Looking for quality content? Avoid freebies
Quality content - If you are just starting your website, you know
how hard it can be at times to create original content. With a
new website there are so many things to remember that the quality in
content is sometimes overlooked.
In that rush to get your website up and running, some people write their own articles, some pay for articles and some grab content from various free directories.
When it comes to the free articles, let me be the first to tell you, don’t do it. Free articles help you to build your website quickly but it also hurts you in the long run. Let me explain why.
The Spiders are watching
Any time that you post articles from someplace else you run the risk
of the search engines labeling it as duplicate content. Most
people think that the internet is so large that you would never
know. Wrong.
The search engine spiders do take note and it does hurt your
ranking. Here is a little test for you. Choose any article
you like from the internet, modify it, go to Copyscape and test it
out. Unless you have completely re-written that article,
Copyscape will know.
Now, if Copyscape can figure out whether your article is original content, so can the search engine spiders.
You might be thinking, “a little duplication never hurt anything”. Whether it does or does not is not the real issue though. The real concern is how the Google search engine spiders view it.
When you really think about it, there is a link between original
quality content and your ranking. Obviously, it is not a one to
one link due to the additional factors that go in to rankings.
However it does play a huge part.
Why are rankings so important?
Google’s rankings determine for the most part how many visitors are referred to your site. Now you can obtain traffic without Google but not nearly as much.
Google aims to please two customers. Its advertisers and its users. Think about it, any of one of us using a search engine expects what? We expect unique quality content. That is exactly what Google tries to deliver to its advertisers and its search engine users.
Fighting for visitors
We all know how important and stressful it is at times when just
starting out and trying to get visitors to our site. We all
acknowledge that obtaining a high ranking is hard.
Just remember though, ranking and getting visitors to your site is only half of the battle. You must also, with your quality content, convince your users to click. Click, click click. You know, the money click.
What good is getting traffic to your site if you can’t instill a
sense of confidence and trust? How would you feel as a visitor if
you were looking for something and you found the same content
everywhere?
Let me re-phrase, not just the same content but the exact same content? Would you consider any of your findings quality content? As a visitor you would be no more compelled to click at one site versus the other. This would be a bad thing.
People buy things on recommendation , from others they consider experts or from people they trust. Duplicate content doesn’t help you in any of the above categories.
Conclusion
Free articles/content is never a good idea. If you are a good
writer and you have the time, writing your own quality content may be
the best
option. However, with so much to do in the early stages of
building a website, it is understandable to need a little help.
If you choose to outsource some of the content writing, choose a
service that is reliable. The writers should have relevant
experience with regards to the subject matter. I
highly recommend Elance.
I use their servcie for several of my
blogs. One thing to remember, you
should demand and review a few writing sample prior to the
engagement. You want to be sure that the writer that you choose
can produce quality
content.
