Google Says: Content Stitching Won’t Do Any Good For Your SEO

Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, released a video yesterday that’s important for all content marketers to know. Content stitching isn’t going to help your search engine rankings.

What is Content Stitching?

Content stitching is the practice of grabbing direct bits and pieces from other written articles on the web to combine it into your own published article on your site. An example would be copying or pasting quotes into the articles. Even if you cite the sources and include the URLs, Google doesn’t consider it “added value” and won’t rank it high in its search engine.

If you watch the video, Matt mentions that Yahoo hasn’t been a fan of this technique and has even gone as far as marking it as spam (so Google isn’t either, it looks like). He went on to even add in that readers don’t enjoy reading an article that’s just bits and pieces of other articles (which is true, nobody likes that).

What Can Marketers Do?

For good SEO, Matt recommends synthesizing content. He gives Wikipedia as an example. Wikipedia summarizes the content and makes sure to cite the source. The content itself, though, is purely and uniquely written. This means writers and bloggers can incorporate other content, it just needs to be written and summarized in their own words to rank well.

When writing content, make sure you ask yourself if what you’re writing will be valuable to your reader. If it’s not, it’s probably not going to rank well on Google. If you’ve kept up with all of the latest Google updates about Hummingbird, Panda, and keywords, you’ve probably noticed a pattern. Google will rank useful, quality content high, and bad quality low. And we can’t blame them. With the Internet growing bigger everyday, it’s easier on both parties (search engine and user) to divide the best from the rest.

If you’re putting your best words out there with your readers’ best interests at heart, you should be fine as long as it’s not automated. As we can see, Google really hates that.

Watch the full video from Google’s Matt Cutts here:

About Small Screen Producer

Small Screen Producer is a full service, marketing firm located in Houston, Texas that specializes in online digital media marketing through a 4-step process. Step 1: WE PLAN a custom web presence strategy for your business through website design and development, mobile development, social media account creation and branding. STEP 2: We then POSITION your brand through Pay-Per-Click advertising and search engine optimize tactics that include on-page and off-page SEO that are Google and Bing approved. STEP 3: We then PROMOTE your brand using an Inbound marketing strategy or a content marketing strategy to help you accomplish your marketing goals. We do this through blogging, video production, infographics, call-to-actions, landing pages, and free educational offers. We help you build trust and rapport with your customer base. STEP 4: We then PROTECT your brand’s web presence with a reputation management program that monitors social media and on line reviews. Get started today with a free online marketing assessment of your company’s web presence. Your company deserves it.