One of the most common questions about content curation is…what does it really mean? Are we copying the content of other people and trying to get credit for it? Is it really that simple and if so, what about copyright infringement, etc.? Will Google and other SEs penalize our sites for curating content?

These are all valid questions and important ones because I’m sure some of the lazier and less savory folks may think it’s that simple.

The idea behind content curation is to cut out the clutter of noise in the online publishing space and produce more infomative “chunks” for your readers to review.

For example, let’s say you have a blog or website about fishing. You may have a passion for this niche and could write articles all day long. This is great but, not a particularly good use of your time. By grabbing content and provding links to other resources/sites that are relevant to your topic, you are providing your readers more information in one location…YOUR site!

If content is curated successfully, meaning you are genuinely providing additional information and sources that support your topic then you can quickly be seen as an authority, not only by your readers but by Google. This can have a huge impact on your earning potential and longevity in the search engines.

By the way, you are NOT stealing other peoples’ content. Some webmasters may only provide a link to “other similar stories” while others may provide excerpts or short descriptions about another writer’s work and of course provide a hyperlink to that source for the reader to follow if they want to read the full story, etc.

If used correctly, content curation can help provide a huge amount of original content to your website helping you get more traffic, earn more money, and hopefully stay on page one of Google for your niches no matter how many new algorithm changes Google decides to make in the future!