There are soo many portals out there: yahoo, rediff etc. That just publish syndicated content from news agencies etc. Also, the recent news sites like huffingtonpost etc. do the same. And those sites do pretty well for themselves. So, is unique content really that useful ? I read a comment somewhere saying 'Content today is commoditized', do you agree ?
How often do you see the huffington post in the SERPs for anything other than a big sentence in question marks or a recent article in the title?
Unique content is extremely important for people who know what to do with it (as in become an authority source, consistently rank well in search engines, etc.). That said, getting search rankings is far from the only way to run a successful site, and if you choose other options for gaining traffic (and the republished content is legal and has real value to your target audience) then you can be just as successful without it.
I'am starting to think so. I can sit down and make an article that takes 4 - 5 hours to write, include images and maybe a video - and it barely ranks in the search engines. While a 2 paragraph, RSS feed generated, duplicate content article on some junk site can rank very well. My opinion, a lot of it is the search engine. On just about all of my sites, goole has an average bounce rate of 55%. While bing and yahoo have bounce rates in the 20% - 25% range. And it seems that google is ranking duplicate content articles well, even on the trashiest of sites.
I don't care what people say, unique content is the key to do well in the SERPS. Yes, you might not get a good ranking but that's because you didn't do proper SEO. Yugo,
Content has to inform, interest and engage the website visitor. It also has to be useful in some unique way to the visitor. So content can be unique, republished or rehashed or any combination thereof as long as it serves the above purpose. For example, aggregating major news stories on a specific topic such as "Drought" might serve the above purpose whereas duplicating an entire authority news site may not.
I cannot agree with you more. Plus- you have to think about the way you structure your website to communicate/invite to more pages.
I think one of the problems with your situation is that people don't adequately promote each article. It doesn't require as much promotion as an entire website, however a significant effort should be made to promote a single article in several different online mediums (search engines, forums, social marketing sites, etc.). And don't forget offline mediums as well. Tons of opportunities exist in magazines, genre specific newsletters, etc.
I agree, Google measures a sites strength, by the weight of links to its individual articles/pages. Can be a stronger measure than links to homepage alone
Unique content is important. Is it the most important thing on your site? NO, you can be very successful with duplicate content. The most important thing to remember is to make sure that all content is relevant and informative. At the same time SEO is the way to get traffic to your site. So, follow the basic SEO rules and you will be on your way to success with duplicate or original content.
Unique content actually plays a very important role in SEO. If done well, it attracts lots of natural backlinks to your site without any additional effort from you (meaning it increases your productivity by freeing up that link-building time to work on directly income-generating activities while also allowing you to sidestep SEO fads where your efforts will eventually be reversed anyway). There's no trick to SEO. Good content that attracts natural links is the best thing you can do, and lots of sites have proven it (including major networks which spend very little time on SEO directly, and instead let their content do the work).
For evergreen content, it is best to have original content to compete with other websites. It is best to have one article ranks high for a particular keyword for a long time. You cannot achieve that with duplicate content.
Perhaps you're referring to original content. Rewrites can still be "unique" - provided they pass Copyscape and other tests. Uniqueness is pretty much a big deal for people who want their websites to land in Google's page 1 or 2.
Yes, it is overrated. Along with seo. But that is not to say it is worthless. It's just not worth all that much. It doesn't matter if a webmaster has duplicate content throughtout his site, as long as one or more of his other pages has unique content. THOSE pages will be indexed. Make sense? By the way, if the articles are duplicate but they are good, and that his readers have never read before, it helps bring back repeat visitors. Syndicated content, if it is good, adds value to the site. It is a hell of a lot more valuable than trying to get on page one of a search with..."unique content." Also, if a webmaster is lucky enough to land high in a search, and it is about luck, then it means squat if his content is crap. His visitors just won't come back, and he will also have one hell of a big bounce rate. A smart webmaster knows this. But, then again, does anyone here really know if Google's spiders actually do ignore pages that have duplicate content (a duplicate article)??? I bet no. I bet that many still do get indexed. Maybe they could care less about search engines? (Many, including me do not care.) They do just fine with great content, and then advertising it, along with relying on word of mouth.
