If you base the entirety of your content on top-ranking pages, you’ll end up with copycat content. This content fails to stand out from the crowd or offer anything unique.
Copycat content is a problem for SEO because people have no incentive to link to it. And links are important because they’re a ranking factor.
Here are a few ways to solve this problem:
- Provide original research. Polls, surveys, studies—they all work.
- Give a unique perspective or opinion. This can come from you, someone in your organization, or an industry expert.
- Build on what’s already out there. Expand on key ideas, go deeper, and give alternatives.
If you use the Best by links report in refs’ Site Explorer to see our most linked blog posts, most of them are studies. This shows just how effective original research can be for earning backlinks in our industry.
Another tip is to look at why people link to top-ranking pages.
For example, we found links to a competing page about SEO copywriting thanks to a formula coined by the author. So we created our own called the ASMR formula for our post. It’s already earned us a few links.
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