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The Internet is filled with millions upon millions of pages of content. Naturally, having content online is necessary for the ongoing success of your business, so having a writer or team of writers at your disposal is necessary. However, as with all things, when it comes to content, you get what you pay for. Poorly written content can be more damaging to your business than having no content at all. If someone comes to your site through a landing page that is very badly written, filled with grammatical errors or just loaded with words that essentially say nothing, they will not have a very good impression of your company.
Article spinning is frequently considered to be a black hat SEO technique. What happens is that a “writer” will find well-written content online and use it to produce an article for you. To avoid the appearance of plagiarism, they will run the full article through an automated spinning program that essentially substitutes several words for similar words. It would be like taking a sentence and replacing the majority of the words with an alternative word found in a thesaurus.
As you might expect, the resulting article is awful and largely unreadable. Many business owners will purchase spun articles for a couple dollars each and then expect an editor to work on it to make it readable. A decent editor will not stick around very long in such a position.
I once accepted a job editing articles that seemed to be written by someone for whom English was a third language that they’d only started learning the week before. One article, that referenced a portable tool kit, actually mentioned the included “crocodile-snout pliers.” It took me a moment to realize that this was a spin on alligator-nose pliers. Needless to say, I ended that contract.
By the way, it should be noted that although an article has been run through an article spinner, it is still plagiarized content. When you accept and post spun articles as part of your Web content, you are putting your business at risk of a lawsuit for copyright infringement.
To see an example of what happens with an article spinner, I put the first paragraph of this blog article into a free online spinner. This is the result:
“The Internet is loaded with millions upon millions of pages of substance. Commonly, having substance online is essential for the progressing achievement of your business, so having an essayist or group of scholars available to you is fundamental. Notwithstanding, as with all things, regarding substance, you get what you pay for.”
Besides sounding awful and being largely unreadable, it is also an obvious copy of the original text. If you hire a writer who is turning in content that looks like a thesaurus exploded on it, you are strongly advised to end the contract. And if you are hiring writers at bargain basement prices, this is likely what you are going to get.
I have been working as the Senior Editor at SCUBE for more than a year now and I am impressed by the caliber of the writers who are creating Web content for SCUBE's various clients. New writers are reviewed and assessed during a trial period, and only those who are creating well-written, original content are kept on and given more assignments.
You know the saying “You only get one chance to make a first impression.” Your landing pages are the first impression that prospective customers have of you. If they are clear, concise and informative, your prospects will have a much more favorable impression of your business.
