Syndicating your article online – its pros and cons

Syndicate means organization or group or collective. Syndicating articles means collecting your published notes and making it accessible to the world.
Is it as simple as that? Well, almost.
What happens is that when you publish an article it is made immediately available to the public / surfers. Obviously, due to this there are many advantages and disadvantages.
Let us go through the advantages first.
1. Public awareness of your brand:
By making your article available to the mass you are actually advertising yourself, your company. You would have your articles published in many ‘news-related’ websites and also pass them on as newsletters. So for obvious reasons, you would include your name/representative name, your company name in the bylines of your articles. That way you get noticed. The benefit is – you and your company become well known. You become an authority to that subject (let us say “Marker Pen”). The more recommendations you get, the more you are regarded and you gain an automatic trust.
2. Attract visitors to your website:
When you syndicate an article, make sure you include your website URL. It’s not just the inclusion of URL that helps. You must make sure your article is really interesting. If they are interesting you will naturally have followers coming to your website to grab more information. If your article is sort of an advertisement – hopefully it won’t fool many a people.
3. Increase your PR (Page Rank) on Google:
If there are many links pointing to your website, it counts as a significant website for Google to increase the Page Rank. In simple terms it means if your article is syndicated by many websites, the number of links pointed to at your website increases. Of course a direct link with your byline (information) is imperative.

Disadvantages while syndicating your article
1. Obsolescence of information
Unless your article is of a static nature, that is, a topic which does not change, your article could easily be considered outdated. if the article you posted is of a volatile nature then a constant upgrade or follow-up on your article is necessary .

But there is a problem here as well. Consider a case your article is syndicated on a website. You have no control over the article now. How long the article will stay – only the website owner can tell.

And, due to some misfortune if your article is still there, whereas, the topic is well outdated; then your competitors / readers will underestimate your knowledge power. They may consider you (or your company) as one who does not update on the latest happenings.

2. Wrongful modification to the article
A very common thing that can happen once the article lands up in the hands of a webmaster that couldn’t care less. Explicit licensing notices won’t help.

a. You could find your links in the article being modified. Chances are that your links being replaced with their affiliate links. The very purpose of getting more visitors to your website and getting reciprocal links is defeated.
b. You can find your byline URL and useful company information being misplaced elsewhere or placed in some lesser important area.
c. Your article could be divided into ‘n’ pages with advertisement taking a bulk of space instead of your article.
d. You have 5 articles but have reserved rights to publish 3 of your articles. However, if a webmaster gets a chance to publish one article and somehow gets a hand on your other articles, they won’t bother to even read the Terms and Conditions. What they would do is go about publishing articles which they are not supposed to. Tricky eh?
How do you deal with such situation? Well, it’s really not an easy situation. You just cannot post and forget it. You need to continuously monitor the changes / updates on each and every article of yours and deal with such unscrupulous webmasters.

3. Income from Ads:
If your website has articles on the home page and also ads on them, obviously you earn from the articles placed on the website.

Imagine your article is syndicated, and then it looks like you worked for free and allowed somebody else to have a share of the revenue from the ads placed in the article.

There are some websites who write article to promote their website. Whether they promote their business or their website, such sites who write articles mainly to promote their business generally do not suffer.

4. Mirroring information:
What Google really does not appreciate is duplication of data. So, when your information is syndicated, it’s really a mirror of information of what you have on your website. Simply meant Google could consider your website to be mirror information of what it finds on the other websites, thereby having your website page rank dropped to zero.

I really don’t know if it could cause a drop in the Page Rank, but why take chances?

5. Spamming your information:
If you allow somebody to just re-publish your article in their newsletter, beware! You don’t know how or who he is. Chances are that he may spam your article through his newsletter. Very easy to be branded a spam website.

So, in short, if you are one who is into promoting business, a bit of syndication will do more good than harm. On the contrary, if your website is wholly into writing articles, its wiser to have them in the website, rather than have them syndicated.

Obsolescence – how to avoid it?

A small tip – though tedious, I think it’s the best way to avoid outdated info. You can have all your info written in JavaScript and update them. Since the pages are syndicated, obviously it has to retrieve the latest page.

Moreover you are also in control of your information. Here is a sample for you.

I have chosen a poem by William Blake called “The Little Lamb”. If you were to HTML this poem, it would be like this –

Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?

Gave thee life, & bid thee feed
By the stream & o'er the mead;

Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, wooly, bright;

Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?

Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?

