Article spinning is a writing technique used in search engine optimization (SEO), and other applications, which creates what appears to be new content from what already exists. Content spinning works by replacing specific words, phrases, sentences, or even entire paragraphs with any number of alternate versions to provide a slightly different variation with each spin – also known as Rogeting. This process can be completely automated or written manually as many times as needed. Early content produced through automated methods often resulted in articles which were hard or even impossible to read. However, as article spinning techniques were refined they became more sophisticated, and can now result in perfectly readable articles which appear original. Once considered spamdexing, a black hat SEO practice years ago, the practice is now admitted as a fair way to lower the similarity ratio, resulting large catalogs of more or less similar items. Website authors use article spinning to reduce the similarity ratio of rather redundant pages or pages with thin content, and to avoid penalties in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for using duplicate content. It is also used in other types of applications, such as message personalization and chatbots.

Automatic rewriting can change the meaning of a sentence through the use of words with similar but subtly different meaning to the original. For example, the word “picture” could be replaced by the word “image” or “photo”. Thousands of word-for-word combinations are stored in either a text file or database thesaurus to draw from. This ensures that a large percentage of words are different from the original article.

The problem with simple automatic writing is that it cannot recognize context or grammar in the use of words and phrases. Poorly-done article spinning can result in unidiomatic phrasing that no human writer would choose. Some may substitute a synonym with the wrong part of speech when encountering a word that can be used as either a noun or a verb, use an obscure word that is only used within very specific contexts, or improperly substitute proper nouns. For example, “Great Britain” could be auto spun to “Good Britain”. While “good” could be considered a synonym for “great”, “Good Britain” does not have the same meaning as “Great Britain”.

Article spinning can use a variety of methods; a straightforward one is “spintax”. Spintax (or spin syntax) uses a marked-up version of text to indicate which parts of the text should be altered or rearranged. The different variants of one paragraph, one or several sentences, or groups of words or words are marked. This spintax can be extremely rich and complex, with many depth levels (nested spinning). It acts as a tree with large branches, then many smaller branches up to the leaves. To create readable articles out of spintax, a specific software application chooses any of the possible paths in the tree; this results in wide variations of the base article without significant alteration to its meaning.

As of 2017, there are a number of websites which will automatically spin content for an author.

Because of the problems with automated spinning, website owners may pay writers or specific companies to perform higher quality spinning manually. Writers may also spin their own articles, allowing them to sell the same articles with slight variations to a number of clients or to use the article for multiple purposes, for example as content and also for article marketing.

Google representatives say that Google doesn’t penalize websites that host duplicate content, but the advances in filtering techniques mean that duplicate content will rarely feature well in SERPs, which is a form of penalty. In 2010 and 2011, changes to Google’s search algorithm targeting content farms aim to penalize sites containing significant duplicate content. In this context, article spinning might help, as it’s not detected as duplicate content.

Article spinning is a way to create what looks like new content from existing content. As such, it can be seen as unethical, whether it is paraphrasing of copyrighted material (to try to evade copyright), deceiving readers into wasting their time for the benefit of the spinner (while not providing additional value to them), or both. Other criticisms liken the results to “a haystack of low-quality blog networks and article repositories.”

Progressive enhancement is a strategy in web design that puts emphasis on web content first. This strategy involves separating the presentation semantics from the content, with presentation being implemented in one or more optional layers, activated based on aspects of the browser or Internet connection of the user. The proposed benefits of this strategy are that it allows everyone to access the basic content and functionality of a web page, whilst people with additional browser features or faster Internet access receive the enhanced version instead.

“Progressive Enhancement” was coined by Steven Champeon & Nick Finck at the SXSW Interactive conference on March 11, 2003 in Austin, and through a series of articles for Webmonkey which were published between March and June 2003.

Specific Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) techniques pertaining to flexibility of the page layout accommodating different screen resolutions is the concept associated with responsive web design approach. .net Magazine chose Progressive Enhancement as #1 on its list of Top Web Design Trends for 2012 (responsive design was #2). Google has encouraged the adoption of progressive enhancement to help “our systems (and a wider range of browsers) see usable content and basic functionality when certain web design features are not yet supported”.

The strategy is an evolution of a previous web design strategy known as graceful degradation, wherein Web pages were first for the latest browsers first, but then made to work well in older versions of browser software. Graceful degradation aims to allow a page to “degrade” – to remain presentable and accessible even if certain technologies expected by the design are absent.

