Earlier today I was asked to take a look at a blog of a reader to give it a critique. On arriving on the blog I immediately noticed that at the top of every article on the front page of the blog there was a copyright notice which ascribed the copyright to a ‘free article’ website. On opening each post I saw that at the bottom of each post was a paragraph byline from an author with links back to their own websites. Classic ‘free article’ stuff.
The concept of ‘free article’ websites is simple. Authors wanting to build their web profile and incoming links to their sites write articles and submit them to a ‘free article’ website. The free article website then allows any website owner to republish those articles as long as they do so with the links that are in them in tact. In this way the author of the article gets links (which helps their search engine ranking), the article site also gets free links back to them and the person using the article gets free content.
Everyone wins right?
Wrong…..
I won’t unpack whether the article writer wins (that’s a whole other post) but as a blogger republishing free articles on your blog you could actually be doing more harm than good to your blog.
Let me illustrate this with a simple exercise:
On searching ArticlesBase.com (a free article site) for ‘blogging’ to see what articles they have there an article titled ’13 Steps to Successful Blogging’ comes up in the search results (as pictured below):
I highlighted a segment of the article and plugged it into Google within “quotes” to see how many exact matches I could get for it (to see how many times the article has been republished).
Here’s the search results on Google:
Google sees that phrase ‘about’ 54,000 times!
There are three main reasons why I wouldn’t use ‘free articles’ on a blog:
1. A key to growing blogs is unique and useful information – if you want to grow a blog into a profitable and sustainable venture you need to provide your readers with useful and unique information. Post the above article and you’re 1 in 54,000 (and counting).
2. A key to growing blogs is personal voice and connection – if your blog is filled with free articles you’ll end up with a collection of content that is disjointed, that doesn’t personally connect with readers and is devoid of personality. Blog readers will subscribe and become loyal to a blog when they feel a personal connection and want to track with someone over the long haul. Not when they see a disjointed collecting of articles by a different person every day.
3. A key to ranking well in Search Engines is ‘Unique’ content – using an article that appears 54,000 times on the web almost guarantees that it’ll never be found by one of the biggest sources of traffic out there – Google. For starters you’re competing with 54,000 other versions of the same article, secondly you’re competing with the ‘free article’ sites you got the post off (remember they generate millions of links from their free articles) and on top of all that Google hates what it calls ‘duplicate content’ and works hard to not rank highly content that is republished over and over again. The article above does appear in the rankings for a search for ‘successful blogging’ in the #1 position – but the site that ranks for it is a free article site.
The long and short of it is that as a blogger you’re doing yourself and your readers a disservice by using ‘free articles’.
I’d never use free articles on my blog. And that’s the reason it’s MY blog on not someone else’s.
I’m fine if a guest asked to publish a post on my blog, but free articles? A big fat no.
Thanks for making this clear to my (even though I knew this) and everyone else that didn’t know it yet.
I agree… blogs should have useful, unique content, not rehashed free articles. Using free articles is an easy way to fill your blog with content, but does little to build your reputation as a trusted authority on your topic.
Content is King. If you want successes your content should be unique. Then only we can get hits and clicks. No need to go for free articles. Just post your experiences. Dont fill your blog with useless and repeatable content.
I didn’t even know these sites existed! I link to other sites and articles but at least give my take on them even if I do quote. I completely agree that having something unique to offer is the only thing that can make you stand out from the thousands of other blogs out there! Interesting stuff
A blog is definitely the wrong place to post free articles, especially if you’re trying to build up a reputation. If you feel you must use it, at least comment on it. Disagree with some points, give more details on others, just do something to stand out.
Otherwise you’re posting articles, not blogging, no matter what platform you’re using.
I’ve honestly never heard of this, and I can’t imagine why you’d want this for your blog. Building an audience that resonates with your voice is key to a good following. I’d immediately turn away from reading a blog that uses someone else’s writing in this manner (guest posts are a different matter).
I agree, I have never posted a free article on my blog and never will. All my content is 100% unique and that’s why I’m ranking well (for a new blog) in google.
I would never ever go for free articles. It defies the whole purpose of having your own blog to express your own ideas and thoughts.
The biggest risk is to get penalized by Google’s Duplicate Content filter. So many sites have lost their page rank due to duplicate content.
Great post! I learned a lot. Thank you.
I would love to hear your take on the outcome for the article writer.
Yup now I know publishing like that is no good. Thanks for this post. It has helped me in a way.
