The Web Authority

Google is all about making the Web experience great for readers. That is why their search market share has grown and is what the Google algorithm is all about – finding and rewarding websites that provide a great reader experience with unique informational content.

This past year we saw Google patent technology to identify specific authors of content. In part, I feel, down the pike Google will allow website owners and authors to tag their content with unique IDs. Google has not said anything about this, but in their patent disclosure it appeared that this was a possible future direction.

Google likes unique and in-depth informational content. Websites that offer a rich informational experience for their readers will place higher organically than website that are simply “web brochures”, branded affiliate websites that repeat parent site content, or those that show content that is widely syndicated in an industry. There is simply no fooling Google on these issues. When Google indexes billions and billions of web pages and has the technology to weigh content, keyword density, and assign an organic placement score, don’t think that they don’t know that you and 2,000 people share the same content! Google is very smart.

Problems with shared content are important issue for lawyers, real estate agents, and affiliates to consider before purchase. Google has recently aggressively target affiliate websites as these are typically websites that share the same content with many other affiliates on the Web. Real estate agents and lawyers sometimes buy syndicated content that is widely shared by others as well. The content that they buy for their website will not help them with Google placement and overtime, Google may actually remove any pages from their index that shows this content. Google does not like to show duplicate content in their index; it affects the user’s experience and as a result hurts the Google reputation for quality search returns. If you as a website owner understand this before purchase, that’s good, but if you don’t and think that this syndicated content will help you with organic placement, think again!

When it comes to Web content, the best rule of thumb is to invest in your own. Make it unique, make it informational and you will overtime improve your organic search placement, end up with more links to your website, and develop the Web Authority with readers that you really have been seeking in the first place.

The old adage you get what you pay for is exactly right when it comes to outsourcing your blog writing overseas. Indian and Philippine writers simply do not have the grasp of the American language to communicate properly with blog readers. When you are serious about communicating your message, you simply do not want a United Kingdom spelling of a common word that Americans may consider a misspelling as well or the strange use of everyday term.

Your website and blog content is about communicating your business message and should not have the distractions that a non-native speaker may include in an important post or online message. It is not as if they do it on purpose, clearly non-native speakers want and try to write and speak like a native speaker, but they can miss commonly used syntax or introduce strange wording or meanings without knowing that they are doing so.

I’ve seen some bloggers charge $5 a post for blog writing, but on analysis the post was worded strangely or included misspellings. There is simply no replacement for a native speaker when it comes to crafting your message for your blog or website.

My firm blogs for many clients professionally and we may be one of the only writing firms doing this, but we license our content to you for exclusive use on your blog, but do not write blog posts as “work for hire”.

We don’t specifically blog as “work for hire” to protect our writers and our content from unexpected use. We’ve had people write how-to books from a compilation of our blog posts, use blog posts verbatim as press releases, and we’ve even had some clients use our blog posts as new website content. None of them ever told us upfront what they were going to do, but used our services in a manner in which they were not contracted for nor expected for use. Blog posts are supplied at a much lower compensation rate than other writing and so use in this manner is simply cheating us out of a fee.

You only have to be burned once to know you need to cover an issue in your letter of agreement! Now we license our writing to clients for their exclusive use on their blog only. We can expand on a blog post and create web content or a press release at our special writer rates for these services, but a blog post has to stay as a blog post. That protects other aspects of our writing business, makes sure that our writing staff is fairly compensated for their work based on market pricing, and allows our business to grow.

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Click our post title to read the U.S. Copyright Office explanation of “Fair Use” for blog and website content.

The bottom-line is that all content on the web is copyrighted whether you know it or not and whether there is a notification on the page or not. For blogs and even website content you absolutely must be careful not to infringe on someone else’s copyright.

These are my best practices:

Don’t ever snatch someone’s content. Link to the full article on their website just like I have on this post. Don’t copy the article and then paste it into your post or website page even though you may reference the original page location.

If you are going to quote something from the article my rule is to copy only one or two paragraphs, blockquote it and then reference and link to the full article on the home location. Always make it clear that this is someone else’s content.

You can use a topic or thought to get your own creative juices going and then put aside the original piece and write one that is uniquely your own, but you may even want to reference the original article if you are stating any of the number or research that may be in the original article. You did not do the actual research and should make sure to give credit where credit is due.

If you do get a “Take Down Notice” to remove content, act immediately to remove the offending or infringing article in full and don’t replace it later on hoping that the original author won’t be looking. There are services that trawl the Web looking for duplicate content, don’t think that you can remove it and then put it back up in a month or two. If you did get caught, make changes in your procedures so you don’t create future situations.

The bottom-line is keep and protect what is your and honor what is someone else’s. A good writer’s rule to live by.