Thank you for the story. I understand that pain.

The thing is, so long as Google holds this position of authority and so long as Matt Cutts is at the head of the webspam team, I will run SEO in fear of him.

I wish I knew, but something tells me they’ve got a team reverse-engineering every article spinner on the market.

And if you need to get backlinks (if they’re that important to your needs), I’d leave it to the experts. Hanapin does a tremendous job. Slingshot SEO is also fab. Or if you don’t have such a budget, I’d propose having sculpted, branded corporate social media tools so you can backlink while augmenting your web presence. SEO and social media meet along that fine line called “Web Presense.”

Why do the work in the shadows when you can do the same work in the light? Engaging, and benefiting at the same time.

Branding and backlinking at the same time is a beautiful thing.

Someone get me a white, ten-gallon hat.

You’ll have to let me know how the rest of that story goes for you!

I agree and will pass the note along.

He apparently did an overall analysis of our sites, gave some pitch about how great our content was and that all we needed were some links and how he could get us 100+ backlinks with article spinning.

I let it go in that meeting, but when he returned in the following meeting I basically told him thanks, but no thanks after discussing the risks with some folks in the industry who have actually taken part in article spinning. He skoffed, made some snide remark and was on his way. My view on article spinning is that it just adds more junk for internet marketers to compete against and sort through when it comes to SEO. Not to mention that while they may have some value in the short term I doubt it really has any long lasting power behind it. And from the feedback I got from various peers, that tends to be the case.

I was VERY tempted to approve this guys article spinning at first because the higher ups are pushing hard for backlinks, but I just couldn’t take that step over to the darkside. As internet marketers we have to stop accepting junk content, no matter how tempting it is. Perhaps I worry too much about the ethics of internet marketing and I’m too much of an SEO goodie, goodie, but I’d rather spend the extra time putting out some quality than filling the SERPs with a bunch of garbage.