by Ana Hoffman 77 comments

Article Spinning: to Spin or not to Spin



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Why on earth would I want to talk about article marketing in general and article spinning in particular?

You know where I stand on quality link building vs quantity, and if not, read the post I just linked to.

However, personal opinions aside, I want to find out what works and what doesn’t, so that you can base your own opinion on the most intelligent information I find.

Some 10 days ago, Alex Whalley from AlexWhalley.com decided to put Unique Article Wizard (article spinning/submission software) to the true test:

The question I want to know is, Does Article Marketing work on it’s own? – and how effective is it (really?)
I also want to find out if Unique Article Wizard works.

Here’s the link to Alex’s original post:

FYI: all UAW links in this post are Alex’s affiliate links – figured he’s doing all the work, might as well benefit from it. :) So if you decide to buy the products, please go through his link.

So when I saw his non-challenge self-challenge, I naturally thought I’d follow his experiment and kill two birds with one stone: see if Unique Article Wizard in particular and article marketing in general is still a valid link building venue (…nah…) and not have to work at it myself other than writing a post or two.

Additionally, I went to the source that Alex mentioned in his post – Pat Flynn from SmartPassiveIncome.com, who recently wrote a killer guest post on how to build an email list, to see what his thoughts are on the matter, as well as Robert Dempsey from ItinerantEntrepreneur.com, who accepted Alex’s non-challenge and decided to give it a test run on some of his niche sites: I Accept Your Non-Challenge Alex Whalley.

But first…

Article Marketing and Panda Update

Aside from the fact that I think article marketing as a means of link building and traffic generation for a site like mine is a waste of time (feel free to prove me wrong in comments), I read an article by Unique Article Wizard titled Lovin’ Google’s new algorithm! (thanks for the link, Alex), in which they talk about why Google recent algorithm update didn’t affected UAW sites.

Problem I had with that post is the fact that the author mentions many a time that quality is paramount for UAW sites and submissions, yet nowhere do they address how they maintain quality.

As a matter of fact, about a year ago, when I tested UAW for a couple of months, I chose the option to receive the content submitted by other users of UAW and after being flooded with tons of subpar content I would never publish to any site, let alone TGC, I quickly turned that option off.

The Culprit: Pat Flynn

Unfortunately, Pat wasn’t available to let us know what he thought of Alex’s endeavor, but here is one of Pat’s posts on the subject you might find interesting:

Note: Pat did make quite a few good points on the subject in the comment area; so be surely to take a look there.

Article Marketing Challenge Update: Alex Whalley

I spoke to Alex Whalley to get his take on how his self-challenge is going on so far and here’s what he had to say:

- How is it going so far?

Surprisingly well actually. Apart from the incessantly boring task of writing and rewriting articles on a topic I could not care less about – the actual results I am seeing in relation to rank have been good.

- How long does it take you to spin an article?

It takes me anywhere from 60 – 90 minutes to write, rewrite and then submit an article. The actual spinning (actually rewriting is how UAW approach it) takes about 30minutes. (see my process in this post)

- On average, how many websites accept an article = how many potential links you get?

It used to be a lot, but since the updates to Google’s Algorithm the number of sites in the UAW network has decreased dramatically.
They claim it is now more focused on relevancy and quality rather than quantity, but I am yet to be convinced (and I doubt I ever will be)

The Articles that have been submitted for the challenge to date ended there run after being accepted by 115 and 132 sites respectively.

Of these sites, I randomly checked 40 of them and had an 80% success rate.

- With the new Panda update, are you concerned about getting low-quality links from possibly many autoblogs?

Ironically this was more of a problem pre-panda.

As I mentioned in the last sentence, the sites used within the UAW network are (apparently) checked and audited so that spammy sites are not part of your backlinks.

Again I refute this simply because some of the active links I did follow were utter crap. In fact I remember 5 of the sites being mirror images of each other – indicating to me that it was the same owner, and most likely all on the same IP too.

But I am not concerned, mainly because I have always had relative success with UAW, just not on it’s own.

I have to admit I am beginning to doubt its worth, especially considering how much time I am investing with the article creation and submission part.

- Do you think these article marketing strategies works specifically for niche sites or would you do it for your main blog?

I would never do this for my main blog, and it relates to the last question you mentioned – low-quality links.

I have no doubt that the links I get from this method are of low quality, but that’s the point.

The way I intergrate Unique Article Wizard into my process means that it does the job of providing all my link layers to be fed a constant source of (semi) relevant incontent links from articles. Obviously in this challenge I have no other ‘properties’ to optimize so I am focusing solely on the money site – but since it’s a niche site, then it’s OK.

My own blog has received a dose of these backlinks before, but that was before I knew better.

Definitely works on niche sites though.

Article Marketing Challenge Update: Robert Dempsey

The reason that I joined Alex’s challenge of article marketing, specifically using UAW, was because I have heard a lot about article marketing and spinning, but hadn’t tried any of it before. I paid for a few article spins and submissions to get some links, but use my favored PPC to drive traffic to my surveys and opt-ins (works well too btw).

Frankly I thought that a bunch of crap links from God-knows-where sites wouldn’t amount to anything.

So you could say I was a bit skeptical of the entire thing, but I decided to test it on one of my niche sites.

However, something must be working as I jumped over 200 spots literally overnight for my #1 keyword; I have 3 major keywords total for this niche site. In short, my #1 is currently ranking 49 and my #2 is ranking 31. Not bad considering that last week I was over 270 for #2 and not even ranking for my #1.

