Why Article Spinning Doesn’t Work
Article spinning is one of those black hat SEO tactics that gives the rest of the industry a bad reputation. The basic premise of article spinning is that your write one article and submit it to hundreds of article submission sites. You might change up some of the content by replacing certain keyword with synonyms, but about 90% of the article remains the same. Some article spinners use automation software that can get around a site’s CAPTCHA so you don’t even have to bother with the submission process. You load an article full of links and send it on its merry way. Sounds like a great way to get links, right?
Article spinning is the easy way out!
I think a lot of small business owners turn to article spinning because they are overwhelmed by the amount of content a strong content marketing campaign needs to be successful. If you actually sat down and created an editorial calendar for yourself you realize just how much content you need to be pumping out to stay in the game! Article spinning seems so much easier, and it looks like it produces the same benefits—links. But if you think that the only purpose of a content marketing campaign is to get as many links as possible, you’re doing it wrong!
There are a few big reasons by article spinning doesn’t work and could potentially hurt your brand in the long run.
1. Article submission sites are spammy
And Google’s Panda update declared war on those sites! Mass submission sites aren’t known for being beacons of knowledge and useful information in the online world. For the most part, it’s all low quality, spammy, link and keyword heavy junk. They know it, we know and the search engines know it. Relying on article spinning means all your links are coming from sites on Google’s “Do Not Fly” list.
2. Duplicate content isn’t useful
Reading the same article over and over, no matter what site it is on, is annoying and frustrating for the reader. Do you want to watch the same episode of any TV show (even your favorite) over and over? No—it gets stale real quick. The same thing goes for content marketing. Even a great article runs its course sooner or later. While there is nothing wrong with trying to breathe new life into an old topic by taking a different spin, reusing the same article again and again is just lazy.
3. Too many links from the same anchor text
When you use a software to submit articles, it just sends out the same piece of content over and over and over and over…Nothing changes. Not the content, not the title and not the anchor text. Relying on the same anchor text again and again throws up a red flag to the search engines that you are spamming the system. That’s why it is so important the vary your anchor text from article to article.
6 Responses to “Why Article Spinning Doesn’t Work”
The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Journal is Written by SEO Expert:
Nick Stamoulis
Tel - 781-999-1222
nick@brickmarketing.com
Brick Marketing - SEO Company
If you do it right, article spinning is none of the above. If you use software to spin, you churn out crap and synonyms are, well, synonyms of the same word. But spinning manually is just repurposing content, something people have done for eons.
The politician who makes the same speech, changing only the names, in Little Bend, Riverside, Four Corners and so on.
The fisherman who tells all his friends about the one that got away (only each time he repurposes, the fish gets an inch longer).
And so the article marketer who sends the same article with shifts in some of the information to different sites.
Properly spun, one does not just use synonyms. Properly spun, there can be a hundred titles, several URLs and a variety of anchor text. Your rant is not against article spinning – it’s against automation. Automation and SEO do not mix. I join in that rant.
I totally agree on the automation. What annoys me, is that plain old “reprints” are penalized at all. If an article is worthy, why shouldn’t it be duplicated across various sites? I’ve had articles without one word changed published in various print magazines over the years. The editors weren’t bothered. So why should search engines care if a a decent article is published more than once on the web.
I guess they don’t care, really, they just will try to pick the original or most important placement to rank. But they aren’t very good at it. I’ve seen my content scraped without my name attached to it, and it beats out the legitimate posting in rankings.
I hope you’re right, Nick, that the search engines are catching on to the automated spinners.
I understand the need for article spinner software for easier construction of content. Yes, it is because of these ‘spun’ articles (replacement of synonyms, etc.) that the web has become full of SPAM, users had become adept to ignore ‘duplicate-looking’ content.
Communication changes depending on how it was transferred or told via different channels. It is this fact business owners must realize to gain legibility status. It does require work but users appreciate such efforts than end up with a bad reputation of sharing almost ‘duplicate’ content.
I understand the temptation for article spinners. I had been there. Then, I realized my site was churning junk and my conceived ‘efforts’ was useless and bad in the long run.
So hail to search engines for their efforts against this! An inspiring or unique informative content maybe hard to get by… but the effort for personal communication is better.
@Katherine It’s things like article spinning that end up getting our good reprinted content docked in the search engines. I guess it is the tragic flaw in technology – it lacks the artificial intelligence to make a distinction, in this case between spun articles and noteworthy reprints. I bet they are trying to find solutions though.
Add another to the list: why spend all the time on useless article spinning when we know that creating great content is hard. Use your time wisely!
Quality content is the only way to go. As it is pointed out here, there is a right and wrong way to “spin” an article. Normally, there is more than one side to a subject and with a little creativity we can look at an article through the various ways viewers of the article might see and present that article in a slightly different point of view to provide us with a “fresh look” at the same copy.
In my humble opinion it is easier to read an article then rewite it in your own words. Maybe this is because I still use the old fashioned pen and paper method rather than fight to get software to do what I can do myself. Surely. if article directories publish spun rubbish, they will not last long?