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Drawbacks of Content Distribution
Of course, nothing good ever came easy. Any website owners who are looking for SEO magic beans will be disappointed by content distribution:
* Desired anchor text is not always available. Unfortunately,
content management systems most widely in place today make it easier for website owners to accept content as text rather than HTML. This means that many website owners simply have their content management system convert a URL into a live link, rather than taking
time to code in
anchor text. Still, an experienced content distributor can usually find ways around this problem to make sure that many if not most of
links use anchor text.
* Results are variable. Content distribution is not quite as sure a thing as reciprocal linking. The site that publishes your article has to like not only your site, but also your article. This is especially true for
passively-generated links that come from content clearinghouse websites. But results can vary
other way, too: an article that catches on will yield more links than you ever could have gotten through
same investment in reciprocal linking. In order to minimize
risk of content not catching on with website owners, you should make sure your content is high-quality, and also plan for a large content distribution campaign:
more content you try,
more likely you are to find a winner.
* Requires significant investment. You need high-quality content, expertise in content distribution, and quite a few work-hours to distribute
content and track
results. Of course,
cost has to be weighed against
cost of reciprocal linking, which is also significant. These costs can be mitigated by outsourcing
entire process from soup to nuts to a content distribution specialist. Costs of outsourcing content distribution compare favorably with costs of outsourcing reciprocal link building.
* Requires special expertise. There are numerous newbie pitfalls to distributing content, from improperly formatting articles to writing a bad introductory email to accompany content submissions. You generally have to have done numerous campaigns to truly get
feel for it. Again, this requirement has to be weighed against
real-world requirement of special expertise in other link campaign methods. Again, this drawback can be mitigated by outsourcing your project to a specialist.
In short, there are benefits to both reciprocal linking and content distribution. All things being equal, you should use both. Still, content distribution is
only one method that carries substantial non-SEO benefits as well. Plus, a professionally managed content distribution campaign may even yield greater SEO results than reciprocal linking would for
same investment.
You owe it to yourself or your clients to add content distribution to your SEO-toolkit--before
owner of
next highest-ranking site finds out about it.

Joel Walsh is the owner of UpMarket Content, offering a fully managed content distribution campaign guaranteed to get you at least one hundred one-way inbound links for every three pages of content: http://upmarketcontent.com/website-promotion-package.htm [requested HTML anchor/link text: website content distribution]