The low-down on rewriting articles: What you need to know

By Kim Ross
The low-down on rewriting articles: What you need to know

 

I have good reason to believe that many of our Affilorama members are faced with the task of rewriting articles at the moment. (AffiloJetpack members, I am especially talking about you!)

If this is you, read on for my version of the who, what, where, when, how and why of rewriting articles.

What?

First things first, we are talking about rewriting articles that you have ownership of. This might be Private Label Rights (PLR) article packs that you have purchased, or if you've purchased AffiloJetpack content, the articles inside your niche pack.

This purchased content is yours to do whatever you choose with.

Why?

There are two main reasons why the article content from your AffiloJetpack niche or a Private Label Rights (PLR) pack needs to be rewritten:

1) You are not the only person who has purchased this content. If you put the articles on your site ‘as is', you risk being penalized by Google for having the same content as found on other websites (duplicate content), and therefore suffering a cut to your traffic sources.

An article that is 20% different from the original may escape this sting from the search engines; however we recommend you rewrite your articles to be at least 50% different.

2) The content is written using general keywords for a niche. In most cases you will need to optimize these articles and replace the general keywords with specific keywords that target a sub-niche you have chosen (that's another kettle of fish).

An example: If you are working within the weight loss niche, you might choose a sub niche that targets a particular demographic - over 50's, teens, pregnancy, male, etc. The articles you begin with will likely be written for a general audience, so you will need to rewrite these to target your chosen sub niche.

Where?

The default use of article content is to place them as articles on your website. These are there for SEO purposes - to build links, and bring targeted traffic to your website. You can then funnel this traffic into a squeeze page to sign up for your newsletter series, and capture these leads.

Remember though, that the article content you have purchased is yours to do whatever you want with, and there is nothing stopping you from using it for something a bit different.

For example, you might decide that a better use for your article pack is to use it to add to your newsletter series, or to combine it and make a free report to give to your visitors.

You might also choose to pull information from the articles and use it to create supplementary forms of content, such as video content, FAQs and glossary for your site. This type of content is particularly link worthy, both as a source for internal site links and for others to reference you.

Who?

This is the age-old dichotomy. You can either invest your own time into this, or pay someone to do it for you.

When?


The difference between article spinning and article rewriting is not immediately obvious. Let's clarify:

Unlike article rewriting which involves rewriting entire paragraphs and replacing keywords with your own, article spinning involves rewriting each sentence 3 - 4 times each, for use in spinning software that will generate 200 or so versions of your article.

While it can take a lot longer to rewrite each sentence of an article 3 - 4 times, the magnitude of the result is a lot greater. These spun articles are then submitted to article directories and other sites for link building purposes.

The primary purpose of rewriting articles is for use on your site, and you may also use these rewritten versions as a starting point for spinning articles to submit to directories, blogging and article sites.

How?

Before you begin, you will need to have chosen a keyword phrase you want to rank for, and an appropriate article to rewrite for it. If you're struggling to find close matches between your chosen keywords and the given articles, remember (AffiloJetpack members) that you can sift through your newsletter content for additional information. Creating a swipe file of additional research for your sub niche is also very helpful as it makes it easier to target your sub niche as you rewrite.

There are many different approaches to rewriting an article, what I'm explaining here comes recommended by Mark Ling and is an easy and effective way to get it done.

1. The first thing to do is read through the article once so you've got a clear understanding of the article in your head.

2. The next step is for you to read through it again, and pull out all of the key points in each paragraph, as you remember them.

Some people may prefer to skip the step of creating key points first, and jump straight to simply paraphrasing the original paragraphs. It's harder to create unique content using this method though, as you haven't distanced yourself from the original article.

3. After taking a few moments to distance yourself from the original article, you then rewrite the article using they key points that you made, one paragraph at a time. Here is an example:

Original paragraph:

"Some foods promote extra baggage around the middle, and others reduce tummy fat. It's not just a matter of how much you eat; the types of foods you eat can also have a drastic effect on your waistline."


Rewritten paragraph:

"The issue is not simply how much you eat, but also what types of food you eat. Some food types will reduce tummy fat, others will promote that extra baggage."

4. The next step is for you to replace the original keywords (in bold text in the example paragraphs) with the keyword phrase you want to target. It's also a good idea to use a thesaurus to replace a few words with synonyms - for example "baggage" with "mass". http://thesaurus.com/ is handy.

