While working on a competitive analysis for a law firm client, I came across an alarming trend – many of the competitor’s blogs had strikingly similar content that riffed on local news stories.
When exploring this a little bit further, it seemed that many of the firm’s competitors used syndicated content from the same industry marketing company to fuel their blogging efforts. In other words, these firms are receiving content from the marketing company to publish on their blogs.
The marketing company is smart enough not to duplicate the content for each firm in the same location. However, the formula is nearly identical for each post:
- Paraphrase a recent study or news article;
- Overtly link to keywords throughout your site;
- Cite the source of the information (that way, you’re not plagiarizing); and