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The new buzz on the internet is all about getting one-way
links by distributing content to other sites in exchange
for backlinks. As with every other SEO or website promotion
technique ever devised, there are plenty of newbie myths
about it that can ruin your chance for success before
you even start.
Newbie Myth 1: The "Duplicate content penalty."
Some webmasters worry that if the content on their
sites is suddenly on hundreds of other sites, search
engines will inflict a "duplicate content penalty."
Why is this concern unjustified?
* If this were true, every major newspaper and news
portal website would now be de-indexed from the search
engines, since they all carry "duplicate content"
from the news wires such as
Reuters and the Associated Press.
* Thousands of self-promoting internet gurus have proven
that distributing content is an effective method of
improving search engine rank.
* Even more thousands of content websites have proven
that republishing this content does not carry any search
engine penalty.
True, the first website to publish an article often
seems to be favored by search engines, ranking higher
for the same content in searches than higher-PageRank
pages with the same content. But the "duplicate"
pages do show up in the search engine results, even
if lower than the original site. Meanwhile, the reprint
content has no effect on the ranking of a site's other
pages.
The only duplicate content penalty is for duplication
of content across pages of a single website. Meanwhile,
there is a sort of "copyright theft" penalty,
whereby someone who copies content without permission
can be manually removed from search engine indexes out
of respect for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
But that penalty is only for flagrant theft, not minor
mistakes in attributing reprint content.
Newbie Myth 2: The goal is to get in article clearinghouse
websites.
There are over 100 popular, high-traffic websites that
act as clearinghouses for content made available for
redistribution. These websites include isnare.com, amazines.com,
and goarticles.com.
Many novice content-distributors are upset when the
article clearinghouse websites, with tens of thousands
of articles each with a backlink, pass negligible PageRank.
But the point of distributing content to those websites
is for other website owners to find your content and
put it on their websites--not to get a backlink directly
from the clearinghouse website (though this is sometimes
an unexpected bonus).
Plus, to maximize PageRank-passing links, you also
have to submit articles to website owners individually.
It's not a small amount of work. But there's no substitute
for a polite, individually crafted email recommending
a website owner complement his or her existing articles
with one you've written.
Myth 3: Any content will do.
Reality: It should be obvious that many website owners,
jealous of their link popularity, will only republish
exceptionally high - quality content. For articles,
this means a unique point of view and solid information
that cannot be found just anywhere, ideally presented
in compelling language in a web-optimized format by
a professional published writer. You can conduct a content
distribution campaign with bad content, but you'll be
handicapping yourself from the start.
Myth 4: Distributing content is easy. Just hit "send."
Reality: Content distribution campaign requires skillful
planning to target publisher websites effectively.
This is essentially a four-step process.
1. You must identify the categories of websites most
likely to republish your articles. These categories
range from the very broad, such as internet, business,
and family, and can go as narrow as family-friendly
internet businesses.
It's a careful balance: you need to make your target
category narrowly relevant to maximize the value of
the link and your chances of getting your article accepted
for publication. But if you target too narrow a category,
you'll lower the maximum number of links you can hope
to get.
For instance, a website on web content writing has
to target its content distribution to more than just
sites focusing on web content. There are only so many
websites devoted to web content as a topic of interest,
and besides, many such websites would be competitors.
Distribution should target broadly relevant categories,
such as web design, webmaster issues, writing, marketing,
business, website promotion, and SEO. Yet some broadly
related categories, such as internet or publishing,
are not relevant enough to yield good results.
2. To maximize success, you must have articles custom-created
for each major category you want to submit to. "Incorporating
Content in Web Design" and "Marketing with
Content" would be possible titles for a web content-writing
website owner targeting web design and marketing websites,
respectively. An article about web design won't appeal
as strongly to marketers, or vice versa, so simply submitting
to websites having to do with "the web" would
not be as effective.
3. For maximum success, articles custom-written for
a category then often have to be refined for sub-categories.
For instance, "Incorporating Content in Web Design"
becomes "Incorporating Content into Flash Web Design,"
or "Incorporating Content into Accessible Web Design."
Sometimes the refinement is just a "find and replace"
of one keyword for another, sometimes just in the title.
Sometimes, entire paragraphs have to reworded or removed.
4. Once you've identified sub-categories of websites,
you still have to be able to meet the requirements of
individual websites. Some sites only publish articles
up to 500 words, some only do how-to articles. Owners
of high-ranking websites can afford to be choosey. To
really maximize results within a sub-category, you need
at least three different articles of varying lengths
and focus specifically geared toward that sub-category.
In the end, distributing content for website promotion
and inbound links is a marvelously effective way of
promoting a website. But it's not magic beans. Like
anything else having to do with achieving success on
the web, it takes hard work and knowledge to be successful.
About the author:
Joel Walsh is the owner of UpMarket Content, offering
a fully managed content distribution campaign guaranteed
to get you at least one hundred one-way inbound links
for every three pages of content: http://upmarketcontent.com/website-promotion-package.htm
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