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Loads of content = traffic
September 7th, 2008I tested a new concept recently and it turns out to be working very well. My goal was to get a lot of content indexed in Google, with not that many backlinks and check what would happen. Usually, with blogs, we focus on quality content and not quantity and that’s always what I’ve been doing, so I had to change my mindset a little bit. We’ll go trough generating a lot of content for a website and how this can drive traffic.
There’s of course a balance
You can’t just generate a million pages and wait for the traffic, it’s like anything else, you have to find a balance between quality and quantity. I’m sure you’ve figured by now that when I say I generated a lot of content, I didn’t generate that content manually. Not generating the content manually means getting the content automatically from rss feeds or similar sources. That being said, it’s easy to just get yourself a million of articles through RSS feeds and get them indexed in Google, but the truth is that like anything else, you have to be smart. Remember that you still need backlinks to get a good ranking in Google, and those backlinks are extremely hard to get with a crappy website. It’s where playing smart comes into play, because you have to find a way to generate thousands of pages, without your website looking too much automated.
How to generate content from feeds
The most popular method to generate content is to get your content from RSS feeds. I won’t go exactly into details as everybody use a different platform for their website. You can generate content automatically for a wordpress blog, a drupal CMS or a pligg site for example. You can do a little search for your platform and I’m sure you will find some interesting plugin. If you are into Wordpress, you might want to have a look at an interesting WP plugin called wp-o-matic. It let’s you generate content automatically from RSS feeds for your Wordpress blog and it’s pretty good for a free plugin.
Isn’t it bad?
I know, I know, you like quality. I do also like quality. I just think part of making money online is trying a lot of things and getting some money from everywhere you can. I’m not building my future on automated websites, it’s just a nice addition to my collection of websites and it’s bringing in some money. You can make your site totally useless by generating content automatically, so that’s why I’m saying you have to be smart when doing it. If you are going to automate a website, make it look good and still useful to people. That’s what I did and after 2 months, it’s driving around 500 uniques daily and it’s going up every week. I think it’s great for a 2 months old website and it is 100% passive income.
Don’t be evil
Remember, don’t be evil! I know you guys will look around for an automated website possibility. I don’t usually talk about these things because I don’t like it, but I found out that if done correctly, it can be useful for you and your users. Don’t think about starting a finance blog and just generating posts without doing nothing, you have to think a little further than that to have a platform that can drive good traffic. The lesson is that automated websites work if you’re not too evil!
25 Responses to “Loads of content = traffic”
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wow, nice alternative. not too evil
. ehehe. that is right. users and readers like valuable and informative content. if this benefits the both sides then why not.
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I actually started out blgging like that using that plugin and it worked great. You still have to do some articles to get the traffic in the beginning but I had ok success. I now focus on content and try to get at least 3-4 post per week on my blog
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Hm… I hadn’t quite got from post what are you suggesting as source for that content.
Depending on that it can be totally fine as well as very ugly. I mean copying CC with atribution is one thing but ripping off from all right reserved is another.
Rarsts last blog post..Looking for disk space hogs with WinDirStat
Interesting, I also tend to shy away from “automated” but I agree with you Ben, there are instance where it can really help you and still be good for visitors.
Interesting – but this content, is it in some way infringing copyrights to use other peoples content on your site?
Why would Google even index it as it is duplicate content? or am I missing something?
@Olly: I should have talked about that point. As the content comes from RSS feeds and these feeds are only “preview fields”, I only get something like 200 words from each article. That preview is displayed and I provide a link to the full article. Everybody’s happy
That’s a very interesting post. It’s true, it’s much easier to make money with PPC ads by having a network of automated blogs than with just one lone blog. The (rather thin) line to separate them from splogs is making their content useful to your visitors.
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@Anthony: Yes it looks like it’s easier and yeah, the line is rather thin!
Heh, talk about devil… Woke up today to find trackback to my last post on such site.
At least that was an excerpt.
Rarsts last blog post..Computer you won’t dream about
Hi Ben,
Thank you for really really great post. If you could share “how to use rss for your blog in the un-evil way!”, that would be really appreciated.
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Right, you have to balance the content with the quality of it, not only relying that Google will be more interested in thousands of words to be indexed but to really have material that seems to be unique and high quality.
I think your idea of posting some quality content and get more traffic are really practicable, because that what I doing.
I keep posting averagely 2 post per day and without doing anything, I get traffic that really over my expectation.
But, if I stop, did my blog are effects? hope hera from your opinion.
Regards,
feelingtube
I think trying to pull from RSS is wonderful. As long as you link back, and give credit where credit is due – I don’t really see a problem in it.
What do you mean by automated websites? Do you mean the content is automated? For example, pulling directly from feeds?
Hi,
Website Content is the primary issue of SEO.If any site having good optimized content with related keyphases then it will be boost up very fast in the search engines.But one thing should be remember for all SEO guys that never used any black hat policy othrwise your site will be banned by google.
Regards
Gopal
Do you still not think this would be classed a duplicate content in some way and not be indexed?
You may be onto something here…to an extent. To anyone that reads this and applies it, be very careful. You do not want to have too much duplicate content on your sites. Don’t think that the search engines will not notice a trend. If the search engines are not up to par now, you can bet that they will be in the near future.
I would use this technique sparingly. You can automate a little content just to bulk up your site a little, but don’t stop adding your own unique content.
I’m no expert and I’m just learning myself, but if used improperly, this technique could backfire sooner rather than later.
Anyway, thanks for mentioning another option to us.
interesting, nice alternative.
@Rarst: What a coincidence
@Dennis, yeah I’m thinking about writing such a post…
@Motorcycle: Exactly, a lot of average content with a purpose for the users
@Best of youtube: Yes if you stop your website will suffer from it. Google likes fresh content updated on a regular basis
@Investing…: By automated I mean a website that pulls information from rss feeds on a regular basis
@Olly: duplicate content isn’t that bad if you just take part of articles. Take Digg for instance…
@aaron:That’s why you have to be smart doing it!
Man, I smile a lot…
Though I’m writing many nice posts I’m not getting much subscribers. I don’t understand the reason. Though My Blog is 10 days old I don’t have ven a single subscriber. But I’m getiing 100-200 visitors/day..
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Now everyone can create passive income even at home. You can make your own website and then earn money from that. Real Estate is albo good way to making money. Just slow down with your day job and concentrate on your small business. Even 100$/month passive income is better than nothing at the beginning.
Hi,
If you can successfully implement proper SEO techniques for your sites then you will gain too much traffic as well as good PR for your site.
Regards
Gopal
thanks for sharing your experience its really interesting article for me and now i am not getting mistakes…
Thanks for the tips ! They are very useful.
Very nice information. Thanks for this. When did you start this blog?