Reader Question: Can I Submit Blog Posts As Articles?

Article Marketing & Blogs

I love getting questions from people, and I figure if one person was asking the question, then there are probably several others who are wondering the same thing.

This question concerns how having and blog and doing article marketing can interrelate with each other, and if it’s alright to get double duty out of blog posts and submit them as articles.

Reader Question:

“Is it okay to write an article and use it as a blog post as well as submitting it to an article directory? I know they do a quick search when I submit an article to verify that the work is original, but that won’t find not-yet-published articles at other sites nor will it find an article just published to my blog but not yet indexed by search engine.”

Answer:

Yes–I do this, although there is an order to follow in re-purposing content like that:

First, write the blog post. Then, you can use the blog post as an outline for your article, making the article a unique piece of content that is based on the blog post. You really want to the blog post to remain unique, as it is on your own site.

You had also asked:

I know they do a quick search when I submit an article to verify that the work is original, but that won’t find not-yet-published articles at other sites nor will it find an article just published to my blog but not yet indexed by search engine.

Actually, when a directory searches for already published articles, they are trying to ensure that the content is written by you (that it is not “borrowed” from another author), rather than if the content hasn’t been published anywhere else previously.

So, as long as all the articles you have published on other sites clearly have your name associated with them, you should not run into any trouble. This is a big reason why I advise always including your name in the resource box.

When submitting blog posts as articles, it is for your own benefit that you will re-write the blog post to create a unique article. The reason for this is that Google and the other search engines value unique content on a website more highly than content that can be found in multiple places.

So, when it comes to your own website, you want to be sure that you have as much unique content as possible. It’s okay to write your articles on the same topics as your blog posts (this is what I do), but to make the article unique you would use different wording and such.

I have a post about bouncing articles off of blog content:

How To Use Your Blog To Generate Articles

What about the rest of you–do any of you re-purpose your blog content as articles?

Photo credit: What no one ever tells you about blogging

Posted: Thursday, May 21st, 2009 at 12:00 am

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2 Responses to “Reader Question: Can I Submit Blog Posts As Articles?”

1. Matt Says:
   November 16th, 2009 at 9:24 pm

   I am a landscape architect, and I am using a blog to promote my business and market myself as an expert in my field.

   Can’t I simply cut and paste my exact blog post to submit as an article? Blogging is a secondary part of my marketing plan, and re-writing each post to be different would be like having to keep up a second blog- and I don’t have time for that. The reason that I want to submit articles is to get more readers and ultimately visitors to my blog and website. I understand that re-writing the content is the ideal solution, but if I don’t have time, is it worth it to me to bother submitting the original blog posts as articles?

   Thanks for your help!
   Matt

2. Steve Shaw Says:
   November 17th, 2009 at 8:40 pm

   Hi Matt,

   It is really advisable to rework the blog post, but if you can’t then there is still benefit to submitting it as an article. But just a warning–many times blog posts do need tweaking to be in article format. So, putting aside the idea of reworking your content for SEO reasons, you would probably still need to do a little tweaking to each blog post to make it suitable as an article.

   Here is some further info that may help with that:

   How To Turn A Blog Post Into A Free Reprint Article

   I hope that helps!

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