Using Free Reprint Articles - Some Questions Answered

Using Free Reprint
Articles - Some Questions Answered

by:Glenn Murray

Recently I wrote
an article discussing the merits of using free reprint articles
on your website to increase your search engine ranking. (The article
explained how Google loves lots of content on your site, how it
loves that content to be regularly updated, and how you can get
lots of keyword rich content for your site, absolutely free. See
http://www.divinewrite.com/Top_Ranking_Free.htm .)

A few days after publishing, I received a 'please help' email
from Loren, a small business owner. Her website is all about glass
art (http://www.headchangearts.com ), and she wanted some clarification
on some of the points I made in my previous article. Loren's questions
were good ones, and the answers important, so I thought I'd publish
them.

Q: We have a site for glass art. From your article, I gather that
if I create an articles page with free reprint articles (written
by other people) containing 'glass art' type keywords, I'll get
higher search rankings for those keywords? Is that correct? If
so, what page comes up in the rankings? The article itself or
my Home page? Also, if the article is being used by other webmasters,
won't the search results also include their version of the article?

A: In answer to your first question, yes, having an articles page
with keyword rich free reprint articles generally has the effect
of increasing your ranking. Google thinks highly of sites with
a lot of helpful content, but it all comes down to whether other
webmasters do as well. If your site contains heaps of helpful
content about glass art, other webmasters in the glass art field
(be they suppliers, distributors, or competitors) will be inclined
to link to you simply because that link implies (to their customers)
an association with you. That association boosts their credibility
because you're obviously an authority in the field. It also may
help their own search engine ranking a little as Google will then
see them as part of an expert, credible community of sites (although
the benefits of this for the linking site are minimal and arguable).
So, in a roundabout way, I'm saying that yes, article-based content
can help your ranking, but only if it increases the likelihood
that other related sites will link to yours.

As to the question of which page (the article itself or your home
page) displays in search results, that really depends on which
page has the most links to it*. If you have an article which is
just THE BEST source of info in the industry, and everyone's linking
to it, that page will display in the search results. This is good
because people who click on this result are interested specifically
in the content of the article. So when your website displays,
they get the information they want, and they'll be pleased. And
assuming your navigation is clear and easy to use, it is likely
they'll at least visit your home page.

And finally, yes, if other sites have published the same article,
they may display in the results alongside you. The same is true
of the original author's website. But it's important to remember
that, generally, the site with the highest PR will rank highest
in the results, and it's this site that most users will visit.
You just need to work hard to make sure that's you! For an example
of how this works, do a search for a very specific term related
to the article of mine which you've obviously read. Search Google
worldwide for "Google's love affair with content" (including the
quotes). You'll notice that the no.1 result is actually a page
on EzineArticles.com which contains my article. The page on my
site (DivineWrite.com) containing the article only ranks no.2.
This is because EzineArticles.com has a higher PR than DivineWrite.com,
and overall, the keywords are considered more relevant to the
rest of the content on their site than they are to mine. Obviously,
this means that a good article can display several times in the
same search results, but that's ok - it simply adds to the perceived
authority of the article and the sites containing it.

* Above I say that the page that displays in the results will
be the one with the most links to it. There are some complicating
factors here. For instance, the text in a link plays a big part
in how effective that link is. A link to your site that says "Click
here" or "check this site out", won't do you as much good as a
link which says "Glass Art sales" or "glass art creator". So if
lots of people are linking to the page containing the article,
but the text in their links is generic, then that page may not
rank as highly as a page with fewer - more keyword rich - links
pointing to it. Of course, this assumes that both pages are equally
well optimized for search engines and for the same keyword phrases.

I know that the above is a very specific question and the answer
is full of ifs and buts, but hopefully this exchange will answer
a few questions for a few people.

Happy reprinting!

About the author:

* Glenn Murray is a website copywriter, SEO copywriter, and article
submission and article PR specialist. He owns article submission
service Article PR and copywriting studio Divine Write. He can
be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com
Visit http://www.DivineWrite.com or http://www.ArticlePR.comfor
further details, more FREE articles, or to download his FREE SEO
e-book.


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