Using Free Articles For Website Content

Web site content is important to your search engine rankings. Many webmasters use article directories as a source of instant free content that can be added to a site in minutes.

A common mistake is to use content that is not terribly relevant to the types of users you are trying to attract to their website.  This can be off-putting to your visitors. They will resent the time wasted looking for stuff they are interested in.

Non-relevant content makes your site navigation more cumbersome and harder to follow too.

A second major mistake, one that is often made by those who build sites purely to earn 'pay per click' income from Adsense advertising, is to put up a site with content almost completely obtained from article directories. Often, the content is of low reader value, and in any case is very likely duplicated elsewhere on the net by other would-be adsense entrepenuers.

Most have simply gone to a few major article directory sites, grabbed hundreds of articles relating to a specific set of keywords, and created web pages with these as virtually the only page content. These days, you run the risk of losing your Adsense account if you do this, as it is quite obvious such a site is created mainly for the purpose of generating Adsense income. This is contrary to Adsense account terms and conditions.  

Build links to your website.  Be a publisher

If you are a webmaster, you should seriously consider becoming an article author, not just a user of articles for content ( ie. become a publisher).

As an author you are allowed to include an ' about the author' text box, (usually at the foot of the article), that contains a link back to your website. Over time, as your articles are used as content around the internet, the direct links back to your website will increase dramatically and your search engine rankings should improve.

I say 'should' because of the growing problem of 'article spam'. This is partly due to the availability of submission tools that allow posting of your article to many article directories at once.

Predictably, some webmasters use these tools to post poorly and hastily written short articles that are nothing more than an advertising blurb for an overpriced product. Most articles of this sort simply aren't worth reading.

Read on to find out why doing this could be bad for your business