What exactly, is spintax?
That’s a question I get asked quite often, so I thought I’d write an article explaining what spintax is and what uses it has.
The term spintax is a contraction of “spinning syntax”.
Spintax is the format (or syntax) that is used by various software spinners and article submission sites that create or use spun articles.
There are various spintax formats depending on what software/services you use. See the section titled “Spintax Formats” below for more details.
Article Spinning
Firstly, let me explain what article spinning is.
Article spinning is a method of creating one or more unique copies of an original article. The level of uniqueness depends on the type and amount of spinning you do.
Typical uses for spun articles are:
- Submitting to various article directories
- Submitting to blog networks
- Creating unique content for a website/blog
In general, the main purpose of spinning articles is to gain backlinks.
Spintax Example
Let’s look at a spintax example using the most common spintax format.
Let’s say our original article has the sentence:
Writing articles is a lot of fun.
Now if we format the above sentence with spintax, we might have something like:
{Writing|Creating} {articles|stories} is a {lot of fun|rewarding experience}.
Each of the words or phrases contained with {|} are randomly substituted in the spun article. So for the above example, some of the variations generated would be:
Writing stories is a lot of fun.
Creating articles is a rewarding experience.
Creating stories is a rewarding experience.
And so on for all the combinations possible. The number of variations depends on what software or service you use with your spintax.
You can spin articles at the word, phrase, sentence or paragraph level or a combination of all these.
Nested Spintax
Nested spintax refers to two or more levels of spinning. Not all spinning software or services support nested spinning.
Nested spintax is probably best explained with an example.
Let’s say I have the following sentence in spintax format:
Article directories are {an important {element|component|aspect} of SEO|useful for {getting|gaining} backlinks}.
In the example above, the first level spintax is in blue and the 2nd level is in green. So some examples of the output this example would produce is:
Article directories are an important aspect of SEO.
Article directories are useful for getting backlinks.
Article directories are an important element of SEO.
Optional Words or Phrases
Another spintax function that is supported by most spintax formats is the facility to make a word or phrase optional.
An example of this is:
The best {|overall|general} product.
Note there is no word specified before the first pipe symbol. The above spintax example would produce the following results:
The best overall product.
The best general product.
The best product.
Spintax Formats
Unfortunately, there is no standard spintax format.
In the examples given, I’ve been using the most common spintax format (sometimes known as Jet format) used by software spinners such as The Best Spinner.
This format uses {} to delimit the words/phrases to spin and the | symbol to separate them.
{word1|word2}
{word1 {level 2|level two}|word 2}
Probably the next most used spintax format is the one used by article submission sites like ArticleRanks. The first level spin uses {~} and the second level uses [|]. For example:
{word1~word2}
{word1 [level 2|level two]~word 2}
Then there is the format used by article submission sites like the Free Traffic System which uses [spin]|[/spin] format. For example
[spin]word1|word2[/spin]
Note that Free Traffic System only supports one level of spinning (also known as flat spin).
The Best Spintax Strategy
So putting everything together, what is the best strategy for creating the most effective spintax.
Well, the answer to that question depends on the purpose of what you want to use the spun article for.
However, let’s assume you want to use your article in as many places as possible, eg: article directories, blog networks etc.
Here’s the tips I use:
- Don’t be tempted to use an auto-replace option in your software spinner as you’ll just end up with a junk article that will take you quite a while to clean up.
- Manually spin each sentence or paragraph. If you have a large article, then perhaps spin ever second or third sentence.
- Then go through a spin at the word/phrase level by manually selecting the best synonyms. This is an easy task with spinners like The Best Spinner.
- Make sure you proof read a couple of examples of the spun article to make sure it reads OK and doesn’t have any bad grammar or clumsy sentence construction.
By following these tips, you will greatly increase the chances of having your spun article accepted on the sites you submit it to. Additionally, by having a high level of spin and uniqueness, it will help your rankings as the search engines will see your backlinks coming from articles with unique content.
