Curatti

Stop It NOW! Why Are You Posting Re-Hashed Content?

  • Mark Preston

    • It seems that since the buzz word ‘inbound marketing’ was invented by HubSpot, the world has gone content creation mad. Marketers all over the world became copywriters and the feeling of ‘write and publish as much content as possible’ started to become the norm.

    Why? Why? Oh Why?

    I really do not understand why there is so much panic to publish as much content as possible. If you have been told that publishing regular content on your website, increases your rankings. I’m afraid to tell you frankly, it’s a load of crap. Publishing regular content only increases rankings IF that content generates impact or your website already has such a high authority that anything that gets published will rank straight away.

    What is Re-Hashed Content?

    In a nutshell, it is a piece of content that has been written, based on a subject that has already been published many times already. As an example, here is a title I see being published nearly every day:

    “Top 10 SEO Tips”

    Now when I searched this phrase in Google using quotes, there were 47,300 results (on Google.co.uk). This means that by the time you read this, there will be at least 47,300 other pages published on the internet (that Google have cached and indexed) related to this title.

    There is an Old Saying

    Have you heard the saying – “If you have nothing good to say – don’t say anything at all”. This is how you should think about the content you write and publish. Remember that every single piece of content you publish affects your brand (personal and business). That may be in a good or bad way. If you publish stuff that never gets shared, never achieves any backlinks, never gets ranked or never receives any sort of interaction at all, this is probably doing more harm than good.

    What Options Are There Available Then?

    If you take a look at my own SEO blog and compare this to the highly respected Moz Blog, you will notice that unlike the Moz blog that publishes ‘how-to’ and ‘case study’ style articles, I tend to be different and stand out from the crowd because I write about my own experiences and opinions, as opposed to publishing my 15 years’ worth of knowledge.

    Being different is what has allowed me to write for sites like Curatti, Moz and SEMrush, not to mention newspapers. If I just created re-hashed articles on subjects that has been done to death, I would never get published on these high profile blogs because I would not be unique or stand out.

    But I Have No Other Option

    If you are really struggling to stand out from the crowd and just prefer to cover widely published topics, you should at least make sure that your piece of content is far better than what is already published. And definitely make sure it provides some unique value that others don’t. If you can’t create a piece of content that adds some serious value, don’t write anything. Doing so would be a waste of your time… and you will be harming your brand in the process!

    What Do You Think?

    What are your feelings about re-hashed content? What do you do to add originality into important, much-covered subjects? Please share your thoughts, below.

     

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    Mark Preston

    Mark has worked within the SEO and digital marketing industry for over 15 years. He has spent ten years at Director Level, running and building agencies, working with companies and brands of all levels. In April 2016, Mark decided to pack the agency life in to become a freelance SEO consultant, promoting his own brand awareness through Mark Preston SEO. He now travels around the UK, training marketing teams on ethical SEO techniques.