Developing Great Content

Greg Jarboe

President, SEO-PR

March 22, 2011

Over the past 5 years, Google has redefined “great content” 3 times

• Five years ago, Google defined “great content” as a useful, information-rich site, and pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.

• In May 2007, Google’s move to universal search redefined “great content” to include videos, images, news, maps, and books.

• In December 2009, Google’s introduction of realtime search redefined “great content” to include blog posts and live updates on sites like Twitter and FriendFeed.

• In February 2011, Google’s Panda (aka Farmer) update redefined “great content” again.

Panda/Farmer update noticeably impacts 11.8% of Google’s queries

• “Big algorithmic improvement” to Google’s ranking designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites -- sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites, or are just not very useful.

• It was also designed to provide better rankings for high-quality sites -- sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.

Source: Official GoogleBlog, Feb. 24, 2011

Who is harmed by low-cost content tailored to Google searches?

• PBS convened a group of people to discuss content farms, how they are changing journalism, bringing down pay rates for writers, and possibly polluting Google searches with poor quality content.

• Some panel members believed Demand Media was simply fulfilling a need, while others believed there were dangerous repercussions from the proliferation of low-cost content tailored to Google searches.

Source: Mark Glaser, MediaShift, July 27, 2010

In the 1880s, who was harmed by Joseph Pulitzer’s “new journalism”?

• In the 1880s, Joseph Pulitzer cut the price of the New York World to a penny, hired Nelly Bly, and added bolder headlines, more prominent illustrations, sports pages, women’s sections, advice columns, and comic strips.

• One comic strip featured a street urchin in a yellow shirt, and a hostile critic coined the term “yellow journalism” as a damning label for this kind of high-voltage newspaper.

Source: Paul Starr, The Creation of the Media

Search reverses communications model taught in journalism schools

Who says what in which channel to whom with what effect?

Who seeks what in which channel from whom with what effect?

Sources: Harold Lasswell, 1948, Greg Jarboe, 2003

Web search interest in how to bunny hop on Google is evergreen

Source: Google Insights for Search, March 19, 2011

Bing users are also conducting searches for how to bunny hop

Source: Bing, March 19, 2011

YouTube users are also conducting searches for how to bunny hop

Source: YouTube, March 19, 2011

Demand Media videos rank high for how to bunny hop on a bmx bike

Source: Google, March 19, 2011

Demand Media videos rank high for how to bunny hop on a bmx bike

Source: Bing, March 19, 2011

Demand Media videos rank high for how to bunny hop on a bmx bike

Source: YouTube, March 19, 2011

eHow put How to Bunny Hop on a BMX bike in YouTube video’s title

Source: YouTube, March 19, 2011

eHow put most of the keywords in the video’s description and tags

Source: YouTube, March 19, 2011

154,128 out of 650,021 views were referrals from YouTube searches

Source: YouTube, March 19, 2011

Page views on Demand Media’s owned and operated sites up 20%

Source: Demand Media, Feb. 22, 2011

Demand Media’s RPM (revenue per thousand page views) up 26%

Source: Demand Media, Feb. 22, 2011

Demand Media’s content and media revenue increased 42%

Source: Demand Media, Feb. 22, 2011

eHow’s search rankings improved from 317,320 to 324,021 keywords

Source: Sistrix, Feb. 26, 2011

Is Demand Media a “content farm” or an “evergreen content library”?

Source: Fast Company, Feb. 28, 2011