Blogging Articles – Pros and Cons

As a blogger you want a continual stream of fresh content. Preferably, you want to add fresh content to your blog on a daily basis. However, there are times when it’s simply impossible to create fresh content on a daily basis yourself. Fortunately there are numerous sources of content that you can use on your blog. You can use PLR articles, or you can find fresh articles from article directories such as ezinearticles.com. Both options will save you a lot of time, but also have their own pros and cons.

PLR Articles Versus Article Directory Articles

So, what is the main difference between a PLR article, and an article from an article directory? Well, the main difference is that you can’t edit the article from the article directory at all. You have to use the article as it is and include the author bio box. So what do you are doing is that you’re giving credit to the author of the article, which is only fair. That also means you are including some outbound links on your blog which you might not be interested in. However, those are the rules when you are using articles from article directories.

Duplicate Content Penalty

A concern shared by both the PLR articles and article directories is the famous duplicate content penalty. It is still debatable whether duplicate content will hurt your blog on not. However, in the long run, fresh original content is more likely to attract a readership than duplicate content. On the other hand, newspapers and the article directories themselves consists entirely of duplicate content, and they get pretty good search rankings.

Keyword Density

Another disadvantage of using articles you haven’t written yourself is that you have no control over the keyword density. As long as the articles are relevant to the subject then that might not be a problem. Latent semantic indexing is far more important than keyword density at this point in time. If you don’t know anything about the search engine optimization, latent semantic indexing, or keyword density don’t worry! It’s more important to have content that is relevant to the subject than it is to worry about key words and stuff like that.

Rewrite, Rewrite, Rewrite

If you’re using PLR articles, and you want your content to be unique, you need to rewrite your articles. In fact, if you using any PLR material at all, you should always rewrite it before publishing it. In all likelihood, you can be sure that hundreds of other bloggers and Internet marketers have the exact same PLR material. Even if you’re not afraid of the potential duplicate content penalty, you don’t want your readers to find the exact same article on another blog related to your subject. You need to separate your blog from the rest by being original. That does not mean that you can’t use content written by others. You just have to be careful.

Research, Research, Research

If you find a great article on an article directory, or if you have a great PLR article on a specific subject, there is no law saying that you have to publish that article. In fact, what you have is the beginning of some great research material. You can easily use these articles to create your own blog posts, which are unique, and don’t exist anywhere else. This is a great way to use the work of others to create your own original content.

Saving Time

At the end of the day, the main advantage, you get from using articles on your blog is the time you save. The time you save either on writing or research is time, you can spend to further other parts of your business. If blogging is your business, you can use this time to add even more content to your blog.