Unique content – what does that actually mean?
The term "content" in the general sense of the word covers the entire content of a website, which includes the text layer, as well as other elements such as titles, graphic files, metatags, infographics and video materials.
And up to this point everything is understandable. The problem is that the noun "content" is accompanied by the adjective "unique", and this should encourage some deeper reflection.
"Unique content" is a term that usually appears in the context of designing an online store, SEO optimization or positioning, creating a brand/company image, creating content for company blogs, as well as other marketing activities.
The uniqueness of content and materials is the basic criterion that allows search engine robots to filter valuable and useful websites from mediocre ones containing so-called thin content. For this reason, to achieve success in search results, you have to have unique content on your website, unique product descriptions, unique blog articles, unique photos and graphics, titles, meta tags or video streams.
In a word: Unique content is king.
There is only one small BUT.
It seems to me that what we commonly understand by the term unique content does not fully reflect what unique content should be.
How do we commonly perceive unique content?
When we get to the heart of the matter, which is explaining the essence of unique content, a small snag appears. It turns out that we are not really able to formulate a full and comprehensive definition of it. As a result, the concept of unique content is blurred, distorted and simplified to the limit of possibility. As in the definition below.
Unique content is a term that relates to search engine optimization (SEO). It means that the content is original and not copied anywhere else.
I encounter this understanding of unique content quite often:
I need unique content for my site. Can you re-write this article from the link? I want the same thing, but in different words.
I need 50 unique descriptions of photo boxes. They only differ in size and type of closure . Can you do this?
I have unique category descriptions to write. You can write based on what your competition has…
After auditing the site, I noticed that I have several duplicates of content. Can you edit this for me, change the order of sentences or words somehow, so that this content is not duplicated and is unique?
Now some of you may say: “What do you mean? What’s wrong here?”
Among other things, when thinking about the definition of uniqueness, we very often strongly associate it with duplicate content. Let me just remind you that duplication/replication, according to Google, is “creating large blocks apparel stores email list of text within one or more domains that are the same or very similar.” In many definitions, unique content is presented as the opposite of duplicate content.
Following this line of reasoning, unique content is:
those that are not duplicated;
those that are not identical or similar to others;
you won't find them in identical form anywhere on the web.
Of course, this type of definition is true to some extent, but it does not fully reflect the essence of unique content. It leads us to the conclusion that: unique is everything that is not duplicated. You can see for yourself that this is a rather narrow and one-sided understanding of the term. It results directly from the very technical approach to creating texts, which dominates among companies specializing in positioning, among others.
Unique content according to this strategy is simply certain combinations of words containing certain keywords that are not repeated on other sites. This approach to the topic also suggests that the essence of the uniqueness of the text is based only on its structure and can be measured according to fixed algorithms.
If we disrupt this order (reword, add synonyms, mix up the order, write the same thing but in different words), we will get a completely different and unique text. As a result, there is a lot of "unique content" published on the web that does not really differ from the others in terms of meaning and does not contribute much to the topic, but is perfectly optimized in terms of the structure of headings and saturation of key phrases.
Let's explain this with an example.
Let's assume that we wrote an article using only and exclusively information from one source material. Look carefully at both fragments.
Test No. 1
Text No. 2
Please note that:
Both texts cover the same topic, but they are not identical. They are different.
You won't find duplicates of this content anywhere else on the web.
It turns out that all the conditions for text uniqueness according to the common definition are met.
Now compare text #1 with the text that was written based on it (text #2). In your opinion, have you read two texts that could be described as “unique”?
By definition: yes.
Now imagine that we published these texts on two identical websites (let's forget for a moment about domain authority, backlinks and other algorithms, etc.). Since they are all unique (because that's what the definition tells us), which one should the search engine choose and display in the first position for the phrase: how to roast walnuts in the oven?
Time to go!
…
Having
trouble
choosing?
Answer? Potentially any.
Why? Because these texts, despite some differences, actually contain identical semantic content. Neither of them introduces anything new to the topic. Now imagine that the first of these texts is on a competitor's website and the second on yours. How is your website supposed to stand out if you have content on it that is unremarkable and is like any other?
Some people still believe that if the content is written correctly, optimized for keywords, consistent with the topic and is not identical to the content of other websites, it deserves to be ranked high in search results.
Unfortunately, language correctness, optimization, keyword placement and lack of duplication are definitely not enough to outdo others. Everyone does it (better or worse).
Why should the search engine reward your “unique” articles and product descriptions and not your competitor’s “unique” content?
Writing the same thing only in different words does not result in a unique text, only a re-working of it.
What is unique content and how to create it?
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