It's hard to write completely original articles and blog posts, especially when you need to create new content frequently to appease your readers and the search engines. Plagiarism is out of the question, of course. Is there any kind of shortcut to getting fresh, current content on your website? Yes and no.
I really hesitate to call the approaches I'm going to describe here “shortcuts.” The problem is that they can easily be abused and become simply “article spinning.” And in fact, the approaches I'm going to discuss do require real thought and work on your part. But if you're working on some really good, original content for your website, and need to put something fast up in the meantime, these ideas can help.
I'm going to assume that you regularly browse the news online, and that you also use online resources to keep abreast of developments in your field. If you don't, you should; I can think of no faster way to stay current. Bookmark several good news sites as well as some blogs by noted experts in your business. Spend some time every day reading headlines, and read more in-depth when something captures your attention.
On this point, at least, I'm probably preaching to the choir. Every good SEO reads up on the field daily – and not just the field of SEO. If you're doing SEO for a new client, you need to become an “instant expert” in that niche. Once you know what your readers care about the most, you can start seeking it out.
What do you do when you find it? Well, as I said in the introduction, you can't plagiarize. But you can link. And you can talk about whatever you're linking to. What you say and how you say it depends on your own field, perspective, the needs of your website, and your readers.
Let me give you an example. Michael Martinez recently wrote about a new form of blog comment spam. This spam appears to come from real people, with apparently confirmed Gmail accounts. They don't drop any links, and they don't quote from the original article on which they're commenting. But they tend to comment on older posts. Martinez believes that these spammers are attempting to create personas for a new breed of black hat SEO – one that uses Google's new reliance on social media clues against it. I wouldn't be surprised at all if this is what is going on, as it sounds like an extension of what I've seen happening in various forums: users sign up and make relatively basic comments, attempting to build a “persona” that they can use for some kind of promotional purposes later.
Okay, do you see what I just did in the previous paragraph? I linked to Martinez's article, summarized it, and added my own observation about the phenomena. (By the way, I have to admit that I didn't do Martinez justice here; it's worth reading the piece yourself if you're at all interested in a really in-depth analysis of what's going on and the possible purposes behind it). If you want to help promote a conversation on your site – and who doesn't? – you can add a question to the end of your opinion to find out what your readers think. In the paragraph above, I might have asked if anyone else had noted any suspicious comments on their blog posts (especially older posts) and what, if anything, they were doing about it.
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