For those who are doing anything and everything possible to get better search engine results for their site or page, article spinning has been one way to get a better spot. Article spinning is essentially creating several different versions of one article or piece of content, and then putting it into a piece of software called an article spinner. The spinner then interchanges the different versions with each other to make lots of new articles.

For freelance writers, it has meant a new specialty that has its own problems and rewards. Creating several versions of the same content can be extremely time consuming when a writer first starts out, and many writers won't do it all because of it. The technique does get many, many more articles for site owners for far cheaper than hiring someone to write hundreds of articles would cost. But is it worth it?

So far, yes. As long as there are enough versions and the writer has been skillful enough to not repeat phrases in any of them, the results can be terrific. Paying for five articles and being able to get 250 out of that work is a great savings for site owners who are already paying a lot for their content and web design. And all of those articles create backlinks to the site. Each backlinks is an indication of the popularity of the site and raises it in the search engine rankings.

There are a lot of people who find the practice deceitful, but it isn't against any rules and it is technically original content, as every version is different. The problem right now is that there are rumblings about Google changing their formula to count article spinning backlinks as much less favorable than other types of backlinks. This, again, all comes down to the skill of the person doing it. The new formula requires that a lot of phrases that pertain to the original topic be included in the content. A skillful writer includes these phrases anyway, as part of keyword optimization and doesn't repeat any phrases in order to keep each version as different as possible. Also, Google may rule the world for the most part, but it isn't the only search engine out there, and SEO techniques are aimed at all of them- not just Google.