The same could be written as a JavaScript code as follows –

document.write (“

Little Lamb, who made thee?
”);
document.write (“Dost thou know who made thee?
”);
document.write (“Gave thee life, & bid thee feed
”);
document.write (“By the stream & o'er the mead;
”);
document.write (“Gave thee clothing of delight,
”);
document.write (“Softest clothing, wooly, bright;
”);
document.write (“Gave thee such a tender voice,
”);
document.write (“Making all the vales rejoice?
”);
document.write (“Little Lamb, who made thee?
”);
document.write (“Dost thou know who made thee?
”);

Let us assume that you have saved this document as blake.js, so others would simply include the lines as –


Advantage?
• You are the owner of your content. It pays at the end, even if you have to write lengthy JavaScript codes.
• Obviously, this saves your time from keeping a check on other websites modifying your content.


Disadvantages?
If you syndicate your articles to many websites and if there are thousands of visitors visiting them and viewing your article, then your server has to pay for the real high bandwidth for displaying your article on their system.
You cannot guarantee every webmaster to accept Javascript of your article. Moreover chances are that search engines do not consider (read index) Javascript pages for ranking.
If Javascript is disabled at the reader’s end then chances are your article won’t appear at all.
The imminent question would be – should I syndicate or not? Well, the choice is up to you. If you feel that you are benefiting from syndicating then why stop? Go syndicating! Let the world know who you are!

Are we really Web 2.0 ready?

Okay, it’s a bright Monday afternoon and I thought what could be a better way to kill time than to read some SEO gossip? Yes, you got me right…here are some tidbits on SEO.

These are ‘word-to-word’ diction of what some SEO professionals have got to say.

The question asked was very obvious –

“What are your "New Year's resolutions" for search? What are your top priorities for things to address, things to change, or things to plan for in 2008?”

Here are some notes from leading Internet Marketing professionals from various parts of the world.

Have a look –

Andrew Goodman from Page Zero media says –

“I resolve to take a comprehensive approach to what we used to call "search" marketing, to focus on raising online visibility and reputation as search engines adapt and change themselves.

To this end, I have cancelled my consulting firm's "brief" five-year hiatus from SEO (we focus mostly on paid search) because the world of search is in a new, exciting phase that requires mature integrated marketing strategies. Now, we do "SEO 2.0." And I like hanging out with mature, integrated people!

Also to this end, we'll be implementing instructional video production for at least one client. It will be interesting to see if these types of videos, posted on YouTube, actually make it into a prominent place in a significant number of SERPs.

I resolve to apply for at least one patent related to search. This is a tricky one, so I think 2009 might be more realistic.

Finally, I resolve to attend a search conference in a warm climate, without resorting to any city whose population of slot machines outnumbers people.”

Does Andrew mean to emphasize more or search? What is search marketing?

Search Marketing:
In Internet marketing, search engine marketing, or Search Marketing, is a variety of methods to used increase or boost the visibility of a website in search engine results pages (SERPs) on various well known search engines.

Are we moving toward SEO 2.0? What does it mean?
By definition it says (not precisely so) – contribution of many and change in the approach that focuses on actual growth in the revenue and the analytics which are detailed by the minute are some great insights towards a good SEO.

Simply put, there are contributions due to integration – growth and linking. Get good affiliates to link up with and you are already doing great SEO.

Exposure – get your clients to be noticed by the world. What could be a better way if not, but, create great presentations (and I don’t mean PowerPoint presentations, lol). Collect information useful for promoting your client. Place a great video prez and viola! You are on the way to success.

Search is getting bigger and bigger. Patents on various search methods are already on the anvil. Perhaps search by videos? Search by website types? I have not had a chance to look at such options. Maybe they are there already – or maybe not.

Blake Suggs from Range Online Media focuses on transparency in the search. What search phrases are triggering and how does it aid the change in appearance of search ads.

Better ad campaigns? Sure! With more transparency in the available traffic for specific set of terms. The basic idea is to help search marketers focus on better campaigns – specific to what the ‘search’ is about. Well, the idea sounds good, doesn’t it?

Fraudulent clicks – what Blake suggests is to have a means for seeking meaningful answers to questions around click validity. It would be nice to see if there are stringent methods to stop click frauds. Perhaps ‘Online controlling’ points made available world wide (or at least in the Canadian regions to begin with as per Blake)? Maybe more organic clicks and ‘real’ clicked money on the way?