The only issue I have with this entire process is that it takes me an hour to “spin” an article.

The way it works with UAW is that you take a single article, and then rewrite each paragraph two times. So rather than using a spin syntax, you are literally creating 3 different versions of the same article.

When my first article was submitted I was happy to see that it was sent to more than 120 sites. However when I went to ping the articles, I found that the reality is that only about 30-45% of the sites actually accepted the articles.

This could be because my article didn’t fit their sites. However some of the links led to 404 pages.

Now I need to put this in context.

I first launched this site a few months ago, and had 20 articles posted previously – all written by an article writer. Google knows all about the site, and the sitemap is now updated regularly and submitted to the big 3 search engines. I also have PPC running to it from Yahoo/Bing. The blog is a full blog – email opt-in, comments, the whole 9 yards. So this site is set up as an authority site, with the one exception being the homepage, which is currently a survey.

So far the results seem to speak for themselves. It wasn’t until I started this challenge and pinged all the articles that I saw a huge bump in rankings, ranking that continue to improve.

Over time we’ll see.

Would I use this for my own site?

No.

However, I am using a version of article marketing, but with that I’m targeting “better” sites to syndicate my content too. I’ll be doing that with this niche site and others as well.

These things aren’t free, but they do work and are getting my niche site ranked much faster than I expected.

Unique Article Marketing Takeaway: Ana

As I previously mentioned, a few month ago I decided to try out Unique Article Wizard on one of my sites.

Here’s what I wrote in Link Building: What’s Naughty, What’s Nice?:

My objective was to build links to one of my websites and push it up the Google ladder; at that time the website was ranked #10 for my main keyword. Besides taking up all my time spinning the articles until my head was spinning, UAW did the exact opposite of what I expected: it pushed my site further down, all the way to the third page as a matter of fact.

Since back then I didn’t have enough experience to analyze why my website went down like a torpedo, I kept spinning and submitting article until one kind soul who knew a thing or two about SEO told me to stop. Within that week, my site was back on the first page. Soon after it was in the top 3.

One might certainly might argue it was a coincidence or there must’ve been other factors that came into play.

But remember, my blog – my story – my conclusions. icon smile Link Building: Whats Naughty, Whats Nice?

Point: UAW might give you an initial push in rankings, but then turn it upside down and you’ll find yourself back on page 200.

Longevity is still in question and only time will tell whether the ranking from Alex and Robert will hold water.

FINALLY…

The floor is yours… I am sure you’ve got a lot to say on the subject and I want to hear it all.

Comment to show me that you’re alive!

ana hoffman article spinning


traffic generation cafe comment below

{ 77 comments }

Deborah April 21, 2012 at 1:40 pm

I wish you had dates on your posts, as SEO changes quickly and it is nice to know what the dates are.

I only found out about UAW 2 months ago. It has helped on my niche sites. It got me penalized on one of my bigger sites. Of course, since Google changes the rules all the time, I might not have been penalized a year ago for that. I think it was link velocity that sandboxed me.

When you add a bunch of backlinks or content, your website will bounce around, that is normal.

The jury is still out on article submission. I have helpful sites on different health topics and am trying to figure out how to get more links. I do directory submissions, but that is usually not enough.

Date: April 21, 2012 ;)

Ana Hoffman April 23, 2012 at 7:02 am

You are right, Deborah – I need to add the dates back in. Personally, I hate it when other bloggers do it on their blogs, so why on earth am I doing it on mine? lol

Jovan Valdeze February 15, 2012 at 5:46 am

Totally agree with you Ana, I have tried every spinning article tool but, all in vain. It is not as effective as writing one by yourself.

Ana Hoffman February 15, 2012 at 9:53 am

No one can do it better that you can do it yourself, Jovan. lol

Thomas October 26, 2011 at 4:12 am

I have been pondering about making use of UAW for some time now and after reading this post and the subsequent comments, I can now discard the idea and invest my time elsewhere.

Just my 2 cents on article spinning: manually spun content can add value to the web whereas automatically spun content does not add value, and I think we need to make a clear distinction between the two.

Ana Hoffman October 27, 2011 at 11:39 am

That’s the right decision, Thomas.

Your distinction is also 100% spot on!

Nancy September 2, 2011 at 5:44 pm

well for me uaw has been a hit and miss.. i tried it on new site, it sandboxed me lol, although when i tried this on an aged site which was around 6-8 months old, it improved my serps but not my much ! i guess google is tracking down these blog networks as they leave massive footprints !

Ed August 21, 2011 at 11:37 am

I go for the “high-quality, original article” approach, but either way, I come back to a simple question – if not writing a blog for the love of the topic, what does an equivalent hourly wage work out to? In other words, with all the blogs out there and all the time it takes to get traction, what does the “average” blogger see as a return (if that’s the goal)? My experience says, “not so much…”.

-Ed

Ana August 21, 2011 at 1:36 pm

You are right, Ed – most bloggers will miserable fail the test.

Red July 13, 2011 at 5:00 pm

I have to admit that this was an interesting blog post but as far as article marketing and article spinning are concerned it is simply another bunch of opinions. Some like AM and spinning some don’t but here’s the deal …

Almost everything and I mean everything on the net is dupicate content.

