Content curation is the practice of collecting a wide array of relevant data to a specific subject and then recreating content based on this knowledge to deliver it to your target audience. In a sense, this practice is nothing new to the world. In fact, schools have been doing this for hundreds of years.
Any time you wrote an essay about a given subject has been the same as creating curated content for websites. You are basing your knowledge from fact and tailoring the content to fit your target audience, in this case a teacher.
- If this is truly what great content is supposedly based on, then why does it need so much attention?
- Shouldn’t all websites that focus on truth practice this form of content manipulation?
- Or is it just a way to get around plagiarism?
Finding information about Google’s official view of content curation practices is next to impossible. All we can do is look at the facts based on what others have experienced in recent changes according to their own traffic and search engine rankings. Although Google’s own official blog provides snippets of information on how to increase your page rank, they seem to be introverted with their information on how to succeed.
1. Links – What many found works well within a website are links to other relevant content that reflects or adds more basis to your own. These links can be internal among your website or external to cite your sources. Regardless of where they are located, the links need to be relevant to the content represented on the origination page.
Some believe this is Google’s way of weeding out the spammy websites that offer nothing for the reader except copy and pasted content from a separate viable source. They seem to want to give credit where credit is due and not to those who simply copy content for their own use.
2. Unique – Exactly how many ways can the same information be created before it starts resembling other websites? This is probably why blogs do so well. A blog can incorporate an author’s opinion regarding the subject matter which can provide a unique aspect.
However, how long will this practice last before too many people share the same belief within the same information? If you can incorporate something different that no one has done before, your website could do well according to Google.
3. Informative – According to various blog posts listed in Google about content curation, many successful site owners are informing others to provide as much information as they can when creating content. This should be another obvious point to make for anyone creating content.
The more information you provide, the more likely you are going to fill someone’s need. This aspect works with anything in life. More information equals less misconception and misunderstanding.
4. Citations – Much like linking above, if you can cite your information then your pages will perform better in the search results. Well, at least according to various bloggers it does anyway. It is a strong belief among many that citing your information is linking relevant content with each other, which is what Google wants; relevant content to be featured in a search result.
Does that mean that our articles need to be the same format as a WikiPedia.com page?
As humans, we have to label everything in order to make it sound more politically correct. Content curation has been a practice of many for years and is nothing new. However, we have to give it a label in order to make it sound more professional. It’s a method in which we make ourselves seem more than we really are.
We are humans that have the capacity to regurgitate information and wording it in a unique manner to set it aside from those written by others.
Ken Myers is the founder of LongHornLeads.com and has learned over the years the importance of focusing on what the customer is looking for and literally serving it to them. He doesn’t try to create a need, instead he tries to satisfy the existing demand for information on products and services.