I like that this recommends manually mixing things up. But still feel all these 'tactics' do nothing but junk up the web with duplicate content. Sure, it's not *exactly* duplicate content - but that's just splitting hairs on what is basically spamming. Spamming isn't just spamming because it's automated - automation is just more efficient spamming.

As a user I totally hate such low-life content. As a publisher, I enjoy it as SERP listings below me. Unfortunately, that's an ideal world scenario, because the engines live off spam, ranking pages that are boosted by such spammy tactics above me. Hence, as a webmaster, I might feel the need to run articles through Ralph's and Dirk's CCC processor that creates a gazillion of quite unique variants and pass those to various places.

Hi Michelle.  Of course, you are right.  And so is eveyone else who makes similar comments.  But a business is there to attract customers, make sales and make a profit.  The same comment could be said (but seldom is) about every store and every manufacturer - 99% of things we buy are unnecessary and are just polluting up our world.  The question is where to draw the line?  What is reasonable?  There will never be a black-and-white answer to that.  If an article is good quality, I suggest it isn't spam...even if it is duplicated on 500 different websites.  On the other hand, 500 totally unique articles that appear in only one place each...if they are pieces of crap, I would call them spam.  But, that's just me.

Whether it's manual or automated, the whole idea of spinning articles into tons of new ones makes me throw up a little (no a lot) in my mouth.

What has our industry come to? :(

In an ideal world, we'd all be creating great content and trying to get it hosted on as many sites as possible to make it as accessible as possible to people it could help! But obviously, that's not the case, and shameless self promotion is what it all boils down to. Still, sometimes great, useful content emerges, and that's what you have to seize and promote the most.

Perhaps if more people strived to do what's right in an ideal world, we'd actually get closer to having one.

Just a thought.

Just found this offsite comment.

Not sure that's really related, Sebastian. That article is knocking the practice of taking others articles and plagiarizing them for your own use, I think. Where the one here, I think is talking about spinning your own articles into multiple articles, not plagiarizing others to spin.

Its message is clear: article spinning sux a$$. Of course spinning stolen seed is worse than spinning one's own 'intellectual property'. However, the author addresses both variants:

Even if the seed piece isn’t stolen from another writer, it still reflects an attitude that falls somewhere between shiftless and larcenous.

As a copywriter, spinners, whether manual or automatice, make my blood boil! Presenting a slightly massaged re-hash of something already published is underhanded and lazy, as far as I'm concerned. If the material is stolen, that just makes it worse.

Sebastian is absolutely correct, by the way... the piece he found addresses both plagiarism and spinning of one's own work. I'm surprised you could have missed that, Jill. Besides the excerpt quoted by Sebastian, that piece also said:

Most honest copywriters see red when they hear about someone writing (or stealing) a single article, running it through their article spinning software and generating 50 or a 100 copies and selling each as a “unique” article.

(emphasis mine)