Remember that you need a keyword density of at least 1% in your article, with your keyword appearing once within the first 50 words. Be careful not to over-optimize the keywords in your article, as the search engines can identify this as keyword stuffing and penalize you.


How long is this going to take you?

It varies from person to person - an experienced article rewriter can rewrite articles in 15 minutes, while if you're new to this it might take you an hour or so to complete your first article. Don't stress out if you're slow to complete your first article rewrite, you will speed up with practice.

Use our Article Compare Tool (premium membership) to check the originality of your content with the original article.

Another useful tool is Copyscape. This will tell you if your article matches content that is already on the web.

Keep in mind that your rewritten articles don't need to be award-winning material before you put them on your site. You can always come back and revise your articles later on with extra information you've picked up as you're knowledge of the niche expands (and search engines love it when you update your content). This is an especially good idea for people who want to work on eventually developing an authority site and bring their content up to an exceptionally high level.

48 Comments
Donald Johnson 14 years ago
Excellent post! Did not realize article spinning and rewriting were two different things, but its true. I was about an inch away from asking which article spinner Affilorama recommends for members, but then realized theres a tool like that in the premium =b
Dan Sullivan 14 years ago
After reading this post I have a question. Are you saying that we should not use spinning as a means of rewriting our articles for our sites? I thought that was the purpose of such programs.
Justin From Affiliate Freedom 14 years ago
I like what you were saying about the "how" of it. Stepping back and getting the bigger picture. Have you or Mark used rewritten articles from your own site as new content on your site? If so, did you experience any spikes in traffic with the new content?
Peter Woodard 14 years ago
great article on rewritng the content. Thanks Mark
Dave Adamson 14 years ago
Great article, it's answered a few questions i had.

@CELTIC55 - You should just rewrite your articles for single use in your site, Article spinning is useful for creating multiple versions of the same article.

You could spin an article for use in your website if you also plan to post different versions of it around the web linking back to your site. - 2 problems with this though..

Firstly you must spin your article very good and ensure the new generated ones are NOT too similar because chances are that the versions on article directories will be indexed first and you may be pinged for duplicate content.

Secondly, this will only work well for getting your website ranked, if you direct people from the article directories to your webpage they will get bored pretty quickly because you're just showing them a different version of what they already read.
John 14 years ago
Thanks a lot great article, I finally know what tools to use.
Janis Rowell 14 years ago
This article has answered my questions at just the right time as I am about to re-write.... Thank You
lee albins 14 years ago
Yes I would like further clarification also on post further up about spinning these articles in the jetpacks. I have a great article spinner that I can use. Thanks
Ryan 14 years ago
I would like to add a FREE duplicate content detection tool, you may use as copyscape alternative: http://www.percentdupe.com/
Timothy 14 years ago
Thanks for the advice on article writing. This is very helpful.
Margene Smith 14 years ago
Great article. Rewriting articles does become easier with practice, as does article spinning.
Chrishann Goodwin 14 years ago
Very good information! Thanks for sharing.
Abizer Nalwala 14 years ago
Nice post Kim. It also reminds us that we need to get it going and not get it perfect the first time. And for Google, the more changes you make on your site the happier it is.

@CELTIC55 : I think what Kim is saying is that if you only want to use the rephrased article on your webiste and nowhere else then you could rewrite it which takes less time than spinning. And spinning give a greater magnitude of the result but will take longer as you would have to rephrase each sentence into 3 - 4 variaations. Hope that helps.

Cheers!
Abizer
JC Dean 14 years ago
I hope every one who has bought AJP reads this.
Thanks Mark and Gang,

I am rewritting eversingle AJP artical and am sure I will be rewarded 100 fold for my effort. Nothing will take the wind out of your sails like the finding you sites on page 15 or worse, the sand box.
Allan Crespo 14 years ago
Bit by bit I'm realizing the vast amount of information one needs to keep in mind in order to create an attractive site that makes money. Good thing we have access to posts like this atop the material in Affilojetpack. Eventually, I believe, I'm gonna need to upgrade to premium, I'm seeing some pieces are missing in my puzzle, like the Article Compare Tool and who knows what else more. I'll try Copyscape, hope it works, checking my rewriting. Don't get me wrong though, I'm ok with what I got in the pack, that's much more than what I had before I decided to purchase it. That's a start, from there I expect to learn more and more every day and hone my skills with knowledge and experience.
Neo Kanobi 14 years ago
Great info !!!!

