Question: With so many blogs, websites and article directories disappearing daily and losing influence in the search engines, how can we be sure that article marketing is not dead?

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Answer: You are in general talking about newbies who set up blogs and generally accept any content from anyone. Sites like that will never survive. Most will stop paying for hosting after only a few months, then the site and all of the links on it will disappear.

Sites with no form of quality control will not attract an audience, and they will cease to operate, when the site owner realizes that no audience = no revenue.

But, other website owners get it.

Audience = revenue.

Successful website/blog owners build their sites with the desire of building an audience.

For example:

• Mashable;
• Copyblogger
• Problogger
• WebProNews;
• About.com;
• Web MD;
• Social Media Today;
• Marketing Pilgrim;
• AdAge.com;
• InsiderMobile.com;
• Search Engine Land;
• etc.

These sites occasionally take content from third-parties such as myself — syndicated content from people like me.

But they are very selective about the content they are willing to accept from me. My article has to demonstrate good writing, good content, and more importantly, information that would appeal to their audience.

These sites are not going anywhere. They will be here most likely ten years from now, because they focus on publishing content that will be of value to their audiences.

And their audiences generally enjoy the content well enough to drop links to pages that have articles on them that they would like to share with others.

There is a reason why the above mentioned websites are as popular as they are. They start with great content, and their audiences find information of such quality that they are willing to share those links with their own audiences.

When I get an article syndicated, it will often end up on a few dozen junk websites that will not be there one year from now.

But my successful articles will be published on authority websites of the quality shown above.

Articles that I have written do still appear on WebProNews, About.com, and WebMd, as well as thousands of other authority websites, and not all of them in my own name.

The point is that these sites already have large and loyal audiences, generating loads of traffic every day, and they have a lot of credibility in the eyes of consumers and the search engines.

One of my articles on one of those websites will get a lot of traffic from targeted buyers, and my articles will have true link popularity to give to my linked websites, which will impress Google and the other search engines.

I write articles, because I want to attract huge audiences who will consider visiting my website. I write for my audience first, and the search engines second.

And so long as my articles find publication on sites with a butt-load of loyal users and traffic, then my business will continue to prosper with article marketing.

Were all Article Directories negatively affected by Google’s Farmer Update on February 24th, 2011? No.

Although we are only looking at 2 days worth of statistics at this point, it looks like The Phantom Writers has done well with the Farmer Update.

Our traffic is running at 10% over the daily average, and by day of the week, we are generally running 16% up on traffic.

We have looked at the keywords for which we have historically had good rankings in Google — those for the main part of the website and those keywords that direct searchers to articles in our directory. We are up, up, up!!!

On keywords that we track, one search phrase that we had been holding on page 8 of the search results, we are now on page 6. Outside of this one keyword, the search phrases we track have moved from the middle and bottom of page one to the top of page one, almost unanimously in slots 1-3. There are exceptions of course like famous waterfalls, where we were ranking at #9 today.

I strongly suspect that Quality Content is the Prodigal Son that has come home to Google.

Am I suggesting that Google has built an algorithm that can identify quality content? Certainly not. I don’t think that is something Google will ever be able to do by looking at just the content.

Instead, I think that Google has figured out how to better measure “social validation” of the quality of content.

Consider this…

When an authority website chooses an article for publication, a human editor is involved in that process. That is social validation of the quality of the content.

When people choose to link to an article manually, that again is a social validation of the quality of the content.

In social media, there are certain people who are “thought leaders”. These are the folks who have more followers than people they follow. And when they “tweet”, others “retweet” what they have shared. When thought leaders tweet, Google pays attention. And more so, when people who pay attention to the thought leaders repeat what they post, there is real social validation in that data, and Google pays attention.

Badly spun and poorly written articles will never have real social validation of their value. To a certain extent, people can rig some social validation of a particular article, but others do not repeat the Share. That is a nice signal concerning rigged results.

Real articles that offer real value to readers cannot help but receive the social validation that they need to prove their value to Google.

Yes it is still early in the game, but my initial gut instinct about the Google Farmer Update is that it is powered by Social Validation of content that offers value to its readers.

.

Get my recent report that has been developed to help you write good quality articles quickly, without sacrificing quality: 20-Minute Articles Writing Guide.

Bill Platt

Often, watching the Internet train wrecks is more entertaining than those things we typically do to entertain ourselves…

This week’s episode of Cooks Source Magazine is definitely entertaining… It is a gift that just keeps on giving…

As an online writer, I have experienced having my content outright stolen and plagiarized many times… So, I find myself taking great delight in this person getting smashed by the train of inevitability… In this thought, I am inspired to quote the Matrix movie…

Agent Smith: You hear that Mr. Anderson?… That is the sound of inevitability… It is the sound of your death… Goodbye, Mr. Anderson…

Source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/quotes?qt0324266

The author of this dismal event, Judith Griggs, has thanked those of us who contributed to the viral nature of this story for all of the Free Publicity…

I must admit, that I have often suggested myself that “All Publicity is Good Publicity…”

In this case, I would like to suggest that this kind of publicity will be the death knell of any business embroiled in it… Therefore, publicity of this nature should be avoided like the plague…

Where It All Began…

The website Gode Cookery presented their readers with the article, “A Tale of Two Tarts“, copyrighted by its author Monica Gaudio in 2005…

During the last week of October 2010, Monica was contacted by one of her friends, who asked about her byline appearing in the Cooks Source Magazine… Her friend was interested in knowing how she was able to break into the print magazines as a writer…

Monica was also curious, since she had never before heard of Cooks Source Magazine…

So she turned to Google for research, found the October issue of the publication online, and sure enough, her byline and her article were on page 10 of the October 2010 issue… (this issue has since been removed from the Internet)

Monica Gaudio initially assumed that a simple error had been made… Perhaps someone put her article into a free article directory or something…

If Only The Truth Were So Innocent…

Gaudio contacted the publication by phone and its websites’ Contact Us page…

The editor of Cooks Source Magazine (Judith Griggs) responded by phone, but found Monica not available… So she left a message advising that Monica should contact by email…

Monica notified the magazine of the unauthorized use of her article…

According to the Ed Rants article, Griggs replied by email, “Well, it was on the Internet. Didn’t you want it published?”