I am NOT trying to be rude, cold, or critical and I won’t use anybody here as an example but please tell me this:

Unless you are an actual genius (IQ of say 200+), highly educated (degrees up the wazoo) with massive writing skills do you really think you are capable of writing original content, content that not even one other soul has ever written?

I’ll wager you can’t do it.

Most of you seem to be involved in blogging, SEO and affiliate marketing so I challenge you to come up with a post, article, idea, strategy – anything – that is absolutely new, has never been written about; totally one-of-a-kind, original content.

I am not talking about simply giving your take, opionion, or thoughts on a subject that you THINK has never been discussed and so you write it, in your own words, using your own headlines, sub topics and a twist on words because in all realism anything of that nature is going to be “duplicate content” in one way or another. In fact, there is a 99.99% chance that someone, somewhere has beat you to the punch.

No – No!

What I challenge you to do is to come up with totally new content. In other words if your thing is SEO, affiliate marketing, whatever – I want you to write a post or article about something so original, so fresh and new that it has never been heard of before. The idea, the concept, the strategy, the training – whatever – is so original it isn’t in a book, on the net or anywhere.

That means you can not do research on a subject and simply write an article or blog post, nor can you regurgitate what you’ve learned from others because if you have learned it from someone else or researched someone’s else’s material in order to regurgitate your own views you are really writing what? Ah yes! Duplicate content.

No, you have to create something entirely new.

Go ahead, give it a shot.

Unless you can accomplish that feat whatever you write is “duplicate content” in one form or another. So what does that tell you about those who think they write original content? About Google’s new content filters and Panda thing? About your last blog post?

Ana July 13, 2011 at 9:19 pm

No argument from me, Red – there’s nothing new under the sun; just putting a new spin on old and tired topics, that’s all.

I appreciate you taking your time with the comment.

Bruce July 14, 2011 at 7:34 am

Red,

In 1899, U.S. Commissioner of Patents Charles H. Duell said, “Everything that can be invented has been invented.”

Don’t be a Charles Duell my friend, more – 100% original – content is surely on the way! :-)

Ana July 14, 2011 at 11:23 am

Good point, Bruce!

Cathy Presland May 17, 2011 at 1:03 am

Hi Ana,

Another great article :)

Personally I don’t use article marketing – but not for any of the technical reasons, just that it’s not my favourite medium of communication. Yes I know I can outsource, spin, etc etc, but just not ‘me’.

However there are lots of people (my clients included) who DO like to write so it’s great to keep on top of what’s working in which segments of the market.

Interesting to see how this turns out long-term!

Cathy

Ana May 17, 2011 at 6:21 am

Many people do not like article marketing. As I said above, I prefer the higher quality sites and it does work for me. If it’s not “you” and you get better traffic, by all means do what works.

Yes, I agree – it’s important to know what works on the market at the moment and interesting to see how it pans out!

Bryan May 3, 2011 at 8:35 am

Hey Ana,

I think article marketing is not a very effective way to get referral visits. Too many people are taking advantage of the link building benefits rather than reading the real value that comes out of it. Talking about real value / good content I think it’s pretty difficult to find something that is worthwhile reading unless it is from some authority gov, edu or sometimes eHow. I would rather read something about myocardial infarction from Medscape rather than on Ezinearticles.

This blog post on article spinning is a really interesting take on it. I must admit that I use article marketing but I don’t use it for my main blog, because it really doesn’t bring me any benefit. I would say to those who want to bring blog traffic via article marketing to please cross it off their list. I do agree however, with building backlinks through small niche sites, although it has to be quite a consistent process. UAW is a pretty good service. And I must say that I’ve been split testing a a few niche sites with and without UAW and have seen some visible difference especially with search engine rankings.

Ana May 4, 2011 at 6:01 am

Hello Bryan. You make some good points. I guess your results will depend on the type of niche you are into. Of course you want medical information from an expert in medicine, but some topics do benefit from article marketing.

Brad Harmon April 30, 2011 at 8:54 am

I guess I could see the benefit of this technique for niche product blog sites. If you sold gas grills through a niche blog site, how much could you really write before running out of ideas? Article spinning a core 10 to 20 posts to various sites would seem to be a good strategy.

I’m with you though, Ana. For a main blog site, it seems like way too much work for not a lot of benefit. It seems like you could put your time investment into much more profitable strategies.

Ana May 1, 2011 at 9:50 am

Works better with the niche sites, Brad, for sure.

Dani April 8, 2011 at 2:19 am

Hi Ana
just wanted to say i think i agree with your take on UAW, great chat with Alex and Alex, i’m still interested to see how the non experiment is shaping up, although i think poor Alex has had enough of drills by now.

Cheers
Dani

Dani April 8, 2011 at 2:21 am

i ment to say Alex and Robert not Alex and Alex :)

Ana April 17, 2011 at 8:10 am

I, too, would love to know how it went. Will get an update from them when their “challenge” is over.

Ana

zamahsari April 2, 2011 at 7:28 pm

I used also a spinning software. I didn’t analyze it deeply. I have used it for months but it seems not too good to increase the rankings.. It might be due to the low quality of my spun articles or something else.. However, I decide not to use it again…

Ana April 17, 2011 at 8:07 am

That was my decision as well – not worth my time, but glad it works for someone else.

Rose April 1, 2011 at 10:09 am

Well I’m also participating in Alex’s challenge, except I’m using a different blog network.

