There’s a misconception about what makes unique web content. By all means, you never want to have duplicate content on a website and repetitive content should always be avoided. But people think they are covering their bases by writing their own version of a topic that can be found elsewhere on the web. There’s nothing inherently wrong about this, as it is virtually impossible to not find a subject covered somewhere else online. Case in point, this blog entry: it is one of many posts on the web about unique content.
But webmasters should not confuse unique content with useful content. Unique content truly transcends itself when it becomes valuable. The reason that linking to internal pages is at such a premium is because this link sign of approval shows that someone doesn’t just think that the content is unique, but valuable.
Writing Niche Content
What it comes down to is that you always need to be thinking in terms of niches. Once you’ve found your niche for your blog or ecommerce site, each article or post needs to also fulfill a niche need in some way. It has to be written about in a way that has never been done before. Am I following my own principles? Time will tell, but there is something to be said for filling your site with useful content as well – even if that content is not entirely unique. If you only intend to write subjects that have never been covered before, then you’re never going to write another post. I feel I’ve got something to say, which is why I’ve begun this blog in the first place. But filling a niche with content should be every site owner’s first priority.
There are some tricks you can take to make sure a page is truly unique:
- Search Google to see what the titles of topics that have already been covered. If I were to make the title of this article, “Unique Content,” it would never rank. But the phrase, “What makes unique content” only comes up with two current titles, when using exact quotes around the phrase, so it’s uniqueness is part of the title tag itself.
- Be topical. Write about a subject in relation to a recent news story. This will ensure that your content is not overgeneralized. It will also ensure that you are not writing content that’s covered by thousands of sites going back ten years. One of the great values of a blog is the ability to write about the current news and trends, in addition to general informative posts, as this content will be fresher and more likely to go viral.
How Unique Does Content Have to Be?
Another question is how unique does content need to be before it is no longer considered duplicate content. Can you just change a “the” to an “a” somewhere in the middle of a paragraph and evade plagiarism software? The answer is no. Do an experiment: take a paragraph off a page that’s been indexed by Google. Remove two or three words. Put the altered content into the Google search bar. It will come back at you with: “Did you mean…” and list the original paragraph with the omitted words. Google’s smart. They’ve thought of this. Don’t try to fool the Google.
Changing a paragraph within original content is not going to fool plagiarism software either. These programs are sort of like anti-viruses that will update with new definitions for pinpointing these tricks aimed at beating the system. Just as keywords and links need to be placed in a certain percentage of relevant content, so too does unique content need to be separated from other content on the same subject. Google does not make these percentages public, so you’re better off writing new content and not trying to game the system by writing content that is almost unique.