In the same email, Griggs asked what Gaudio wanted to do about this…

After that email, Gaudio contacted her friend Nick Mamamtas for advice… Mamatas advised that she should request a small payment from the magazine, for having published the article without permission…

Gaudio stepped up and took the high road… She advised the magazine that she wanted an apology on Facebook, in the print magazine, and a donation of $130 — not to her, but to the Columbia School of Journalism…

Most editors caught with egg on their face would have considered this a more than equitable arrangement…

Cooks Source Magazine Responds

This is where the story goes Twilight Zone weird…

According to the original story on Monica Gaudio’s blog, the magazines’ editor Judith Griggs said this (spelling errors not corrected):

Yes Monica, I have been doing this for 3 decades, having been an editor at The Voice, Housitonic Home and Connecticut Woman Magazine. I do know about copyright laws. It was “my bad” indeed, and, as the magazine is put together in long sessions, tired eyes and minds somethings forget to do these things.

But honestly Monica, the web is considered “public domain” and you should be happy we just didn’t “lift” your whole article and put someone else’s name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace.

If you took offence and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. Now it will work well for your portfolio.

For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain, albeit for such a fine (and very wealthy!) institution. We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me!

I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me… ALWAYS for free!

Bizarre!!!

This is a “professional” print editor with three decades of experience, taking the position that all content found on the Internet is “free” of copyright protection, and therefore content that can be used for her profit, without notifying or compensating the author of the content…

Monica Gaudio had it right when she referenced the University of Maryland’s advice to students regarding Copyright and Fair Use considerations for Digital Content, which states:

• The same copyright protections exist for the author of a work regardless of whether the work is in a database, CD-ROM, bulletin board, or on the Internet.
• If you make a copy from an electronic source, such as the Internet or WWW, for your personal use, it is likely to be seen as fair use. However, if you make a copy and put it on your personal WWW site, it less likely to be considered fair use.
• The Internet IS NOT the public domain. There are both uncopyrighted and copyrighted materials available. Assume a work is copyrighted.

{Editors’ Note: We placed the extra emphasis where the website said that the Internet is not in the public domain…}

Plagiarists Anonymous – 12-Step Plan

Here is a 12-step plan for duplicating the Cooks Source argument:

• Step One… Make an Excuse: the magazine is put together in long sessions, tired eyes and minds somethings forget to do these things.
• Step Two… Suggest The World Is YOUR Oyster: the web is considered “public domain”…
• Step Three… Remind the Author That You Only Broke the Copyright: you should be happy we just didn’t “lift” your whole article and put someone else’s name on it!
• Step Four… Blame Others: It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace…
• Step Five… Acknowledge The Labor Of The Author: you as a professional…
• Steve Six… But Lay Blame On The Author: the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing…
• Step Seven… Claim The Magazine “Improved” The Content: It is much better now than was originally… (Never mind that the only fixing was getting rid of the appropriate inclusion of the Old English….)
• Step Eight… Suggest That The Editor Helped The Career Of The Author: Now it will work well for your portfolio.
• Step Nine… Claim an Investment: We put some time into rewrites.
• Step Ten… Demand Compensation From The Victim: you should compensate me!
• Step Eleven… Claim Altruistic Motives: I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces…
• Step Twelve… Imply The Expectation For Compensation Is Somehow Wrong: have many who write for me… ALWAYS for free!

This Story Exploded On The Web

In fact, we have been trying to develop this story for the last 36 hours, and it has grown faster than our ability to keep up with it…

When we do stories like this, we like to be very liberal with quotes, links, etc.

But less than 48 hours after the story broke, there are 59,000 websites in Google talking about this story and more than 140 news articles on the topic…

We will never be able to link every angle on this story, although we are going to try to reference those pages that helped us understand the story…

After Monica told her story on her blog, her friend Nick Mamamtas, who she had gone to for advice, told the story on his blog too…

Then Neil Gaiman tweeted the story to his 1.5 million Twitter Followers…

Reddit user, GeekChic picked up the story and reported it on Reddit… So far, 1322 people have commented on this story at Reddit…

The story caught fire at Twitter… The creative minds in the online writing community have offered some new names for the Cooks Source Magazine: Crook’s Source, Crock’s Source and Kook’s Source…

On Twitter, the name that caught the most interest was Crook’s Source, and now this story has its own Twitter Hashtag:  #CrooksSource You can keep up with the Twitter rage about CrookSource here… CrookSource also caught fire with its own domain coming online Friday…

Ed Rants also got involved in this story, tracking down and reporting many of the verified thefts of articles and images… This blog is also doing a good job keeping this breaking story up-to-date…

An important website in this story going viral was Smart Bitches Trashy Books, where they are less than nice with the words they choose… Be aware, a trip to any of Cooks Source Facebook pages will lead you also into an onslaught of curse words and ugly comments…

Cooks Source Magazines’ original Facebook page was quickly overrun with angry comments from pissed off people in the online publishing community and others who just smelled blood in the water… Thursday evening, Judith Griggs submitted a lame attempt at an apology on her Facebook page, when she posted:

Hi Folks!

