Google v Content Farms

Google’s recent decision to wage war on sites containing poor quality information and duplicated content, came into effect with changes to their algorithm during the end of February. The aim is to weed out the content farms and spammers who provide inadequate and unoriginal material, so improving the quality of search results. At the time of writing, this has only been rolled out in the U.S so far, but in light of Google’s plans to take this worldwide, it’s important to be prepared.

Content farms have been proliferating across the web, and have been the subject of thousands of complaints to Google about their domination over the rankings. Sites publishing generated content have been accused of producing essentially shallow and meaningless material, using information scraped from elsewhere on the web and poor quality user generated content. It’s a big market, and Demand Media alone are worth $2 billion as a result of their ‘how to’ and ‘self-help’ articles. Yet user-led article submission sites are also being targeted, as well as the spammers who create and duplicate meaningless websites to bump up their positions. In fact, it will be more or less extend to any site Google considers to fall short of their new stance on quality of information control.

While this is good news in terms of searchers being able to access better information, already, some genuine companies have been hit. Google’s support forum is addressing the problem by inviting those people who feel they have been unfairly affected to communicate their concern, and  have issued  advice. "Sites that believe they have been adversely impacted by the change should be sure to extensively evaluate their site quality. In particular, it’s important to note that low quality pages on one part of a site can impact the overall ranking of that site."

It remains to be seen, however, if this will have any impact.

Google expect the change to affect 11.8% of U.S enquiries, and so as such, it’s more important than ever to make sure your content is unique and of high quality to avoid being targeted by the new algorithm. So as well as following all the normal SEO advice of ensuring you have good back links from reputable sources and effective social media links, distinguishing your site from the content farms to avoid being punished by Google is vital.

 So here’s what you need to know about good content;

Create original, useful and unique material that engages people, captures their interest, and gives good advice.

Beware of cramming your content with repetitious keywords – Google will read this as spam!

Google likes relevant material. Make sure the information you provide is related to what you do. Concentrate on your business niche to keep on topic.

Changing a few words from an existing piece is still considered duplication. Don’t reproduce content from other websites without radically changing the content.

If you need to outsource the work, use a professional copywriter who can write engaging relevant copy for you.

Remember it’s not just the writing. Google is looking for ‘"research, in-depth reports, and thoughtful analysis.’ Good quality information graphics, downloads and videos all count.

Finally, remember that only time will tell how this all works in practice. So in the meantime, just make sure you keep providing fresh, relevant, original material, because content really is king!