Article vs blog

[fernimac]

Why do you need to differentiate between the two. Put your articles on your blog and let them work together.

Exactly. That is what I do. You can even change the style a little: more informal in your blog, more formal in your articles. But they work terribly well together and you get the best of both worlds: user generated content and feedback plus some IBL from your blog, hundreds of IBL from articles directories from your articles.

[chrisJumbo]

One tip I learned here, was to post the article to your site first (whether by blog or separate landing page) and after it is indexed, add it to the various article directories that you like.

Since it is found on your site first it is credited as the source as far as the SEs. Having it in Article directories gets you some link love and additional traffic.

[bobitza]

So you're saying from your experience that the "crawl date" is the deciding factor for duplicate content? I mean, the content with the earliest crawl date is regarded as the original by the SE ?

[chrisJumbo]

So you're saying from your experience that the "crawl date" is the deciding factor for duplicate content? I mean, the content with the earliest crawl date is regarded as the original by the SE ?

That is my understanding.

[coolguy27]

I go for putting articles on my blog... Since blog is one of SEs favorite nowadays...

So instead of consuming your time creating long articles save it by blogging your articles....

[seo4china]

There has been cases where, even after publishing an article to your own blog/site first, subsequent publication on article directories have actually pushed the original blog post as duplicate content, especially if the original site or blog is relatively new or without much back links. On the other hand, articles on articles directories are frequently stolen, sometimes it is just not worth it to have your content stolen and copied over and over again on the Internet just for the benefit of a single back link.

If one is to go with article directory submission, the best would be at least to make a 30% modification on the original content to avoid duplicate content issues.

[bj]

Still articles have their strong points too. With the main articles directories, your articles may be picked up by hundreds of publishers, so instead of having one IBL per post per service you might get a lot more IBLs. I know that with the blog you have subscribers but still ...

I've done well with article directory submissions in the past. There is value there.

There are also only 24 hours in a day, and I get most and best conversions off direct traffic to my site through the SEs, and most of that comes through my blog articles, rather than the front door. The more you blog, the more entrypoints you have for that many more keyphrases. PLUS you're creating backlinks, and the opportunity for more, since a lot of people trackback as well, by taking your idea and running with it.

Do I do the occasional article submission? Yeah, and probably not as many as I should. But that only happens during a rare LULL in my work schedule.

Bottom line is that blogging is the biggest bang for the smallest amount of time put in.

YMMV.

If one is to go with article directory submission, the best would be at least to make a 30% modification on the original content to avoid duplicate content issues.

I totally agree with this statement. Plus I'll go one better. I want UNIQUE content for my own site. I don't want my site's articles copied exactly elsewhere. When I write for the article banks I'm careful what articles I let out there and what keyphrases are included in them. I don't want to DILUTE my own onsite efforts, even if it gets me a link back.