5/31/06
When Unique Content Is Not “Unique”
General Marketing Babble
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my feed or subscribe to me on Twitter, which is updated on a more frequent - and more meaningless - basis.
Disclaimer: This is meant for people striving to develop long term web properties. Those churning and burning can return to their regularly scheduled programming. ;-)
I was reading a recent entry on visibility over at the seomoz blog last night and in it was the tried and true suggestion of making your site stand out (both visibility wise and algorithmically wise) with content.
“Develop unique content” is almost always the first suggestion given by people being asked how to make a site stand out from the others in a niche. Matt and other Googler’s are constantly preaching it as something Google wants.
So why the hell do webmasters and online marketers find this concept so difficult to understand?
I think one of the bigger reasons is not fully getting what “unique content” means. When “experts” and engine reps preach it, they mean it from a conceptual standpoint and not a literal one. So, what does that mean?
There are two possibilities for unique content. The first is the literal one. A page of content that is technically unique from those found on other websites on the web. I’d be more likely to call this unique *text* as that’s really what it is. The topic/gist of the page is the exact same as one thousand other pages on the web.
An example of creating literal unique content would go something like this:
1. Webmaster needs to add more content
2. Webmaster goes to a top ranking site and writes down all the topics the site has or uses the keyword research tool at Overture to come up with a list of potential topics
3. Webmaster either writes a dictionary style explanation of the content or reads another article on the topic and writes basically the same thing in their own words
While this content is full of unique text, it certainly doesn’t have any unique value. The same information is available all over the web, the above is just written using the webmaster’s own words.
The second version of unique content (in my head anyway) is conceptually unique content. Something that either no other site has, something that you’re written to be better than the current information that is available or something that uses what is already available, but with a twist to make your version either more interesting or adds value to the original concept or topic of the “article”.
As an example, I saw a site selling internet services that was not a “big brand”. The site had seen a ton of complaints about people trying to cancel service with one of their larger competitors. So, the non big brand site wrote a cancellation guide for canceling service with their competitor.
Not only is the content ranking in the engines because no one else had thought to do it prior to them, but they received a lot of links on message boards, homepages and blogs as well as traffic from frustrated customers of their competitor who happened to be in the market for a new internet provider.
“Content is king”. I laugh most of the time when I see this phrase. I think the people swearing by its success are those creating unique content from a conceptual standpoint. I think those who think content is a moot point are probably creating sites with unique content from a literal standpoint.
Think of content like movie plots. When a movie is predictable or the basic plot has been done ten times before, you want to see something new – a new spin from the director, a better level of special effects or an unexpected twist to the plotline to name a few. If a movie is a repeat of five others you’ve seen before – and it doesn’t give you anything new aside from different actors, how likely are you to see it again or recommend it to others?
Content follows the same concept in my mind. If you re-hash the same crap already out there, with no added value – the site can be as *literally* unique as it wants, but that alone isn’t going to earn it recommendations (links) and therefore ranks in the engines and word of mouth with people for being conceptually unique.
Of course, don’t just create true unique content and then sit on your ass. Content is not a magic pill. You still need to do link development, advertising and promotion for your site. But, having content that is unique from a conceptual standpoint will give you a strong advantage - and with today’s competition on the web, advantages are something you can’t afford to be without.
-- Subscribe to the Sugarrae feed
Rae Hoffman
Related Posts:
Added: And if you’re using sales copy as “unique content” take a look at a post MB did here:
http://www.martinibuster.net/2006/05/mother-of-all-link-building-strategies.html
Love your movie plot analogy!
Interesting. Maybe it’s just me, but my perception of the current state of the web is that linkage data is all you need these days. Content is a conversion mechanism in some cases, nothing more. With the right links, you can rank a site about anything, for anything else. I keep returning to the TBL (mis?)quote that any point in the WWW can be considered only as a part of the flow of the WWW, and its’ place and impotance are determined by that. Content may act as a selector for which page ranks for which exact phrase, but with whats happening in the majors (G - domain root authority roolz!, Y - PageRank 2002, MSN - What would Sir like to rank for today? And I do nearly mean today), I just don’t think it’s got the importance it should do at the moment.
Damn those content footprints - that’s a 2-way street, and the traffic is oing the wrong way at the moment
That’s not to say that content is a waste of time - linkbait, nar’mean? ;) I guess we’re all waiting for SOMEONE to figure out how to actually make the semantic stuff work properly. Or teach a computer to read.
I agree that links still rule. I guess I look at it as content is a vehicle to drive natural links to a site over time that have good worth. Not saying you don’t need to do link dev, but when you have really good and truely unique content, it makes the link dev much easier.
It’s a lot easier to get someone to eat a juicy steak then a burnt one. ;-)
Conceptually unique ideas are very rare in business, and successful ones are even more rare. Most successful businesses, on and off the web, are take offs of existing ideas.
Sorry, didn’t see this til now… Yes Peter, that’s true - but they still put a different spin, package, ad campaign - something behind it to differ themselves in order to build customer and brand loyalty.