The network I’m testing likes intensive spinning, instead of just three versions of each paragraph, you can put in ten versions of every single sentence, and then within each version of each sentence, you get to spin the words some more, to make every article that comes out even more unique.

It takes a bit of work doing, but what I’m testing is whether the articles stay indexed for longer because they are highly spun. With most networks (including UAW) articles get indexed, and then deindexed a few weeks later and G tallies up the duplicates.

Bruce April 1, 2011 at 9:39 am

Ana,

Interesting article. Myself, I consider article spinners to be no better than ordinary spammers.

For those who don’t know, articles are spun by pushing content (usually not very good content) through software that pukes out 10s or 100s or 1000s of watered down, low quality, no value, often incomprehensible chunks of crap masquerading as articles that get scattered across the Internet by people with no intent of providing any useful benefit to anyone other than themselves.

Some people argue that’s the way the game is played. That’s what you have to do to get back links to get ranked high. I argue that’s what lazy people do to get ranked and just because you can do it doesn’t mean you have to. Yeah, yeah, yeah… I don’t want to hear, “Well if I don’t do it someone else will.” So let them. Don’t be a sucker and don’t play the game.

Wait a minute, what am I thinking… I – do – want to encourage everyone to start spinning articles. In a couple years after your low quality junk has been slapped, choked, kicked and body slammed by Google and can no longer be found (and all of my high quality, high value articles have replaced all your spin droppings), you can tell me how spinning articles really wasn’t such a great idea right after you ask me if I’d like to super size my order.

Just saying!

JamestheJust April 2, 2011 at 9:27 pm

Bruce -

Entitled to your opinion, but that’s just it – it’s your opinion. I’ve been spinning articles for clients on Elance, and it dawned on me: they’re paying me thousands for this…

It worked for them – turned out it’s worked great for me, too. Now I’m fully supported by spun articles, call them spam or not, I’m not actually looking at linking as an ethical question (you’d be hard pressed to win the case and convince me otherwise).

Spinning and submitting works, despite any algo changes, because links drive up your rankings.

I’ve never been penalized, slapped or otherwise seen any dropping in rankings for my linking methods. And funny thing: I still get traffic from my articles.

Of course if you hit the SAME anchor text and the SAME URL over and over with it – then of course you can get a decrease in rankings…

Depends on who’s spinning them, I suppose.

Either way, doubtless we’ll never see eye to eye, but I did want to say the typical “Your links will get penalized, your rankings will fall” doesn’t apply. Has yet to happen after more than a year.

But that’s the mantra that gets perpetrated. That’s fine – I still don’t get it, though. It’s a link. It’s not like there’s a law that’s been broken (discussing the merits of a spun article usually sounds just as you put it: one party looking down upon another’s methods, but it sure makes for fun debate).

What CAN happen is that the blogs on which the links appear will be closed down – usually the blogger either lets the blog go or sells it, or just deletes the post: but that’s why I use article directories as well versus just a blog network.

Thanks, Ana, for bringing it up – it’s a fun topic to debate. The 2 parties will likely never agree on the issue, and I can’t be convinced at this point not to do it…it’s just working out too well.

Are my rankings holding? My goodness, and how!

I’m also using SENukeX when it comes out. I’ll give Bruce an extra bonus if he’s game. :)

Sorry. Couldn’t resist.

Bruce April 3, 2011 at 9:24 am

Hi James,

I enjoyed reading your thoughtful reply, thank you for taking the time to write.

I have no problem with link building. I spend a chunk of time almost every day building my own links. I just question some of the methods used by some to build their links.

My issue with article spinning is there is no value created with a spun article. How could there be? The same piece of content is being jumbled up and twisted around so it doesn’t look like the original article, yet it isn’t providing or adding any new information. It’s just churning.

For me, the whole issue centers around the idea that you and I – want – to provide value for our readers. When someone spins an article into a 100 or 1000 article wannabe’s they are saying loud and clear, “I don’t give a damn about quality.”

Article spinning is not about producing quality content (except maybe when Pat Flynn does it [love your website Pat!]) Article spinning is all about back links. When someone litters the Internet with spun articles the last thing they’re concerned about is the quality of my ‘user experience’. In fact 99.9% of the people who spin articles don’t care if anyone ever reads their spun articles. Because it isn’t about putting out worthwhile information… it’s about getting a link. That’s not opinion James, that’s a fact.

As I mentioned above, I spend a lot of time and effort building links to my own sites. We all need links. I just don’t spin articles. I mean, really… isn’t there enough crap out there already? Why do you want to add to it?

James you and I probably aren’t going to agree on this, that’s OK. You’re a good guy and I do enjoy the conversation. We’ll just agree to disagree, pour another cup of coffee and move on to the next conversation.

Take care

P.S. – I received your email with the SENukeX offer while writing this reply. Thank you my friend, it’s tough passing up the extra bonus but I’m gonna pass on the latest and greatest article Veg-O-Matic for now! :-)

JamestheJust April 3, 2011 at 2:48 pm

Hilarious – you’re on my list, I mean.

This is a line where you have made a leap in judgment, though:

Article spinning is not about producing quality content (except maybe when Pat Flynn does it [love your website Pat!]) Article spinning is all about back links. When someone litters the Internet with spun articles the last thing they’re concerned about is the quality of my ‘user experience’.

Not sure which it is:

Is Pat Flynn REALLY the ONLY guy on the net blasting “Quality” articles via UAW or similar services? Is that the point?

