Article Snatch

A mediocre example of a mediocre genre, this site is one of the results of online businesses believing they know how to push their sites up the Google rankings without actually doing any work or creating any content.

The principle works like this. Firstly you write an article on any subject you fancy, and you don't need to worry about being a good writer or even being able to write fluently in this language. Expert knowledge, or indeed any knowledge, of the subject matter is also unnecessary since you can simply cut and paste some content from somewhere else. The sole purpose of the article isn't the content, you see, but to insert links to your own website or in it. Your site should theoretically relate in some manner to the content of the article, but that's not a requirement.

Next you post your article on a directory such as this one, immediately creating a link back to your website. Then, you hope that hundreds of other site owners will copy your article to their sites, since they are also too lazy to write their own content, and every time your article is republished, another link back to your site will be created too. This will then cause Google, and other search engines, to believe your site is important because so many other sites have back links to it, and your site will shoot up the search engine returns pages like the proverbial dot-com success story it isn't. Meanwhile, as your site gains status, everyone linking to it will gain status also and eventually everyone will be at number one on that Google page.

Needless to say, none of this works. Maybe, and in long forgotten days, the people who design search engine algorithms really were that innocent. But not today, and merely linking your site up with a gazillion others doesn't do you much good. And although it's a fact that some website owners have yet to grasp, only one site can be at the top of a listings page. The greater the competition for that spot, the less chance you have of being there, so the more link sharing you get into, the worse your chances become.

So you don't get the instant success that you'd hoped for, leading you to write even more articles in the hope that at least some will be picked up and widely republished. It doesn't matter too much if you don't write them yourself, and in fact if English isn't your first language it's probably wise that you don't, and simply cut and paste something from elsewhere instead. Eventually, you've published five, or maybe ten thousand articles in one directory alone, and now you're busy copying them all to every other directory you can find. You figure that since you now have thousands of links on just one site, and since that site is so popular, surely the search engines will now pay attention.

Well, see, it still doesn't work because the search engines know exactly what's going on and value the links on the directory site somewhere below spam and above Britney Spears. They aren't going to be sending your site rankings soaring, because not only is your own site awful, but everyone who links to it has pretty awful sites, too. Directories such as this will cite the well known "content is King" principle to attract more writers, but content is only King when it's original, useful content, not this stuff.

Need I say, the quality of copy on this site is poor? After all, many of the writers here have written literally thousands of articles and they can't all be great, original copy. I picked, at random, an article from the Humor section as an illustration. This article, entitled Good Jokes, begins:

"Good Jokes are good because not only it will bring laughter to the people, but it will also not offend other people. Good jokes or commonly called clean jokes are those that don't contain a foul and green intent."

Some of the good jokes that follow include:

"Q: Where do you find a no legged dog? A: Right where you left him."
And
"Q: Why don't blind people like to sky dive? A: Because it scares the dog."

Prefer great one-liners? How about these:

"Boys are like parking spaces, the good ones are take-in!"
Or
"To a worm, digging in the hard ground is more relaxing than going fishing."

Lastly, the author tells us that

"there are also Good Jokes that depict a story and at the end of the story is the punch line. They usually portray people with their stupidity and dullness which makes people laugh at the end."

Hence

"Three retirees, each with hearing loss, were playing golf one fine March day. One remarked to the other, Windy, isnt it? No, the second man replied, its Thursday. The third man chimed in, So am I. Lets have a beer."

Pretty funny. Let's hear it for the dull, stupid deaf people.

Well, what can I say. This is one of the better articles I saw. You get the idea. It's not going to impress Google, and it's not going to do a lot of good for you if you include it in your website either, or at least I hope not. If you're starting a website or struggling to get some attention for one you already have, please, steer clear of content like this because it won't help. And even if you're unconvinced, remember that somewhere in there will be at least one link to a site over which you have no control. If you're going to write for yourself, write good, original material. And there's no reason to lower that standard if you're writing for other sites, either.

(Footnote: I should probably explain the Britney Spears reference. When I was working for a search engine myself, the top search term of all time was Britney Spears. Many site owners knew this, so they were including her name on their pages regardless of whether those pages had anything to do with her, or not. They were banking on their sites turning up in the listings every time someone typed in Britney Spears, and on the search engines being insufficiently sophisticated to spot the trick. Unfortunately, quite often they were right.)

PS. SJ, I managed to work that name into this article four times, ok?;-)

This site is one of the results of online businesses believing they know how to push their sites up the Google rankings without actually doing any work or creating any content. I had a bad experience with it.