Well, here I am with egg on my face! I did apologise to Monica via email, but aparently it wasnt enough for her. To all of you, thank you for your interest in Cooks Source and Again, to Monica, I am sorry — my bad!

You did find a way to get your “pound of flesh…” we used to have 110 “friends,” we now have 1,870… wow!

Best to all, Judith

{Editor’s Note: All misspellings have been left intact.}

Monica says that she has not received any follow-up messages from Judith Griggs, so we must assume her original post shown above is what she is referring to as “her apology”…

All I can say is WOW!!

Her 1,870 “friends” at this point in time is quickly approaching 5,000 “friends” on her original Facebook page… LOL

And unfortunately for her, while the emotions may be cooling a bit, her troubles are just beginning…

The Truth Is That Her Legal Problems Are Just Getting Started

Some wise people realized at one point that if Cooks Source was willing to flagrantly steal content from Monica Gaudio, then perhaps she was stealing from others as well…

My oh my…

What Monica found was literally the tip of the iceberg…

You know what they say, “The part of the iceberg you can see is just a fraction of what is there… 90% of the iceberg is below the waves...”

It is kind of funny actually… The people who are taking down Cooks Source are doing most of their research and documentation from the Cooks Source Facebook pages…

This discussion got started on one of Cooks Source’s Facebook pages, and they were reviewing all of the back issues of Cooks Source in search of more stolen content…

Eventually, someone realized that they were gathering the evidence on Cooks Source pages, so their research may be deleted at any moment… In response, someone set up a Google Docs page, to track all possible stolen content by this magazine…

On Saturday, November 6th, at 8:30 am CST, there are 161 possible thefts documented… The possible theft of copyrighted materials include articles and images…

At about the same time this story got its own Google Document, it also got its own Meme…

Within a couple more hours, this story had its own Wikipedia page…

According to the Ed Rants story:

For every reproduction that I found, I made efforts to contact the original copyright holder. And the above examples demonstrate unequivocally that nearly the entirety of Cooks Source‘s material has been taken from other sources and that, in at least four instances, Cooks Source did not obtain the necessary permission to reproduce the material.

Cooks Source Damage Still To Be Felt by Cooks Source

One discussion page within the site gathered the names and phone numbers of all of Cooks Source advertisers during October…

The phone calls began…

The angry writing and publishing community were letting their fingers do the walking and their anger do the talking…

All of Cooks Source advertisers were suddenly inundated with email and phone calls from the Internet community…

Many advertisers apologized, and noted while they do intend on pulling their advertising from Cooks Source, most said they had pre-paid advertising for several months in advance…

I feel for those poor people who got involved with this magazine as advertisers…

They had no way of knowing what this woman had been doing to build her magazine…

Until this week, this woman had successfully dodged the scrutiny of many, including the major media companies whose work she had published, most likely without permission…

You can bet that the major media companies are not going to be asking for “a pound of flesh” or a measly $130 from Cooks Source…

The Hammer Will Fall

Silly Judith Griggs seems to have stolen content from companies who have entire legal departments that wait for something like this to happen…

Time Magazine has confirmed that The Food Network is investigating the wholesale copy-and-paste of The Food Network content into Griggs’ for-profit publication, including content from Paula Deen…

NPR confirmed in own of its stories that one of its articles was published by Cooks Source (although once again, Cooks Source has removed the offending content from its archives).

Content from Webmd appears on Cooks Source here and Webmd here…

Other content that is suspected to have been swiped without permission comes from websites such as: Disney, Weight Watchers, Food TV, Martha Stewart, Whole Living, Recipes  Today, Natural News, and Sunset.com…

Who in their right mind steals anything from Disney? Disney will crush her like a bug…

Importance to Publishers and Authors

Publishers take note… All content on the web should be treated as if it does have copyright protection… Because in most cases, most content does have a copyright applied to it…

The articles that appear in The Phantom Writers Article Directory are Free Reprint Right Articles but they do retain their copyright protection. Publishers are invited to publish that content, so long as the Terms Of Reprint are honored in full…

Authors take note… Your articles do have copyright protections… In this section, I will show you where and how to enforce your copyrights online…

Since copyright offenses fall under federal protection, any copyright litigation must be argued in Federal Court… This is the reason big companies like Disney, NPR, Martha Stewart and WebMD are our friends in this case…

Without a doubt, copyright litigation is expensive, and most smaller companies cannot really afford to pursue the rogue publishers in court… But there is more than one way to bring a publisher to the negotiation table, and the easiest way is to let the publishers’ advertisers know the nature of the publisher, and its unwillingness to honor your copyrights…

Additionally, Internet companies takes DMCA complaints very seriously…

When I find a copy of my articles posted in violation to my copyright and Terms Of Use guidelines, I generally attempt contacting the webmaster first… I allow the webmaster that is using my content, in an inappropriate way, 7-days to correct my article or remove it from their website… 98% of webmasters will comply immediately…

If the webmaster ignores my request, then I go to the web hosting company and file a DMCA complaint… The web hosting companies do not want to be taken to task for allowing their customers to host copyright infringing materials on their website… The web hosting company will usually take down the offending page or close the offending web hosting account…

If the web hosting company refuses to take the appropriate action, you can always go upstream to the web hosts’ bandwidth provider, but that is painful and time-consuming to figure out who that is…

If you cannot get the appropriate action taken by the webmaster or web hosting company, you can file DMCA complaints with Google and the other search engines, and those companies will remove the offending websites from its index… In other words, Google will remove the offending website from Google’s search results, etc.

