Source Content
We all know content is king.
It engages your readers, helps drive sales and increases your search engine ranking.
But let's face it—writing and editing take a lot of time, and require pretty specialized skills. Your energy may be better spent doing other things. Like running your business.
So where do you find content?
First things first: Copying content from another site is illegal unless it's explicitly licensed for public use or otherwise allowed.
You can reprint Wikipedia articles to your heart's content (if you follow the rules). But you can't just poach someone else's copyrighted hard work.
That being said, there are plenty of ways to find good (legal) content without doing it yourself.
Have Your Audience Provide Content
Blogs, forums and discussion boards are great ways to keep some content on your website fresh and updated. Plus, your audience does the work.
You'll need to moderate, of course, but that takes less time than actually writing. Just make sure your bloggers are credible and their topics are relevant to your target audience.
Also, note that blogs, forums and discussion boards tend to work best in augmenting original authoritative content. Just ask yourself a question: If you had a health concern, would you be more likely to trust a random blogger's post, or an online health encyclopedia?
If you're like most users, you would probably seek a balance of authoritative and first-person information. Keep that in mind as you work to create the right content balance for your site.
Find Free Content (Legally)
Yes, legal free content does exist. Finding and using it is fast and easy.
But be warned: There's no limit on how many times this content can appear on different sites. And duplicate content can dilute your search engine ranking.
Using the content may also require you to link back to the original source, or the author's website. This could help them out, but won't do much for your search rankings. It will also provide another exit point for your readers—one that comes earlier than the "buy" button you might be driving them to.
In some cases, you can modify the content to make it appear more original to search engines. Just be sure to check the copyright clause to see whether this is acceptable.
With these caveats in mind, here are some places to start your free sourcing:
- Government websites: Did you know that much content produced by government (particularly by the US federal government) is copyright-free and in the public domain? Section 105 of the US Copyright Act defines such works as not entitled to domestic copyright protection. You can find much of this material by simply searching Google for ".gov" and your search term. You can also browse sites available from USA.gov, The US government's official web portal. Once you find content you like, be sure to check the copyright clause to ensure it's truly public domain.
- Expired copyright databases: Copyright doesn't last forever. There are rules that govern when it expires. (In the US, you can find these rules at the US Copyright Office.) When it does, the content typically becomes public domain. Many people catalog this content to make it easily available. You can find it in such places as Project Gutenberg.
- Public wikis: You're probably familiar with Wikipedia. You may not be as familiar with other public wikis, like Wikibooks and Wikinews. Many of these sites make their content freely available for republishing, provided you include attribution and a link to the original source.
- Creative Commons: Whereas copyright is highly restrictive, Creative Commons licensing is more flexible. It allows authors to specify terms for their content. Many of them allow for republishing. To find content, simply perform a Creative Commons search.
- Article databases: With the rise of "article marketing," in which authors provide free content in exchange for links back to their website, lots of great—and tons of awful—articles are now available free on a wide range of subjects. You can find them by browsing or searching sites like Articlesbase.
Get Content That's Almost Free
If you'd rather pay to customize your content, you can use a private label rights (PLR) provider. With PLR, you purchase the rights to publish professionally written articles, often distributed in themed "packs." PLR packages allow you to rebrand articles with your name and rewrite them to suit your needs. Packages tend to have limited distribution and come keyword-optimized.
Let's say you want to be a little more hands-on. You can also get content-building software that allows you to pick a topic and receive a series of keyword-rich sentences from which you can build an article.
Like posting content from article databases, the PLR and software routes are fast and (relatively) easy.
But stop and think about whether your content truly offers your audience a value-added experience—otherwise you're just taking up real estate.
Even worse, search engines are getting smarter every day. If your PLR content starts popping up all over, or your keyword-rich sentences have no usefulness (or, in some cases, have no meaning whatsoever), rest assured that Google will eventually find out and penalize your site.
Hire a Content Provider
The safest and best route to sustained success is hiring a content provider. While the short-term costs can be higher, the long-term results are more reliable—you don't have to worry, for example, about getting penalized and losing search ranking when 100 other people copy the same article to their website. And that makes it a sound investment.
(And yes, we recognize that as a web writing and content company, we have some bias. But we also think it's the truth, or we wouldn't be in the business.)
There are plenty of content providers—freelance copywriters, web marketing firms and content companies—who will write sparkling content just for you.
Yes, you have to pay them.
But there are definite advantages to hiring pros:
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fewer errors
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consistent voice and style
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experience providing tailored content for your audience
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ability to optimize content for search engines
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content that's unique to your site
Many companies can also provide additional strategic services like guiding your information architecture, creating an SEO plan and performing competitive analyses.
And these services could save you from investing in all sorts of "free" content that ends up costing you money in the long run.
Do It Yourself
Finally, if you have the skills and ambition, you can create content from scratch yourself.
In that case, read on; our entire web writing guide is for you.
What's Next?
Got print materials you're thinking of posting online? Then you'll definitely want to learn how to webify your content.
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very useful guide !!!!!