What Has Unique Content Done for You?

I wanted to start a discussion on the use of unique content.
Why is it important? Give your own personal testimony as
to how you've seen your website grow, and gain popularity
(in search engines, in PPC revenue, or in readers).

I once saw a presentation of a Google dude (sorry, that's
the only word I could think of to describe him. That spoke
on people "sharing their own history", instead of history
being written by "the winners", who he later described in
the difference between the revolutionary war and the civil
war.

Paraphrased: Would the civil war, if won by the south, have
been a civil war, or a revolution? It would have been a
revolution if the side wanting to seperate won, but instead,
history was written by the winners.

And the internet is changing into history written by
individuals. Is this why content is so key? Unique content,
turning the internet into something individual based? If so,
what is your take on it? Where does duplicate content fit
into this?

What is your take? Is it no longer "content is king" but
"unique content" is king?

If so, what are your personal testaments to unique content
and what it's done with your business?

*Also, what is the hardest part about coming up with
unique content for you? Just some stuff to chew on, as I'm
going to sleep. Goodnight for those of you who are in my
time zone.

Peace.

 

OK for one example on one of ours sites one article received over 6000 uniques from G in one month

So unique content is King and always produces excellent results for traffic

 

Quality unique content truly is the king.

In my personal experience, it didn't benefit me that much, but that's because the niche is very small and the demand for articles even smaller. The best thing for me, was probably the fact I knew they were mine. I know they were 100% unique and written by me, and so I felt a lot more confident submitting them to articles directories and publishing them.

 

If you can produce original content, and have it not only indexed but promoted on social news networks than you are truly golden.

I had my first major blog article promoted to the front page of several major Social sites and now I enjoy a loyal and steady following I never had before. Couldn't have done that without unique content.

//Oh and the hardest part of producing unique content is living up to my own very high standards of quality.

 

What Has Unique Content Done for me?
It has given me thousands of thousands of visitors and adsense clicks and $$$$$.

 

Unique content has done good for me in terms of serp... but it has also allowed RSS feed 'stealers' take my feeds and publish the content on their auto-blog sites, giving my unique content less value

 

agh, I hate those auto-blog RSS feed stealers

 

..unique content has bought my house, h2 sut, fed my wife and kids and allowed us a nice lifestyle. I cant complain. But whose to say blackhat wouldnt have done the same or more...

 

Unique content allows me to dominate any niche I touch.

 

Unique content is great for visitors to my site in my niche

 

Unique content is vital for any niche. It brings visitors and better lifestyle

 

First article on my site let me promote it easier and gained 3x the traffic.

 

Unique content let many other sites take it and change it to their own unique contents.

 

Unique content is making me compete and getting a nice rank in 64million strong SERP keyword with only a 2 months old blog.

 

Very nice....

 

So I was wondering how you guys generate traffic with your articles. Do you not submit them to directories so you can recieve ranking in the serps for them or do you get traffic via the authors line in the article.

I have written a few articles but it only brings me about 100 visitors a month from websites that have chosen to print them.

 

I have thought about submitting to directories and all but then my content wouldn't be original anymore. I look at Seth Godin. This guy posts a picture of a cat and ends up getting linkbacks from others. I want that kind of power over my content.

 

I want to thank you guys for all of your awesome
information, and testimonies to unique content.

I, for one, hate using duplicate content! I really have no
flexibility over the quality, and I hate feeling like I did a
half way job. I wanted to comment on someone's post right
here.

That's awesome! My dad, who's been internet marketing
longer than I have, had a blog set up for about 3 days and
got number one for a keyword that had 60+million people.
You guys who can do that are awesome. One day, when I
have the time, I really wanna dedicate to getting to the top
of keywords like that.

 

Unique Content is the MOST important thing if you are looking for long term and organic traffic. I have covered 2 posts Making Money with adsense - Part I and Making money with adsense - Part II in my blog where I have covered in detail the effects of unique content Hope this helps.

Current search engines have become way to smart and can easily screen out copied content.

 

This is how I look at content. Unique content is an aspect, but certainly not primary in creating a growing business (if that is what one is trying to do). I would put it in this order:

1) Content has to be relevant to a visitors in a large and growing segment of the marketplace.

2) Content has to be discoverable (visible to the Internet browsing population). That is, good content that cannot be found via search engines or other means, is not useful to potential readers.

3) Content has to be well presented, readable and addresses the "problem" that the reader is looking for information on.

After this "uniqueness" certainly helps if readers are looking for a different perspective or additional information. To a certain extent it may help in "visibility" (e.g. Google), but not necessarily so. For example, there is absolutely nothing unique about Wikipedia's content (in fact they insist it is not). What is unique is the presentation and organization, which are the keys to its success.

So uniqueness, I feel, is one dimension, but not necessarily the primary. Visibility, organization, presentation, and most important relevancy, I think are other, possibly more important, dimensions.

Rich