When it comes to website content, fresh is best. Scraped or auto-generated content is just a big ole' waste of time, money and resources.
Says who? Matt Cutts, the leader of Google's own Webspam team, that's who.
In one of his recent YouTube Q & A sessions, Cutts answers the question of whether or not it's useful to re-post content (including press releases, blog posts and articles) from other sites.
The short answer? No.
Google has made their mission clear from the get-go – they're dedicated to "providing the best user experience possible", and to that end, the search engine giant is constantly 'tweaking' their algorithms.
According to Cutts, "Google focuses on high quality content" by focusing on 3 main factors:
- "Discretion"
- "Curation"
- "Content"
Cutts explains that marketers, website owners and businesses who want to make the most of their SEO content marketing strategies should look at:
- Why would users want to return to my website?
- What value am I providing visitors with each piece of content on my website?
He uses the NY Times as a cystal-clear example of a website that, in Google's eyes, does everything right when it comes to content creation, discretion and curation.
What's So Wrong With Duplicate SEO Content?
According to Cutts, "It's probably not worth just having automatically generated stuff that could be duplicate content".
That's right. Sourcing and posting auto-generated RRS feeds, passed-around press releases and scraped content is at best, a waste of time, money and resources.
And if you really go all-out with recycled content, you run the risk of being reported directly to Google by virtually anyone who's online.
It's time to stop scraping for content and start creating your own, high-quality SEO content – or hire the pros to do it for you!
After all, while Cutts doesn't claim that Google has any plans to penalize sites with non-malicious duplicate content, he's perfectly clear when he states ""Why not just concentrate on the good stuff"? Indeed.
