Three Good Reasons Why PLR Articles are a Bad Idea

by Priya Shah

Published on this site: May 8th, 2006 - See more articles from this month

Internet marketers, be warned! There's a troubling trend on the internet - that of stealing other people's content for the purpose of boosting Adsense earnings. Splogs were one of their manifestations.
http://www.marketingslave.com/2005/10/22/blog-wars-ii-attack-of-the-splogs/

Once those evil tactics stopped working, marketers came up with private label rights (PLR) articles and software tools catering to Adsense publishers who want to beat Google's duplicate content filters.

They mislead publishers into believing they will help them create "unique" content either with public label rights content or by generating hybrid articles using article creator software.

Here's why these are a very bad idea.

1. Search Engines can Detect and Filter Hybrid Content
   
   If you want to believe marketers touting Public Label Rights (PLR) and rehashed articles as the way to beat Google's duplicate content filters, do so at your own risk.
   
   According to Chris Knight, of the EzineArticles.com article directory, even software like the EzineArticles.com CASM (Content Association Sequence Matching) system can detect exact complex sentence matches in PLR articles.
   
   Search engines like Google are even smarter. They use more than one way of identifying duplicate content, including methods of dating to identify the page on which the original content first appeared.
   
   So if you think these "unique" article creation tools can beat a search engines like Google in the "cut-and-paste" content game, think again. The best way to beat the duplicate content filters is to create unique content. http://www.seoandmore.com/blog/index.php/archives/how-to-beat-googles-duplicate-content-filter/
   
   
2. Article Creators Violate Fair Use Guidelines
   
   There's no doubt that it's unethical to steal sentences from other articles, rewrite them and call them your own. Chris Knight also warns against marketers who claim that you can take and steal any exact match sentence from any author under fair use doctrine. http://ezinearticles.com/blog/archives/2006/02/fair_use_vs_
   plr.html
   
   It's the equivalent of taking bits and parts of other people's songs, remixing them and releasing them under your own name. The word for it is plagiarism and it applies as much to written content as it does to music.
   
   If you publish hybrid content created from another author's articles you could be guilty of plagiarism too.
   
   
3. PLR Articles will Kill Your Brand
   
   Building your brand through article marketing involves creating trust by sharing original ideas and content.
   
   If you're caught using plagiarised content on your own site or submitting it to article directories, you'll end up destroying the trust you built between you and your target audience.
   
   If you do use PLR articles for your Adsense site, use common sense and don't submit them to article directories as your own, even with modifications.
   

And if you really want to go about it the right way, check out Chris' Article Production Strategies Seminar and learn how to leverage article syndication to grow your Adsense sales and traffic.
http://www.articlewritingtips.com/chris-knight-teleseminar.htm

Priya Shah is a partner in the
search engine marketing firm, SEO & More and writes an online marketing blog. Visit Article Writing Tips for more article marketing strategies.