Saturday, April 18, 2009

Some Like It Free: Pitfalls Of Using Free Article Content

The easiest and cheapest way to get started with article marketing is to use free content from article directories and/or public domain articles.

Getting article content in this way seems like a perfectly sensible and promising way to promote your product or service. You are getting well written articles which are related to your website topic and the best thing is that its free.

However, although it seems like like a great idea at first, there are a few reasons why this will ultimately not get you the traffic you want and more importantly the revenue you hope to receive.

You Will Not Rank Well

Having the same content on your website as a few dozen or hundred other websites will not achieve good search engine rankings. Rankings will be important if you wish to attract customers to your website. And if you rank poorly, you will lower your website's visibility on search results. Therefore lowering possible clicks to your website.

You Get Lower Chances Of Follow Through

If you have readers that have seen a duplicated article in several places. Then coming to your site and seeing the same article, it will be unlikely that your readers will want to see what lies behind your link, therefore lowering your chances of clicks to your website.

You May Get Labeled Untrustworthy

Although getting a sale is an immediate goal you should have. In my opinion, a goal you should consider more important is to develop a relationship with your reader/customer. Developing a good relationship with your customer increases his willingness to return and buy more from you.

But when he sees a number of duplicated articles on your website. The chance of him sensing distrust or even worse a lack of confidence in what you have to share is likely to increase.

You May Get Stopped Even Before You Begin

The goal of your article marketing campaign is to submit your articles to article directories. Then be aware that article directories also lookout for content that are duplicated. To keep getting readers to return to their site, an article directories' goal is to have unique and valuable content.

As a result of submitting duplicated content, you may stop your efforts even before you get started, as there will be a high chance that they will reject your article.

You Loose Out On Your Own Links

The cost of using free articles is having to agree to include the author's resources box with the article. The resource box is what makes article marketing work as it contains the links which direct readers to other websites e.g. affiliate links, sales pages etc.

Having the author's links mixed together with what you are trying to accomplish with your efforts, lowers your marketing message and impact.

When you look at just these few reasons, you see the possibility of a substantial drop in effectiveness in article marketing when you use free content. It is then well worth your time and effort to create your own articles, as they maximize your articles potential to help drive traffic to your site.

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