Submitting Articles to Multiple Directories = Spamming?

To rehash a famous quote
“You can convince your self of anything but the audience of nothing. ”

The strength of your content and the growth of your community are item of credibility which you can cultivate carefully and yet destroy quite easily. I subscribe to your content via RSS . Which means I subscribe to many other sites via RSS. As soon as I start realising that I am reading your articles in more than one format I am more likely to jus skip the content altogether.

My personal view is that your devaluing the quality and uniqueness of the brand of you. If people such as Mark and I are flagging a “concern” then you may be about to run afoul of the wisdom ( and madness ) of the crowd.

Its a wonderful post youve written here, but who are you trying to convince ? Us or you ?

I love your content Caroline , please do keep posting and asking questions.

Hi Caroline. Thank you for taking the time to respond to my question in such a detailed way!

I would say that you’ve covered the bases both ethically and technically. I also appreciate the fact that you cited that these articles are royalty-free, which means that you make nothing from the articles themselves.

Bum marketing sounds a bit like laying a trail of breadcrumbs to find one’s way to a certain destination, except that each breadcrumb takes you directly to the destination.

You certainly didn’t need to justify this to me and, to be honest, if I’d read your posts more closely, I might not have used the word “spam” – it’s just that an image of all of those horrible e-mails for deposed presidents in Lower Rainforest, Africa looking for your help, since you are a trustworthy (and gullible) soul, in recovering their money that was stolen from them by villains and heathens… that image popped into my head when I scanned your post.

So, in closing, I understand your method better and I’m rather intrigued by it now! I’ll be reading with great interest!

Regards,

Mark

I don’t think it’s any different from what writers have always done; offer their services to whoever needs them, write with a distinctive voice, but with different content, depending on the needs of the audience you are writing for.

I think WereBear is right on the money there, writers have always worked to increase the syndication of their articles…so why would or should it be any different for marketers who use article writing as a method of customer reach? (Provided the article content is worth reader’s time and not just fluff filled with keywords)

If I take the time to research and create a focused article of value to readers interested in the topic, why shouldn’t I do everything I can to maximize the number of readers who will see that article–including duplicate submissions to article directories?

Does everyone interested in “Red Plastic Widgets” only get their reading material from Directory A? Of course not, so if you only submit to that single directory you’re missing out on tons of readers. Isn’t that a shame for you AND those readers who might have enjoyed or benefited from seeing what you had to offer on the topic?

@Nik, note that these articles are just for my niche sites. I wouldn’t actually use this strategy using my own name, which should probably tell me something heh :/

@Mark, hehe it made for an interesting post and I do like to get feedback on my methods. It’s always interesting to throw something out that’s a little controversial.

@WereBear, never thought of it like that… I see it more like submitting a press release or breaking a news story – you don’t just go to one newspaper, you try and make sure you’re on the front page of every paper there is.

@Scott, exactly. The Internet is a big place and it would be pretty boring if there was just one directory, just one search engine, one social site, one blog on each topic etc.

“By the very nature of the beast, these articles are designed to be duplicated and re-published in other places.”

Exactly. To begin with, I’m enjoying the heck out of your newsletter and so I thought I’d come over and comment on a subject I feel is close to home. This is called syndication. Content ezines are syndicated to other feeds and, therefore, your articles show up on blogs or websites that you didn’t send them to. Some of these blogs are spammy-like, but that’s not of your fault. I don’t see even them getting penalized so why should you? Ignore all that rubbish. Take that article and send it flying out there. I have never been penalized and I’ve been doing this for years. It’s called using SEO to your advantage and if you’re smart, you’ll do it. Great topic, btw!

I don’t personally have any issues with this. Most of the articles on directories can be found in a million places, so to me that eliminates spam as a concern when submitting.

Caroline, you for it! Not only did you write this so eloquently, but I recommend you even submit this particular post to all those directories as well. Change it up all you want, change up paragraphs etc if you want to, but get your fabulous work out there! :)

I don’t see why you are spamming, ain’t those directories meant to be submitted with tons of articles for others to read?

To me it seems rather abnormal if you do not use such community to expose your post.

@Book Marketing Buzz, that’s reassuring, thank you :)

@Lin, hehe I really should do some article marketing to build buzz for this blog but I feel like I already spend enough time working on the posts themselves.

It isn’t spam. Truth be told, most article directories are used by article marketers to market themselves or products. If a reader likes your content, they’ll go to your ‘personalised’ blog or whichever site that you have provided content -in their interest-.