So when does the post on whether or not using article marketing as a link building tactic si a good idea for your blog or website come? Curious to hear your take on this. Because on the surface it looks like the article writer has 54K links pointing back to his site from the resource box or any solid anchor text links he was able to get in the content of the article.
Who would really? Smacks me of laziness and quite frankly if i visited a blog which I found to be posting free articles I would not be coming again. I don’t read purely for content if I did I would read articles I read becuase I like peoples styles or writing, their personality and I like the sense of community you don’t get any of that from a free article.
Andrew Pryde
How about commenting on a “free article”?
I must be honest. When I read the title of your post, I was expecting a complete angle.
Considering, I have read so many times in the past that bloggers should write as many articles as possible with the intended outcome being more exposure and being perceived as a guru of sorts.
However, your post blows the dust off a concept rarely uttered out loud. Here’s the kicker, it makes sense.
Based on the information provided in this post, considering I were to accept is as logical, I would just be promoting the material of another site on my blog and, as a result, contribute to their successful search engine ratings on Google.
It would be an understatement to say that I found your post quite digestible and enjoyable.
Including such a free article on my own may sometimes provide readers with interesting relevant content. There are some things I don’t know much about, so publishing someone else’s article might fill this gap on my blog.
There’s an easy way to give this duplicate content an unique addition: comment the article. It’s especially easy, if you don’t agree with the author. ;)
Unique content is the key to generating an important traffic from the main search engines. This very own article , that Darren posted above is amazing , for the number of results in google. It must be somehow old enough since it was first written and pretty popular among the free article sites. These guys will never build up traffic , neither gain readers using “Free Articles” on their blogs.
Great post !
Darren,
I`ve tried to buy the book “Problogger” from Amazon and Barnes & Noble and didn`t manage it. I am from Romania and I am not pretty sure , but Amazon does not ship it in Europe and Barnes & Nobles does not take my zip code.
:(
I had never even heard of such a thing being done until I read this…
Great post! Free article use is bad for your readers, like Darren mentioned there is no personality behind it. I can’t stand articles where I end up sounding like a robot reading it to myself. Writing your own articles is what will make you stand out. And really…do you truly believe you can compete with 54,000 other versions of the same thing?…Good Luck!
Great post Darren!
Free Article Bloggers are just another spammers to me. I rather have 1230125159 guest posts for free then 2 free articles.
Anyways script bloggers is what I call them!
Eyugghhh..
Free articles are next to useless. I appreciate the writers intentions on sharing their work, but as far as I am concerned, free articles only degrade the quality of the website.
Your post title made me go “oh no Darren, don’t go this route” and I was prepared to list exactly the reasons you did as to why this was a bad idea. Fortunately, you did that yourself. Good Post.
Thanks for this
Completely agree with not posting articles from article banks onto your blog. You lose your individuality and the opportunity for readers to connect with you.
But what are your thoughts on posting your articles onto article banks for others to use? Particlurly when you are trying to get visibility with the media within your niche?
I have done this in the past and resulted in improved google rankings, traffic and some product sales (not huge, but some).
But at the same time, i often find my articles being abused.
Eg i recently saw an anonymous blog reprint one of my articles with random links to mortgage and v!agra products (!!!).
It would have my full article reprinted with my name and link at the bottom – then in certain parts of the article would just have a irrelevant random words an link.
I dont know who the blog author is and so havent bothered to try and get them to remove it
But It has put me off posting articles to banks.
Darren have you a view on this?
Darren, it’s rare to see you take a one-sided approach to a topic. I think that you are throwing the baby out with the bathwater on this one.
Perhaps the real issue is that the blogger had ONLY free articles and/or the attribution to the article directory was particularly obtrusive.
Here’s a couple points from the other side of the fence:
– What if the free article presents great information that would be of value to your readers?
– From the visitor’s point of view, how is publishing free articles any different than the guest posts that you and other blogger often feature?
– On a trusted site, like yours, publishing even a duplicate article will have value in the search engines, since you will probably outrank the other people who published it. Simple formula: more pages in Google = more money!
In general the duplicate content thing is a myth. Matt Cutts has endorsed article distribution and publishing as a valid SEO method and when combined with a steady stream of unique high quality content it can be an effective method of building a blog and satisfying your readers.
I am not familiar with this practice, but I think a blog with only free articles shouts “I have no creativity” and that’s just not a very attractive thing.
I look forward to your other post about being the writer of these free articles. I am even wondering if that’s how some rumors start.
While I totally agree that “free articles” don’t have a place on my blog, I’m a bit confused about another type of article…Affiliate articles. I’m a member of an affiliate program, and the owner of that program has written an article to publish along with the links for the product.