Because here’s where I disagree / agree – first let me say that I don’t know Pat, I’m sure from your comment that he rocks, that’s fine…

But have you actually read through all the spun articles on the net?

In order to make the case (you called it a fact) that 99.9 % of spinners out there don’t give a rip about quality, you need to read 100% of the spun articles, logically.

I didn’t get thousands of dollars last year for chum. SO like I was saying – it DOES matter who spins (and apparently you agree as well) – but overall you’re right:

We won’t agree on the point.

I added the SENukeX bonus ComLuv as a joke, btw – but yes I am trying it out when it comes out, and I understand this is NOT for everyone, it’s a business decision.

I’d just like to say on record:

There are people who spin/submit without caring. They just want the links. That IS why you spin in the first place…

But really: who cares? Those articles wind up on places that allow the content – it’s not like you force it onto someone.

If an article directory gets upset with a certain author they get banned, no biggie.

If a blog owner doesn’t like the content, they don’t publish it – no harm, no foul.

So why the big to-do about it? If you find a blog with this content on it, you walk, hit the ‘back’ button – no harm, no foul – nobody moved, nobody got hurt.

So again: it’s a moot point. It’s like arguing why Google chose primary colors for their logo and getting your knickers in a knot: the spun articles need a place to be published – those publishers either want the content or not, and last I checked: if I owned a website, I’ll publish what I want.

What’s the issue again?

Ana April 17, 2011 at 8:03 am

Interesting discussion, boys – I shall start charging your comment rent. :)

I am not getting in the middle of it – you largely know my opinion on article spinning.

I can see both sides of the coin: spun articles don’t add much value, since all of it has been already said elsewhere, but they don’t have to be low quality either – I know James is an amazing writer who knows how to turn an old wine back into a new wine pretty easily.

I would not be opposed to spinning articles for a link wheel – something meant strictly for link building and not necessarily for readership.

Ana

Sheila Atwood April 1, 2011 at 8:38 am

Ana,

I have been watching this challenge also. Especially since I have not used article spinners. The challenge that Robert and Alex have taken is a big undertaking and getting their honest take on what is happening makes is worth keeping an eye on.

I found your summary of the challenge a great addition. Thanks Ana.

Ana April 2, 2011 at 6:36 pm

Thank you as well, Sheila.

Honesty is not always an easy thing to come by online these days, and Alex and Robert are definitely being as transparent as they can be in this challenge.

Alison Moore Smith April 1, 2011 at 8:36 am

I appreciate this article (as well as the 80s flashback). I’m not really interested in spinning articles, but I have so many unused ideas that this has confirmed my decision. I have about a billion 1-hour posts in me. Why spin old stuff around in the same amount of time? :)

Ana April 2, 2011 at 6:34 pm

I am with you, Alison – seems like such a waste of time!

Nice use of the pipe, btw :) – I would put spaces in between though.

Ana

Oliver Tausend April 1, 2011 at 8:34 am

Hi Ana,

thanks for putting this information together. I haven’t done article marketing yet because it dawned on me that it might be a waste of time for me too, especially with the recent changes.

Your post didn’t change my point of view much, stubborn as I am ;-)

Take care

Oliver

Ana April 2, 2011 at 6:33 pm

It wasn’t meant to change your mind, Oliver, since I am with you – I think it’s a complete waste of time.

Ana March 31, 2011 at 10:05 pm

Sorry, hon, not my specialty. You’ll have to find the info on your own. :)

Steve March 31, 2011 at 1:48 pm

Ugg. The intro almost killed me. That song by dead or alive is my Kryptonite. I hate it with a boundless passion.

Anyway now on to what matters. I have read all of Pats, Roberts and Alexes views and experiences with UAW. I also have tried to use it in the past with mixed results.
Longterm I say that unlike yours my results then (pre-panda) I just simply didn’t use it ‘enough’ for the cost and though I think it helped in a “pat flynn” type link-building effort for the niche sites I used it on, I was not impressed with the time to result ratio. (I was spinning each of the three copies to get a really spun output)

My concerns now are very inline with yours. I want to see the results now…as well as the results a month from now.

Like Alex said, it may be something worthwhile for a Niche site, but nothing that I would want pointing toward “my” site.

Again so much of it comes down to effectiveness vs time for me.

Ana March 31, 2011 at 10:02 pm

I love “The Wedding Singer” with Adam Sandler – that’s where the song came from. I guess you don’t care for the movie either. :)

Very well summed up, Steve.

I can do so much with the time it takes to spin an article! Not for me….

Justin March 31, 2011 at 8:25 am

I had never heard of UAW before, but I will not use their service in the future either.

Ana March 31, 2011 at 9:50 pm

No reason to, Justin.

Wade March 31, 2011 at 2:02 am

Hi Ana,

Yes I agree with you that those applications probably provide poor quality work. We write and rewrite articles ourselves and like to feel that the quality is maintained. We do web design, we write E books and pretty much anything that you would need written. Feel free to contact me anytime :-)

Sam March 31, 2011 at 1:37 am

Hi Ana,

Thanks for your review and it’s better for me to not use it.

Riya March 31, 2011 at 1:35 am

Hi Ana,

I never used Unique Article Wizard but I think it’s better for me not to use it at all after your review. Thanks for sharing your experience.

Ana March 31, 2011 at 9:47 pm

I don’t and wouldn’t, but as you can tell, many bloggers do choose it as a link building strategy for their niche sites.

