What does unique content mean?
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There’s a lot of confusion out there about blog content. Questions I’ve heard include “Someone has asked me for a guest post. Can I offer them that’s already been published on my own blog?” and “What should I blog about? I can’t think of any topics that haven’t already been covered by other organizers.”
Direct sales expert Deb Bixler, who previously explained how and when to go for the upsell, returns today to explain the differences between unique content and original content.
It is important that a blogger understands that all the content they put on their site should be unique to that site.
Unique content does not necessarily mean original.
Google Looks For Unique Content
Google’s job is to find the content that is the best match for the search terms being searched. If many sites have the same content in the same words across the web they are not unique posts. Serious bloggers are very picky about unique content.
Unique content is content that has never been published on the web before in the exact same format nor will it be posted it in the future.
The definition* of the word ‘unique’ is:
- existing as the only one or as the sole example; single; solitary in type or characteristics.
- having no like or equal; unparalleled; incomparable.
- limited in occurrence to a given class, situation, or area.
- limited to a single outcome or result; without alternative possibilities.
- not typical; unusual
Original Blog Content
Original content for your blog on the other hand is a new idea or concept. There are very few new concepts anymore. No one is so great that her or his concepts or ideas were not thought of previously by one of the 6.97 billion other people on earth today.
The definition* of original is:
- belonging or pertaining to the origin or beginning of something, or to a thing at its beginning.
- new; fresh; inventive; novel.
- arising or proceeding independently of anything else.
- capable of or given to thinking or acting in an independent, creative, or individual manner: an original thinker.
- created, undertaken, or presented for the first time: to give the original performance of a string quartet.
*Dictionary.com
Your content and your blog posts should all be unique.
They should be unique to your blog, the particular article you are writing and to the entire worldwide web in general.
You may however write on a previously “used” concept or idea several times in the same blog. I guarantee you that your content is not so great that it has never been presented before. You do not have any original content.
Make sure that everything you post IS UNIQUE and the search engines will find you.
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Thanks for sharing my article, this is a topic that many get confused about. I often get posts from people claiming it to be unique then do a Copyscape search and find parts or all of it in multiple locations on the web.
If you want your blog to show up in Google, run only unique content!
Thank you for your article and for suggesting we check Copyscape before accepting guest submissions. I have done that occasionally, but I don’t make a regular practice of it. Great advice!
Great explanation of the difference between the two. I’m smiling about your comment on being original — guess we aren’t as great as we’d like to think:)
That would be an interesting challenge: “Write a blog post that is totally different than anything you’ve ever read.” Think it’s possible?
Copyscape is a great idea. Especially when using a post from someone you don’t know. Many people want to guest blog but then send me a post that has been published and expect me to make the 30% revisions for Google. They need to understand it’s their work and they need to make revisions if they want to make it usable again. Great info! Thanks Janet and Deb!
I hear you, Autumn! I’m happy to publish guest posts, but if it takes me longer to make it usable (whether due to duplicate content or just plain bad writing) than it would take me to write something myself, how does that help me? It needs to be a win-win situation that benefits both the guest blogger and the host.