Site content creation
-
I have a new customer that wants to build a comprehensive website to provide dental health information. However, he's a busy dentist and can't develop all the content himself. He particularly likes what mercola.com (http://articles.mercola.com/sites/current.aspx or http://blogs.mercola.com/sites/vitalvotes/default.aspx) is doing to provide content from other sources.
At first I thought this could be a good thing and that we could setup some Google Alerts that would alert us to new content related to specific topic areas and then post excerpts and links to the original source of the content.
But now I'm concerned that we'll get penalized for this.
Can you give me some advice on how to go about getting new/fresh content on a new website that doesn't require someone to write it all themselves?
Thank you!
-
I would go to that meeting with some examples....
Joe Schmoe dentist has articles about this and this and this on his site.
Ask what are his specialties? What expertise does she want to share? Pet peeves?
This is your dentist's opportunity to improve the dental health of every person who visits his/her website.
-
Wow! Thank you all for such fast and excellent responses. I guess you've all confirmed my suspicion. In looking again at the mercola.com website, I see that they are actually adding some unique content to each post. I suspect they may have a staff person or copywriter doing this since none of the posts are very long.
I'll re-approach my client and see if I can explain to them a better approach and why it's better in the long run to provide good unique content themselves.
Thanks everyone!
-
However, he's a busy dentist and can't develop all the content himself.
It is really hard to get webdesign and SEO clients to author their own content. They don't "get it" that this can be some of the most important marketing for their business and a way to demonstrate their credibility, professionalism and unique style.
I think that it is worth getting some ideas about the benefits of authorship together and approaching the dentist a second time about this subject.
-
It is a tough question. We have been down this road, and found that in the end, it has to be unique content. It's really challenging to ask a client who is not a writer to write, just as it is difficult to ask a writer to be a dentist.
We use a combination system at times. We send a q and A sheet to the client on different topics. We then have a professional writer turn it into a page or article.
-
Dunamis did really well in pointing out core issues, and a technique that I highly recommend to clients. What I'll add here is that if you go the route of excerpts, and do not add unique content to those - enough that the majority of content is the unique new portion, the site will be very poorly received by visitors and search engines.
Individual articles should be at least a few hundred words of unique content. Anything less will result in those pages either being completely ignored by the search engines, or worse, flagged as either duplicate content (you don't have to have an exact copy of another page to get the dupe content flag - even if only a good portion of the page is replicated, that's enough without that extra unique content), or even possibly not even indexed at all.
-
Tough question....I think that any solution that doesn't involve someone writing fresh content is not going to work well. If you're using someone else's articles then it's not unique content and I would guess that it wouldn't be terribly helpful for your site.
One option would be to hire someone to write articles. You can find copywriters in just about any niche. Or, what may be less expensive and possibly better would be for the customer to have an employee write articles for the site. If you wanted to be involved, one idea would be for you to scan google news occasionally - set up alerts for dental issues and then see what news stories come in. For example, here's one in today's news:
http://music.aol.co.uk/2011/06/07/john-lydon-speech-problems-surgery/
You could have the dentist or an employee write an article that describes what could have happened there. But, if you just provide an excerpt or a link it's not likely to help you much from an SEO perspective.
That probably doesn't help much though if you are looking for a solution that doesn't involve someone writing the material themselves!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Building my Portfolio of 70 MicroNiche Sites (10-15 Pages of Content)
Hello Moz Community, I just bought 70 new domains in the past month in different niches with exact match domains, installing these sites on 2 different hostgator servers, installing all the plugins needed etc. and start publishing first 10 articles on each site. ( the keyword research was done with long tail pro and choosing the best long tails with MOZ difficulty grader that is under 40-45.) My question is the following: If I will have some of these sites that will don’t rank in Google in the next 3-6 months for the main keyword without building links…what will be the best course/method/resources I need to know about building quality backlinks and having the time to do these tasks on each website to be sure that every site will be a winner, or even 50-70% of them in both traffic & money ROI !?! I want to have a minimum of 10 sites that will make around 150$ per month because my Intention is to sell these sites on flippa for higher multiples of 15-20 monthly revenue. ( I sold my first website on flippa in September for 1650$ and is awesome. I want to repeat this success at a higher level ) Thank you ! I built niche sites since February 2012 but in terms of building backlinks to microniche sites I didn’t do too many things in the past when is about backlinking (just submitting in directories) so I ask about the experience of this community. Which are the best methods to build links in 2013 J Best regards, Sebastian Papp & His Team
Link Building | | Sebastyan220 -
Article submission web-sites and SEO
Does article submission web-sites have any impact to SEO in these days? There are a lot of good/not so good article submission databases, but does it really matter if you spend a time to write unique articles for them? I mean, is it a good way for link-building, or should I spend more time for other parts of SEO? There are also a special websites (for example SubmitYourArticle) which automate this process, does it make sense to use this services? Alternates? Lots of questions… Update Sorry, I found some good answers only after that I posted this question.
Link Building | | ditoroin0 -
Webcam Listing Sites
Anyone have experience in getting clients' sites listed on webcam-listing sites for SEO purposes? If so, which sites would you recommend? What was your experience? Any tips or tricks? Any pitfalls? Thanks!
Link Building | | DanielFreedman0 -
Notification of backlink creation
Hi I was wondering if any one knows of an automatic updating service that notifies you when a back link to a site becomes live? Could this be achieved in google alerts perhaps?
Link Building | | Hardley0 -
Local service site link building
I have a local service site http://winecountrycarpet.com/ and I have been link building as much as possible for my landing pages (which aren't local to my city, but are within 20 miles). I would like to keep my link building as above board and white hat as possible (so i do a lot of forum sigs and links in do follow forum in my industry) I do not seem to be seeing any results though. My pages are on the first page for their targeted keywords, but I think this has more to do with onsite SEO and non competitive keywords. I am wondering if anyone can recommend any strategies that I might find more effective. I have thought about leaving blog comments on do follow blog's but it just seems so spammy its hard to imagine it working. I am open to any ideas.
Link Building | | ayetti0 -
Run of Site Links
I recently got a link from a relevant site but it ended up being a run of site link. The site has over 3,000 pages that now link to my site. Will my site get penalized for this?
Link Building | | mj7750 -
Are backlinks from sites like diigo useful for SEO?
I read an SEO article that recommended getting backlinks from social bookmarking sites like diggo.com. Does anyone have any thoughts on the usefulness of these types of links?
Link Building | | casper4340 -
Should I Update content if Doing well in google
I have a page that is doing ok in google, it is for a service but i am not to sure if i should re write it and update it. The content page is in position two on page two in google, so should i re write the page to try and increase page rank for the service or should i leave it alone any advice would be great
Link Building | | ClaireH-1848860