Blog content for estate agents and why you should never buy it
It sounds like such a silly thing to say “do not buy duplicated blog content for your estate agency business” but there are so many estate agents and letting agents in the UK who are doing just that. We have come across a number of property industry experts who write regular blog articles, and to be fair, these are good articles, but they then sell them to different estate agents or letting agents according to town or postcode selection.
So every month a great article comes into the inbox, usually on a Word Document, with images attached, and someone at the estate agency is supposed to copy and paste the article into their website and add the images. How simple does that sound?
But you know when something sounds too good to be true…? It usually is! And that is the trouble with this scenario.
Why is this true good to be true?
The reason is that Google and other search engines, will not be able to categorise this content, because it is identical to other web pages, those of the other estate agents who have also bought it. If you get in first you might stand a chance, but if the same content is going to hundreds of other estate agents or letting agents across the UK, how can you guarantee that you get it onto your website first?
This is called “duplicated content” and it means that apart from the odd word (town name, agency name) every other word is precisely the same as it appears on another website page elsewhere. Even if the content is slightly re-written it will still be classed as duplicate content. Google and other search engines do not want to rank pages that have duplicate content on them.
Google doesn’t just downrank website pages which have the same content, but they just refuse to index those pages. So you could spend half an hour adding in the content you have purchased, hopefully, you will Geotag and Alt Text the images that have been sent to you – and check that these are licensed for multiple online uses – and upload these into your website media library and, into your blog article, and all you are doing is getting your pages ignored. Do you actually check how much website traffic you get to these pages which have duplicated content on them?
If you type site:{name of your website} into Google it will tell you how many pages on your website are indexed. To the left is a website we have built recently and it has 100% unique content. Now try your website and, if you have purchased news articles, how many of them have been indexed by Google?
If you are serious about having a blog on your website or having a great website that is indexed by Google and other search engines – giving you some great ORGANIC SEO, then take the time to write your own content, to include keywords and long-tail key phrases, to Geotag and Alt Text your images, and don’t waste any money on buying articles that are not unique to you and your business.
Read more about GREAT CONTENT and following the E-A-T principle HERE.
Jane Gardner
I work all over the UK with various business owners, dedicating my creative and expert property knowledge from 35 years in the industry. I am a Level 4 ARLA Propertymark examiner, I sit on the board of Agents Giving Charity and I love everything property related! I can be contacted on 01923 627777 or by email to jane@social-angels.co.uk