[...] — Chris Hooley decided to give “writing an article with a extremely unique perspective” a try (see the article and his thoughts on the corporate punk here) and saw pretty damn good success with it (over seven hundred diggs and a server crash). If you’re not reading Chris, I’d recommend giving him a shot. He’s one of the funnier people in this industry (and he means to be). [...]
[...] Secondly you’ve also gone to the trouble of creating two different pages for yourself (see 1 and 2). Here’s the first tip for you that’s really not what Google is talking about when they say create unique pages, you may want to have a look at When Unique Content Is Not Unique to get a better understanding on the concept. However the point of this post is not to dis your “SEO-FU” it’s to help put an end to the Dave Pasternack SEO Contest. [...]
[...] point is making sure he site is ship shape from an SEO perspective and that she has general content worth linking to. 2. Creation of specific content meant to be interesting and attention grabbing… something like [...]
Great advise. I was writing “literally” unique content for my new blog that is an informative / how to type site for my industry. Even my “literally” unique content has better than the 2 or 3 other blogs in my industry. But the more I research SEO and the realism of this new SEO world that I have been following the more I want my presence to be real and genuenly unique.
I am finding that the research that it takes to create genuenly unique content takes about four times as long. The great thing is that in the search for that unique content you learn more about new topics and about my industry. I have recently found two other sub industries in my industry while doing the digging.
Not to mention my new love for SEO. I had hired an SEO company to help me two years ago and payed out the a** for little to nada. Now I have been doing it my self and it is getting kind of addictive. Loved your post.
Hi there. Found the link to this page on Aaron Wall’s site. Absolutely fantastic article, and you’ve hit the nail on the head. Even those of us with the best of intentions lose sight of this point every so often, so I’ll be forwarding your post to all the copywriters I know! And try to send some more link love your way too :)
One year old post but still standing true (found it through Aaron Wall’s link).
While difficult to come up with truly unique content - it is a real advantage to anyone. Yet for marketing I guess it would be very very difficult to implement.
If we follow the movie analogy - the movie industry would have been out of business by now if they would have published only truly original movies. And most indy original movies don’t get a crowd either.
You see, we as people somehow like rehashed things. How many identical soap operas are out there ? Thousands, and they all have people watching. The same stories with different character names. People keep watching them.
We just feel comfortable when we recognize the story. Brand new things may force us to think and that is dangerous for your health :D
[...] Hoffman hat auf seinem Sugarrae Blog interessante Ansichten dazu geäussert die ich so zumindest noch nirgends gelesen [...]
The analogy about movies was great. I didn’t really get it until there but that helps a lot. I think a lot of times I create uniqu text rather than unique content.
[...] But is it enough? Check out Sugar Rae’s post here. [...]
[...] sugarrae.com [...]
[...] damn straight been saying it - for well over a year via posts about how the concepts of things like creating unique content and link development have been [...]
[...] But, my bigger concern was how 14 brand new pages, five of which were of high quality, lengthy and conceptually unique (again, the others were quality as well, but contained little text, so I could see Google getting [...]
[...] you have the blog set up, write a couple of posts with unique content and try to get them indexed as quickly as possible. I got one of my sites indexed within 24 hours [...]
[...] feed. Thanks for visiting! I was going through Aaron Wall’s SEO book and was going through this blog post in a references section. I just had to post it here. I don’t want to defeat the purpose of [...]
[...] and article rewriters everywhere, suggesting their popularity. As Rae Hoffman suggested, not all unique content is created equal, you should check it out. She definited unique contents as [...]
[...] how unique is your content [...]
[...] best advice I have seen came from the sharp Sugarrae blog. They suggested that you approach writing your sites content like you would an interesting movie [...]
[...] parece interesantísimo…VA PAL BLOGLINES!), es de Sugarrae y bueno, el post se titula “When Unique Content is not Unique“, que viene a ser “Cuándo el contenido Único no es [...]
[...] think staying away from rehashed content is key. Let’s face it. Most of the time rehashed content doesn’t get many links. By [...]
I knew this entry existed before, but stopped to read it after seeing you in SEO Book.
Your analogies are great. “Juicy steak”–that’s grand.
One thing that baffles me a little is ensuring that what I write has not already been done (not literally, but conceptually). While I know that’s where research comes into play, there comes a point where 8 hours of research can be prohibitive to cranking out consistent content. Do you have any suggestions for quality assurance checking (that what I write is substantially different than what else is out there on the same topic) ?
Unique content is to keep visitors coming back to your website you built but building traffic to your site is what I found to be the more difficult part in IM.
“As an example, I saw a site selling internet services that was not a “big brand”. The site had seen a ton of complaints about people trying to cancel service with one of their larger competitors. So, the non big brand site wrote a cancellation guide for canceling service with their competitor.”
Am wondering which webpage you are refering to, care to show us?
thanks.
[...] links until they can figure out how to naturally attract links. Making an initial investment in quality unique content that people naturally want to link at will save you money on rented links and time in the future. [...]
Brilliant!
