Good search-engine optimized content is unique web content. Awhile ago, I wrote about what makes a good website. This is partially a follow-up to that, with special consideration to the SEO value of writing articles that are different from anything else on the Internet.

Search Engines SpiderSearch engines follow links around the Web to find new pages. When a search engine finds a page, it compares that page to the other pages it has indexed. Why?

It is the search engine’s job to provide people with the most relevant results when they perform a search. There is no need to show two pages with nearly identical content in the search results. Think of it from the searcher’s perspective. Do you really want 5 out of the top 10 Google results to be the same content? Of course not. You’d get tired of clicking from one result to the next just to see the same stuff. Search engines do everything they can to keep that from happening.

If the wording on your page is nearly identical to someone else’s page, the search engine will have to decide which one to show when someone searches. It will probably not show both. Yes, I know—there are exceptions. But you risk keeping your page out of the search engines if your content is too close to someone else’s.

So, how do you come up with some ideas to write some unique pages?

Here are some tips:
  • Conduct an interview with someone in your industry and feature it on your website.
  • If you sell a product, feature a page with customer testimonials. This has the added benefit of giving your company credibility.
  • Make a top ten list.
  • Listen to people’s questions and create a FAQ. Just make sure you’re answering real questions, not just questions you’d like people to ask.
  • Write up a different perspective on a current event or something that’s going on in your industry.
Here are some tools to measure the uniqueness of your page:
  • Similar Page Checker - compare the content on two pages. Just enter the URLs.
  • Duplicate Content Analysis - Like the Similar Page Checker, but a bit more advanced. Enter up to 10 URLs and check how unique the content is.
  • Yahoo! Uniqueness Test - Paste some text in a box and compare it with pages indexed in the Yahoo! search engine. This tool takes awhile to run.
  • Copyscape - See if anyone is plagiarizing your articles.

Visit the Idea Motivator blog for more ideas on how to write unique content for your website.

Spend the extra time to make sure your website articles are different from anyone else’s. The search engines will reward you.