What Has Changed
Nowadays, quality is more important than quantity. Search engines place great importance to the quality of the page that links to you. The problem with syndicating articles wildly and freely like in the past, is that most of the time these articles end up published on sites with very little authority. These links are not likely to count much for search engine purposes. There are also other issues: if an article you syndicate is also published on your site, you may be subject to duplicate content penalties. Search engines want unique content, and they're getting better at detecting and penalizing pages whose content can be found on other pages.

How Search Engines Deal with Duplicate Content
When search engines find different versions of the same article, they prefer to rank the one hosted at the site with the highest authority. For example, if one of your articles is published in the Wall Street Journal and also in the article archive of your own little website, the Wall Street Journal version will show up on the search engine results while your site's version will be relegated to search engine purgatory.

For a new site trying to build authority the problem is even greater. When a site is new, almost every other site will have higher authority, so freely syndicating articles can put you in a Catch 22 situation. On one hand, you give away articles to get inbound links and boost your search engine rankings, but on the other hand what really happens is that older, more established sites (some of which are really not that good) may beat you in the SERPs with your own articles!

Keep Some of Your Articles for Yourself
The best way to build your authority is to get editorial citations (links) from high-quality pages related to your topic. When these high quality pages link to your articles, you want those links to point to your site, not a competitor. That is why it is a good idea to save a good number of your high quality articles for exclusive publication on your site. As your articles gain authority, they will also start to appear in the SERPs without competition from the same articles hosted somewhere else.

The Right Way to Syndicate Articles
There is still room for free article syndication, though. When you are new to the web syndicating articles may be the easiest and cheapest way to get others to know you. The trick is to write some articles for free syndication and others to publish exclusively on your site. You can write shorter, easy to read articles for syndication, and more elaborate articles for your site.

Typical ways to come up with articles for free syndication are: to repurpose or add a new twist to old articles, to write an abbreviated version of an existing article, or to write check-list type articles that show "10 top ways to do this" or "20 fast ways to do that", etc. (they are not hard to write and are easy to syndicate and spread). Many sites will pick them up and each of them will have a link to your website, where readers will find your exclusive, more in-depth articles (as well as the products and services you offer).

The Role of Articles Beyond SEO
Well researched, elaborate articles are a great way to build credibility and generate trust. Experts say that you may need up to seven contacts with a prospect before you make a sale. I don't know if seven if the magic number, but I do know that nobody is going to buy from you if they first don't trust you. By keeping a large article archive with relevant content written by you our somebody in your organization, and updating it often, you will make your customers come back while you will establish yourself as an expert and generate the trust your customers need to feel before they buy from you.


Mario Sanchez publishes The Internet Digest ( http://www.theinternetdigest.net ), a growing collection of Internet marketing articles, tips and resources, and Resource Box ( http://resourcebox.blogspot.com ), a small business internet marketing blog