NEVER for the main site though, Riya.

Gerald Weber March 30, 2011 at 11:09 pm

I have never used it personally but from what I understand UAW is basically a service. You give them your content and trust them with however they are submiting/sydicationg spinning etc or whatever.

This to me sounds like a very unwise idea to begin with. If you don’t really know what’s going on, it’s like playing Russian roulette with your SEO.

Not a smart idea.

On another note. If you were spinning content and then stopped and noticed a change in a week. It wasn’t because you stopped what you were doing. A week is not enough time really to get out of a penalty or in most cases to even see a difference in ranking from any link building efforts.

Ana March 31, 2011 at 9:45 pm

It wasn’t literally a week, Gerald. We all have our best educated guesses, and that was mine.

Jym March 30, 2011 at 9:04 pm

Very interesting perspectives here Ana.

I’ve had a few forays into article marketing, and it’s certainly helped to boost rankings for specific keywords, temporarily. My own (not by any means exhaustive) tests revealed a similar conclusion to yours here – it’s not a long term solution.

Personally I also don’t really trust UAW’s claim’s of only submitting to quality sites and it seems that Alex has found that to be justified. As spinners go, their system is fairly good, and not as time consuming as some others.

My (current) conclusion – Article Marketing using a tool like this can be a handy element in an overall link-building strategy, and (if your articles are good and find their way to the right places) can serve to bring in traffic directly from the sites you’ve submitted too. But gone are the days when this strategy could spearhead your campaign successfully.

Thanks Ana, and thanks Alex…
Jym

Ana March 31, 2011 at 8:58 am

I definitely can refute UAW claims of “quality sites only”, Jym, since I tried them for 4 months.

Article marketing? After the recent Google changes seems like even more of a waste of time – for me, anyway.

Ana

Alex March 30, 2011 at 4:17 pm

Ana,

WOW.

First of all, thanks so much for the link love – I definitely am feeling that.
Now as for your assessment and overall synopsis of article marketing and where this might be headed – I have to agree whole heartedly.
I want so much to refute something here or there, but each point you made was both valid, and perfectly in context with the facts as we know them (read: Google and Panda)
I am seeing great results ranking wise, but as you stated – how long this lasts is anyone’s guess.
Again, I think that it’s a catch 22 here in that one can never test one particular method of backlinking properly because one method will never work alone. So you either do a whole lot and never know which is the most effective, or you try them all individually and shoot yourself in the proverbial foot before you even begin.

I guess – apart from the results in rank and traffic I need to look at the time factor, and with that in mind UAW is not looking too good in my books.

Thanks again for putting all of the information on this into one post and providing what I think is a very objective (and highly educated) perspective on it.

Kudos to you Ana.

And silly me for being the one stuck doing all the work LOL!
Now I have to go write another 5 articles on Home Improvement… YAY :(

Richard March 30, 2011 at 1:28 pm

I agree that there are definite risks with article spinning but I have also seen numerous case studies of the results people have achieved using this technique so plan on doing some testing of my own shortly just to give me a more educated view.

One thought I have had recently is that there are a number of “gray hat” techniques that can boost your rankings/traffic over the short term but are unlikely to be successful longer term. However I am interested in setting up a few test sites that take this initial traffic boost and then leverage this through viral marketing so that as the organic traffic dies away the residual traffic starts to boost your figures. The “gray hat” is really the “sneeze” that initially launches the virus. Any thoughts on this Ana?

Ana March 31, 2011 at 7:46 am

I think it’s actually a valid point, Richard – if I understood you correctly.

If you set up a squeeze page of sorts or a survey page and get it ranked by whatever means possible and start directing traffic to your main site from that page, that sounds like a win.

If and when the page gets shut down, it’s not a big loss, providing you have other means of generating traffic, of course, as you should.

You gave me an idea, Richard – thank you!

Adrienne March 30, 2011 at 12:34 pm

Yep, the title definitely caught my attention and coming from you, I had to read this post. Never thought this would be something you would be undertaking but after reading through the entire post, I get it.

I saw Alex’s challenge and that Robert Dempsey was going for it (he’s my bud, great guy). He does love to test things out as he should. I totally agree though, I’ve never cared for the spinning services and yes, I’ve tried them out which is why I can actually admit this. And I do agree that the boost in traffic and/or ranking is only short term. But I always enjoyed writing articles and I did get a lot of traffic to my sites through this method which is why I was disappointed that some of these sites were hit rather hard. Not everyone will take the time to write quality stuff so it hurt those of us that did. But I don’t believe article marketing is dead, it won’t ever die. Might take it awhile though.

Interesting challenge and was eager to hear their results. Not something I cared to get in since I don’t have any niche sites I want to do this for at the moment. Thanks for sharing this with us though Ana. Really can take away a lot from this topic.

Adrienne

Ana March 31, 2011 at 7:41 am

Good to hear I got you with the title, Adrienne – I still got it! :)

To be quite honest with you, I was never a big fan of article marketing.

As you can imagine, I always wrote quality stuff and still got very few visitors from it.

One can argue that when someone is just staring out, any method that brings any amount of traffic is great.

However, my argument is that the time is best spent of the more long-term and more productive strategies like networking and SEO.

Thoughts?