You said one of the key words - "major networks". As a owner of a single author blog, its difficult to compete against larger sites that can either buy articles or hire authors. Over the past year, I have posted lots of articles that were 500 - 1,200+ words, and got almost no traffic from them. There comes a point in time where I feel like I'am wasting my time.
I wouldn't say it was, fresh unique content is very valuable. Although it can also be useful to reproduce non unique content.
I just listed them as an example to show that even well-known sites don't rely on SEO "tricks" to get rankings. It has a great deal to do with content. Here's the way I see it: if someone either can't create good content or afford to buy it, then they're not really equipped to be in the content business. It would be like someone wanting to start an IT consulting firm without knowing the first thing about technology. That said, the "little guy" can definitely compete. But their focus shouldn't be on SEO for general terms to compete with big sites that have a crapload of content, professional journalists on board, and a decade or more of history on the Web. It's not likely to happen. The key is in specializing in a niche -- even if that's a narrower one. Beyond that, they can take a completely different approach to another niche (something that makes their site more brandable). If you want to buy articles from pros, but you can't afford their normal rates, consider compromising. Accept fewer rights for a lower fee. I do this with my own writers for my writing blog -- I simply purchase exclusive Web rights for 30 days, and non-exclusive rights after that. It's exclusive long enough that my blog is the original publisher according to search engines rather than duplicate content, my readers get good information they're looking for before they can get it elsewhere, and my writers can further monetize their articles later by selling print rights, reprint rights on the Web after 30 days, using them in e-books after those 30 days, using them for article marketing at that point, etc. It's just as effective for the blog as buying the full copyright. Frankly I think a lot of writers are completely naive on that front. They buy far more rights than they actually need, so they basically pay too much. Unless you want something ghostwritten so you can claim authorship, there's rarely a reason to buy full rights for blog content. As for bigger sites, stop thinking about how to compete with them, and start thinking about how to work with them. Interview their writers or owners for your own blog. Comment on them regularly. Offer to write a guest post for them occasionally. The more you interact with them instead of trying to best them at their own game, the more access you'll gain over time to their audience members, who in turn might become your readers. You'll also attract links from these bigger sites, which do help you compete with them. But they'll do it anyway as long as you're either stroking their ego or offering something of actual value to their own readers. Also create things worth linking to naturally. Content doesn't just mean articles. I see you have video on your blog link here. That's a start. How about having some free tools and calculators? What about a free downloadable report? Why not run a contest (seek sponsors if you can't afford to buy the prizes outright)? All of those things can help with SEO in a completely natural way, because they give people things worth linking to. Personally when I release something worthwhile I also put out a simple press release on WebWire.com and that tends to lead to a bit of blog coverage and links too. You can compete. You just have to approach it differently than more established sites do. And if you do, eventually your site will join their ranks in that "established" pool. If you were talking specifically about the blog in your blog link here, I'd check to make sure you're not being penalized. I see the site's been around since 2008, but has 0 pagerank. While pagerank really doesn't matter on its own, if you've been penalized in that way, it might be worth checking to see if there's some problem on the backend that's also causing you to be penalized in the SERPs. I don't know if you are or not, but it might be worth looking into.
Lots of really good comments here on unique content. For me it's not just about getting SERPs rankings, although there's no point having a website that doesn't get any visitors. It's much more about gaining the trust of an established readership and giving them the confidence that they'll get something from your site that they won't get elsewhere. That will encourage a percentage of your visitors to become regular visitors, meaning you don't rely on the SERPs ranking for their visits and your efforts are helping to grow the customer base, not just maintain it.
Unique content is never overrated due to its originality, but when it comes to DP's B/T/S section, requests and rates for unique content are laughable
Unique content is considered to be of high value in the sight of Search Engines, provided that these articles are regularly updated...a part of SEO