It has been a long held and time proven tactic, to use articles to generate interest and attract visitors to our websites.
Buy writing a good quality article and posting it to an article directory with a high Google page rank, we are in effect, creating for ourselves a link to our site from what is considered an authority site.
Google loves authority sites. Google wants to give its users the most relevant content it can. If an authority site such as an Article directory has a link pointing to another site, it is fair to assume that the link must point to a site that it deems to be of some worth.
Another benefit of posting an article to an article directory, is that other publishers may copy and use your article on their own websites, therefore putting it front of a lot more readers. By rights, the publisher who uses your article, is ethically required to also retain your resource box, which contains your author details.
This resource box should also contain a link to the authors' website. The end result is, you end up with a lot more websites having links to your website, which reflects on your site as having even more worth.
Clearly article marketing can be a greatly effective way of increasing exposure for your website.
But, unfortunately, there are many people out there, who openly abuse this wonderful opportunity.
It stands to reason, that the more articles you write and post to article directories, the more "link juice" you are going to generate. And this is true. And once again the added benefit of having other website owners use your content will also expand exponentially.
Where it all falls down, is in the methodology and tactics employed by many marketers, to abuse this time honoured method. Hence the rise, of such applications as article spinners, automatic article submission software, and article scapers.
Article spinners for example, take one article, substitute multiple synonyms, and then generate hundreds or even thousands of articles from one article. These so called "different" articles are then posted to multiple article directories, generally used automated article submission software.
It is supposed to appear that you have created and submiited a different article to each directory, which in turn removes the duplicate content penalty and creates more links back to your website.
Then there are the scrapers, which take your article and post it to someone else's website. This in whole is not a bad thing. It gets your words in front of a lot more people. Where it can fall down also though, is when your author's details, or the link to your website, is stripped from the article. There is no nice word for this; it is theft, pure and simple.
The current internet marketing mantras seem to be," Just use what works"," The end justifies the means", and worst of all, "Everyone else is doing it so it's O.K".
The question is, are these the principles you would apply to a normal business, or your life in general?
Ultimately, we have to ask the question, just what kind of internet are we creating? Are we just tearing around the internet throwing crap out the window of the pickup while throwing down a six pack? Would you do this in your own neighbourhood?
It is a competitive world out there in internet marketing land. It is discouraging to see, just how openly techniques like article marketing are being abused.
In our modern society, we have commonly accepted rules of conduct. We have laws. We try to respect and engage others with general good manners.
It's a curious thing to see how people behave when they think no one is watching, or when they fear no penalty in being discovered for doing something dishonest. They will use any method or tactic, despite how unethical or underhanded, to get what they want. Just how civilised are we really? Remember Lord of the flies?
In some ways the internet is still like the old wild west.
There are the good settlers, out there in a land of great opportunity, abiding by commonly accepted values of decency, hard work, honesty and integrity, trying to build, produce and create something worthwhile, and generally contributing to society in general.
And then there are the bandits. These bandits roam around, with no interest in creating a home or a better place, just chasing an easy buck. They pillage and plunder with no remorse or conscience as to their effect on society, their fellow human beings or the world they inhabit with others.
