It isn't the end of hand crafted content -- it puts a heck of a squeeze on the middle of the quality curve, though.
Demand Media et al compete for more phrases versus me than my actual competitors do, simply because they are virtually guaranteed to have a piece which is laser targeted at a query like [how do i make a bingo card]. In a perfect world, I'd like to rank for that query, rather than having to pay eHow for an AdSense click about it.
I have, nonetheless, paid over $20 over the past year for clicks on ads on this page:
Demand Media's entire business model is that that page cost them $4 to create. They keep half of what I pay Google, so they're ahead quite a bit on that page -- and there are other advertisers than me with ads there.
My strategy for competing with this, such that it is, is to go for depth over breadth, do a bit of the outsourcing thing myself, and compensate for my comparative lack of scale with focused use of programming. I pretty much can't outrank eHow for "How to X" questions in a systematically economic manner. I can, however, outpublish them regarding actual bingo cards which, since it is what the customer actually wants, tend to get the links and build the self-reinforcing authority.
For those of us who are at least partially in the publishing business (and I really am at least partially in the publishing business by dint of my SEO strategy), you have to have some idea of how you're going to compete on the long tail versus mass amounts of textually unique garbage backed up by impressive domain authority. At least until Google brings the hammer down on them. (Honestly, that Wired piece would have made me very uneasy if I were working for them. Google doesn't mind people doing SEO, but SEO which scales algorithmically pisses them off like you wouldn't believe. That is practically their working definition for black hat.)
Demand Media et al compete for more phrases versus me than my actual competitors do, simply because they are virtually guaranteed to have a piece which is laser targeted at a query like [how do i make a bingo card]. In a perfect world, I'd like to rank for that query, rather than having to pay eHow for an AdSense click about it.
I have, nonetheless, paid over $20 over the past year for clicks on ads on this page:
http://www.ehow.com/how_2120747_make-bingo-cards.html
Demand Media's entire business model is that that page cost them $4 to create. They keep half of what I pay Google, so they're ahead quite a bit on that page -- and there are other advertisers than me with ads there.
My strategy for competing with this, such that it is, is to go for depth over breadth, do a bit of the outsourcing thing myself, and compensate for my comparative lack of scale with focused use of programming. I pretty much can't outrank eHow for "How to X" questions in a systematically economic manner. I can, however, outpublish them regarding actual bingo cards which, since it is what the customer actually wants, tend to get the links and build the self-reinforcing authority.
For those of us who are at least partially in the publishing business (and I really am at least partially in the publishing business by dint of my SEO strategy), you have to have some idea of how you're going to compete on the long tail versus mass amounts of textually unique garbage backed up by impressive domain authority. At least until Google brings the hammer down on them. (Honestly, that Wired piece would have made me very uneasy if I were working for them. Google doesn't mind people doing SEO, but SEO which scales algorithmically pisses them off like you wouldn't believe. That is practically their working definition for black hat.)