In progressive enhancement the strategy is deliberately reversed: The web content is created with markup document, geared towards the lowest common denominator of browser software functionality. The developer adds all desired functionality to the presentation and behavior of the page, using modern CSS, Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), or JavaScript. In the case of JavaScript, script also follow the principles of unobtrusive JavaScript.

The progressive enhancement approach is derived from Champeon’s early experience (c. 1993-4) with Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), before working with HTML or any Web presentation languages, as well as from later experiences working with CSS to work around browser bugs. In those early SGML contexts, semantic markup was of key importance, whereas presentation was nearly always considered separately, rather than being embedded in the markup itself. This concept is variously referred to in markup circles as the rule of separation of presentation and content, separation of content and style, or of separation of semantics and presentation. As the Web evolved in the mid-nineties, but before CSS was introduced and widely supported, this cardinal rule of SGML was repeatedly violated by HTML’s extenders. As a result, web designers were forced to adopt new, disruptive technologies and tags in order to remain relevant. With a nod to graceful degradation, in recognition that not everyone had the latest browser, many began to simply adopt design practices and technologies only supported in the most recent and perhaps the single previous major browser releases. For several years, much of the Web simply did not work in anything but the most recent, most popular browsers. This remained true until the rise and widespread adoption of and support for CSS, as well as many populist, grassroots educational efforts (from Eric Costello, Owen Briggs, Dave Shea, and others) showing Web designers how to use CSS for layout purposes.

Progressive enhancement is based on a recognition that the core assumption behind “graceful degradation” — that browsers always got faster and more powerful — was proving itself false with the rise of handheld and PDA devices with low-functionality browsers and serious bandwidth constraints. In addition, the rapid evolution of HTML and related technologies in the early days of the Web has slowed, and very old browsers have become obsolete, freeing designers to use powerful technologies such as CSS to manage all presentation tasks and JavaScript to enhance complex client-side behavior.

First proposed as a somewhat less unwieldy catchall phrase to describe the delicate art of “separating document structure and contents from
semantics, presentation, and behavior”, and based on the then-common use of CSS hacks to work around rendering bugs in specific browsers, the progressive enhancement strategy has taken on a life of its own as new designers have embraced the idea and extended and revised the approach.[how?]

The progressive enhancement strategy consists of the following core principles:

Web pages created according to the principles of progressive enhancement are by their nature more accessible, because the strategy demands that basic content always be available, not obstructed by commonly unsupported or easily disabled scripting. Additionally, the sparse markup principle makes it easier for tools that read content aloud to find that content. It is unclear as to how well progressive enhancement sites work with older tools designed to deal with table layouts, “tag soup”, and the like.

Improved results with respect to search engine optimization (SEO) is another side effect of a progressive enhancement-based Web design strategy. Because the basic content is always accessible to search engine spiders, pages built with progressive enhancement methods avoid problems that may hinder search engine indexing.

Some skeptics, such as Garret Dimon, have expressed their concern that progressive enhancement is not workable in situations that rely heavily on JavaScript to achieve certain user interface presentations or behaviors, to which unobtrusive JavaScript is one response. Others have countered with the point that informational pages should be coded using progressive enhancement in order to be indexed by spiders, and that even Flash-heavy pages should be coded using progressive enhancement. In a related area, many have expressed their doubts concerning the principle of the separation of content and presentation in absolute terms, pushing instead for a realistic recognition that the two are inextricably linked.

An article directory is a website with collections of articles written about different subjects. Sometimes article directories are referred to as content farms, which are websites created to produce mass content, where some are based on churnalism.

An article directory may accept new articles from any contributor, but may require that a new article is unique (not published elsewhere) and not spun (see article spinning). A typical article is around 400-500 words, and tools such as a WYSIWYG editor for writing and submitting an article may be provided.

An author box may be provided for personal information about an author, including a link to the author’s website.

Tags or categories may be used to organize articles and to help with search engines since tags or categories act as keywords that identify the topics covered in the article. Many directories pay the author for his/her participation. Some directories review articles before they are published and there may be a waiting period of several days before a new article appears. This helps to eliminate low quality submissions, including duplicate articles, spam and spun articles.

Article directories allow users to submit unique articles to the directory for content syndication. These directories allow articles to embed links to other websites with relevant anchor text. Popular article directories are considered authority sites and are constantly crawled by search engine bots. Webmasters submit articles with relevant anchor text linking back to their site to obtain backlinks.

