Is Original Content that important for SEO?

Michael Angelo’s painting on top of the Palace of Versailles

Many people think that creating original content consistently is the key to get search engine traffic.
Well, this is really important, but it is just a part of the equation.

Today I am gonna show you creating original content is not always as much of a help as you want it to be.

This topic is so vast that an entire book can be written on this topic. But in this post, I will discuss an isolated incident, so that it is easier to focus.


This original infographic is created by and first published on Techwelkin. Click on the image to view it larger.

Jeff Bullas has used the infographic on his website. And now Jeff Bullas’ post is ranking much better for most of the competing keywords (keywords like “youtube facts infographic”) but Techwelkin is not. In fact, the same infographic on Jeff Bullas’ is ranking in Google image, but Techwelkin is nowhere to be found there.

One might argue that Jeff Bullas’ post has some original content. Yes, it is true, that is one of the reasons why his site is ranking better. But many of the keywords which Jeff Bullas’ post is ranking for, contain “infographics” term, and the infographic is not original, ideally, Techwelkin deserves to rank better than Jeff Bulla.

So just creating original content is not enough. Google can rank non original content over original content.

Also, I must say that though this happens a lot of the time, I am not suggesting to go ahead and just use others’ works and do a lot of promotion and it will work.

Mostly. It will not.

There are reasons why Jeff Bullas’ site is Ranking better.

Jeff’s website acquired a lot of authority because he created a ton of Original Content that helped people. Even in that post where he has used the infographics, the content is really good. Much better than the post on Techwelkin. More on it later.

So, focus on providing value, in the process, you can use others’ works (with proper credit of course) to help you to speed up the game.

And for SEO one should not depend heavily on what happens in isolated cases.

Sometimes I see, when a client is told to improve their content or user experience, their responses are like “My competitors also having low quality content and bad user experience”.

To answer that, Google is not perfect, but it is improving every moment. What is working now, may not work tomorrow.

But one thing that never changes is their Goal to be the best engine by giving the best results on the web.

So, try to be the best result on the web, and implement SEO best practices to help you to achieve maximum success.

The Reasons why Jeff Bullas’ post is Ranking Better

Let’s discuss why Jeff’s site is ranking better.

#1. Jeff Bullas’ website is more Authoritative

The reason it is Ranking is Jeff Bulla is a more popular and his website has more Authority (don’t think about Moz’s DA, this is not same as an authority in Google’s eye).

Techwelkin also has good authority, in fact, founder Lalit Kumar got interviewed by Doordarshan, he has many other amazing projects, but I doubt Techwelkin has more traffic than Jeff Bulla.

Even if it had more traffic, Techwelkin has articles on a really broad spectrum, from topics like Aarogya Setu app to how to do things on iPhone to checking PNR Status on WhatsApp. So Jeff Bulla has more authority in Online Marketing, make money online domain, where Techwelkin authority spreads out on different niches. That is another reason on this niche Jeff’s website will always rank better.

#2. An inefficient SEO practice

The infographics on Jeff Bullas’ post ranking, but not Techwelkin is — the code provided by Techwelkin to embed the infographic, is not really good for its own SEO.

Here is the code provided on Techwelkin’s post for using the infographic –

 <a href=http://www.techwelkin.com target=_blank><img src=http://www.techwelkin.com/static/infographics/youtube-facts-figures-by-techwelkin.jpg></a><br><br><a href=http://www.techwelkin.com target=_blank>Infographic by TechWelkin.com</a>  

With this code, the infographic will link to Techwelkin home page, not the exact post where the original infographics live. This is not helping much for SEO, cause this link doesn’t tell Google the exact page of the Infographics, Google only knows that Techwelkin has created this infographic. Google can’t rank his home page for those queries.

Techwelkin got THE BEST backlink one can get. The backlink is contextual, editorially given, it is from a high authority website, from a high authority page with really awesome content. 100 out 100 on relevancy, in fact, both are targetting very same keyword, it is hard to get a backlink from a page targetting the same keyword. It can not get any better.

But due to that, not good practice, Techwelkin got really good link juice then instead of empowering the specific page that targeting the keywords, it distributed the link juice to the entire website. It improved the authority of the entire website, but that page lost the opportunity to rank.

And this is not about one backlink, this the case for many other websites those are using the infographic.

Google SERP showing pages using Techwelkin’s infographic on YouTube facts and statistics

#3. Techwelkin’s post is outdated

This one is probably the biggest. If you check the SERP for terms like “youtube statistics infographics”, you will see most of the results are quite recent, 2 years old at most.

Tip: In my experience, if the results show date associated with the results, it means recency is a major factor for that query.

But the date associated with Techwelkin’s post is Sep 24, 2014, which is really old and unfit for the query (thanks to Glen Allsopp from ViperChill, he talks about it in his private newsletter)

The date associated with Jeff Bullas’ post is Oct 14, 2017. Old but much recent than 2014.

Google mistakenly assumed the stats of this infographic are of 2017. And ranked it.

So, the point is just creating content is not enough. Original content is awesome but you can reuse other’s content to gain an audience.