Free Articles - Should you or should you not use them?

Darren Rowse's ProBlogger is part of my daily readings. One of these past days I read a post on his blog called "Why I don't use Free Articles on my Blogs". It should be clear for everyone what the article is about. After reading it, two of the four reasons given by Darren stuck to my mind: "Quality of Articles" and "Duplicate Content". Those of us who have had a website or a blog for a while know that quality and original content are the best way to increase rankings and traffic from search engines. Or we should know, since it is written in almost every article dealing with increasing a website's popularity. If you think about it, it's common sense. What do you want from a website you decide to visit? Quality! Whether we talk about products, services or information. And for those of us running websites meant to help others [put whatever you wish here - in my case, make money online] quality of information is probably the most important aspect of one's website. You could have the most attractive design a website could have, if people don't find useful and quality information, off they go and never will you see them again. More than that, they might "recommend" you to others as a place one should not waste time with. For those who own a website about something they have good knowledge of, by all means go ahead and write your own original content. If you think you're not good at writing, you have two options. Option number one is hiring a writer to do all the work. You tell him/her what you want the article(s) to be about, give him/her the information you want included in the article and then send him/her to work. Of course this costs money. If you don't have the money for a professional writer, then - option number two - search the internet for articles and free e-books who teach people to write. And believe me, it is not something you can never learn. Don't think you have to be Shakespeare for people to read your stuff, find it interesting and come back for more. As long as you know what to write about, all you have to learn are some basic guidelines that make your article easy to read and understandable. Trust me, if a construction worker can do it, so can you. By writing your own articles you could solve the first problem - "Quality of Articles". As for the second one, it arises when we think about one of the most recommended ways of increasing "natural inbound links" and "quality traffic" to your website: submitting your articles to directories (thus increasing chances of people finding them), especially to those allowing others to republish them. Once such happens, you bump into the problem of "Duplicate Content" which is something search engines don't like. And for a good reason. Why would they send people to a website which has the same content as hundreds if not thousands of others? This will negatively influence your website (or blog) once others start publishing your articles on their own pages. So what is one to do? Well, one of the solutions suggested by those who posted commentaries to Darren's article is to submit your articles to directories in a slightly different version. This way you can avoid your website being categorized as "Duplicate Content" while increasing inbound links and quality traffic (both from those who read your article and are curious what else you have to offer them as well as from search engines who will start giving your website more importance as a result of many others linking to it - in a natural way). What happens if your website focuses on a topic you don't have too much knowledge about. Why would you have such a website? some might ask. Well, a lot of people build websites about helping others make money online when they don't have that much experience in the field themselves. A lot of successful websites about this topic started in such a way. Including mine. Whatever your case may be, the question is: how can you offer quality content on a topic you don't know too much about? You do some reading and you find out there are plenty of free articles you can publish on your website or blog. And it seems that almost everybody does it. So why not you? You could, but before you decide to do so, think about the problems raised by Darren: "Quality of Articles" and "Duplicate Content". Well, quality is not so hard to figure: use your common sense; find other articles about the same topic and see if they say pretty much the same thing; find webmasters who are experts in the field and ask for their opinion; visit forums and ask people to read the article and tell you their opinion, or whatever other way comes to mind. The problem comes with "Duplicate Content"! What I suggest you do is read more articles about the same topic and come up with your own. Don't get me wrong. I definitely do not recommend you brake any copyrighting laws. What I am trying to say is that by reading more articles on the same topic, it should be quite easy to form your own opinion (agree or disagree with different things said in various articles), put it down in your computer and then up on your website. To make your life a little easier, some suggest to even use quotes from different articles. It's up to you. As you can see, it pretty much comes down to writing your own original good quality articles. I don't want anybody to think I am completely against publishing other people's articles. If you take some time to visit the rest of my website, you will realize I have a good deal of articles belonging to others. I mean, if I find a good one I am convinced would be of use to my visitors, I will, by all means, publish it, without worrying too much about search engines and their "Duplicate Content" policies. What do they know? :) Just don't get carried away! Use your common sense and imagination to find original ways to get good, original content for your website/blog and avoid being labeled as "duplicate content". If others can do it, so can you!