Spinning Hyperlinks
The last part of spintax is spinning your hyperlinks.
Obviously, you don’t want to go to all the effort of creating a spun article and leave out hyperlinks to your site.
There’s no real difference between spinning plain text and hyperlinks apart from having to get the hyperlink format correct. An example of a spun hyperlink is:
<a title=”{keyword one|keyword two}” href=”http://{example.com/page1|example.com/page2}” target=”_blank”>{keyword one|keyword two}</a>
The more keywords and URLs you add, the greater the potential for missing a quote or misformatted HTML tag.
If you need to generate spintax for hyperlinks, then you should check out my Free Spintaxer Tool.
Also, make sure you take advantage of my special LIFETIME 40% discount off The Best Spinner.
Cheers
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Hi Peter
Great tools. We want to add this feature to our rewrite tools.
Thanks!
Really good introduction to spin syntax. I have been spinning for some time and didn’t know there was a second format as you mention with free traffic system.
I haven’t used Article Ranks and if I am already using AMR, would it still be of use to purchase a monthly submission?
Hi Julian.
Thanks for your feedback.
I also use AMR, but remember that it primarily posts to article directories (there are a small handful of blogs it can post to).
With sites like Article Ranks, they are submitting your articles to private blogs.
Article Ranks allows you to earn credits if you accept articles on one of your sites if the Page Rank is 1 or higher. This increases the chances of an article that you submit via AR of being posted on a site with a PR >0. This all helps to increase your link juice.
Hope that helps.
Cheers
Peter
Article spinning and Spintax are really valuable resources for people needing unique articles. It’s like an active dictionary/thesaurus that can look over an entire article and make it different and unique, while still maintaining the same basic properties of the original article. This is one of the few things I would say is absolutely vital for an online business or a blogging website looking for unique content that will stand out, especially in niches that are heavily populated with content.
thank you for clearing that up for me. I was reading a e-book that talk about spintax and I had no idea what they were talking about.
I know have a better understanding of spintax.
Hi Lisa.
Glad you find my description of spintax to be useful.
Cheers
Peter
I take it that if you spin at the paragraph level, thats going to give you the highest level of uniqueness, then moving down to sentence level, then eventually word/phrase level. But man that is a lot of work lol.
Hi Azlan.
Spinning at the paragraph, sentence and word/phrase level does give you the highest level of uniqness, but as you say it is a lot of work. Ultimately it comes down to what you are going to do with the spun article.
A highly spun article can be used for many purposes like posting to web 2.0 sites, article directories etc.
If you don’t want to go to all the effort of that level of spinning, then spinning a couple of paragraphs and sentences along with word/phrase spinning will still get you a highly unique article.
Cheers
Peter
Good tips, I´m going to try the free tool you recommend. Do you think it also works for Spanish?
Thanks a lot!
Should work for any language
Hi,Thanks for providing such information, i am going to try a software for spinning.
Hi all
I’ve just received a pack of spintax articles. Please advise on the best free tool I can use for checking the uniqueness of the spun article(s). Thanking you in advance
Hi Sonia.
I’m not aware of a free tool that checks “uniqueness”. If anyone knows of one, please feel free to mention it, otherwise I might have to write one myself.
Cheers
Peter
thank you Peter
your explanation is clear !!
i’m thai and i have to write some french articles for my boss.
thank you very much
Hi Cheewan.
Glad you found it useful.
Cheers
Peter
Hey just stumbled upon this article through Google. Thanks for the explanation and i’m going to check out your free Spintaxer Tool. Cheers!
Thank you so much for this – your article has cleared up the spintax mystery for me & I’m off to construct my first spun article.
Peter,
I want to tell you thank you for the Spintax lesson. I learn something new everyday. I was in the middle of creating bookmarks and was questioned on using Spintax in my titles. I look forward to reading more of your posts. I just discovered your site, so you have gained a new reader.
To Your Success,
Stacie Walker