Beginning with the Google Penguin release on April 24, 2012, Google began to punish sites that obtained links from article directories. On January 29, 2014, Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team, posted a video specifically warning against the use of article directories for SEO linkbuilding. The big issue with submitting to article directories, has to do with lack of editorial oversight. This means that pretty much any article can be added to the directory, no matter the quality or relevance to that website.

In the field of search engine optimization (SEO), link building describes actions aimed at increasing the number and quality of inbound links to a webpage with the goal of increasing the search engine rankings of that page or website. Briefly, link building is the process of establishing relevant hyperlinks (usually called links) to a website from external sites. Link building can increase the number of high-quality links pointing to a website, in turn increasing the likelihood of the website ranking highly in search engine results. Link building is also a proven marketing tactic for increasing brand awareness.

Editorial links are the links not acquired from paying money, asking, trading or exchanging. These links are attracted because of the good content and marketing strategies of a website. These are the links that the website owner does not need to ask for as they are naturally given by other website owners.

Resource links are a category of links, which can be either one-way or two-way, usually referenced as “Resources” or “Information” in navbars, but sometimes, especially in the early, less compartmentalized years of the Web, simply called “links”. Basically, they are hyperlinks to a website or a specific web page containing content believed to be beneficial, useful and relevant to visitors of the site establishing the link.

In recent years, resource links have grown in importance because most major search engines have made it plain that—in Google’s words—”quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating”.

Search engines measure a website’s value and relevance by analyzing the links to the site from other websites. The resulting “link popularity” is a measure of the number and quality of links to a website. It is an integral part of a website’s ranking in search engines. Search engines examine each of the links to a particular website to determine its value. Although every link to a website is a vote in its favor, not all votes are counted equally. A website with similar subject matter to the website receiving the inbound link carries more weight than an unrelated site, and a well-regarded website (such as a university) has higher link quality than an unknown or disreputable website.[self-published source?]

The text of links helps search engines categorize a website. The engines’ insistence on resource links being relevant and beneficial developed because many artificial link building methods were employed solely to spam search engines, i.e. to “fool” the engines’ algorithms into awarding the sites employing these unethical devices undeservedly high page ranks and/or return positions.

Despite Google cautioning site developers to avoid “‘free-for-all’ links, link popularity schemes, or submitting a site to thousands of search engines these are typically useless exercises that don’t affect the ranking a site in the results of the major search engines”, most[which?] major engines have deployed technology designed to “red flag” and potentially penalize sites employing such practices.

These are the links acquired by the website owner through payment or distribution. They are also known as organically obtained links. Such links include link advertisements, paid linking, article distribution, directory links and comments on forums, blogs, articles and other interactive forms of social media.

A reciprocal link is a mutual link between two objects, commonly between two websites, to ensure mutual traffic. For example, Alice and Bob have websites. If Bob’s website links to Alice’s website and Alice’s website links to Bob’s website, the websites are reciprocally linked. Website owners often submit their sites to reciprocal link exchange directories in order to achieve higher rankings in the search engines. Reciprocal linking between websites is no longer an important part of the search engine optimization process. In 2005, with their Jagger 2 update, Google stopped giving credit to reciprocal links as it does not indicate genuine link popularity.

User-generated content such as blog and forum comments with links can drive valuable referral traffic if it’s well-thought-out and pertains to the discussion of the post on the blog. However, these links almost always contain the nofollow or the newer ugc attribute which signal that Google shouldn’t take these into its ranking considerations.

Website directories are lists of links to websites which are sorted into categories. Website owners can submit their site to many of these directories. Some directories accept payment for listing in their directory while others are free.

Social bookmarking is a way of saving and categorizing web pages in a public location on the web. Because bookmarks have anchor text and are shared and stored publicly, they are scanned by search engine crawlers and have search engine optimization value.

Image linking is a way of submitting images, such as infographics, to image directories and linking them back to a specific URL.

Also known as guest posting, is a popular SEO technique that consists of writing a piece of content for another website with the goal of getting more visibility and possibly link back to the author’s website. According to Google, such links are considered unnatural and should be generally containing the nofollow attribute.

