If you are a webmaster or blogger, unique content is key. Actually, it is an essential. If you are a blogger or you have set up and run an automated blog for fun, it is a good idea to add unique and original content to it on a regular basis.
I have a theory that unique content can get Google in the habit of spidering it regularly. If all you ever post to your blog or website is syndicated content, then where would be the draw for search engines and visitors. More often than not, visitor and search engines will not visit your site unless you offer something that cannot be found anywhere else. That something is unique content. The more unique content you post, the more often your site will get spidered.
Then as it gets used to coming by, it will also spider syndicated content and in some cases actually give you credit for it even with links pointing to the original source. The reason I know this is because I am an avid article marketer and I syndicate my content widely. One thing I have personally noticed is that whenever I type my article titles into search engines, I will always see multiple copies of it across multiple article directories as well as many blogs and websites that have published them with resource links pointing to both my original article and my homepage.
One thing that I have come to understand and that I have seen with articles of my own I have syndicated is that Google doesn't always rank the original in the first spot. On the contrary, I have found that it ranks the copy from the most trusted site in the first spot regardless of who is linking to who. Page Rank may have a lot to do with this as it is a calculation of how much a particular site or page on a site will be ranked and how much it is trusted.
What is the end result of these observations? The end result is that this information can be leveraged to your advantage. The only question is...how?