Article Spinning, is it Ethical and Does Article Spinning Work?
What Is Article Spinning?
Article Spinning (AKA content spinning or content cloning) refers to an internet marketing technique that creates fresh articles from an existing article by changing words,synonyms, rewriting sentences or entire paragraphs. The technique is becoming increasingly popular amongst article marketers and SEO's as a means to evade duplicate content filters currently employed by the major search engines. Advocates claim that article spinning software is capable of producing or 'spinning' hundreds or possibly thousands of unique versions from a single seed document.
There are three main reasons to consider article spinning:
- As previously mentioned, the main purpose is to evade search engine duplicate content filters. By spinning an article the goal produce multiple unique articles each suitably different to escape detection and filtering. However this might not be as easy as some would have you believe.
- Article Spinning is often implemented by copywriters or anyone who uses article syndication as part of a link building initiative. For these people the capability to spin thousands of unique articles at the press of a button is an advantage that greatly simplifies a time consuming process.
- Because each article is unique each has the same chance of being indexed and ranked without fear of being filtered. This means that multiple search engine positions can be achieved raising visibility amongst the target readers beyond the site being promoted by any link campaign.
After Spinning, articles are ready to be submitted to various article directories, article syndication sites and blogs en mass so that a large number of links are created to your website. Some article spinners come with their own submission software that lets you submit articles to hundreds of directories automatically. Content spinning is without doubt one of the simplest and most obvious SEO tactics, even though it's not always considered the most ethical.
Article Spinning, Ethical or Not?
The Internet offers an incredible source of facts, concepts and experiences, that are researched, documented and uploaded by people who are experts in their niche and passionate about their subject. It is also a place teaming with swindlers who, for the most part, have no misgivings about stealing the hard work of others and maintaining it to be their own, their intellectual property. This type of plagiarism should never be regarded as acceptable or ethical behavior.
Fueling these acts of plagiarism is undeniable proof that content spinning can output content that is grammatically correct and makes complete sense while able to pass Copyscape's plagiarism tests. If the spun content is suitably camouflaged and rendered undistinguishable from the original content then isn't the initial act of plagiarism forgivable?
Article spinning makes it possible to create articles on subjects of which you have absolutely no knowledge or experience. The knowledge, research and hard graft required to put the original article together is the only thing that lets the plagiarist spin his new content. Whether the original is recognizable or not is purely academic.
The Best Companion for Plagiarists and Imposters.
Most spinners come with the ability to scrape keyword targeted text from the web. This ability is greatly appreciated by spammers and snake oil salesmen alike and makes their job a whole lot easier. This tells us a lot about the thinking behind content spinners, how the program developers view their target customers and how they think users will ultimately employ their product.
Not All Article Spinners Are Plagiarists
If you are spinning your own articles then nobody can say this is unethical. It is also common practice to spin PLR articles; these are pre written articles that once bought give you the right to alter them in any way and republish them as your own. Again there isn't an ethical problem with this; you are paying for the privilege of having someone else carry out the initial research, perhaps on a subject that you know little about, and reshape them to fit your precise requirements. You can even buy pre-spun articles; these are articles that have all the spin tags already inserted for you. All that is required is to pop it into your article spinner of choice and out pops a few new articles. However, if you have bought a pre-spun article that is very popular, you are probably heading towards publishing duplicate content as more and more copies get pushed onto the web.
As a tactic, whether you are ethical in its use or not, article spinning becomes rather pointless if it fails to get past search engine duplicate content filters. So does Article Spinning actually work?
Does Article Spinning Work?
The effectiveness of article spinning is a hotly debated topic with equally convincing arguments both for and against the practice. It seems that no real answer will emerge until some sort of reliable evaluation is carried out. This is exactly what is being undertaken by two internet marketers who use article marketing as a way to build links and raise the online visibility of the products they promote. Both are attempting to rank for the term 'Article Spinning' the winner will be judged as whoever has the achieved greatest number of positions on the first page of Google by 31st may 2010.