How to Make Your Content Marketing Unique

The number one goal in all of your content marketing is to create something unique and attract attention.  As we discuss in our eBook “What It Takes To Run A Successful Business Blog”, having duplicated content either on your own site or copied content on the web isn’t going to do you any favors.  For one, having duplicated content doesn’t really help you stand out as a thought leader.  Secondly, from an SEO perspective, having content that already exists is going to land you pages deep in search engines (which won't help you get organic traffic).

Understandably, coming up with fresh content on the fly multiple times a week isn’t an easy task.  There may not even be that much going on in your particular industry to help you come up with fresh content ideas. Additionally, creating fresh content doesn’t necessarily make it ‘fresh’ in the truest sense of the word.

Fresh doesn’t simply mean to write something and post it, and search engines aren’t going to automatically reward you just for having published content a few hours ago. It’s not that easy.

Here are some tips that will help you produce that unique content that will both engage your readership and please Google’s new search algorithms and rank higher than ever.

Quote Other Posts, But…

One of the biggest fears surrounding unique content production is whether or not you can quote other sources in your piece.  For example, if you simply snag an article that you found on the Huffington Post and throw it up on your blog, then you aren’t doing much in terms of helping your search engine ranking.  However, if you caption a quote from that article, or if you take a YouTube video and add it to your article, your piece will be unique – as long as you do it right.

So what does “doing it right” mean?  It means that you can use these third party sources, or even previous material that you’ve already written, but then you have to re purpose that content and add some unique value.  Using a quote from an article to help support a different idea than that of the original article, for instance, will help add uniqueness to your content.

Don’t Get Caught Up In The SEO

You can’t just focus on SEO alone when it comes to coming up with unique content.  Let’s say you read a great article on the web and you think, “Wow, I love the information in this article!  I’ll just re-write it in my own words, optimize it with new keywords, and I’m good as gold.”  The only problem with this type of content creation is that you aren’t adding any unique value to it.  If you’re basically taking an idea and just changing some words around, then that content piece has the same value as the one you copied.

Your goal, when creating value, needs to be about providing some new value that no other sites or sources that exist on the internet are providing.  So perhaps rather than basically re-write that article that you love, you can take a piece of it and expand on one part, or you can inject it with your own opinion backed by other sources.

Write Stuff Your Readers Love

Unique content with unique value can be your business’s biggest asset.  When you have fresh stuff on your site that no one else is offering, you’re not only increasing your ranking, but you’re giving readers great information that they want to read.

When you create content that your readers want to read, then you’re creating content that your readers will want to share.  The more shares you get, the more links you get, and the more potential visitors and leads and customers you’ll be attaining over time.  This is the kind of stuff that will help you outrank your competition (especially those who are posting similar content to yours).

On a final note, speaking of your site ranking, it’s important for you to regularly audit your site and make sure that there’s no duplicated content on there.  From a Google Panda perspective, having that duplicated content on your site can really harm your ranking, so if you’re thinking of re-purposing your content, be extremely careful and be focused on adding value to it (i.e. maybe a new statistic has changed your opinion or further helps support information on that piece).