If you find yourself in need of an official DMCA Takedown Notice, go here and here… On the last link in the previous sentence, the author also advises how you can notify the advertisers of the copyright theft or plagiarism… In her example, the person who stole her stuff was using Google Adsense… She filed complaint with Google Adsense, and Google removed the offender from the Adsense program…

The point is that you should try to seek remedy directly for copyright theft and copyright infringement… But if the webmaster fails to take your contact seriously, you can hurt them in the pocketbook…

While speaking with the advertisers was not immediately effective in the Cooks Source case, Cooks Source will soon feel the pain of its bad decisions, because advertisers are wanting out of the publication…

If You Operate an Online Business, Honor All Copyrights

If you operate an online business, regardless of which side of the fence you sit, avoid putting your business in the line of sight of angry Internet mobs and attorneys enforcing Copyright Law…

Let Judith Griggs and Cooks Source be a lesson for you and your business…

Feel free to comment on this story below…

Article Written by: Bill Platt

Consider Bill’s newest Guide For Generating Traffic Online…

As you can see from this post, Bill never fails to fully document a story he is telling…

His guide describes 35 Proven Methods of Traffic Generation that you can use for the promotion of your online business… And it is written with the same commitment to detail shown in this story…

“Multiple Traffic Streams: The Magic of Attracting Buyers“

Learn more here…

P.S. New Words in the Lexicon

grigg – verb: (source)

1. To use content on the web without permission, then request payment from original author for rewrites and editing.
2. To remain ignorant of plagiarism, ethics, copyright, and asshat behavior.

crooksource – verb:

It is like outsourcing, but you do not pay for the content you use… And if caught, you claim that you have a legal right to steal the content…

More Resources for This Story…

This story caught some attention from the Mainstream Press early on, with stories in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and Britain’s The Guardian…

The story has also been picked up by the New York Magazine, New York Times, CNN, Cnet, Forbes, Publisher’s Weekly, The Toronto Sun, Salon.com, and more local newspapers serving the area where Cooks Source is located, The Daily Hampshire Gazette and MassLive, western Massachusetts largest news website.

Cnet covered the story, because it is believed that the Cooks Source story is the reason why Intuit’s websites for small businesses server was brought down…

Other websites of note that covered this story include: Boing Boing, Slashdot, Gizmodo, Consumerist, Woot, About.com, TechLand, Gawker, MSNBC blogs, Tech Dirt, Daring Fireball, and PopeHat.

Time Magazines’ News Feed was able to secure an exclusive interview with Monica Gaudio on Friday…

Many of the following stories are an interesting read as well…

• Cooking up a controversy: Author says magazine told her to “be happy” they plagiarized – Society of Professional Journalists
• Cooks Source Under Siege, a Content Farmer Tells All and the Rise of the Undesigned Web – Advertising Age
• Cooks Source Magazine Ignites Copyright Firestorm – Storify
• Facebook Backlash Inundates Food Magazine Over Content Theft – All Facebook
• The Internet attacks: Cooks Source under fire for printing author’s work without permission – DailyPress.com
• Cooks Source magazine gets Facebook backlash for copying material without permission – Online Journalism Blog
• Copyright Infringement And A Medieval Apple Pie – How Publishing Really Works
• The Stupidest Thing an Editor With Three Decades of Experience Has Said About the Web Today – Whatever by John Scalzi… And a Follow-up post
• (UPDATED) Lift a Blogger’s Post? But Honestly, Cook’s Source, You Can’t Do That – BlogHer: Jenna Hatfield
• Cooks Source Magazine – Phil Bradley’s Weblog
• Cooks Source Scandal Blowing Up The Internet – Anali’s First Amendment
• Cooks Source Copyright Infringement Becomes an Internet Meme – Wired News (blog)
• Cooks Source – Social Media Justice – Seattle Post Intelligencer (blog)
• Cooks Source Hates Puppies – Dallas Observer (blog)
• Cooks Source, condescension and copyright law – Econsultancy (blog)
• Cooks Source Magazine Bagged for Printing Writer Article Without Permission – Technorati (blog)
• Cooks Source & Copyright Norms – Madisonian.net
• Cooks Source: The Web Is Considered Public Domain – GeneaBloggers
• Cooks Source Gets Pounded Online for Copyright Violation – Suite 101
• Cooks Source Magazine – Mahalo
• Judith Stew – One Sick Mother

Title: “Is It Really Possible To Achieve Number One In Google?” by Bill Platt

Excerpt: Everybody wants to achieve a top ranking in Google… That has become the Holy Grail of Internet Marketing…

It is achievable, but it is not always necessary to achieve the treasured Google number one spot to make your placement in Google profitable for your business… Although it may not be necessary to reach Google number one, it sure does make you feel good when you get there…

Realistically, there are many variables that could make or break your business, regardless of whether you are #1 in Google or not…

Read the rest of the story here…

I am now doing blog posts for other websites, which belong to some of my online friends. The following is from an article I wrote earlier today…

But most people who attempt article marketing are unable to Rinse-and-Repeat, primarily because they do not understand article marketing well enough in the first place. articlecontentprovider.com, A Rinse-and-Repeat Formula for Article Marketing Success, Mar 2010 (2500+ words)

You should read the whole article…

This article goes well beyond what it takes to write a good quality article, but how to write an article that others will want to publish…

This article describes the five essential elements to creating an article that could prove a profitable, rinse-and-repeat formula that you can use to promote your websites…

This article explains a system that you can follow to make sure that your article marketing produces more consistent traffic and profits for your website…

Read A Rinse-and-Repeat Formula for Article Marketing Success in its entirety…

I was in the database earlier this afternoon and discovered a problem with the submissions. We have literally layered various distribution channels on top of one another to further the reach of our Article Distribution Service.

