entries onto multiple article directory sites for SEO purposes.
Why should I avoid it?
Because recent Google updates have placed more emphasis on quality content than ever before, and many of the ‘spun’ articles are not up to scratch.
Links from most article directories now carry little weight in terms of SEO anyway, so if you paid for an article spinning service, you’d be wasting your money.
Google is trying to make the web a more relevant and interesting place and of course to help people find what they want as quickly as possible. Unique, well-written content should be a major component of your SEO strategy.
If you try to take shortcuts, they will backfire in terms of wasted money and lack of impact on your search engine results.
What should I be doing instead?
Forget cheap, quick fixes and start taking your online marketing seriously. Either set time aside to write content your target market will want to read, or pay a copywriter to do it.
A word of caution, you get what you pay for generally when hiring a copywriter, so don’t be sucked into another trap of always going for the cheapest option.
Rather than focusing on lots of versions of the same article, invest your time in coming up with a range of interesting topics that will engage your potential customers.
If you liked this article, you should also read: Five copywriting craters you don’t want to fall into
Image credit: defret
Jamie, a well presented and realistic assessment of what will be needed for small businesses to succeed online – in short, ‘hard work!’
It’ll take a good understanding of what an owners target audience needs, and adding value to their lives with great content and services/products.
It takes planning, execution and evaluation to get their in the end – work the plan and adjust if needed.
Hi Jude, thanks for your comments – I totally agree with everything you say. Too many people think they can get away with shortcuts in online marketing, but it just doesn’t work that way. Like you say, get a plan together and go with it, but be prepared to make tweaks along the way.
Jamie thanks for this well presented and to the point article. I think many link builders lose sight of the end goal which as you have said is Quality, unique and compelling content and focus solely on the means which is building as many links as possible. Building quality links from a diverse set of sources takes imagination and hard work and as Google gets smarter, there are no short cuts to be taken.
Your comments are spot on Tom. Too many people look for a quick fix when it comes to link building and SEO, but it takes time, research and hard work to get it right.