Michael Arrington of TechCrunch published an excellent post a few weeks ago about the end of personalized content. It’s about content creators that are creating content with the sole purpose of generating pageviews. And, there are thousands of such “networks” — most of them you’ve never heard of.
Arrington further writes:
“They [Demand Media and Fast Disposable] push SEO juice to this content, which is made as quickly and cheaply as possible, and pray for traffic. It works like a charm, apparently”
If you’re a small publisher that is very focused on creating content, the quote above may not be relevant to you. But, SEO has been a hotly debated topic since the evolution of search engines. And, it will continue to be an important factor.
However, creating content just for SEO is bad for everyone — your staff (if you’re a publisher), your advertisers, but most of all, for your audience. The quality of your audience is directly related to the quality of your content. And, if you’re only using high-trafficked topics that is covered by every blog in the same genre, then you’re doing more harm than good.
Content creation and audience development are extremely challenging tasks. But, sites that break stories and publish good content are in for the long run.
On the contrary, creating specialized online content is often attributed to lack of consistent revenue. As online publishers know, generating a revenue stream through online content is not easy, especially if you’re trying to attract big clients. Most large corporations now use media-buying and advertising agencies to purchase content — even for blogs. What do these agencies look for? Pageviews and impressions.
Unfortunately, unless the media buying process improves (and they’re starting to), selling based on a niche audience will continue to be a challenge.