I discovered that one layer shut down in mid-January, due to an internal issue. We were aware of the issue, but unaware that it would pose a problem in the distribution process.

I have been working on resolving this coding issue since 2pm yesterday afternoon. It is 4:30 am right now…

The particular issue that forced me into the software today has mostly been resolved. The channel that was inoperable since January will have all distributions to it reset, to return the service to the level we anticipated that it had been working.

Fortunately, while in the code, I found myself in the exact area where I needed to implement an upcoming upgrade. So, I did take some time today to orchestrate that additional upgrade.

We anticipate that the upgrade set up today will deliver incredible results to our customers. Only time will tell if it delivers the anticipated effect.

By summer, we expect to have another set of major upgrades in place that will extend the reach of our Article Distribution Service considerably, and we will be able to show our clients where articles have been published online.

From behind the scenes, I can see the improvements that have so far been made in 2010, and I can see that they are powerful upgrades. But I can also see the future… And the future holds so much more in store for us… We have barely scratched the surface at this point.

If all of our plans go according to schedule and produce the results we anticipate, the quality of our service will be obvious to anyone who cares to see.

.

Bill Platt, owner of thePhantomWriters.com

I have slipped behind on my duties again. My primary machine simply could not keep up with the level of work I had been asking it to do for me.

I upgraded to a new Quad4 processor operating on Windows 7.

I am in the process of trying to get all of my necessary software moved onto the new machine. Good progress is being made, but I still need to get a couple of my Word Processors transferred to the new machine. Once done, I will be back to work – full steam ahead.

Bill

We just finished the programming for three major upgrades to the system:

1. We put related articles below each article on our website, to encourage publishers to find more articles to publish.

2. We built an Article Search Engine, for the express purpose of finding articles within thePhantomWriters.com website. This is just one more channel for people to find articles they want to publish, and it will let you drill down into the articles in a way that we have never before been able to do on this site.

3. We built an add-on for Article Dashboard directory owners to receive articles from us. We have had third-party programmers approach us on this front before, but none were willing to enable us to have control over category placement inside of the article directories. We have finally built our own solution that gives us the placement control we wanted for Article Dashboard websites. We are in the process of getting the word out to Article Dashboard directory owners now, so this channel will need time to grow.

As another consideration, on Feb. 16th, 2010, we completed negotiation with another party for the development of a new content distribution channel, due to come online before Summer 2010, which will expand our reach considerably more. This new channel will give us access to hundreds of additional websites, for which there will only be two companies supplying content to the network – of which we will be one of them.

Distribution Channels

During 2009, we took the decision to expand our reach beyond the standard service that we have offered since 2001. While our original article distribution channel is stronger than ever, we wanted more reach.

Instead of charging more for each individual distribution channel, we decided to simply merge each new channel into our existing systems.

In 2008, we had agreed to work with two different third-party providers to get additional reach for the articles we distribute.

One of the two proved to have a negative effect on our clients, and we attempted to seek a solution with their tech team to fix the problem. That process failed, so we discontinued giving articles to that company.

The second company had given us access to more than 70 blogs, where we could send articles, based on the category of the article. Their software left a lot to be desired, and the bloggers who were participating have since began to fall off. Originally, there were more than 70 bloggers taking content from us through this service, but now there are fewer than one dozen bloggers taking content from us, through this channel.

In March of 2009, we launched our own WordPress blog Plugin to help bloggers get articles from our service. That WordPress Plugin can be found here. It took 3 months to get our first 25 participating blogs. By October of 2009, we had 75 participating blogs. In February of 2010, we have 275 participating blogs. Our plugin allows bloggers to CHOOSE which articles they want to receive from us, based on Keyword and/or Category, and to put those articles into their defined categories, rather than our defined categories. Our WordPress Plugin gives bloggers the ability to receive only the kinds of content they want from us, without having to catch and delete a bunch of articles they do not want.

We now have the Article Dashboard article add-on, and we expect it to have a growth curve similar to the WordPress Plugin, but we also know that most Article Dashboard sites will go offline within two years of launch. Attrition for Article Dashboard sites is pretty high.

The additional content channel that we anticipate coming online by the summer of 2010 is very different than anything we have done in the past, and different from anything we have seen in the past. We have very high expectations for that distribution channel.

Going Forward

We intend to keep stacking new distribution channels on top of our original service and to continue seeking growth for all of our distribution channels.

We are also working behind the scenes to build a new reporting system, that you will be able to use to find “exactly” where your articles have been published, after distribution. While the search engines are useful for this task, no search engine will give you a precise view of where your article has been published. Our system will not be precise either, but it will be better than relying on Google and Yahoo to find where your articles have been published.

We hope to make an announcement on this tracking system, by the summer of 2010.

Bill Platt, owner of thePhantomWriters.com

In any business, if you can reduce your effective advertising expenses, you will increase your profits. Many business owners will opt to push the additional savings into more advertising, and if you are utilizing the information described in this article, you could feasibly increase your paid traffic by 40-times, with the exact same advertising budget.