What is everyone’s opinion about that?
Now I do have to say though, the original author of that article is a smart person…..54000 backlinks from the time it took to write the one article.
OMG Darren you must be reading my mind. this is scary because when I first started blogging in 2005, I asked travel webmasters to travel articles and created pages for each article.
Today I made decision to remove all 100+ of the articles because I have read so much about duplicate content. the articles are outranking the actual article submission sites, and driving some traffic to the blog, but I didn’t want these articles to affect the blog long term.
Never heard of free articles before so I learned something today. I have a figure skating blog where I regularly have guest coaches write an “Advice from a pro” column, which is its own separate category. I don’t feel I am the authority on certain topics in skating that only come with experience and years of coaching, so I felt “Advice from a pro” was almost a necessity for my blog.
Darren, Brilliant timing! I was considering adding free articles to a new web site I’m doing. I was going to add them to compliment some products I’m selling. I saw that a competitor was using free articles to give their site an instant air of authority (they only launched recently). Now I’m thinking that putting the hard yards in will probably be worthwhile, even though it means it’ll take longer to build up the volume of work. And then I’ll have a wole bunch of orinigal articles that I can submit to the free article sites and get the link love from the search engines. Thanks for helping me make that decision!
Couldn’t agree more. To be honest, it baffles me that someone advanced enough to find the articles, and smart enough to know how to find the right ones and even have a website…use them. :P
If so, will free articles only benefit the author? What do you think is the better place to use free articles? Is it on a niche site (not a blog)?
Great article, but it also applys to bloggers who copy articles form other blogs and make it there own, and this is very common!
So you end up with the same article in the same words on hundreds of blogs and those never end up high on google rank.
So Darren?
If you say you shouldn’t use free articles but should write your own…what about giving your articles away for free so people will link back to your site?
I do not understand why anyone would want to defeat the purpose of what a blog actually is.
Darren,
I got your book and I LOVE IT!!!
Good points. I used to think it would be a good idea to actually submit my posts to ezinearticles.com, but after reading this post I don’t think I’ll do that anymore. Just never thought about it that way. Thanks for the insight!
Agreed.
If you’re going to write anything that’s going to appear anywhere else, write a guest article, one that’s tailored to the audience of your host.
Plan around the go-live date of the article and promote the hell out of it.
Obviously, there’s a whole world of know-how behind that strategy, but that’s where the real value lies…
The article is pretty clear that don’t publish free articles collected from some where over the internet.
How about submitting the articles to article directories to get back links ?
Will it become duplicate content?
What are the advantages of submitting to article directories.
I request some Darren to clear this silly cloud.
There’s a HUGE difference between article repositories and guest posts.
Typically, when someone writes a guest post (as I have done here on ProBlogger and on other sites), they don’t offer that post up for anyone else to use. It’s almost as if the site that’s hosting the article has “sole usage rights” in the eyes of the author.
In the case of article repositories, the author is giving ANYONE rights to use their work. This means you could find your post about pregnancy, or high heel shoes, or bathing suits on a less-than-reputable site trying to rank for ehm… a certain sexual fetish or something like that.
I’m sorry, but as a writer of any of those topics (or any number of others that could be misconstrued), I wouldn’t want backlinks from sites like that.
I also wouldn’t want backlinks from splogs (spam blogs) that are only using my article to boost their rankings for certain keywords and have content to show ads. That happens enough without submitting to free article repositories, why encourage it?
Back a few years ago, it might’ve been a decent idea. But that was before people started coming up with as many sneaky, lazy ways to get to the finish line before anyone else. I have no tolerance for that.
You want backlinks from reputable, related sources by offering up free content? Write a press release and use PR services (free and/or paid) to get the word out. Or, just work on writing original, thought-provoking content that will get you natural backlinks from people who want to expand upon it or bring attention to it for you.
Free articles are a big no-no to me.
First off, high SERPs are derived from unique content, not duplicated (as mentioned above).
But even more importantly, if one is really pressed for time, one can write a unique, relevant USEFUL post within 10 minutes by simply searching for news within a niche and offering their own interpretations of it. The resulting blog post by definition is unique (yay for SERPs!) and is still infused by the blog owner’s personality and unique blogging voice.
Data points,
Barbara
Great post Darren… I must admit I have on some occasions used free articles or I have commented on their content.
The truth of the matter is that some are very well written and as a result I have chosen to share them with my readers. However, you make a valid case for why you would not want to use them, I am okay with that.
