29th February 2008

What Exactly is Unique Content? A Definition is Required

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What exactly is unique content? How can we define it once and for all?

I don’t know the answer to the question, so I am asking the question instead.

Then I will come onto what is recognised by search engines as unique content and how to avoid duplicate content issues. There are easy ways around duplicate content issues, which I ‘llexplain later as well as how some ultimately comes down to copyright, they are distinctly different.

As for Fat Affiliate or Thin Affiliate … my answer is in allegory … Does one buy milk from the supermarket? … or does one buy a cow & milk the cow whilst it’s fat for oneself.

Is it simply the volume or detail & description that makes something perceived as unique? What one’s perception of unique content might be, may not be to another. By scrambling the same words around & injecting a few others, in theory (whatever that theory is) does it actually make it unique? Thus are we using the correct adjective?

Is content simply something which is reworded, rephrased, re-mocked or rehashed & then put out there in some form, is it basically one & the same thing?

How many ways are there to describe a widget or the paint colour chart at your local diy store. Unique & quality is down to user & individual perception / evaluation, what you call light blue I might call topaz, what you call green I might call jade .. or ..

  • Woodgate scored the winning goal for Spurs
  • Woodgate headed to score the winning goal for Tottenham Hotspur
  • Woodgate leaped high above Cech outwitting him to head the winning goal in the Carling Cup Final
  • Woodgate leaped high above Cech outwitting him to head the winning goal for Tottenham Hotspur in extra time of the Carling Cup Final to beat Chelsea 2-1 and win their first major trophy since 1999.

The result is the same .. Woodgate scored the winning goal! .. so is any more unique than the other when it boils down to basically the same point?

Writing your version of an event or a product is still a re-edited version of the event or product detail, where it probably becomes more unique is via personal experience of an event or use of a product or experience of a services.

Do affiliates need to oversell, pre-sell or worse still pre-sell twice

Prefill the Basket – Don’t Presell the Customer Twice

Now for the Pise’ La Resistance

What is recognised by search engines as unique content, and a way of avoiding duplicate content issues & what some ultimately comes down to copyright, is distinctly different.

Let’s take a hypothetical example … you copy a full blown article from Wikipedia …

Say for example something about Imhotep, the first architect of the pyramids of the non royal population of Egypt, and the first mortal to be heralded as god-like.

How will the search engine spider measure unique content? On the site it will display exactly the same as the Wikipedia article, however the source code is different. Using simple coding you can randomise which words appear as hard coded, which display via javascript & which appear image based. The spider / bot cannot fully differentiate, by randomising the process you can fool the search spider / bot into thinking you have unique content which is constantly /intermittently changing (thinking its updating) through simple randomisation. Thus, though there might be copyright issues for articles or you have used the description from a merchants product feed for example … to the search engine you have fooled them into thinking it’s unique content & you’ll potentially avoid content duplication penalties.

I am not questioning the need for unique content, but questioning what the true definition is & if we use the adjective “unique” or phrase “content is king” too liberally, without analysing the actual core substance of the written material.

There is currently one response to “What Exactly is Unique Content? A Definition is Required”

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  1. 1 On March 10th, 2008, Tony said:

    Well, that’s a mind blowing article! No wonder there’s no comments, I think you’ve rendered everybody speechless.
    I often thought that the whole “unique content” thing is a bit over-rated when it comes to selling products.
    Isn’t re-worded content or presented in a different way content enough to do the job? Useful information to help a buyer decide should be enough.

    Tony

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