But before I can show you how to reduce your advertising expenses and increase your traffic, it is important for you to learn about proper keyword research.

When playing the search engine rankings game, it is important to know what people are “actually typing into the search engines” in an attempt to find your business…

Food For Thought

Think about this, if you were going to take a vacation to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and you needed to find accommodations in Ft. Lauderdale FL, what would your first search keywords be?

Would your first search be the generic search phrase, “travel”?

If you answered, “Certainly not”, then you and I are not much different…

Why would anyone type in the generic keyword “travel”, when they know specifically what they want, before doing the search?

They wouldn’t, would they?

Some people will abbreviate the “Fort” in Fort Lauderdale; others will not abbreviate. The same applies to the state information – some will abbreviate; others will not. Some web searchers will eliminate the state information, because they assume that Google will know “which” Fort Lauderdale they mean. (In the case of Fort Lauderdale, that is reasonable to believe. But search for something like “Paris”, and you might discover that 23 U.S. states have a town or city named, Paris, along with the country of France.)

People will search for a range of spellings for the locality, and then they would add niche-specific keywords to their search, utilizing words like:

• hotels
• hotel rooms
• hotel suites
• accommodations

Expand Your Thinking

Chances are that even if you sat down to generate a list of keyword phrases that people might use to find your business in the search engines, you will get stuck in the “keyword rut” that bogs down so many other webmasters… The “keyword rut” that I speak of is the one where we get a certain set of words and types of words stuck in our heads, and that prevents us from exploring the wider range of what might be available.

Even the best keyword research tools fail to show us the full-range of related keywords – keyword research tools tend to only show us the keyword phrases of a “similar root word”. For example, if you type in the word “hotel”, you can get vastly different results from the Google Keyword Research Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) and the WordTracker Keyword Tool (http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/).

Just to prove my point, I ran the keyword “hotel” through both keyword search tools. Google’s Keyword Research Tool performed better than the WordTracker tool, but WordTracker does provide better estimates of search-volumes outside of the Google universe.

While not all-inclusive, I wanted to show you a list of suggested keywords that I was expecting to find using both tools. Behind each Keyword, I indicate in parenthesis which tools provided those suggestions to me…

• motels (Google – YES | WordTracker – YES) BOTH
• accommodations (Google – YES | WordTracker – no)
• bed and breakfast (Google – YES | WordTracker – no)
• b&b (Google – YES | WordTracker – no)
• vacation rentals (Google – no | WordTracker – no)
• vacation homes (Google – no | WordTracker – no)
• condos (Google – no | WordTracker – no)
• condominiums (Google – no | WordTracker – no)
• beach rentals (Google – no | WordTracker – no)

As you will note from this example, if you let the keyword research tools do all of your thinking for you, then you would have missed over half of the keyword phrases that are actually relevant to your business…

That my friend spells m-i-s-s-e-d o-p-p-o-r-t-u-n-i-t-i-e-s!

How To Do Better Keyword Research

A trip to the library or your favorite bookstore could be the best thing you will ever do for your business research / keyword research…

Use book titles to narrow your search, but check the “back of the book” for the Index, before you make your selection…

Many of the best books in the non-fiction niche have an index at the end of the book, with page-after-page of topic related keywords, with page numbers.

If you have selected the most relevant book from the shelf, and it has a good Index at the end of it, you will have one of the best resources you will ever need to do keyword research in your niche.

Value The Long-Tail Keywords

Many people make the mistake of only chasing the high-volume keyword phrases that signal strong interest in a topic…

However, the high-volume keywords have some inherent shortcomings:

• Although 151 million searches are conducted using the word “travel” each month, that search will seldom generate a real click, because the person searching for it will realize that more specificity is to his or her best interest.
• If you are able to get a click from the search for “travel”, that click will cost an average of $2.25 in Google.
• If you are bidding high enough to be seen for a search for “travel”, you will find your competitors to be many. It is harder to be noticed among the crowd.
• If you do generate a click from your placement on the word “travel”, that visitor may hit your website and leave to do more shopping, since there are currently 11 paid listings on the front page of Google for that search phrase. People will spend less time on your site, if they know that they have more varied choices.

The still-generic search for “Fort Lauderdale travel” will require $1.72 per click, with 8,100 searches per month.

A more specific search for “Fort Lauderdale Florida hotels” will actually cost an amazing $3.48 per click, but the hotels that are paying for those leads are more likely to get a larger portion of the 60,500 monthly searches, since this search phrase is far more precise.

“Fort Lauderdale beach resorts” only costs $2.02 per click and has 27,000 monthly searches, which is really inexpensive compared to the still-generic “Fort Lauderdale Florida hotels”.

“Fort Lauderdale resort” is even cheaper at $1.93 click, with 50,000 monthly searches.

“Fort Lauderdale beach place” gets a surprisingly high, 3,600 searches per month. It has two competitors and can be purchased at an average of $1.06 per click.

…Do you see where we are going here?

Here is where I get to drive my point home… “Fort Lauderdale reservations” gets 40,000 searches per month, and it has an average Cost Per Click (CPC) in Google of a measly 5 cents per click!

As individual searchers drill down into the search results, your chances of appealing directly to them when they are likely to make a purchase is greatly increased… And more to the point of this article, you can generate a lot more traffic for a lot less money…

If you have fewer competitors on the long-tail keywords AND you pay less for those clicks, you could very well cobble together a large list of long-tail keywords that will give you access to the same volume of traffic you would get with one high-volume search, for much less money!

