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Distributing Content for One-Way Inbound Links
By Joel Walsh
Find out a great way to get hundreds of inbound links by distributing content while avoiding the common newbie pitfalls.
A time-honored way of getting one-way inbound links is to distribute content, usually articles, for other websites to publish in exchange for a backlink. Most often, the backlink is included in an "author's resource box," which is a brief "about the author" paragraph promoting the author's site.
If done right, content distribution can become your primary method of building links. To some extent, the links can even build themselves passively, with no further effort on your part. How? Webmasters can discover your available content either on your site or on a content clearinghouse website for months and even years after you first start a content distribution campaign.
Given the enormous value of distributing content for inbound links, the big question is: why isn't everybody doing it?
Myths about distributing content for inbound links
There is a surprising amount of ignorance about doing a content distribution linking campaign. Here are the three most common myths:
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 ridiculous?
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.
Myth 2: Distribution is for article clearinghouse websites
only.
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.
Fact: 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.
Fact: A content distribution campaign requires skillful
planning.
The most likely relevant categories of websites to republish
articles must be identified. Relevance of republishing websites
has to be balanced against the number of potential republishing
websites both when creating content to distribute and when
targeting sites for distribution. For instance, our own article
marketing campaigns target not just sites focusing on web
content, but also broad categories of interest, such as: web
design, webmaster issues, writing, marketing, business, website
promotion, and SEO. To maximize success, articles have to be
custom-written for each category, and refined for sub-categories
such as accessible web design, affiliate webmaster issues,
freelance writing, and web marketing.
Fact: You need at least three different articles of varying
lengths and focus to have a shot at targeting high-PageRank-
websites effectively. Many experienced article marketers
recommend having 25 or more articles on hand to maximize
results.
Distinct non-SEO benefits of distributing content for inbound
links
Content distribution in exchange for backlinks predates SEO. In
fact, for many content distributors, these non-SEO benefits are
the primary goals:
Traffic generation. More than any other method
of getting links, the links in distributed content generate
traffic. Distributing content gets you traffic even when it
doesn't get you a link. If your article gets picked up by a
large-circulation email newsletter, you will get a flood of
highly qualified traffic.
Authority. Distributing content is the only
linking campaign method that can make the recipient website and
its owners appear authoritative. There are thousands of internet
gurus who owe their lucrative reputations entirely to the
articles they've distributed.
Mindshare. Distributing articles is the
only linking campaign method that can help you spread an idea.
This makes article distribution invaluable for launching new
products or services.
Drawbacks of Content Distribution
Of course, nothing good ever came easy. Any website owners who
are looking for SEO magic beans will be disappointed by content
distribution:
Results are variable. Content distribution
is not quite as sure a thing as buying links. You cannot say for
sure at the outset how much of an investment it will require to
get X number of links with X PageRank. Of course, this
variability is one reason why links from content distribution may
appear less "artificial" to search engines.
Requires significant investment. You need
high-quality content, expertise in content distribution, and
quite a few work-hours to distribute the content and track the
results. These costs can be mitigated by outsourcing the entire
process from soup to nuts to a content distribution specialist.
Further, the cost has to be weighed against the cost of other
link campaigns, which is also significant.
Requires special expertise. There are
numerous newbie pitfalls to distributing content, from improperly
formatting articles to writing a bad introductory email to
accompany content submissions. You generally have to have done
numerous campaigns to truly get the feel for it. Again, this
drawback can be mitigated by outsourcing your project to a
specialist. And again, this requirement has to be weighed
against the real-world requirement of special expertise in other
link campaign methods.
In conclusion, there are a number of ways of getting one-way
inbound links, and if you're smart, you'll use all of them.
Still, there's only one method that carries substantial non-SEO
benefits as well, and that's content distribution. I know, I
know: focusing on content just feels like you're giving in to
Google. But don't fight it. When it comes to getting high
search engine rankings through content, you know you want it.
About the Author Joel Walsh is the owner of UpMarket Content, where you can get a content distribution campaign managed from soup to nuts, and guaranteed to get you at least one hundred one-way inbound links for every three articles. Check out this guaranteed website promotion content distribution package: http://upmarketcontent.com/website-promotion-package.htm
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