Is There A Right Way To Fix A Bad Site?

[gronesy]

Hello,

I have a site I set up a while back before I learned much about SEO. I did do keyword and competition analysis. I've added merchant-supplied non-uninque articles to the site but that's about it.

Of course, Google doesn't care much for me and the traffic is reasonably low.

I converted it into a WP affiliate site about 3 months ago.

My question is this: would it be a good idea to hire somebody to update the articles to make them unique as long as I keep the URLs the same?

By updating I mean make enough small changes that they would be seen as different content.

Or should I just get another keyword list together and have somebody write more articles to add to the originals?

What I'm asking is if the non-unique articles will still hurt me even if I have new unique content written for the site?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Jeff