New ideas, newer ways to think – make your machine think a lot like what you want – web 2.0 – integrate, innovate, collaborate, rethinking ideas.

Rethinking You and I.

Internet marketing sauce for 2008

Being in the ever changing field of internet marketing, one can’t help but being observant to the web marketing and development world. It’s a process where consistency, originality and powerful yet innovative strategies work.

Here are some tips which can help you strengthen your Internet marketing strategies. A market where you find the shift is toward online consumers, social interaction and media publication. No longer is it the domain of the journalists or corporate alone.

Read on for some great Internet Marketing Tips

1.Optimize your web content

This is an oft-repeated advice. It’s a good idea to have your contents optimized. Make it more human readable and also easily accessible for the search engine or spider-crawl friendly.

Make sure your contents are relevant to the page / topic. Going off or waywardness is not a great marketing technique. Your website will be ranked based on the percentage of relevant keywords on the page.

So, for example, if you are talking specifically about mantels, do not also place in contents about furnitures, bed, table and so on, although your organization may be manufacturing / producing them as well.

2.Create a content development strategy for your website

You have carved a niche for your company. What you need to do now is to bank on the contents you have built for your website and build on it. Start adding more keyword rich, context-specific contents. Keep the reader in mind. Even as you add more contents, keep in mind that it should catch the reader’s attention. Do not jam your contents with too may keywords, optimize it to the maximum possible.

3.Invest in paid search marketing campaign (Pay per click)

When the visitors click on your ad, you pay for the click. What paid search does is to quickly leverage search engine traffic by building on the keywords related to the product or service you offer. So what you can achieve through a genuine paid search campaign is a ‘Page Rank’ when you don’t even have one. Paid search marketing is a viable option than organic / natural search.

4.Publicize through article marketing

The most promotional method for publicizing your website is through article marketing. What does it help you to do? It helps you get quality back links or incoming links which is recognized by many prominent search engines as a factor to boost your page rank. So more the number of quality links you hoard, better are the chances of being ranked high.

You can also ensure ongoing awareness by promoting your website through various channels like – directories, content publishing, article announcement and content syndication (commonly known as RSS).
Another aspect is to publish the article on your website first. Have them socially bookmarked using various tools to bookmark.


5.Build your social media strategy

Its predicted that about 60% of the top global companies will have some form of social media marketing strategy beginning this year. What does this mean? A clear social marketing strategy should be used as part of communication and marketing. As social media is an essential component for online marketing and search engines adjust their rankings to also include search personalization. An increase in the online content to carve a niche is the effect of social media.

6.Create a company blog

The early focus of marketing strategy was to focus on the marketing and communication in a faceless phase. This has changed significantly. Online consumerism is in. online consumers are in control now.

What need to be done is – creating and establishing a company personality. A corporate blog coming alive is what I mean. It’s lucrative to have a corporate blog as the mass looks up to the new media and social website for insights.

If you can provide them that, they are yours forever!


7.Experiment using video marketing

You got some great videos? Well show off then! Video marketing is the most powerful, revenue generating potential media. The rapid growth in You Tube traffic is one such example.

This is the best way to portray what you are. Because you know, facts are easily seen and understood than being understood when explained. This is exactly the reason why web marketers and advertisers capitalize on this media.

Simplified video sharing techniques through video marketing has had a huge implication on affiliate marketing.

8.Encourage web widget marketing

A huge leap in web marketing is creating several applets which help build your branding strategy and improvise on it. Several leading firms build their own widgets to enhance and market their product or service in the shortest possible time.

Creating widgets is a leading brand building strategy adopted by most corporate for online business advertisement.

9.Discover mobile media marketing

Mobile media has seen an unprecedented growth. It is now being recognized by many web marketing companies. What does it do? Well, it brings out the best of website on your cell.

Its now (or will soon be) imperative to have a mobile friendly website so that users have the option to ‘browse’ through their favorite website. This is an innovative and new opportunity for websites to improvise their branding strategy and marketing.

10.Effective email marketing strategy

Nothing gets better than an effective email for communication. A company should have effective email communication strategy. One must increase the existing customer base by conducting ‘Permission Marketing’.

This is done by sending in regular, targeted communication info (such a news, updates on the company policies and so on) which is very crucial for marketing success.

You must combine the latest technological advances with traditional marketing practices to achieve this.

Obviously, the future is bright. Hopefully this year will boost new channels of marketing through permission marketing, power linking and effective social networks.

Welcome Web 2.0!