Let me make my point with “Fort Lauderdale beach resorts”, which has 27,000 monthly searches at a rate of $2.02 per click, and “Fort Lauderdale resort” with an 50,000 monthly searches and an average CPC of $1.93. These two long-tail keywords co-joined will be exposed to 77,000 people at Google, and those clicks will cost an average of less than $2.02 per click.

If you simply compared the above example with the 60,000 searches for “Fort Lauderdale Florida hotels” at $3.48 per click, you will find that you can reach more people, at more than a 38% discount in PPC pricing…

In Conclusion

There are many niches where you might advertise, where your competitors are paying $2 to $6 per click in a shark-feeding frenzy, and yet you can get 5 cent clicks all day long for other relevant, more specific, long-tail keywords, with less search volume… But, by bidding on more keywords, you could actually get as much exposure as your competitors are getting, at a much lower cost…

There is one niche where I am getting as much exposure as the competition, but I am only paying 5 cents a click in MSN and Google, while my competitors are fighting among each other for the shorter, less specific keywords in the niche, at $2 to $6 per click… In comparison, I am able to get 40 to 120 times more traffic for my websites than my competitors are getting for the exact same amount of money… And the people visiting my site have pre-qualified themselves by drilling down to my extremely relevant keywords for their searches…

As a business owner or manager, it is important to target your PPC and SEO towards the actual keyword phrases that your potential customers are using to find your website… But more importantly, if you leverage the knowledge found in this article and your efforts, you might be able to discover that you can tilt the odds towards you getting the sale, and you can do it at a cost that would make your competitors envious…

About The Author:

Bill Platt has been providing article distribution services since 2001 at http://thePhantomWriters.com/ Utilizing his nearly one decade of article marketing experience, Bill Platt created a free ebook titled, “Article Marketing: Beyond the Basics”, which will teach you why many people fail with article marketing, and how you can turn your articles into profitable and productive advertising tools. Get your copy of this article marketing ebook that has been receiving rave reviews. Download it for free here:
http://thephantomwriters.com/ebooks/advanced-article-marketing.html

Read more articles written by: Bill Platt

This article originally published here.

You can use disinformation to your advantage in the SEO game. Disinformation is false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately. Disinformation is a tool that has been used brilliantly in war, as a tool of subterfuge to cause an enemy to make an error.

If you are a history buff, like I am, you will likely have seen the stories about successful “disinformation campaigns” waged during World War II by the Allies against the Axis-Powers.

Operation Fortitude

The first was called, “Operation Fortitude“. To soften the landing for the D-Day invasion, the British and the Americans devised a plan to convince Hitler that the anticipated D-Day invasion would arrive at a different location. Operation Fortitude was actually devised to not only convince the Germans that the invasion force would arrive some place other than Normandy, but it also sought to divide Germany’s army to protect to false targets of invasion.

Fortitude North suggested that the invasion party would cross the English Channel from Kent, England, and push its way into Norway.

Fortitude South was designed to convince the Germans that the main invasion of France would occur in Pas-de-Calais, France, 307-kilometers or 181-miles north of Normandy, France.

Operation Fortitude has been suggested by historians to be one of the most successful deception operations of WWII and arguably the most important deception campaign of the war. Both Fortitude North and Fortitude South were related to a wider deception plan called Operation Bodyguard, which laid the groundwork for the successful the invasion of France at Normandy Beach (Operation Overlord).

Operation Mincemeat

In Operation Mincemeat, British Intelligence outfitted a corpse with a locked briefcase, filled with war plans designed to convince the German High Command that the Allied invasion would occur in Greece and Sardinia in 1943.

The British dropped the corpse into the sea, equipped it with fake invasion plans, and arranged for the body to float up on the beaches of Spain, where the Axis-Powers would discover the corpse and the contents of the briefcase.

This ruse successfully convinced the Germans to expect the invasion in Greece and Sardinia, instead of the real target of Sicily.

Operation Bertram

In 1941, British entertainment star and magician, Jasper Maskelyne was added to the mix of Allied tools in the battle against the Germans in Eastern Africa, when he was assigned to a unit called A Force, which was dedicated to counter-intelligence and deception.

Maskelyne wove together a number of illusions that tricked the Germans into dropping their bombs on realistic-looking harbors that did not exist and preventing German pilots from being able to see the Suez Canal during bombing raids.

But Maskelyne was most effective during Operation Bertram, prior to the battle of El Alamein, when he helped the Allies create deceptions that would help lead to the Allied-Forces defeating the Germans in Africa.

The Allies intended to attack the German line at the northernmost point of the German forces in Africa. Fortunately, Maskelyne was successful at creating an illusion that convinced the Germans that the focal point of the attack would come from 30-miles to the south, and that the attack would take longer to prepare than was actually necessary.

At the beginning of the operation, the Allies dumped waste containers at the northern end of the line and threw camouflage over the waste equipment. This the German aerial recognizance teams noticed immediately. Then the Germans continued watching this location for an extended period of time. After a measure of time passed and no additional activity appeared to be taking place at this location, the Germans began to ignore the location.

Once the Germans began to ignore the location, the Allied-Armies started replacing the refuse with actual supplies and equipment under the cover of night.

To support the idea that the attack would be launched further to the south, a fake water-pipeline was being constructed across the desert stretching to a southern point along the German line. The slow construction of this water-pipeline was what helped convince the German high command that the attack would come at a much later date.