My mission is to pass along information not necessarily make money or make blogging friends. If I deem that information is worthy of mentioning then I will share it.
After all, it’s my blog…
BTW — Darren, it’s always a pleasure, just finished your book. It was enlightening, I have learned a lot about the business and you. In a future post I will make some observations.
Keep In Touch!
Once again, great article and fantastic blog! Article directories are good places to get new ideas for your own articles, but as you said, It is all about unique content.Submitting articles to directories is a good idea as long it is not the same articles you have on your blog.
Reginald said, “I would just be promoting the material of another site on my blog and, as a result, contribute to their successful search engine ratings on Google.”
Exactly and that’s why I syndicate my articles much like the writer of this article did. However, I’ve only used a syndicated article from someone else maybe once, twice at the most and I agree…comment on the article being posted to make your blog voice heard.
Hi Darren, this is Shameen. Thanks for the information. Your illustrated example of Google made it clear.
But what about one who just started blogging. I think Publishing Free Articles is very good tool to build a Blog for them first time. Moreover usually a Blogger Build his Blog on a Specific Topic. This helps the visitors to Read more articles about that specific topic rather going to Free Articles Directory. Anyway your information was Brilliant and u tooo. I luved your blog.
There’s really nothng to disagree with in your post. I can’t think of one reason why using free articles for a blog is a good strategy. “Doing yourself and your readers a disservice” is an understatement.
If you are in splogs
then publish free articles.
But if you have normal blog with handwritten content, then pass over it.
Nice reminders, Darren. However as I look at it this is a case of the freedom granted to publishers to submitted their articles to different article directories.
I used to submit my articles to 4 to 5 articles articles without changing any thing but I am not sure if they were re-published anywhere. Now, I limit my article submission to two.
I remember Ezine Article Directory reminded to me to re-write my articles before submitting to them, but it is not compulsory.
> I won’t unpack whether the article writer
> wins (that’s a whole other post)
I hope you will write that post, and soon!
What happens when the article writer who publishes, say, at ezinearticles, also posts his article on his blog? Then even an original article becomes “duplicate content.”
If you publish something on your blog first, and then submit it later to the article sites, will your blog post be considered “original” by google? Which sites get penalized for duplicate content? The ones that come later, or the ones with lower ranking? Or all of them? Somebody has to get credit for the content (I think, but I’m not sure). Who?
I have never really heard of this though I am new to blogging. I write my own content and never though of rehashing what is already written unless its a direct quote.
I have seen people post blogs on websites such as twitter and I find out later that I seen the same article someplace else. I never return to those blogs as a result. I prefer real information from the minds and hearts of the writers – even if you’re not considered a great writer, its better than deception IMO.
You do realise that 4 blogs are ranking higher than EzineArticles for that 3 years old article?
The number one ranking factor, as long as a page has enough juice to be indexed, is the title – nothing forces you to use the author title for a page title on your blog.
There is no need to post just the article, you can mix it with unique content
All those 1000s of article directories have been running for years with all that duplicate content. You would think that after 3 years they would have given up, because all the traffic is going to EzineArticles, probably the largest article repository, thus all the 1000s of other directories are just a charity filling up servers… or maybe not… maybe it is possible to rank with better SEO especially siloing, better promotion of key articles etc.
Have you ever seen Technorati in a search result? 100% duplicate content
Do you ever see Technorati in a search result beating your blog based on the title of a post? I doubt it very much.
In my personal opinion, syndicating a 3rd party article which you believe to be good quality is as valuable to your readers as guest posts, in fact you can just call them guest posts.
Quite often authors who have an affiliate program even allow you to publish an article using affiliate links instead of normal links in the byline.
Publishing a 3rd party article is about as valid as embedding a YouTube video someone else has made in your blog.
I’ve certainly done that before.
Certainly it is much harder to get editorial links to a website that is nothing but duplicate content, but it certainly isn’t impossible, and there is value to a reader in the collation of related articles on a topic – search engines recognise this.
I haven’t personally got a problem with free articles, especially if it’s an article, which I have found enjoyable to read, and I have got something out of it. I don’t see a great deal of difference between them and guest articles, the difference isn’t huge, If you want to twist things around, you could say guest posts are lazy and change the style and feel of a blog!
I will tell you what I annoys the hell out of me, is paid for reviews which you see so many big name bloggers doing nowadays! For me there is no way the writer is being subjective, you pay me money, to write about your product or service and am I really going to say something negative!!!
If someone elses article is a benfit to your readers then I would say go for it.
It might not benefit you with Google placement and ranking but your readers might appreciate it.