I won’t see duplicated articles of yours all over the place as devaluing your brand. As others have commented here, that is part of ’syndication’. And the stuff that you have here which have built your following will most likely remain on this blog exclusively. I don’t think you will spend too much time writing such long detailed articles for article directories. Will you, Caroline? Heh! :)

I don’t have issues with this. Dead tree publications have been doing this for years. Authorities write and re-massage articles on dieting, painting, sewing, etc. all the time. In fact, word-for-word duplicates of recipes, knitting and crochet patterns have always appeared in one source, then been republished elsewhere. The direction of migration is generally from “expensive glossy magazine” to “book” to “pulp craft magazine”– but it can occur in any and all directions. There is no problem with this– provided there is proper attribution and copyright is upheld.

The one difficulty on the web is that you do want to time and place things carefully. It would look odd to readers to see virtually the same content in their feeds all at once. But this may not be a problem for many niche areas. It would not be for knitting because people in those areas don’t subscribe to 200 “knitting” RSS directories to catch the “latests”.

So… when you say you wouldn’t do it for your personal blog, but you would for “niche blogs”– that might be entirely appropriate. This is could be because your personal blog is in a niche were everyone subscribes to all the major directories using the same feed. In contrast, the audience in many “niche” areas just don’t do that.

I see nothing wrong with your approach. As you said, it’s an accepted practice to submit the exact same article to multiple directories – at least you are changing the articles.

And I think your concern about Google and duplicate content is largely unwarranted. To the best of my understanding, Google doesn’t exactly penalize duplicate content – it’s more accurate to say it ignores or disregards the duplicate page. In other words, it looks at both pages and gives credit to the page that was published first.

This is an excellent article, Caroline! I’ve read about this elsewhere, but you’ve really got it well covered in detail.
I just might have to start doing this myself. I’ve got lists of ezine directories safely tucked away deep in the recesses of my forum. Now I need to start making use of those directory lists!

Thanks for all your great articles!! Keep up your excellent work!

Ready……….Set……….BLOG!!!

@YC, no the articles for the directories are around 500-700 words only. And of course no graphics.

@Mark, once I start seeing some traffic I’ll post stats and show which ones are working. Though I imagine that most wont generate any traffic at all and will just be a backlink.

“And whilst we’re on that subject, just why are there so many directories anyway?”

I guess when the first such directory came up, it got very popular and maybe the owner made some nice money and so the idea got duplicated many times. It pretty difficult to answer though, I mean I sometimes wonder why are there sometimes so many (1000+) link submission directories. At least there aren’t a thousand article directories…

Freelance writers (and I am one) do this all the time. Research once, write the article from different angles, and pitch it to different publications.

That being said, I also know a bit about SEO and that Google penalizes for duplicate content. So, if your livelihood depends on Google, I’d make certain your articles only contain 1/3 similar content. Rewrite the rest.

However, if you’re getting into the writing gig – why not pitch some of your best ideas to print media, as well? You never know!

Sincerely,

Meg Meyer

@Meg, no I don’t actually like writing articles very much – they bore me. I like to write for this blog but that’s different. These articles are solely to drive traffic and create backlinks.

Caroline, I love your attitude and your mission, but we sure don’t see eye-to-eye on this subject!

Have you done any research on anything (outside of IM) lately on the ‘net? If we can define “useful” to include “unique”, “relevant”, “timely”, and “interesting”, then how much truly useful material did you find?

I think it’s sad that the Internet is so cluttered. And I think it’s sad that much of the clutter has been created in the name of marketing, i.e. the more I publish, the more exposure I get, and the more money I (might) make.

Submitting multiple versions of the same article to various directories may be OK because it’s really not against the rules, and, besides, everybody does it… but, in doing so, are you not contributing to the clutter?

I know that article directories and blogs and websites are intended to let anyone publish anything, anytime. Wonderful. Now think of all the absolutely worthless material out there. Not so wonderful. Carbon copies. Graffiti. Inane, even.

Do I want to put an end to all that? Heck, no! Al Gore gave us all the right to create a blog, distribute an article, carry a sign, or whatever. And we don’t have to read other peoples’ stuff if we don’t want to.

But wouldn’t it be cool if publishers would exercise some restraint, if for no other reason than the good of the Internet?

Imagine if Coca-cola could only advertise on milk cartons.
The company would never reach half of its target market.

Syndication is all about sharing.

I find it disheartening that so many of us have been hog-tied in our creative thinking because of almighty Google.

