What is Article Spinning?
Article spinning, or content spinning, is the practice of re-writing someone else’s piece of content to create what seems to be an original piece. Article spinning replaces words, phrases, and sentences with alternate versions to make the content look original to search engine crawlers and website visitors.
The purpose of content spinning is to quickly generate large amounts of content that won’t be recognized as plagiarism.
Why Article Spinning is Considered Black-Hat SEO
Article spinning is a black-hat SEO tactic and goes against Google's Spam policies for web search. According to Google, spammy, automatically-generated content includes:
"Text generated using automated synonymizing, paraphrasing, or obfuscation techniques."
Using content spinning can result in a manual action for your website, leading to penalties or removal from search engine indexes.
How Article Spinning is Done
Most often, article spinning is done using content-spinning software. Here is an example of content spun using a free online tool:
Original Text: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."
Spun Text: "The speedy auburn fox leaps over the idle canine."
As you can see, the quality is often very low. More advanced tools can create better-quality copies but still struggle with context and meaning.
There’s a second type of article spinning known as manual rewriting, where a writer rephrases existing content to make it more readable and natural-sounding.
Is Article Spinning Important for SEO?
Article spinning is nothing more than carefully disguised plagiarism. People who deliberately use this tactic are aware of that and still choose to take the easy approach rather than putting effort into creating original content.
Historical Context
There was a time when article spinning was common practice because it didn’t raise any red flags with Google’s algorithm in the early 2000s. Now, Google’s algorithm has become much better at recognizing spam and demoting pages with duplicate and otherwise "thin" content in search results.
Current Scenario
Despite Google's efforts and success in fighting computer-generated content, some black-hat SEOs still use article spinning and get away with it. It is commonly used to quickly create many posts, a portion of which may rank for certain keywords and drive traffic to the site. Another common use is low-quality link-building, where spun articles are distributed across different websites for money (as an alternative to guest posting).
Risks of Article Spinning
While content spinning can save time and temporarily boost your site’s ranking in SERPs, the lack of authenticity and value to the reader will eventually give you away. This type of content is created for search engines rather than for the user experience.
Potential consequences include:
- Non-Indexed Content: If Google recognizes your content as low-quality, computer-generated content, it’ll ignore the page, and it won’t be indexed or shown in SERPs.
- Site-Wide Quality Impact: Featuring low-quality content such as spun content could harm all the other pages on your website, even if they feature high-quality, relevant content.
- Penalties: Google has a specific penalty for "thin content" with little to no value, which includes spun content.
What to Do Instead?
If you want to find a new use for your existing content, article spinning is not the only solution. Here are three ethical alternatives to repurpose your content while staying within Google’s guidelines:
1. Repurpose Your Content
Instead of spinning articles, repurpose your existing content by presenting it in a new format. For instance, you can turn a blog post into a social media post, an infographic, or a video. This way, you can take advantage of what you already have and give it new life.
2. Cover a Topic from a Different Angle
You can cover the same topics as existing content but from a different angle or in greater detail. This approach involves adding your unique perspective and voice, making it original and valuable.
3. Republish Older Articles
Republishing existing content is another alternative to content spinning. Identify underperforming content that is at least 12 months old and rewrite or update 70-80% of it. This gives older content exposure to a new audience and increases the chance of attracting new traffic.
Conclusion
All these methods will bring much more value to your website than content spinning. Focus on creating high-quality, original content that provides value to your audience and adheres to SEO best practices.
