Articles & Article Directory

A recent issue that has many article directory webmasters concerned is the issue of article directory spam. In simplest terms, this comprises the submission of many PLR or low word-count articles via an automated script to article directory sites. None of the site owners that I have corresponded with have been successful at completely stopping this at the submission level. However, there are some things that you can try to slow it down a bit.

Raise the minimum number of words that you will accept for an article submission…and then stick to it. 600 words is a good minimum as any article with fewer words is merely a long advertisement and not very informative, for the most part. Get an article manager module installed to help automatically delete lower word-count articles. Folks that are submitting articles with low word counts aren’t reading your TOS anyways, so you don’t need to send them an email to notify them of the reason you declined/deleted their article.

One sure-fire way to identify PLR articles is to look for wierd characters throughout the title, summary, body and resource sections of the article. What this signifies most of the time is that the article was copied directly from a word document and pasted as a submission without being proof-read. Another way to spot PLR articles is by length. Some are 5000+ words in length. It is doubtful that many authors submitting articles on a regular basis are writing articles of this length.

One last thing to try is to limit the types of email accounts that people use to register with. On your signup page, simply run a piece of javascript which will prevent the use of yahoo and gmail accounts, as well as any other domains known to be article spammers. When a spammer is prevented from registering with their inventory of throw-away email accounts, they will often pass your site by and look for greener pastures.

If any of you have any questions about how to streamline your article approving process, please shoot me an email. Time permitting, I’ll do my best to help you out. I’m doing a couple of things currently which has practically taken article spam to almost zero.

jm