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 you write one article and submit it to hundreds of article submission sites. You might change up some of the content by replacing certain keywords 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.