Thanks for the Tips

Neo
SolAff 14 years ago
Hi, Great Article

I have Spun my articles to 96.40% and when I have put one on scribd it comes back as duplicate content.
hsoftware 14 years ago
I could have sworn I saw a training video here somewhere where Mark is using article rewriter to show how he goes about spinning an article. Now I can't find it. Or maybe I just imagined it.

Ben
billy202 14 years ago
My feel on rewriting versus spinning is that it comes back to your reputation. If you are building a site where your credibility and reputation are important then rewrite articles using keyword density but give your writing a character and personality that is consistent with you as an individual. This could be a passion, hobby or interest site where you are developing a long-term presence. Even if you outsource, go over the article before final publication.

Spinning relies on spin element permutations and is volume based. For instance if we are talking about articles we can set up three spin elements as follows; "generating|spinning|rewriting|original|outsourced articles for publishing|publication|printing|inclusion in blogs|article directories|ezines|. When we run that sentence through a spinner there are at least 60 unique variations that 'hang together' pretty well.

It comes down to monkeys and mice.
As we add each spin element into our article the risk of 'monkeys typing' (monkeys sitting at typewriters randomly hitting keys) increases probably exponentially. This is where the mice come out to play. People scan read articles and about a micro-second after they sniff rubbish, their mouse quietly clicks, and they are 'outta there'.

If it is about reputation I recommend rewriting, if it is about volume then spinning is probably OK. The internet is full of spam, rubbish and crap, AND while the demand for relevant quality information increases, surfers are becoming more adept, discerning and quicker at identifying and dumping rubbish. Quality endures. Rewrite don't spin is my view.

Michael Edgar 14 years ago
Hi, Kim

Sorry, Kim, who are you? What happened to Mark? Good blog.

For spinning, newbie guys, I can recommend the free tool at http://simply-free-article-spinner.com/

To check keyword density, and to check if your spun article is sufficiently different from the original you can use the tool at http://simply-free-article-spinner.com/suggests/SFArticleCheckerDnload.htm

No, I am not an affiliate for either of these tools! Maybe I should be.

It is not clear to me whether articles on our sites do or do not have our Clickbank hoplinks for various relevant products. Are the articles just to inform and not to sell?

If we submit articles to article directories, do we include Clickbank hoplinks, or do we just include a link to our websites? If the latter, how do we make money?

The sites seems solely to inform and not to sell, is that right? My site so far does not have a squeeze page to capture email addresses, but maybe that's coming up. Is it?

Being a technological idiot I had big trouble with Wordpress, but two of my sites (just skeletons) are up now. If anybody needs cheap website help, I can recommend the Philippines. Their English is good, their skills are good and they work for US$7-$8 an hour. You can find people at Craigs List Philippines.




time2shine 14 years ago
Great post, its given me a much needed boost and reminds me that I need to keep an eye on the forums more often.

Because I sometimes get detached from the whole thing, believing that I am the only one struggling to do task that are supposed to be straight forward.

Like re-writing my first article which took me a good couple of hours and afterwards I felt like I was staring into a bottomless pit..thinking 'what I have to do 19 more of these!'

Time & money is scarce right now.

Roxanne Gwyn-Kabayama 14 years ago
Thank you!! =) The Article Compare Tool is wonderful! I have rewritten just one article (and am gearing up for the final 19!) and the original was 600 and something words, and the rewritten article came in at around 1,300 words! I wonder if there is a preferred length for articles?? I know the reader has a shorter-than-normal concentration span due to the nature of it being on the 'net. Any thoughts on article length? Do the search engines prefer longer/shorter? I also heard from somewhere that I should be writing articles to the level of a 12yo. Any thoughts on that?
jo tsang 14 years ago
Then my question is, why not provide all article with spun version in AffiloJackpack?
Kra gye 14 years ago
Does multiple different keywords forming more than the suggested 1% density in an article be penalised by the search engine as keyword stuffing?
Kim Ross 14 years ago
@Billy: I like your monkeys and mice analogy.

While you can use either article spinning or rewriting for your site, what it comes down to is purpose - and the end result you desire. If it's quality - rewrite, quanity - spin.

