From the standpoint of SEO, everything!
If you are simply creating websites for the purpose of PPC and get that sale, then I see no reason why you couldn’t do that. But I wouldn’t expect seeing that site to rank well for a long time (or ever) for a particularly competitive keyword.
It’s all about Original and Quality
In SEO, original means:
- New
- Not already published on the web
- Never copied from another site
- Basically composed from scratch by you or your writer
So it does matter if I copied it from someone else’s site to mine, right?
Yes.
Fine, but does it matter if it’s copied from one of my own personal sites over to another one of my sites?
Still, yes!
But how is this bad?
Search engines are aiming at providing the highest quality search results to their customers. Though Google is dominating, believe me there’s plenty of competition in the world of search. And competitors just waiting to try to beat Google. But the giant is still way ahead of the game. So you have to do what Mr. Google is asking us to provide: original and quality content. Otherwise, Mr. Google will think that your site is not really worth ranking well as it is not bringing something of value to the search game.
It’s actually quite simple and it makes sense.
You have people “spamming the web”. Meaning, creating a bunch of sites that all have the same content but for different cities (for example). That’s trying to get a spot in the rankings by providing a bunch of duplicate content from one site to the other.
Yes but what if I copy all of the content from one of my sites over to another one of my sites only just once (not on a ton of my websites), is that still a problem? Yes!
Ok, but what if my content is of really really good quality, does it still matter?
Yes! I’m afraid there’s no way around this right now when playing the game wearing the white hat. And since I’m in the business of white hat SEO, I wouldn’t recommend methods that wouldn’t comply with the general concepts laid out in Google’s guidelines.
Ok, but I’ve seen “low quality content” ranking well, why is that?
Well, we have to see if it were original and somewhat popular and shared, what site it’s on. And as a matter of fact, add to this about 200 other SEO factors. Quality is also open to interpretation. Even a site filled with lies, which would be considered low quality by some, could still rank. But it’s original and that’s what counts today.
Can I copy just a little quote from another site?
That yes. (Finally a yes!) You can certainly copy a little quote (you should state the reference). If it’s actually related, emphasizes a point and adds to the online discussion, absolutely yes. But I would make sure that those quotes are only a very small percentage of to totality of all the content on my site. If your site is plastered with copied content, again you’re hurting yourself and somewhat wasting your time from an SEO perspective.
Copying content from one site to the other could possibly work for a while. It has slim chances to rank and get traffic on popular keywords. And with time, search engines are only going to get smarter and it just wouldn’t be advantageous to do so.
Content writing can be relatively cheap depending on what quality you’re shooting for. But if you’re serious about your business, I wouldn’t be surprised that you pay about $50-100 or more per article. That’s not uncommon. Set aside a budget. Set goals. If you’re a smaller business, aim at 1 article per month (and make it real good). If you can, shoot for 1 article/week (turn it into your weekly newsletter or something like that). If you’re a bigger company and you have the budget and you have plenty to say (though avoid redundancy in your content), then go for 1 article/day.
Shoot for that sale. Aim for that higher revenue. Build long-term friendships with search engines and you’ll be en route toward just that.
🙂
Patrick