Article Marketing: Fox in the Competitor Hen House or Chicken Little?

I recently was asked by an author to remove a free contentarticle from a client web site where we had posted it (withseveral others from different authors) to increase topicalrelevancy at a site that fit the article perfectly.

This article was submitted to free web content list archiveswhich I'd found online. A search turned up dozens ofadditional uses across the web. I began to believe that thisauthor simply didn't like the site that used the article andwas seeking removal to avoid competition. We took it down toavoid an unnecessary battle over something we didn't wish tofight about.

The site we used it on did compete with this person, but theclient site has more to lose than the author, because readerscould click through to the author site from the resource boxlink and gain the customer instead of the client. Having YOURarticle on competitors sites is an incredible marketing coup!

You should be glad anytime this happens as long as they followyour use restrictions and provide live links from the resourcebox at the end of your articles. The client wisely saw topicalweb content for their site more valuable than the concern ofthat external link to the author/competitor.

It does immeasurable good for your link popularity as wellsince that link comes from a relevant and on-topic site,rather than from a useless links directory. Your articlesserve as 500 to 1200 word advertisements for your business andif it appears on competitor sites, it is as if you have beenable to sneak in the back door and steal customers from thecompeting site via your article. Would you rather appear in arandom list of links, or have 1000 words to convince people tobuy your products or services?

All of this just baffles me as a content distributor. All ofthose authors that requested removal would gain a valuableone-way inbound link to their websites from topical andrelevant content that increases their link popularity andtheir visibility.

Why on earth would they want those articles, that notoriety,that credibility and the high quality links removed? Whenthere is no copyright issue present, you gain far more fromuse of your article than you lose by having an article onsites you don't like.

I've got articles lose in the world that I'm not proud of,simply because I've become a better writer since I distributedthem originally. Several are outdated and recommend thingsthat are no longer valid or, in some cases, not at all usefulfor current standards in search engine ranking - but that isbecause the search engine algorithms have changed and bestpractices have changed.

That is why I now date my article copyright to clearly showthe date associated with the article. But I would NEVERrequest removal of my articles from sites that have oldarticles posted. They will STILL be more relevant and valuableto me than any cluttered, off-topic reciprocal linksdirectory, because they are a link within relevant text thatgain link popularity and sometimes lead to new clients andfurther visibility.

Removal of your articles from compeitor sites would be sillyin most cases and will reduce your visibility and your linkpopularity. Be the Fox in the Competitor Hen House insteadof Chicken Little in fear of the article marketing sky falling.

Copyright © August 10, 2005

Mike Banks Valentine operates http://Publish101.comFree Web Content Distribution for Article Marketers andProvides content aggregation, press release optimizationCustom web content for Search Engine Positioninghttp://www.seoptimism.com/SEO_Contact.htmLearn at http://WebSite101.com Ecommerce Tutorial