What’s the Difference Between Web Content and Articles?

You may notice that SEO packages consist of web content and articles.  What is the difference?  Aren’t articles just…well, articles?  In a literary sense, yes, an article is an article is an article!  An article is a group of sentences organized together because of the similar train of thought.  A new thought, even one related to the overall premise, must be separated from previous thoughts so that the text will look neat, easy to read and organized.

Although we usually don’t equate this in cyber space, blogs are technically articles.  The difference is that blogs can be company sponsored and can consist of practically anything when it comes to opinion or voice.  Web articles usually imply articles that are objective, and resemble magazine writing rather than sales copy.  Articles are often associated with article directories, which are Web 2.0 sites that help authors and companies network on the web.  They can also help build a company’s links and establish a professional’s reputation.

Web content may technically be “articles” but they are made solely for the purpose of one website.  (Or perhaps a network of connected websites)  This is company-sponsored writing and thus there are really no rules as far as objectivity.  Authors or SEO developers can put a company link anywhere in the article, or brag about how great the company is, or link to other sites, or do practically anything that makes sense to management.  There is no worry about failing manual submission to an article directory, because anything goes in website content, and search engines will find and index all content over time (depending on the effectiveness of the link structure and sitemap, of course).

In contrast, articles for article directories are usually found quicker, since they are posted on popular sites and optimized for easy searches.  Nevertheless, many website owners are discovering that by putting more objective information on their own personal site (as in content that reads more like objective articles rather than company copywriting) they can hold on to viewers for a longer period of time, and boost sales.

Naturally, with web content you always have the right to edit and re-format your content, whereas your rights are limited with article directories.  (Article directories even have the right to remove your content if they see fit)  So while search engines do search and index everything, there is an important difference between articles and content meant specifically for web publishing.