Advantages and Disadvantages of Free Website Content

Free website content is attractive to people who are caught up in the strategy of providing fresh website content. There are loads of recommendations that assure that fresh content will improve your search engine ranking, but there are also warnings about reusing content.

I was unsure about these recommendations and warnings, so I asked an SEO expert, which I have worked with for years and trust, what he thought about fresh content and the content duplication that comes from using free website content. Here is his reply:

Hi Misty,

Fresh content is extremely important, and has always been the most ethical way to reach the top of the search engines. Now more than ever search engines are putting filters in place to ignore most links, especially if it finds a reciprocal link. We have been installing blogs and teaching our clients how to easily add content and stressing the fact that your content is for visitors, not search engines. Steady growth and constant updates to a site accounts for a huge portion of what search engines consider when ranking.

On the subject of duplicate content, it can be done, but even if done right it usually won't help your rankings. If done wrong, it can harm your rankings. Sometimes you simply want to post something that you found that might be interesting to your visitors. There's no problem with that. You should however, always place a link to the page giving credit where credit is due and also showing the search engines that' you're not trying to claim it as your own. The best way is to write your own summary of the page or article and link to it. This way you're giving your visitors what they want and still putting unique content on your site.

Jason Corgiat

Professional Solutions, Inc.

The Advantages of Free Website Content

If you are looking to provide brand new content for your visitors to read daily, free web content can definitely fill that need. It can relieve the time spent on producing daily content or the money spent by hiring a writer to provide the content.

You can use articles that are published as ezines with permission to reprint. This might fill your free content need. You can also hook up to RSS feeds or news feeds that will provide free content for your website.

Overall, there are three advantages to using free content:

1. It provides fresh website content
2. It decreases the time consuming process of updating content of a website
3. It eliminates the cost of providing fresh content

Disadvantages of Using Free Website Content

Disadvantages outweigh the advantages of using free content. Overall, when it comes to content of a website, search engines look for relevant content. Their mission – to boost the ranking of websites that provide quality content that will be attractive to the browsers that use their service.

When you use free content:

• You give up management of your subject matter
• You won't have control of the keywords used on your website
• You take the risk of diminishing your SEO effectiveness by duplicating copy
• You are likely to make a bad impression on your visitors
• Free content may recommend competitors

The Solution to Fresh Content

If you want to provide fresh content for your visitors and you want your content to help out with search engine optimization, there are only two true ways to do that:

1. Write the content yourself
2. Hire a content provider to write custom-made content

I am a web writer, so it makes sense for me to make that recommendation. However, I am a writer that cares about the success of her clients. Content of a website is vital to any internet business. I take the initiative to help my clients make the most out of their business by providing high-quality, relevant content that both the visitors and the search engines will love.

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