Is unique content really that important?

Do you remember the days when SEO meant using as many keywords as possible within a page without giving a single thought about the quality? Well, those days are gone.

Now, Google is focused on leading its users to valuable content that gives relevant answers to their queries. What does that mean for the search engine user? They are getting better results! What does this mean for an online marketer? They have to produce more content, and they have to make it more unique than ever.

Keywords are still important in terms of attracting the search engine to present your site in the first page of results, but they are not the only aspect of SEO to pay attention to. The content has to be great, and it absolutely has to be unique. Wait, is uniqueness really that important? Can’t you just feature the same article on several pages of your site and alter it just a bit to add new keywords?

Yes, uniqueness is that important, and no, you can’t feature plagiarized content all over your site.

Customer Oriented Content Marketing Techniques

Content marketing comes in many forms. These are only few of the methods that marketing teams use as an addition to their SEO campaigns:

• Interviews with Influencers

This is a great way of getting unique content for a website. The Red Bulletin Magazine, which focuses on sports, culture, and lifestyle, publishes lots of unique content, with interviews being part of it. The interview with Dylan Werner, a popular Instagram yogi, is a nice example of the way you can drive many visits by engaging an influencer.

• Guest Posts

You’ll notice that many websites and blogs encourage other bloggers to submit their own articles. This is a great strategy that helps the host to attract the audience of the featured blogger to the website, but it also contributes towards the base of unique content. That’s something Google always appreciates.

Even the most popular websites, such as The Atlantic or The Huffington Post rely on this method that enables them to get tons of high-quality content that improves their status on search engines.

• Reviews

Getting reviews by real customers is a nice method for gaining reputation in the eyes of the audience, but in Google’s eyes as well. Asking for the experience of the customers is a double-edged sword, since you never know what they will say.

For this method to work, you have to focus on getting realistic reviews by real customers. Fake testimonials always sound similar and they are too obvious for the target audience.

• Graphs and Charts

Unique content doesn’t only come in the form of text. Graphs and charts can grasp the point in a visual that takes seconds for the viewer to understand. Neil Patel, the master of content marketing, does present huge pieces of text through his publications, but he makes them richer and more comprehensive through unique graphs and charts, which get shared and referenced all over the web.

• Podcasts

Podcasting is a cool way to present unique content to the audience. It’s one of the fastest-growing content marketing methods. GiantThinkers is a good example of how a blogger can shift their focus on podcasting without losing the attention of the target audience.

In Summary

All these content marketing strategies are different, but they have something in common: they are customer-oriented and focused on delivering unique content that solves their problems.

The success of online marketing lies behind hard work on developing content that people will like. For that purpose, the marketers have to investigate the market to find out what problems the target consumers have and what type of content they would like to get. Then, they have to think of unique solutions and present them in the form of easy-to-consume content.

Instead of focusing on the company or website and the products/services it presents, unique content focuses on the way those solutions can improve their lifestyle. It’s all about the final consumer.

No Uniqueness = No Results

This is the most important goal that Google has: providing great search results. It maintains its reputation as an effective search engine by delivering high-quality search results to its users. There are dozens of other search engines people could use, but they always go back to Google because it’s the best in targeting relevant results.

In addition to quality and relevance, however, Google considers an additional aspect: uniqueness. The search engine does not provide a list of results that feature the same content over and over again. It provides alternatives to its users, so they can spend quality time doing research on the topics of their interest.

So, yes, unique content is that important. The more unique your content is, the more success you’ll achieve in promoting any product, service, or website in the online world. Achieving uniqueness through high-quality content, while infusing the right keywords in it, is not an easy thing to do. It’s the main challenge of successful content marketing, and it’s the crucial issue a marketer should focus on.

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About the author: Jessica Freeman is a freelance writer at Australian Writings. She is interested in traveling and online learning. She enjoys writing on education, technology innovations, and blogging tendencies. Find out more about Jessica’s work on SEO by visiting her writing tips blog. Follow Jessica on Google+ and Twitter.