In early incarnations, when Google’s algorithm relied on incoming links as an indicator of website success, Black Hat SEOs manipulated website rankings by creating link-building schemes, such as building subsidiary websites to send links to a primary website. With an abundance of incoming links, the prime website outranked many reputable sites. However, the conflicts of being devalued by major search engines while building links could be caused by web owners using other black hat strategies. Black hat link building refers explicitly to the process of acquiring as many links as possible with minimal effort.

The Penguin algorithm was created to eliminate this type of abuse. At the time, Google clarified its definition of a “bad” link: “Any links intended to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme.”

With Penguin, it wasn’t the quantity of links that improved your site but the quality. Since then, Google’s web spam team has attempted to prevent the manipulation of their search results through link building. Major brands including J.C. Penney, BMW, Forbes, Overstock.com, and many others have received severe penalties to their search rankings for employing spammy and non-user friendly link building tactics.

In October 5, 2014 Google launched a new algorithm update Penguin 3.0 to penalize those sites who use black hat link building tactics to build unnatural links to manipulate search engines. The update affected 0.3% English Language queries all over the world.

Black hat SEO could also be referred to as Spamdexing, which utilizes other black SEO strategies and link building tactics. Some black hat link building strategies include getting unqualified links from and participating in Link farm, link schemes and Doorway page. Black Hat SEO could also refer to “negative SEO,” the practice of deliberately harming another website’s performance.

White hat link building strategies are those strategies that add value to end users, abide by Google’s term of service and produce good results that could be sustained for a long time. White hat link building strategies focus on producing high-quality as well as relevant links to the website. Although more difficult to acquire, white hat link building tactics are widely implemented by website owners because such kind of strategies are not only beneficial to their websites’ long-term developments but also good to the overall online environment.

A web widget is a web page or web application that is embedded as an element of a host web page but which is substantially independent of the host page, having limited or no interaction with the host. A web widget commonly provides users of the host page access to resources from another web site, content that the host page may be prevented from accessing itself by the browser’s same-origin policy or the content provider’s CORS policy. That content includes advertising (Google’s AdSense), sponsored external links (Taboola), user comments (Disqus), social media buttons (Twitter), Facebook), news (USA Today), and weather (AccuWeather). Some web widgets though serve as user-selectable customizations of the host page itself (My Yahoo!).

Widgets may be considered as downloadable applications which look and act like traditional apps but are implemented using web technologies including JavaScript, Flash, HTML and CSS. Widgets use and depend on web APIs exposed either by the browser or by a widget engine such as Akamai, Clearspring, KickApps, MassPublisher, NewsGator or many others.

Sites such as FormLoop allow users to easily create widgets from their own content with no coding knowledge necessary.

End users primarily use widgets to enhance their personal web experiences, or the web experiences of visitors to their personal sites.

The use of widgets has proven increasingly popular, where users of social media are able to add stand-alone applications to blogs, profiles and community pages. Widgets add utility in the same way that an iPhone application does. The developers of these widgets are often offering them as a form of sponsored content, which can pay for the cost of the development when the widgets’ utility maps to the user’s needs in a way where both parties gain. For example, a sports news brand might gain awareness and increased audience share in exchange for the utility of current game scores being instantly and dynamically available – the blog which posted the Sports score widget might gain in having a stickier site.

As any program code, widgets can be used for malicious purposes. One example is the Facebook “Secret Crush” widget, reported in early 2008 by Fortinet as luring users to install Zango adware.

One important factor with client-side widgets is that often the host can not control the content. The content or the functionality it provides cannot be modified by the host. The content is pre-published by the publisher/author/service provider and the host can either accept that content or not use the widget. The host does, however, control the placement of the Widget. Because the host can always take the Widget down, it assures a large degree of mutual advantage and satisfaction with performance and content.

Web widgets can affect page rank in two ways. First, links generated by client-side widgets won’t be seen by search engines that don’t “run” the widget code before analysing the page. Those links won’t contribute to page rank. Second, pages may be penalized for hosting widgets that automatically place links into the page, thereby manipulating page rank.

Widget management systems offer a method of managing widgets that works on any web page, such as a blog or social networking home page. Many blog systems come with built-in widget management systems as plug-ins. Users can obtain widgets and other widget management tools from various widget companies.

A Mobile Web widget has the same purpose and function as a web widget, but it is made for use on a mobile device such as mobile phone or tablet. In contrast, a web widget is on a personal computer or laptop computer

The W3C is creating a set of standards for web widgets.