Adrienne March 31, 2011 at 7:49 am

I agree with you to an extent because I also believe that people should do what they enjoy more in the way of whatever traffic methods work best for them. Like you, I enjoy posting to my blogs but some people may enjoy writing articles more. Sure, they should concentrate on writing that quality content on their blogs as well but if that’s an area they love and enjoy, I say do what you love and what works best for you.

My last post was about socializing and how some people aren’t implementing it into their marketing methods which is a big mistake. So although I do agree with you, I still believe people should concentrate on honing the skills they enjoy doing the most and mastering those to the point of successful results. Unfortunately, I don’t believe article marketing is the right way to go for now. :-)

Thanks Ana!

Adrienne

Ana April 2, 2011 at 8:02 pm

I can see your point, Adrienne.

However, assuming we are in a business to make money, then doing what we enjoy most might not be what makes us money at all. It only distracts us from profitable activities.

I think we both agree that article marketing is not one of them right now. :)

Pat March 30, 2011 at 11:57 am

Hi Ana – sorry I didn’t get back to your email. I have 350 in queue right now, and had a sick family to take care of. So, my apologies.

I’d love to respond to your post though, now that I have time.

For me, UAW has been great, although it’s part of an overall strategy that points the links to an anchor layer of articles and blogs that point to my niche sites – the UAW links never point directly to my niche sites because of the possibility of the power of those links turning upside down, which may or may not happen (who knows what will happen, right?)

My primary niche site, using UAW among some other strategies, has been at #1 in Google for my keyword for almost 4 months now. It’s been going really well and I continue to see success with new niche sites that I’ve created using the same strategy.

I wouldn’t point the links directly to my site though – just in case.

Now, regarding Article Spinning – I’m definitely a proponent of it, but ONLY if it’s done correctly.

You see, a lot of people don’t spend a lot of time spinning their articles and thus give it a bad reputation. When careful attention and time is invested up front to spin an article, it gives us the ability to really get our message out there in as many places as possible. And the thing is, this whole spinning thing is done to follow Google’s “rules”. Here’s a comment on my backlinking post that really sums it up nicely (and I hope you don’t mind me sharing this here, It’s quite long). This was a response (by Mark Mason) to someone else commenting about how my spinning strategy was not right:

“I hate this spinning discussion. Let’s say Pat has the cure for cancer and he posts it on his blog. Curing cancer is good. So Pat spins articles about curing cancer and posts them everywhere so he can help the most people while playing by the rules that GOOGLE has set.

So what about security guards? Pat’s site rocks. It will help people that are thinking about becoming a security guard. Security guards are a help to society. It’s all good.

So what if Pat “advertises” his site by placing similar content all over the web? It’s not like the web is “full” and Pat is harming someone by taking up too much space.

It seems acceptable for Toyota to place the same add on every TV network and run it over and over. It’s OK for AP to syndicate their content everywhere. Why not Pat.

Not to mention the fact that Pat is only doing this because Google’s algorithms are too poor to tell good content from bad content. I would argue that if Pat Does not do something to rank his site, he is being unfair to all those readers out therebat NEED him but cannot find him.

Failing to properly promote your site when there are people to help profitably is A lot bigger sin than syndicating 47 very similar but different copies of a good article.

If you want to take a stand against someone, get mad at Google. They have an inferior product that relies on backlinks — yet they make Billions of dollars each year from it. That’s the problem, not Pat.”

Also, before I leave (and again sorry this is so long!), thin about press releases. It’s the same content, not changed at all, blasted to several hundred thousand places around the web. PRWeb promotes the SEO quality of their press releases – so really we shouldn’t even have to spin our articles if press releases can be blasted out on the web, should we?

Of course, this is all up for debate, and I love these discussions because really there is no true right or wrong answer. To each their own.

Cheers Ana, and again I apologize for now responding to your email. Hopefully this will suffice :P

-Pat

Ana March 31, 2011 at 7:14 am

To each their own sums it up very nicely, Pat.

Thanks so much for your great comment – I knew something must’ve been going on when I did hear back from you; life has a way of showing us what our true priorities are or at least should be, doesn’t it?

I did read that comment by Mark on your post and thought he had quite a good argument there.

It was interesting to see that you don’t point your UAW links directly to your niche site – just in case.

With Google, you never know when “just in case” becomes “glad I did it this way”. :)

Let’s see what other folks think about it. I thought it was brilliant of Alex to start this non-self-challenge – look forward to seeing what he makes of it.

Thanks again, Pat.

Ana

Michael D Brown March 30, 2011 at 11:32 am

Ana,
Well if you are building readership out of curiosity, you could not have done it better than to use “Spinning” as the subject matter. I was shocked to see a tweet suggesting that you would use “spinning” and relieved to discover that you don’t. It is bad enough to deal with poorly written articles that I encounter, much less to know that there are several versions of the same article out there clogging up the information highway. In my experiments and listening to proponents, by the time you have sufficiently “spun” the article by re-writing the paragraphs and sentences so that they can be re-constructed, you might as well write two more articles on closely related subjects and be done with it. I have had some success with simply submitting the same article/same resource box with a submission service. Why try to hide it? I think eventually those slightly nuanced articles, all pointing at the same site will be discounted by more sophisticated algorithms.

Ana March 31, 2011 at 6:21 am

Glad I got you over to my site, Michael – whatever the means. :)

I would never do article spinning; that’s for sure. Annoying, time-consuming, questionable. And I completely agree that it’s easier for me to write 3 different articles that to spin one.

