“Unique” Article Content?

Arghhhh: another from the junk Web content and article marketing related naivete file… A thread from Sitepoint.com’s busy forums starts off with a question about whether a rewritten article is “unique” — well, um no — and highlights a disturbing phenomenon in article marketing. An all too common scenario if you look at jobs appearing on freelance work sites.

There is always useful discussion about website content, optimisation and online marketing going on somewhere. So from now on I’ll be choosing a thread to highlight here every week… This week a thread from Sitepoint.com’s Content Writing forum caught my eye because it points to a regrettable attitude toward creating content.

The thread starts with a question about the uniqueness of rewritten content. Little context is given but I’m guessing the scenario goes something like:

“I need content for my site. Hmmm… Writing’s hard. Wonder if there is a shortcut? Maybe I could just rework some other people’s content in my own words…”

I might be wrong and I’m not suggesting an attempt to deceive. The issue here is more about naivete.

Naivete that is all over sites like Guru.com and Elance.com. It’s based on two key misconceptions:

1. Search engines like content and as long as it is keyword rich the quality doesn’t matter too much.
2. Good content can be aquired cheaply — about $3 to $4 per 500 word article will do it — or copied, if you are clever.

Wrong! Search engines are well beyond keyword richness in terms of assessing content’s value. You can’t get a chunk of good content for $3. And rewriting others’ content is not ok as long as you change a lot of the words.

Rewriting others’ content and presenting it as your own is categorically wrong. It’s theft if you don’t acknowledge the source of your ideas or insight or, indeed, words.

But wouldn’t there be reasons you might rewrite content?

Well, yes. Freelance writing gurus/teachers/courses often talk about getting maximum value out of an idea or experience by offering different angles on that idea or experience for different markets/contexts. But the key thing is that they are your experiences/ideas and the pieces of writing are completely different.

All too often I see people after someone to rewrite some articles for their website for a few dollars a pop. Cheap content! No thought. Just reword and publish. Easy….

Argh! It is not a question of changing the words enough to pass some copyright infringement software test. Rewriting others’ ideas is not unique and presenting them as your own is reprehensible.

I remain depressed by the number of people that fail to understand the value of good — compelling, unique to your site, written by/for your site, showcasing your expertise and an interesting point of view — content.