Maskelyne’s brilliance was obvious when he created optical illusions that allowed the Allies to camouflage 1,000 tanks as lorries, at the northern end of the German line. But then Maskelyne’s team constructed 2,000 fake tanks and equipment that convinced German recognizance that the real build-up was taking place 30-miles to the south, a location that the water-pipeline was being designed to reach…

As a result, when the Allies moved to break the German line, they found easy penetration as the heavy build-up of defensive forces were located 30 miles to the south of the actual invasion force.

Disinformation and Deception in War has a Glorious History

Throughout the ages, disinformation and deception has played a role in military victories over their enemies. Even the Trojan Horse was a deception used to bring down the City of Troy in ancient times.

Disinformation and deception was even clearly in use during the first Gulf War, when U.S. Marines formed in the Persian Gulf, just off of the beaches of Kuwait, preparing for what appeared to be invasion from sea that resembled many great landings during WWII. As we know, General Schwarzkopf executed an end-around during the first Gulf War, where the primary invasion force entered Iraq from the deserts of Saudi Arabia and closed in on the Iraqi forces arrayed in Kuwait awaiting a full frontal-invasion from the Allies.

Of course, in the first Persian Gulf War, the anticipated invasion onto the beaches of Kuwait never came… Nor did the Northern invasion of Iraq from the Mediterranean Sea, through Turkey, in the second Gulf War.

The Art Of War

The Art Of War, by Sun Tzu, has historically taught generals how to fight battles and win wars, but in the modern age, it has also become required reading for many business schools in their MBA programs.

In understanding how to win wars, you can more easily understand the battles that you will engage in the course of business. I have read The Art Of War dozens of times and recommend it to anyone who is serious about becoming successful in the business world.

The Art Of War discusses not only the principles and tactics used in warfare, but it also discusses how to keep the loyalty of your soldiers and how to win the hearts and minds of the people, whose support you will need to survive, after conquest of the army.

This brings us to the point of this article…

Using Disinformation and Deception to Conquer your Competitors – Without Lying To Your Customers

It is important that you should never deceive your customers… After all, you need to maintain a good reputation in order for your business to survive the long-run.

But the Internet has created a unique set of tools that you can use to defeat your competition, without your competition realizing that you have used Disinformation and Deception to hurt them in the battle for customers.

There are literally dozens of SEO tools that one can purchase or use that will permit your competitors to “spy” on your website to see what it is that makes your website successful…

Software applications, like WebPosition Gold and IBP, are designed to help webmasters to do competitive research on keywords, in the search engines and on competitor websites.

If one of your competitors happens upon your website for competitive research, they are going to look at your Meta tags, including Title, Description and Keywords, and they will also look for the keywords that you have spread through your website.

But if you are like me, you have done the testing and tracking to see which keywords and keyword phrases will actually produce sales conversions on your website. Along the way, you may have discovered keywords are very competitive – even in Google Adwords and other PPC systems – where the keyword looks really attractive, but the keyword does not attract the kind of traffic that is likely to buy what you are selling…

The keywords of this sort are “red herrings”. They are keywords that look good on paper – they have heavy competition, high PPC bid prices, and lots of searches made on them. Yet, a thorough review of the “keywords that convert” will show that these keywords do not lead to sales for your website…

Enter an “opportunity” for disinformation campaigns intended to deceive your competition…

If specific keywords are money dumps for your advertising dollars, doesn’t it make sense to encourage your competitors to blow their money on advertising those keywords that will not produce a great ROI for them?

Not many search engines pay very close attention to your Meta Keywords. It was a really good tool for most search engines in the early days, but it was a spam-magnet for people trying to trick the search engines into giving them free traffic…

By 2009, most search engines had decided to diminish or ignore Meta Keywords in their search algorithms.

But your competitors who are using Keyword Research Tools for SEO are still drilling through your Meta Keywords, looking for those golden nuggets that will enable them to steal your rankings in the search engines, thereby giving them access to your customers…

If the search engines are mostly ignoring the Meta Keyword tag and your competitors are using it to uncover important business intelligence about your company, doesn’t it make sense to throw all of your junk keywords into the Meta Keywords tag?

Especially, when you have discovered keyword phrases that only cost you money, without providing you the Return-on-Investment you need to be profitable, then it is time to use those keywords in a disinformation campaign to lead your competitors to the wrong conclusions about how you drive traffic to your website…

Take those ugly keywords that siphon money away from your business and drop them into your Meta Keywords tag, to seed bad information to your competitors who are using SEO spy tools in an effort to uncover the secret to your success…

Give your competitors the keywords they will need to waste their advertising resources, so that they will not have the advertising resources necessary to be equally competitive with you for the keywords that really matter to you – keywords that actually bring in visitors to your website, who are likely to buy what you are selling…

Only Use Disinformation Campaigns to Cripple Your Competition – Brilliantly

All is fair in love and war…

If your competitors believe that the best place to go to get business intelligence for their SEO campaigns is your website, then they deserve to be fed your marketing disinformation…

In the end, if your competitor does not have the financial resources to compete with you on an equal footing, then your competitors will be less of a threat to your business’ survival…

Is this a “dirty dog” tactic to use against your competition? Sure…

But so is them mining your website for business intelligence, in an attempt to steal your fire and your traffic from you…

The beauty about this system of marketing disinformation is that it will only injure those who seek to take unfair advantage of you, by stealing your marketing intelligence…

Bill Platt, owner of ThePhantomWriters.com Article Distribution Service