Home Directory Get Listed Login

Content Farms – What You Can Learn and Apply

Do you offer SEO services? Get listed on this site Free!

While Google has taken action against content farms, from a strategic perspective I still think there are lessons that every publisher can learn from the content farm model. If you haven’t already seen it, please take a look at the leaked AOL document on content farms.

The first slide worth taking note of is slide 15 – content generation process. Basically, the slide goes through the decision process for determining how valuable a piece of content will be and determines if it gets created and who creates it. They use keyword/news tool to determine a piece’s “demand” and, depending on how valuable it is, it goes to low cost, in house, or vetted freelancer. Evergreen content, which will generate long term value as opposed to short term content, gets special consideration and special “SEO treatment.” To be honest, you should be doing this with your posts/content already. The pieces which will generate the most revenue or most links (see building links with encyclopedic content) should be produced by your best writers and be fully optimized with the best SEO Tools.

Slide 17 talks about the day to day creation of content. The key takeaway here is “how much” will it cost to produce this content, how are we going to monetize it, and what is its monetization potential (see adding revenue streams into your website). Slide 20 breaks down the decision process even further. As you are going down this path just be careful you don’t fall into the pageview journalism trap: once you do, you sacrifice quality for quantity, and chances are good that you’ll never make it out.

The next slide worth noting is slide 30, which talks about scaling the content creation process and how to promote the content so it gets maximum exposure. It’s a whole lot less shoot-from-the-hip and a whole lot more planning than you may be used to, but it’s a good starting point for developing your own plan. Slide 36 is the last slide that I think is noteworthy. It goes into detail about recruiting outside writers into the network or promotion strategy and how guest posts are a win-win for both parties.

On the opposite side of the coin, it’s important to see what someone who lived this plan has to say. Paul Miller was an engadget writer who recently left and had this to say about AOL … “AOL sees content as a commodity to sell ads against.” As the bar to becoming a publisher constantly lowers (a concept discussed in some detail in Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky), it becomes easier for low budget publishers to eek out profits, but high cost publishers can’t break even unless they cut production costs to the bone. Or, put another way, a $5 piece of content is going to be a lot easier to monetize than a $30 piece of content, no matter what level of traffic you have.

While it’s easy to blame publishers like Demand Media and AOL, don’t lose sight of the fact that Google is a willing and complicit conspirator in this low budget content creation process. By creating adsense and making it possible for anyone to monetize a website without needing to hire a sales staff, to pick up the phone cold calling advertisers,  or to pound the pavement, they brought monetization to great, unwashed masses. No single product has created more pollution on the web as Google’s Adsense program has. They may have started out the with “don’t be evil” mantra but, like so many before them, they have become what they set out to destroy. They are the virtual drug dealers of the 21st century, selling ads wrapped around other people’s content, creating information polluted ghettos, and they will become the advertising equivalent of a drug lord poised to rule the web.

So what should you takeaway from this post?

• Use keyword or demand tools to help you decide which pieces to create
• Create content based on monetization potential and link building potential
• Send your content out to the appropriate writer based on monetization and Link building potential
• Evergreen and SEO flavored content should be given extra consideration
• Have a plan for promotion
• Beware of falling into the high volume, low quality, page view journalism model

 

Related posts:

1. Short Term Content Versus Evergreen Content I’ve got a confession to make. I used to be...
2. What Can You Learn From the iPhone So you’re sitting around wishing you could have some of...
3. What You Should Learn from Rand Fishkin You can learn lots of things reading the SEOMoz Blog,...
4. Outsourcing Content Creation Vs. Hiring in House One of the first considerations for a web site owner...
5. How to Do A Content Audit of Your Website If you have a website that’s been around for a...

Advertisers:

1. Text Link Ads - New customers can get $100 in free text links.
2. BOTW.org - Get a premier listing in the internet's oldest directory.
3. Ezilon.com Regional Directory - Check to see if your website is listed!
4. Directory Journal - Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory
5. Glass Whiteboards - For a professional durable white board with no ghosting, streaking or marker stains, see my Glass Whiteboard Review
6. Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
7. Link Building- Backlink Build offers 45 PR5+ Backlinks for $295
8. KnowEm - Protect your brand, product or company name with a continually growing list of social media sites.
9. Scribe SEO Review find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts.
10. TigerTech - Great Web Hosting service at a great price.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Content Farms – What You Can Learn and Apply

Source http://www.wolf-howl.com/?p=11640
Tue, 15 Mar 2011 15:07:08 GMT
Tags: Featured, SEO,

---

Mt Dora E-Commerce | Carmel E-Commerce | Turlock E-Commerce | Clearwater E-Commerce | Atlanta E-Commerce | Osprey E-Commerce | Springville E-Commerce | Stanton E-Commerce | Austin E-Commerce | San Antonio E-Commerce |

Featured

---

SEO

---

---

Need SEO Search Engine Optimization Directory? Check out our member profiles:

SEO News
How to Write a How-To Post: 7 Simple Steps

How-to posts are always going to be popular. They’re great for readers – who are often Googling “how to X” – and they’re great for you, the writer, because they’re easy to put together. So, open up a blank document and let"

---

How to Increase Blog Revenue with Retargeting

Retargeting is one of the fastest growing forms of paid advertising on the Internet. What is it? Retargeting is the process of serving ads to past visitors of your website. As a website owner, you can put a little snippet of Javascript on your website"

---

Poll: What Kind of Monitor Do You Use?

Right now I am travelling for family reasons, so I have been working on my laptop for the past three days or so. Let me tell you: those were three painful days. I just can't stand to work on such a small screen anymore, and my productivity was probably c"

---

The Most Overlooked Reason For List Building

Human nature is odd some times. There is this rebellion that is inherent in our nature - something embedded in our psyche - that just compels us to do the opposite of what we're told. You would think we would just "get over it" after childhood, but the r"

---

Mozilla bring popcorn to the HTML5 video party.

Mozilla Popcorn is an open source javascript project designed to integrate semantic data into online video, and present it easily on your site.Mozilla bri"

---

Article Tags
SEO Search Engine Optimization Directory Articles
blog
SEO
Social Media
Google
featured
Monetize
Reviews
SEO Tips
Writing Content
strategy
Promotion
Facebook
Link Building
wordpress
Blogging Basics
Twitter
News
tools
slider
Web Tools




Friends:
Logo Designers
Interactive Web Design