@Medgar: Don't worry, Mark is still around! There are a few of us that work at Affilorama :)
Re: articles on your site - (I assume you're talking about AffiloJetpack) no they don't come with hoplinks for products, but you can put them in if you want. They've been designed to inform - with the selling left to your newsletter series.

Submitting to article directories and linking to your site will build your backlinks, and the purpose is to get traffic to your site and signed up to your newsletter series - so yes, you will need a squeeze page to capture email addresses.

@Jotsang: We can't provide all spun articles in AffiloJetpack because you need to tailor them to your chosen keyword phrases, and you would be faced with the same duplicate content issues if we were to give everyone the same spun articles.
Barry Desautels 14 years ago
Excellent article Kim. I'm a new Jetpack subscriber so very busy re-writing and learning right now. It gets frustrating at times, but overall is a lot of fun. Thanks.
hsoftware 14 years ago
Speaking of keyword stuffing, here is a link to a Ezine articles video that shows what NOT to do with your keywords when writing articles. http://blog.ezinearticles.com/2010/05/article-content-vs-real-life-keyword-stuffing.html

Ben
Kra gye 14 years ago
Thanks a lot Ben for the link. Just watched the eZine video and it was funny as well as informative. To make the point, they presented it in a pretty obvious way by having the same keywords repeated every so often within the short conversation.

However what I am trying to understand is this - keywords can be any word or combination of certain words. If I aware of a keyword because I have done a very thorough research on it, then I can consciously control the quantity I put in that particular page and follow the recommended rule of thumb quantity of keyword.

However what happens if there are keywords that I am not even aware that they are keywords because I am new in the niche and keyword that I have not uncovered or missed those during my keyword research and I put those different keyword in they same article. In other words I have multiple different keywords in the same page. Would this be considered keyword stuffing?
Vee Sweeney 14 years ago
I have done both article spinning and rewriting and I have to say that rewriting seems like more work at first, but in the end, it's really not. Every spinner that I have used fails to locate good replacement words and honestly some of the suggestions that spinners offer to replace words are downright hilarious (and at times offensive). It seemed as though every time I was spinning, I would end up doing it mostly by hand in the end in order to get the results that I wanted for the article. Due to this, I just said heck with spinning and do them all by hand now and I feel the quality is a lot better also.

You make some very excellent points, especially about making sure to change up the article to at least 50%. Understanding duplicate content and how to avoid it is key to marketing or article marketing.
Adam Kim 14 years ago
Very nice article... for usually I get my page ranked top 10 first page of google by choosing a keyword phrase that has low competition of less then 600,000 search results and start writing an article with keywords rich in it... then ping it... then submit it using traffic-bug and then forum comment with anchor text with high page ranking and ping it again and then write another article on it using hub or ezine or buzzle and place my original article url in it... then wait 1-2 days and my site gets top 5 first page of google ... success rate of doing it so far is 90% ... hope this helps...

however this method will take atleast 1-2 hours of your time to come up with a nice article just like this one I wrote
Newbies Learning CPA Marketing
vandexter rutledge 14 years ago
Just hire a great writer from the Philippines who has a internet marketing background and forget spinning. If you must use a spinning software use traffic magnet. Its semi automatic which rids you of garbage articles. Thank you for the information you presented. I will be glad to help anyone for free www.vandexter.com or contact me at [email protected]
noor azlin 14 years ago
@bloggingfornewbies
I'm not quite a newbie but some of your advice cannot be digest by my brain dictionary ;) However, thanks for the share. About the post, rewriting... yup...need a lot of practice. Sometime you'll end up with a new piece of work without you realizing it ;)
John D Thomas 14 years ago
You guys ROCK! Plain and simple! jdt
John D Thomas 14 years ago
Kim -
I think I am beginning to see the value of a squeeze page. At first, I wondered how in the world would a squeeze page get top ranking if it were bare bones. Now, I realize that it is the articles that will attract visitors and give ranking after which the viewer will eventually be directed to the squeeze page where they will leave their info. Is this on track or am I still wondering in the dark about how all this works??? jdt
Juana Gillum 14 years ago
Hi Kim,

Great post! I have been using software to spin my articles which helps me to get much more mileage out of my writing. Of course, this saves me several hours of time too.

