FAQ: Can You Use Ezine Articles On Your Blog?
Q: Can I use articles from the article directory EzineArticles.com on my blogs?
A: This question probably arises from a place of permission and/or duplicate content, which I think I can easily clear up.
PERMISSION
EzineArticles is a site whose purpose is to provide publishers with content. Years ago the main outlet for these articles was online ezines and newsletters. Now that has evolved into publishers seeking content for newsletters AND for their blogs. EzineArticles is aware of this and approves of this use. There are a few stipulations though, with frequency of publishing being a main one:
“Agree to limit the number of articles reprinted to no greater than taking 25 articles from our site per calendar year per unique domain that you own. In addition, for domain owners of many domains, you may not reprint more than 250 articles per year (10 sites x 25 articles reprinted per domain).”
Source: EzineArticles Terms of Service For Publishers
This part of the terms of agreement is there for a reason and the recent Google updates have shown evidence of that. It’s important to understand that you will only rank well in the search engines if you frequently feature high quality, original content. Using EzineArticles on your blog should be for fillers (because you were sick that day and didn’t want to write, because you are going out of town and needed a post to go up, because you wanted to add a post to your blog on one of the slow days of the week, etc.).
You do not want every article or even the majority of articles you publish to all be “reprinted” articles from any article directory source. That could and probably will raise some duplicate content filtering issues for you and plus it’s important to realize that the goal of blogging is to create a relationship with a group of people that may eventually want to pay you for your expertise. Using other people’s articles won’t achieve this level of authority for you.
Now if you’re an affiliate article marketer, it may be tempting to take more than your 25 articles worth for all your mini-blogs, but you will get penalized as a “Google Farmer” — so don’t do it. If you refuse tow rite original content, then try hiring inexpensive ghost writers or tweaking PLR content. You could also feature video content that you get from the various video sites to add content to your site.
DUPLICATE CONTENT
On another note, if you are wondering if you can publish the same articles to your blog that you have submitted to EzineArticles, the answer is yes for most of you and no to some. On one hand, EzineArticles has a WordPress plugin that enables WordPress bloggers to submit their blog articles directly to EzineArticles. So they don’t mind blog article submissions, and in fact are encouraging it.
So if you are an emerging entrepreneur then you shouldn’t have any issues with duplicate content (submitting identical articles to your blog and EzineArticles). Even with the hit that article directories like EzineArticles took after Google’s recent updates, EzineArticle’s results will no doubt be higher in the rankings then yours based on their traffic stats, pagerank, domain age, and other seo factors.
If you are an intermediate or advanced marketer and have made significant traction in the search engines, then I wouldn’t submit identical blog and EzineArticles. Re-write them. Spin them. Change them. And then submit. That’s what I do.
Lisa Angelettie
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