Will other people's articles help my SEO?

[Kanute]

Hi,

I just wonder if it's any use to put articles written by other people (from EzineArticles and other directories) on my site. It would supply my site with content, but would it do any good concerning SEO?
Or is it only original content that matters?

Appreciate your opinion!

[Blade Runner 88]

good question, I too await in suspense...

[countonuspr]

There is a lot of debate over this issue. From my experience you will get the best results from writing unique, original content. If you focus on writing good solid content with relevant keywords within your article topic you will find that you can get rankings for not only the main subject of the article, but also for others.

Now, I am not saying that Google will ban your website for the duplicate content. I am just saying that you will get better results with your own content.

For example if you submit a press release online or submit an article to many article directories you will find that Google will index several pages with that exact same content on it. Many people are lead to believe that Google will only index one instance of the same content, but this is false.

Check this out for proof. This is the title of an article I submitted to several websites and each page is cached and counts as a backlink to our website:

"Cats Dogs and Human Food - How Can Our Food Harm Our Pets?" - Google Search

Notice how in that search Google pulls up several pages all with the exact same content.

So to answer your questions it is best to write original content for your website as you will get the best result, but when submitting articles online don't hesitate to submit them to multiple places including Squidoo.com, HubPages.com, ArticleDashboard.com, and EzineArticles.com.

Hope this helps. Have a great day!

[Dan Grossman]

The content won't help your SEO at all, since Google will always show the same article from a more authoritative source in its search results. Otherwise every search we make would have dozens of copies of any article that matched what we looked for.

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Deftly dealing with duplicate content

[jan roos]

Google will reward the article that got indexed first. For example if you post an article to ezine articles and then also post the same article to your squidoo and if other people post your article on their sites. Google will reward your ezine articles article provided it got indexed first.

[countonuspr]

I totally agree with the above two posts. That is why it is important to not submit the same article that appears on your website to the other article directories or to Squidoo, HubPages, etc. Unique content is the best.

[Solidsnake]

That is not a good idea an definitely a waste of time. The article is already ranked and there is a small chance for your site to get indexed using such article.. Besides, people will not visit your site if they found contents are just copied from other sites.. It decreases your site's quality.

[Bballer1]

Great posts. Learned something new again. Thanks guys

[chaseclicks]

You definitely want to use unique content as much as possible when considering SEO.

[jindalmedic]

Try to create unique content & then post on your site is recommendable otherwise your site might be out SERPs..(google panda updation uniquest & relevent content)...