Thanks for the information on the comparison software for checking articles. I didn't know about this resource and will certainly be looking into it!
Marilyn Baker 14 years ago
Thanks Kim and Mark. I have been rewriting my articles over the past 3 weeks, injecting my personality; changing up to 50% I imagine. Will refine further after reading this. Like others, I thought I was way behind everryone else in getting my first site up!!!! Thanks for all the tips - it will certainly make life easier for the other 4 topics. Any good tips for squeeze pages? Thank again Marilyn ;0)
Ross Leadbetter 14 years ago
Monkeys and mice. That's the best analogy I have heard in a long time! Great stuff.
Sharon Smith 14 years ago
Hi

As everyone has said it is a very good and informative article.

My spinning of articles can take up to take upt to 5 hours. It is not that I am just stupid :).

I rewrite every sentence 5 times and then I spin every word that I can without losing context within the sentence. I spin the words multiple times. It gives very unique articles.

I then generate the articles and read each of them to make sure that they do make sense and that i haven't misinterpreted my own sentences.

I am probably being a little too pedantic nad hence why my sites don't contain much stuff. However it is all unique and informative.

Sharon
http://www.thebesthealthydiet.com
Tom 14 years ago
This is awesome stuff. Essential, for sure.

The cool thing about this method (taking PLR articles and rewriting them) is that it allows you to enter pretty much any niche and instantly become a thought-leader in it, establishing credibility with 'original articles'. If it's a smaller niche, after you've syndicated a decent number of articles out, your name starts to get out there. And best yet, it took no effort apart from re-writing articles. Turn those articles into videos and hit up Traffic Guyser or TubeMogul and you're in for some potentially serious traffic generation.

And all the while you're getting links, building traffic, and gaining exposure. All around it's a win-win situation. Just make sure you're funneling that into a list so you can monetize it.

Thanks for the article.
-Tom
http://www.5figureaffiliate.com
Jordy 14 years ago
It usually takes me several hours to spin an article. It is a boring thing to do. So, I always beak it up into chunks. I focus on a few paragraphs per day an rewrite like crazy. By the time I am finished, it has any where from a seventy percent to ninety percent rewrite.

I like to play it as safe as possible.
Chris Hardenbrook 14 years ago
Indeed, I encourage you all to rewrite and double spin and rewrite the spun stuff and then change that. Because then, I can put my articles up, right out of the jetpack as-is, and have original articles!! Just kidding. I have spent and am spending many hours doing laborious rewrites 'cuz it's necessary. Thanks for the great article and great success to all my fellow jetpackers.
Aloha, Chris
Gulherme Soares 14 years ago
Excellent article. Thanks.
Hi! I'm still trapped in this rewriting phase of the program. I just finished rewriting 3 of them, like somebody said " time and money are scarce" yes indeed. Do you guys suggest to finish them all and then post them? or Should I post as I go?
Abdussalam Muhamad Ekhsan 13 years ago
I just read this article. It's really helpful for me to keep on re-writing the articles. I admit it's actually quite a tough job but I know that I need to keep doing it and keep improvising my work from time to time. :)
William King 13 years ago
I personally recommend to post the purchased articles on your blog or website, for your blog you need to be little conscious so don't take any risk. You know your visitors so always comes up with the thing which they want to read. Write something which is interesting for them, collect information, read other articles do whatever it takes to write a quality article which is targeting your visitors. This will make them more loyal. The best use of purchased articles is to submit them in bulk or unique submission article directories or use them to submit them in guest blog posts.
Peter 13 years ago
Nice tips! PLR articles are great source for content ideas. I personally use PLR articles for backlink generating purposes. This is because most of PLR articles are written is such way that they don't provide any value. I use freshly written articles for lead generation.

Whenever you use articles make sure to chose good keywords. Don't re-publish articles from your site in article directories. This is content duplication and it will decrease your SEO ranking. When you submit article to article directory, don't just leave it. Social bookmark it, ping it why not take article RSS feed to also bookmark it. You should go into this process only for articles that are important for generating site visitors.
Joel 11 years ago
Frankly, spinning has become a spammy way of article marketing. Most reputable sites will not accept spun content, thank goodness.

Don't be lazy people, just rewrite your content!
fieve 5 years ago
You are right that many of the writers are on the point of creating their contents but article rewriting is more important for us to make that content more acceptable.