Content generators are programs that create multiple copies
of your website, look for synonyms for the words you used
in your articles, and then posts fresh, each-a-little-different
pages up.
It sounds like a great idea: you take advantage of
the way the search engines catalog websites, get several
extra hits per day, and take in the advertising revenue for
each of those hits. The search engines get their views, you
get your money, and it's a win-win, right?
Wrong. First, any time you use the words "take advantage
of," you should know instantly that what you're doing is
ethically wrong. If everyone used content generators to
duplicate their sites, search engines would be unusable in
short order. And though you're maximizing advertiser views,
you're not selling a product, which is what the view system
is set up to do; instead, you're annoying web visitors, and
they will eventually dump your lame site and go somewhere
interesting, like a music download site.
Second, any time a technology threatens the search
engines, they instantly go on the defensive. Rest assured:
somewhere out there a team of web geeks are working on a
language program that will be able to deduce when a site
has been using a content generator. When they are
successful, they'll shut down entire domains, not just
individual sites. Content generator sites will be found in
violation of search engine usage agreements, and they will
not be listed any longer.
Worse, the revenue you've been accumulating through that
same search engine is going to shut off completely, and you
may find lawyers on your doorstep stating that you are in
violation of the advertising agreement you made with the
search engine and thus are liable to pay back all the money
you collected for advertising – plus extra money for legal
fees, taking up the search engines' time, and just being a
nuisance to the engines.
This is not a good end to your experiment with content
generation. The only winners in this situation are the people
who've made money by selling content generators to people
willing to take advantage of them. And these are the people
who will build the next generation of software designed to
take advantage of the search engines – and take your
money while they're at it.
What's the Alternative?
Many people don't use content generators to effectively
spam search engines. Instead, they use content generators
to create lots of pages with links back to their own web site.
There are better, more reliable, and above all completely
legal methods for driving traffic to your web site. The
drawbacks: they're not instantaneous, they do take some
work on your part, and they may cost you a little more
money.
First, add real, valuable content to your website. That's not
the content the generators wanted to add, where the same
article has been reposted in different words. Instead, it's
using actual creative content written by human beings. This
sort of content is not that costly, though it's generally not
free either. You can contract with a professional writer, a
college student, or an article broker like
YourOwnArticles.com to supply your site with content;
and you can either supply the topics to be written on (with
or without guidelines) or you can trust the content producers
to come up with their own.
Second, develop a relationship with your customers and site
viewers. This can be as simple as just setting up community
bulletin boards, an FAQ, or even an email response form
that you actually respond to right away; or it can be as
complex as a blog, real-time chats, emailed newsletter
subscriptions, and special offers for your best customers.
Now you're ready to drive real traffic to your website. Start
exchanging links with sites similar to yours that have
content and information you yourself find useful and
interesting. When you exchange links, try to do it by
mentioning the other sites in articles on your website, or in
your blog. Take some of the articles you have archived or
freshly-written articles and take them out to free article
directories, posting them to share with other sites. These
other sites get your information, but in exchange will post
links crediting you for the information and directing readers
to visit your site. Be certain to give the titles and links
names that reflect the keyword you're focusing your website
around; this increases the value of that keyword to you by
emphasizing to web spiders that it has to do with your site.
And start tweaking your site. Look at other ways to include
content, or to include keywords. Keep up with developments
in the search engine industry, and laugh as you find out that
they've shut down the content generators that you were
smart enough to avoid.
