A website needs content. Quality content can be expensive or time consuming to prepare, and many webmasters are faced with the same decision. Should they use free content to help build their site, or perhaps bite the bullet and provide unique content regardless of time and cost? The answer is not clear cut, but then very little is online.

Free Content
Free content is available through various means. Some authors provide content in an effort to get their name out in the marketplace or build a portfolio. Other webmasters may submit articles to directories to help with optimization or to generate a few new hits from potential readers. Still other content is free with an included link back to a specific website or page.

With so much free content available, how can it be bad? It’s not. Free content is exactly that. It is content provided by others for their specific purpose. If it suits your own purposes, than you are at an advantage. Of course, there is nothing completely free. Too much free content on a website can hurt search engine rankings. After all, the content wasn’t just free to you. It probably appears on hundreds of websites around the world.

This brings up another potential problem with free content. With so many websites using the content, including the original source, it is not providing anything fresh and original to website visitors. It is actually highly possible many of your visitors may have read the same exact article on a competitor’s website. Without something unique and special on your site, you may not be giving visitors a good reason to visit again.

But a little bit of free content never hurt anyone. The exception would be content not designed to be free and y placing it on your website you’ve broken copyright legislation by using it without permission. The most popular style of free content on many sites is a feed. These RSS feeds bring pressing news, stock updates, weather, or even flight information onto websites. As the feed pulls from other websites, there is duplicate content, but it is not the same as duplicating an entire article and most search engines agree.

Unique Content
Of course, in a perfect world an entire website would be completely unique with no duplicated content. There are no drawbacks to original content except the price and time required to create it. If a webmaster creates his own content, the time spent writing is taken away from other valuable tasks. If a webmaster hires a freelance writer, the cost may be prohibitive and overwhelming.

Many webmasters elect to provide as much unique content as possible to attract both visitors and positive search engine results, but to fall back on free content as filler when necessary. This is considered an acceptable solution, but many individuals designing websites seek to have entirely unique content at a future date. After all, too much duplicate content can hurt search engine rankings and outdated or not updated content can drive visitors away. The bottom line on content for your website is to include as much unique content as you can, and be sure any content, free or unique, is highly relevant to your topic and demographic.
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