I look forward to the day (if it ever comes), when the search results will be nothing but fresh relevant content. Wow – that’ll be the day!

Good to hear from you!

Michael D Brown April 2, 2011 at 9:37 am

Ana;
I just got a comment on my blog, that suggested a link that my readers would be interested in reading. I went to check it out…
“The general SEALs be afflicted by an spectacular arsenal to fit more scenario. Up of his or her clothing, weapons plus diving gear to the overall great array from automobiles at his or her disposal…the general US Navy SEALs are by way up the overall very best outfitted squaddies in the general world. ”
This is why spinning sucks!
Michael Brown

Randy Pickard March 30, 2011 at 11:31 am

Ana – Well written. I agree with you that if article spinning is not already a waste of time, it soon will be. Alex and Robert’s results are really mediocre given the time they have invested in their tests of article spinning (the primary benefit they have received seems to be content for interesting blog posts about their efforts), and even the limited link authority they have obtained may decay over time.

Ana March 31, 2011 at 6:16 am

How is it that no one ever measures everything with the amount of time something takes, huh?

Great point, Randy – even if this did work, I wouldn’t do it for that very reason.

PS Did you see my post on dupe content I published on Monday? Would love to hear your thoughts…

Randy Pickard March 31, 2011 at 9:10 am

Ana – Your article on dup content is an outstanding resource. I just added a comment to the article

Wade March 30, 2011 at 11:19 am

Another thing, if you are going to go this route you may as well outsource it as it is very cost-effective. @ sandeeop, if you spin the articles properly, then it will not be a problem. I guess it is all about how well the articles are written and spun.

Sandeep March 30, 2011 at 11:10 am

Nice post Ana, I would stay away from article spinners as i’ve used them earlier and think its all rehearsed crap… sorry for the language… but thats what it really is..

The google panda update was a wake up call for article directories to pull up their socks if they want to be in exist..

I was surprised though to find the ezine articles was hit, because i think they’re one of the best moderated article directories out there..

If i put it in a sentence – short term gain for long term loss

Ana | Traffic Generation March 31, 2011 at 6:13 am

I am definitely with you, Sandeep.

Article directories: EzineArticles including, they don’t produce any original content, thus the drop.

I know of only one article directory that wouldn’t accept an article unless it was unique – buzzle.com.

I wonder how they weathered in Panda update…

Wade March 30, 2011 at 11:07 am

As some one who writes and spins articles I can tell you that our clients keep coming back for more so they must obviously be making money or they would have stopped long time ago. It definitely gets traffic and if you spin the articles properly, Google will never latch onto it.

Ana March 30, 2011 at 9:46 pm

I don’t think the problem is with spinning per se, Wade; it’s with the fact that submitting spun articles through software like UAW gives you tons of very low-quality links and whether it’s worth it.

I can see the power of spinning articles for a link wheel, for instance.

Now I know who to contact if I need article spinning. :) Any other skills I should know about?

Nick Stamoulis March 30, 2011 at 10:09 am

This sort of tactic might work for the short term and provide a quick boost, but with Google cracking down on bad content, it probably won’t help in the long run. Article marketing helps for SEO, but it isn’t the only purpose. The goal is to establish youself as an expert in an industry and get the attention of a target audience.

Ana March 30, 2011 at 9:41 pm

Completely agree with the first part of your comment, Nick – these kinds of rankings can be very temporary.

On the latter part, I don’t think article marketing does much for branding at all. There are plenty of much better ways to brand yourself, blogging being the center piece.

Thoughts?

Jurrell Kemp March 30, 2011 at 8:30 am

Great post I never thought of doing article spinning because I always heard bad things about them but I guess it depends on how you use and what niche your in will determine how successful it will be.

Ana March 30, 2011 at 10:29 am

I would still stay away from it, Jurrell.

I am sure Google will catch up with it sooner or later.

I suppose you can do it on a site you don’t care too much about either way.

Chris the Traffic Blogger March 30, 2011 at 8:00 am

Article marketing is the long term investing of traffic building. It will make you a few hits, a few visitors, etc per day but that happens forever.

So over time if you build articles every day that are high quality you will eventually see much higher sustained traffic numbers.

After 6 months of writing articles I get around 280 article hits per day but the number never goes down. Another 6 months and it could be 700 per day.

That’s sustained, reliable traffic but it takes a lot of work and it feels a lot like long term investing… it never feels worth it until you’ve been doing it for a long time.

Ana March 30, 2011 at 10:27 am

I’ve done article marketing for months and never got much traffic out of it, Chris. By not much, I mean a couple of visits here and there – definitely not worth the time.

Now that the links from article directories have been discounted even more, I think it’s a worthless endeavor – personally.

Andreas March 30, 2011 at 2:41 pm

Spinning an article and posting versions with less than 100% uniqueness should get you sometime in the future in trouble, so I would ‘lean away’ from it (to use Matt Cutts’ words lol :) . Even though the Panda update went for mass sites publishing duplicate or identical content and you can still submit articles with less than 100% uniqueness with some success, finding similarities in content is something that google engineers and are still improving on and you will need to spin more and more, resulting in more and more manual work in the future.

Ana March 30, 2011 at 10:25 am

I am with your, Andreas: even if it gets the guys initial push in rankings, I wonder about longevity.

As I pointed out in the post, it pushed my rankings down until I stopped using UAW.

I’d stay away from it.

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