People don’t seem to realize that search engines are simply the machinery behind the world’s largest social media network! (There’s a topic for a future blog…heh)

How important can serps be, when I get a reader to my blog who was actually searching for “old pizza parlor designs”?

Cheers,

Mitch

@John, yes all very true, but this is an experiment in traffic. It might be interesting to run with multiple directories for a while, and then try just a single one (the best one) for a while and see if it makes a difference. It may well be that the additional submissions don’t t make a difference but I’m not ready to test that yet.

@Mitchell, well for me personally, Google account such a tiny proportion of my traffic that I don’t worry about it too much. Though I do wonder if I’ll get more SE traffic over time as the blog gets more backlinks etc.

There aren’t any problems with doing that and no, it’s not spamming. Article marketing is pure gold and you’re genius for doing it! :)

Do you think it is okay, to submit an original article I wrote to my website, multiple online publishers and forums? (For example, ezinearticles.com, ideamarketers.com, hubpages.com, getacoder.com, blogger.com, myspace.com, etc?)

I will write an article and will “manually” submit it to around 30 publishers, put it on forums and my website.

I started to get 2nd and 3rd page rankings to my keywords on google in less than 1 month of doing this.

Now I am reading I can be penalized?

Any suggestions on what I should and should not be doing? Thank you.

Hi – I am struggling with the problem of whether to submit the same article to multiple article directories.

I’ve done this in the past and my targeted web page went up to # 6 on Google quite quickly and then dropped out of sight! The page itself now has no page rank (gray) so I think it was penalized by the Google seach engine algorithms.

Any comments?

@Mike, I wouldn’t worry. When a new page enters the index Google ranks it very quickly and then it takes a closer look at it a day or two later and this often results in a lower ranking or even removal. That is just the way Google works and is normal. It can take a while for a new page to become a little more stable in the serps.

Hey. I love your blog. here is my thing….i don’t see ANYTHING wrong with re-writing articles and republishing them. People have to understand, that this is going to happen anyway. The Internet is nothing but rehash content and you have to almost remake content in order for the content to stay fresh and for people to find the material.

Older content gets loss in the Internet because Google only pays attention to fresh content. People only have a problem with it when the “small fry” people like us use the method to make a buck,,,,but no one says anything when Google does it, or when the huge fortune 500 companies do it like Ebay or Amazon.

If you noticed, Google DOES NOT give duplicate content penalties unless you are hosted on a free site or blog like Blogger. What they will do is de-index your article from the search engines, but you will not get a duplicate content penalty. There is no such thing.

I’m thinking Google put this rumour out to scare Internet marketers from using the practice to make money. Google doesn’t want you to find free methods to making money online, they want you to use their over-rated expensive uneffective Google Adwords campaign for your advertising. ITS ALL ABOUT GREED AND MONEY ON THEIR PART!

So what if a couple of Internet marketers get on the web and advertise their products. This is the ONLY WAY to get traffic that is plausible and expensive (in most cases free).

Marketers can get traffic using the following methods:

1) Expensive over-rated PPC advertising
2)Paid to post-Pay a high page rank blogger to write blog reviews on your site (most overcharge to do this and their is no guarantee the blogger will keep your blog post on their blog.)
2)Blog commenting- Google has scared bloggers into believing that their site would be penalized if they kept their comment section dofollow, so now, there is only a small amount of bloggers with dofollow blog comment sections!
2)Forums-most forums have switched to nofollow, so you won’t get any SEO traffic and the only people who will see your advertisement are members of the forum
3)Article marketing-most effective BUT must submit to multiple article directories (I’m talking over 100 a day!) YOU DONT have to re-write articles to get traffic…it takes a while for Google to find your article and de-index it. Just switch the title around and use a different anchor text (keyword text) and different resource box for each article directory. BUT if you want to gain page rank in teh search engines ,you want your articles to STICK, so it would be a good idea to re-spin or rewrite the article.

So in conclusion, the best solution would be to rewrite articles and submit to article directories. To be quite honest, I DONT re-write my articles. I take one article and submit it to over 100 article directories per day with a different resource box and title and I receive over 500 visitors per day. I do this all by hand, because it is a lot easier than writing 10 articles and submitting them to multiple article directories.

I get more traffic by submitting one article to multiple article directories than I do writing multiple articles and submitting them to only 10. BUT my articles after a while lose steam and i stop getting traffic from them. but guess what? That is going to happen regardless!

So I say, rewrite your articles, submit one article to multiple article directories, do what you have to do to get a LOT of traffic! I do, and i get 500 visits per day. That is 5 sales at $200 a day! :)