Stitching In Website Marketing
December 5, 2013
When it comes to website marketing, we’ve all heard that Content is king. With the explosion of the Internet – and more recently, the social media machine – Content is everywhere. The massive amount of information created everyday is far too much to keep up with. And it isn’t all exactly what is considered “quality” either. So now we have some riotous folks on our hands calling for Content’s royal head in hopes of crowning Context.
“Who will find and sort and rank our Content? We’re doomed,” they cry out in the streets (and also at their computers). “Hoorah for Context!”
And then we have these forward-thinking, anti-everything, pro-everything-else dreamers that have a good point but we’ll have to save for another discussion:
Apparently content is not king or queen… you are!
Now, I don’t like to get involved with angry crowds or politics all that much, but I will say this: King Content may be a little dustier than he used to be, but it would be wise to heed his advice for your website marketing needs. Without quality Content, your site isn’t likely to pop up at the top of SERPs anytime soon, regardless of Context.
Alas, a dilemma rises. During the content creation or editing process, you let your scout party get a little boisterous, and you decide to employ the strategies of the enemy. Before you know it, what started as borrowing a word or two from competitor’s sites has led to a dark life of first degree copy and paste crime and eventually life behind bars. Or maybe just with lower search result rankings.
I’m all for arts and crafts, but when it comes to King Content, don’t stitch him a quilt even if people have left him out in the cold. In the the website marketing world,“stitching” refers to using our friends CTRL+C and CTRL+V a little too much, even if proper references and citations are made. Matt Cutts dropped some knowledge on the subject.
It may sound harmless especially if you give due credit, but stitching won’t be any significant help; in fact, your rank will likely be dinged for duplicate content. You might even drag the original creator with you. But maybe you’re into that, so that’s cool too.
How could I resist an opportunity to get Bill Nye involved?
The moral of the story: put down your hooks or needles or whatever sharp objects my grandma always totes around, and come up with original content. Borrowing ideas and concepts for your website marketing is fine, but directly using large chunks of content from other sites is not going to help out your rank. Again, this is even if you acknowledge the original owner.
So quit stitching, and strap your thinking cap on. You just might bring about peace in ranking land. And all the sites lived happily ever after.