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Online, everybody and their dog is a publisher. Some 700 million retailers, brand owners, corporate bloggers, media, and private users who want to reach online users as friends or as customers publish digital content. The resulting content explosion creates an intense competition for online visibility. In their quest to be visible on line, publishers have no choice but to produce more and more spam-like content optimized to meet the ranking criteria of leading traffic gateways: the few traffic drivers that dominate their category such as Google, Bing, the AppStore, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Amazon. This creates a rampant content inflation, a massive input of low-value-added content that worsens the content explosion. Optimized content can easily displace, and could even ultimately outgrow original content. I show concrete examples of how pervasive ranking-optimized content is and how difficult it is to draw the line between optimization and straightforward spam. On the contrary, optimization blends in. We must learn to live with it – which for businesses means having a real content strategy.AgendaWhy publishers are force to (sort of) spamHow they go about it- Publish or perish- Content farming- Too frequent updates- Social Hyperactivity- Spinning Unique Content- Automated ContentThe resulting content inflationLearning to live with it
Citation preview
FACING CONTENT INFLATION
Therese Torris
August 2011
http://return-on-clicks.com
700 MILLION ONLINE PUBLISHERS ARE
FORCED INTO (SOME FORM OF) SPAMMING
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AGENDA
• Why publishers are forced to (sort of) spam
• How they go about it
• The resulting content inflation
• Learning to live with it
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1 IN 10 PEOPLE WW IS A PUBLISHER
• 200 million Web sites
• 170 million blogs
• 1 million eBooks on the Kindle
• 500 000 applications on the US AppStore
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PRODUCING MORE AND MORE CONTENT
15 billion new pages in Google’s index in 3 months
Source: Worldwidewebsize.com 2011
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RICHER CONTENT
Data source: WebSiteOptimization.com , 2011
More text, more pictures, sounds & video
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FASTER
• 60 million blog posts per day
• 140 million tweets per day
• 70 million hours of video uploaded on YouTube per day
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USERS ARE OVERWHELMED
Consuming content is like drinking from
a fire hose
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USERS RELY ON GATEWAYS TO FILTER, SORT & RANK
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LEADING GATEWAYS TAKE IT ALL
Network effects reinforce
the domination of a few
• Search engines
• App stores
• Social networks
• Content Portals
• Marketplaces
Google 83,6%
Yahoo 6,2%
Baidu 4,6%
Bing 3,6%
Global Search Market Share Source: Source: marketshare.hitslink.com July 2011
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TOP RANKINGS TAKES IT ALL
No traffic from gateways beyond the top rankings:
• First pages
• Top 10
• Top 100
• Best sellers
• Top news
Average Click-Through Rates On Search Result Pages Source: Optify.net, April 20011
36,4%
8,9%
1,4%
1st position on 1st page
First page Second page
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CONTENT VISIBILITY IS SQUEEZED
• Listed, or not
• Sorted into index’s categories/taxonomy
• Matched to
• Search interpretation
• Suggestion & recommendation engines
• Ranked by algorithm
PageRank
EdgeRank
Bestsellers
Top
news
…
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PUBLISHERS STRUGGLE FOR VISIBILITY
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Google Facebook
Yahoo! eBay
Wikipedia Aol
iMDB
Amazon Rakuten
Microsoft
blogspot
Baidu acme.com
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PUBLISHERS HAVE NO CHOICE
BUT TO CREATE CONTENT « OPTIMIZED »
FOR GATEWAY RANKINGS
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OPTIMIZATION VS SPAM : A FINE LINE
• Publish or perish • More
• More often
• Richer content
• Archive more
• Ubiquitous content farming
• Too frequent updates
• Social hyperactivity
• Spinning unique content
• Automated content
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A. Handley & C. Chapman, Content Rules, 2010
Publish or Perish
“If you want to remain top of mind you have to find a way to converse much more frequently
than when you have big news.”
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“Content is Marketing. Adding customized high-quality content from Demand Media is an efficient way to drive growth for your website.”
Content Farming
www.demandmedia.com
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SEO changed the newsroom: “Almost all of our posts are written, or should be
written with SEO in mind….”
Ubiquitous Content Farming
Quote from HuffPost. Sources: niemanlab.com, somescribblings.com, outspokenmedia.com
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Too Frequent Updates
Let’s make the list !
New Last updated Most recent Top news
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“Keep engaging with others, and continue creating engaging content to see your Klout
Score rise.”
Social Hyperactivity
www.klout.com
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“Quickly Generate Hundreds Of
Unique Versions of Your Articles
Using This Revolutionary Software!”
Spinning Unique Content
www.thebestspinner.com
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Automated Content
Content curation
Optimization
Autopost
www.posterous.com
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THE RESULTING CONTENT INFLATION
A chronic inflation of spam-like, ranking-
driven content
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Original content
Ranking-driven content
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HASTENS OVERALL CONTENT GROWTH
Ranking-driven content blends into content creation
and speeds the content explosion
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A VICIOUS GROWTH SPIRAL
• The more “optimized”
content,
the less effective
• The less effective it becomes,
the more is produced
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OUT OF CONTROL
Optimized, ranking-driven content
• outsmarts controls such as Panda
• sucks up resources
• stifles creativity
• displaces and outgrows truly original content
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Data Source Q4 2010 http://www.maawg.org/email_metrics_report.
EMAIL: DOMINATED BY SPAM
Spam = 7.5 times legitimate email
88%
12%
Abusive emails Unaltered delivered email
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CONTENT DOMINATED BY ‘OPTIMIZATION’?
10 x n billions of visible pages
Spam-like, ranking-driven content
Original content
How soon could this happen?
n billions of visible pages
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financial derivatives =10 times the real
economy
Financial data from The Crushing Potential of Financial Derivatives, D. Haas, Oct. 2008, www.themarketoracle.co.uk
DERIVATIVES CAN OUTGROW THE ORIGINAL
$680 290
$53 510 $65 610
Financial Derivatives (BIS est.)
World Capital Base (CIA est.)
Gross World Product (CIA est.)
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LIVING WITH CONTENT INFLATION
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FOUR STEPS
1. Stop fiddling around ‐ Ditch the blog and start a real content strategy
2. Manage your digital content assets - Inventory your texts, sounds, videos
- Assess their customer engagement value
3. Reconcile content tactics and strategy - Optimizing content for rankings
- Investing in longer term customer engagement
4. Empower your people - Your marketing/content people -- not interns, not the agency
- Give them tools
- Let them set ROI targets & metrics
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Therese Torris return-on-clicks.com [email protected]
Content was king. Now it’s a tyrant who knows no mercy.
Parting words:
