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Using Free Reprint Articles - Some Questions Answered
I recently wrote an article discussing the merits of using free reprint articles on your website to increase your search engine rankings. (The article explains how Google loves having lots of content on your site, how it loves content to be updated regularly, and how you can get lots of keyword-rich content for your site, absolutely free.
A few days after publication, I received a "help" email from Loren, a small business owner. His website is about glass art (http://www.headchangearts.com), and I wanted some clarification on some of the points I made in my previous article. Loren's questions were good and the answers were important, so I thought I'd post them.
Q: We have a site for glass art. From your article, I gather that if I create an article page with free reprint articles (written by other people) that contain 'glass art' type keywords, I will get higher search rankings for those keywords. Is that correct? If so, which page appears in the ranking? 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 article page with keyword rich free reprint articles generally has the effect of increasing your rankings. Google thinks highly of sites with a lot of useful content, but it all comes down to whether other webmasters do too. If your site contains lots of useful glass art content, other glass art webmasters (be they suppliers, distributors, or competitors) will be inclined to link to you simply because that link implies (to your customers) an association with you. . . That association increases your credibility because you are obviously an authority in the field. It can also help their own search engine ranking a bit, as Google will see them as part of a credible and knowledgeable community of sites (although the benefits of this to the linking site are minimal and debatable). So indirectly, 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 for the question of which page (the article itself or its homepage) shows up in search results, that really depends on which page has the most links to it*. If you have an article that is simply THE BEST source of information in the industry, and everyone links to it, that page will show up in search results. This is good because the people who click on this result are specifically interested in the content of the article. So when your website is displayed, they get the information they want and they will be satisfied. And assuming your navigation is clear and user-friendly, chances are they'll at least visit your home page.
And finally, yes, if other sites have published the same article, they can appear in the results next to you. The same goes for the original author's website. But it is important to remember that usually the site with the highest PR will rank highest in the results, and it is this site that the most users will visit. You just need to work hard to make sure it's you! To see an example of how this works, do a search for a very specific term related to the article of mine that you've obviously read. Search Google worldwide for "Google's love affair with content" (including the quotes). You'll notice that the number 1 result is actually a page on EzineArticles.com that contains my article. The page on my site (DivineWrite.com) that contains the article is only second. This is because EzineArticles.com has a higher PR than DivineWrite.com and the keywords are generally considered more relevant to the rest of the content on their site than mine. This obviously means that a good article may show up multiple times in the same search results, but that's okay, it just increases the perceived authority of the article and the sites that contain it.
* Above I say that the page shown in the results will be the one with the most links to it. There are some complicating factors here. For example, the text of a link plays an important role in the effectiveness of that link. A link to your site that says "Click here" or "Take a look at this site" won't do you as much good as a link that says "Glass Art Sales" or "Glass Art Creator". So, if a lot of people are linking to the page that contains the article, but the text in your links is generic, then that page may not rank as high as a page with fewer (more keyword-rich) links pointing to it. she. Of course, this assumes that both pages are equally well optimized for search engines and for the same keyword phrases.
I know the question above is very specific and the answer is full of ifs and buts, but I hope this exchange answers some questions for some people.
Happy reprinting!
