This is a guest post by David Walker. You can read his blog on DavidWalker.TV where he teaches how to make money online. Read in this post, what David thinks over using “free articles” on a blog and why you should avoid using it on your blog.
One of the emails I have queued up in my autoresponder sequence is an offer to write a guest blog post for any of my subscribers who wants one.
There are a few stipulations, of course, such as I’ll only write a post for blogs hosted on their own domains, e.g. smartbloggerz.com rather than something.blogspot.com or somethingelse.wordpress.com. But even with a list of perquisite requirements in place, I still end up rejecting around 99 percent of all requests.
The reason?
The majority of blogs I am asked to write a guest post for are filled with generic, “free” articles the blogger has simply copied and pasted from one or more of the major article directories.
Such directories are places where writers submit articles to be used by other website owners for free as long as any links, usually in a footer section at the end of the article, remain in place.
This is potentially great for the writers who submit the articles because the theory behind doing so is their content could be republished on thousands of websites, creating thousands of backlinks and generating tons of free traffic.
However, it’s a deal not so great for the blogger who republishes them.
Sure, they are getting “free content” but if I see a blog which contains nothing more than bland, generic, article directory posts then that blog holds little value for me. I certainly won’t waste any of my time producing an original, informative article for that blog if the owner themselves cannot be bothered to.
I am sure I am not the only person who thinks this way so if you want to make your blog the focal point of your online business in 2011 and want your visitors to stick around, here are three of the main reasons you should avoid using free articles:
1. You Lose Value Using Free Articles
This is a sweeping generalisation but spend a few minutes browsing the articles at any of the large directories and you will soon see they do not add any value whatsoever to your blog.
Many of these articles have been written with keywords and word count in mind, rather than containing any helpful content.
The articles are often very general rather than solving any specific problems and only exist because the writer wants you to click the link in the footer section to visit their blog or sales page.
2. You Lose Your Voice Using Free Articles
Call me old fashioned, but I believe a blog should be personal to some degree, whatever niche you are operating in. If you use generic, free articles, your blog loses its identity, its passion and its voice.
Your blog becomes identical to thousands of other low value blogs out there, nobody will leave comments or take notice of what you put on there – you will become irrelevant.
3. You Lose Authority Using Free Articles
There is of course the issue of duplicate content which your blog will have in abundance if all you do is fill it up with content from article directories.
It is unlikely your page containing duplicate content will rank in the search engines, meaning very few new visitors will find it.
The search engines may also not consider your blog as an authority if you have very little or no original content on there and neither will your visitors who will have seen hundreds of generic blogs before.
Summary
These are just a few points to help you create a more personal, valuable and authoritative blog using your own, unique content rather than going for the easy option of copying and pasting poorly-written directory articles.
More and more blogs are appearing online every day and competition for visitors is only going to increase.
Give yourself an edge by producing your own content so that when people visit, they will want to stick around because you offer value, unlike the hundreds, perhaps thousands of the identical generic blogs they have visited before.
Also, if you follow the above advice, I’ll probably agree to write a post for your blog if you ask me to! 🙂
Top 10 Search Terms:
• free articles for blogs • free blog articles • free articles for blog • free articles for your blog • free article for blog
You hit the right botton there.I experienced the same issue with articles from directories posted in my blog. They don’t rank. One of my blog even got deindexed because of that.
The best way to blog is to create your own content.
I totally agree with loss of value, voice and authority. How do you detect right away that a certain blog is generic? I guess your insight about these ‘free articles’ are also tantamount to rewritten or summary articles that are very rampant nowadays.
Oh no, never use free articles! It will hurt your blog to the point beyond return!
Yes you are right. I had a website which uses free article and it has very little traffic after a while. People stop visiting after they feel cheated. I have since stop using any free article and have close that site completely because Google don’t like it too.
It shows the blog owner to be lazy. How are they to say they know ANYTHING on a subject when there is nothing showing from their own perspective.
You are correct on all 3 points. Free artciles are not for a blog that you use to build authorty and readership. Sometimes I get link exchange requests and as soon as I see a free article on the requester’s blog, it becomes a turn off for me. It just automatically makes me think of the blogger with less credibility. Maybe its wrong, but free articles on a blog feels …CHEAP! (thats the best word I think to describe it)
But, in some cases free article are helpful, like for when you do auto blogging and creating blogs based on low volume buyers keyword where you want to promote related affiliate products and etc.
How sad that so many people still forget that online marketing, blogging, articles, etc. work best when there’s a real person behind the website? I say again and again that gone are the days when people put up with one-sided conversation from faceless “big box” stores. They want personal, connected, and to feel like the person selling them something really cares and “gets” them as a person. That just can’t happen with faceless floods of free articles, keyword flooding, or content overload.
Thanks for the reminder!
Delena
I do agree, free articles are mostly written with specific keywords and key count in them plus they hardly add value. I never used them, and i never will. Using free articles, is a bit like creating fake profiles on a social networking site (just to give the illusion that it is a very busy place) … they both are transparant.
It is so nice to see that people still support the idea of being original.
I make it even simpler – if you don’t want to write original content, then don’t blog at all!
google looks for fresh and original content and ranks them accordinginly , though backlinks and site age plays a part ….