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Creative Commons: Getting The Most Leverage Out Of
Your Articles
By Robin Nobles
© 2005
I've long been an advocate of a form of online marketing that I personally call "article marketing." Yahoo! has recently added a layer to article marketing - Creative Commons Search - which is extremely exciting, and anyone who uses the power of articles needs to take notice.
Introducing Yahoo!'s Creative Commons
Search
(in Beta) http://search.yahoo.com/cc
Here's what it says as means
of explanation at the site:
"This Yahoo! Search service finds content
across the Web that has a Creative Commons license:
http://creativecommons.org/
While
most stuff you find on the web has a full copyright, this search helps you find
content published by authors who want you to share or reuse it,
under certain conditions."
Obviously, if you're not a writer and are in
need of content on your site, this is a great place to go. You can find content
through Yahoo!'s Creative Commons search that you can use for commercial
purposes, and you can also find content that you can modify, adapt, and build
upon.
What forward thinking on Yahoo!'s part!
Now, let's talk
about forward thinking on your part.
Why is this Important to Article
Writers?
Let's think about it for a minute. The links pointing back to
your Web site from your articles and the relevant link text in the bio are
extremely important to a savvy article writer. By allowing other Web sites,
e-zines, online publications, and print publications to publish your articles,
you're widening the scope of your visibility.
And in walks a powerhouse
like Yahoo! with their new Creative Commons Search.
Wouldn't you like
your articles to be available in a select search on Yahoo!?
Do you have
to think twice? (Or even once?)
How About an Example?
Disclaimer:
It's rather dangerous to give an example in print. As soon as you do, your
example could slip in rankings. Forgive me if that happens here.
Please
go to:
http://search.yahoo.com/cc
Click on "Find content I can
use for commercial purposes."
Type "seo articles" (without quotes) in the
search box.
Click Search CC.
The #1 page at the time of this
writing is:
http://www.searchengineworkshops.com/articles.html
Click
on the link, then scroll to the bottom of the page. You'll see the Creative
Commons License that says "Some Rights Reserved."
It says, "This work is
licensed under a Creative Commons License."
Click on the link. You'll see
the actual license and what rights are available under the license as well as
what conditions have to be met.
So, if you want your articles to be
available through a Yahoo! Creative Commons Search, you simply allow it to be
licensed out through Creative Commons.
How Can Article Writers Take
Advantage of Yahoo!'s Creative Commons Search?
Follow these easy
steps:
1. Go to Creative Commons: http://creativecommons.org/
2. Click on the Publish
graphic at the top of the page on the right.
3. Answer the questions:
Allow commercial uses of your work? Allow modifications of your work?
Jurisdiction of your license? Format of your work (such as text)?
4. You
can also click to add more information about your work. If you're only going
to create a license for one article, you can get very specific about your
article.
5. Click on Select a License. You'll see how the license will
look on your page. You can then copy and paste the text to your Web
site.
You can even add a Creative Commons License to your
blog!
How Long Does it Take
for Yahoo!'s Crawler to Find the CC License?
After I put the licenses up
on our Web pages, our pages were found in a Yahoo! Creative Commons Search
within two weeks.
What about All of the Typical SEO
Ramifications?
Does the same Yahoo! crawler crawl Creative Commons
licenses? (To my knowledge, there isn't a different crawler.)
Will having
a Creative Commons license get your pages into Yahoo! faster? (I haven't done
any testing on this yet to see if new pages will get into the regular index as
well as Creative Commons, but it's an interesting concept.)
What about a
brand new Web site with an articles directory? (You need to have a link from
another Web site, because of your site isn't indexed at all, you can't expect
Yahoo! to find and spider those article pages quickly.)
Does having a
Creative Commons license on your articles affect your regular Yahoo! rankings?(I've seen no evidence of this to date.)
What about Relevancy of Search
Results?
That's an interesting question. Let's look at another
example.
Again, go to:
http://search.yahoo.com/cc
Choose "Find content I can
use for commercial purposes."
Type in "wordtracker." Click on Search
CC.
The #1 result is our articles page again:
Marketing on
Internet Search Engines - articles by Robin Nobles and John
Alexander
www.searchengineworkshops.com/articles.html
"Wordtracker" is
being used 11 times on the page, since we've written several articles about
Wordtracker. It's not being used in the title, description, etc. This page is
not focused on Wordtracker at all. However, this page definitely has a higher
link popularity than our other pages.
We have several Wordtracker
articles in those same results, yet our articles page is #1. I'll let you study
the rest of the results yourself.
Some of the Search Results Aren't
Exactly "High Quality"
We have seen some SERPs that aren't exactly high
quality. Will your results float to the top? We'd like to think so.
Will
Yahoo! or Creative Commons find a way to police the results that are less than
quality? After all, this fabulous tool definitely has potential for abuse if not
policed in some manner.
In Conclusion...
Article writers, if
you don't mind others using your content on their sites, be sure to visit
Creative Commons and add the CC licenses to your articles. How easy can
increasing your online visibility get?!
But don't abuse the system. If
the beta tool gets abused, it may never make it to the full version, which will
be a shame for us all.
For those of you who are looking for valuable
content to add to your sites, be sure to visit Yahoo!'s Creative Commons Search.
This is an ideal spot for finding relevant content that's available to be used
on your site.
Just remember that the #1 ranked result may not be the best
article for you, so do your research.
About the
Author:
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