Content Scraping is Poor Strategy

MoreVisibility - March 30, 2007

Recently I read an article entitled Site content and use of web catalogues at Google Webmaster Central. It is disturbing that people are still trying to get results on the SERP pages by scraping content from other sources. Let’s face it, this is just poor strategy. I cannot stress this enough; when it comes to content, the only strategy that works in the long term is creating pages with original creative content that is relevant to the subject on the page.

Look at it like this, the job of the search engines is to provide its users with the information that is closely related to the products and services that they are searching for. When that content is copied (scraped) from somewhere else, it detracts from the user experience. This might work in the short term, but as the engines filter out duplicate content you are sure to lose whatever rankings you achieve with this method.

If you want your site to have a longstanding presence, write original copy for each page. Make sure that what you are writing about is related to the information, service or product that your website provides. If you have trouble coming up with content, do some research or hire a professional copywriter.

There are several steps you can take to ensure that your site is optimized from the backend, but all else being equal, content is king!