For a long time I was able to write content for my web sites but once I reached a certain point I just had too many sites to write content for. That’s when I started looking at article directories and networks for good but relevant content I could use on some of those sites.

I use EzineArticles.com to get great content for my niche web sites. I am happy with them but I can only find so much at any given time, so I needed other places to get content and that is when I came across AMA or Article Marketing Automation.

Article Marketing Automation does two main things:

1. One Way Links: As a paying member you can write articles with 3 links back to your web sites.
2. Web Site Content: As a paying or non-paying member you can accept and publish content to all the sites you list with AMA

Originally I joined the AMA network to use articles from there, not to publish my own, that came later. My beef with AMA isn’t about getting my articles published, it’s about using the articles presented for me to accept or reject.

IMPORTANT POINT: I feel it’s necessary that I point out a very positive aspect of AMA before I go all negative on them. Okay, I love the idea of using Article Marketing Automation or My Article Network to publish my own articles. I get lots of articles published and get lots of one way links back to my blogs. They are great for getting those one way links and worth every penny I pay.

7 Reasons I Don’t Like Article Marketing Automation

First let me explain 5 things I expect in an article I find in my niche categories.

1. Article content has to be relevant to the niche or it’s spam
2. Articles should be written in proper English or people leave your site
3. An article needs to link to relevant content as we are not allowed to remove links
4. Article must not link to duplicate content
5. An article has to belong to that member and can not be stolen from other directories

I don’t think that is asking too much. And now on to why I don’t care so much for the articles from AMA.

1. I reject more than 90% of articles. That’s very time consuming when one has 30 web sites.
2. Too many authors rewrite the same article too many times.
3. Rejected articles just keep reappearing to accept or reject again.
4. Too many authors spam every category.
5. Support does not appear to read or care about the feedback given daily.
6. Too many authors write about one topic and then link to non related pages.
7. Many authors have English as a second language so their content is very poor quality.

So, I don’t just reject articles for the sake of rejecting them. My first priority has to be my web site content and if the articles are not going make my site better why would I use them.

In conclusion: Article Marketing Automation or My Article Network is a great way to get one way links to your sites and increase your rankings and number of visitors. However if you are using this network to populate your sites with content you must be patient and very diligent before accepting them.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Get Better Results From Article Marketing With Proper SEO (webmanmarketing.com)
• Ways To Improve Article Marketing (webmanmarketing.com)

I use a lot of private label rights content for most of my blogs, without even modifying them.  Because of this I have feared the wrath of Google through a Duplicate Content penalty.

However, it has been a few years now and I still don’t see how I could be penalized if I have phrases that are still listed in the top couple of pages of the Google search results. This of course leads me to think that there really is no Google Duplicate Content Penalty.

BTW: Just for clarity I am talking about content that is NOT stolen. I have had to deal with people stealing my content and now I use MyFreeCopyright.com to document any new content I create so I can prove I am the originator of the content.

This morning as I was sucking back my first coffee, Mmmmmm, I was scanning Bloglines, the RSS reader I use to view blog feeds I like to follow.

It’s such a great time saver.

Anyways, I came across an article about duplicate content, which always interests me, especially this one because it was about the penalty being a myth. Which makes sense to me but I was just never convinced, until this morning.

I could never figure out how I could be penalized for duplicate content and yet still have my copy of any given article rank in the top ten on Google, but I have them, so it didn’t make much sense however that didn’t stop me from still fearing penalty.

If you wonder about the duplicate content penalty or filter then take a few minutes and check out Neil Shearing’s Duplicate Content Penalty Myth video. I enjoyed it, plus it has helped to put my mind at ease about DCP.

I am glad I came across Neil’s video. I had just purchased a membership to a site that writes unique articles when perhaps I didn’t need to. However I do hire people to write for my other blogs so I will of course use the membership but