To finish up the two part series on content hosting, http://massa.techndu.com/2007/12/17/CONTENTHOSTINGTheGoodTheBadAndTheUglyPartUno.aspx
I’m going to tell you how I see the benefits and drawbacks of third party
content hosting from 3 unique perspectives. The hoster, (the person putting up
your content into their domain), the hostee, (the person providing the
content), and the search engine spidering the hosted content.
There is also a fourth party involved and that would be the visitor
or reader of the content. But for the purpose of this post, that relationship, (while
ALWAYS the most important reason for creating content regardless of where it
gets published), is not relevant.
Definition:
What is Content Hosting?
You’re likely familiar with the concept even if not the
term. Content hosting has been discussed
several times over the last several years, although not nearly as often as
other types of linking. I first openly discussed
it in June of 04 http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=530. Bear in mind there have been some algorithmic
developments since then, especially with anchor text, but the concept has
changed little in almost 5 years.
You may have been exposed to the concept but associated it with
other terms such as pre-sell pages, advertorials, content pages, interactive
PR, or about a dozen other creative
terms. I prefer content hosting.
CONTENT HOSTING, is the act of placing text provided by a third
party on a new page with a unique url into
your domain and providing an interior link to the new page by virtue of some
type of transaction or agreement .
EXAMPLE:
Advertiser A offers to pay,( or reciprocate or trade), webmaster B to place A’s text into B’s domain.
A will provide B with an agreed amount of text, (usually 150 to 250 words),
which will contain 3-5 embedded text links to a target url chosen by A.
B creates a new url, (usually with target keyword as part of
the url such as www.thirdpartydomain.com/targetkeyword.html),
using the template that he would use to place any other type of page into his
domain to maintain a consistent and professional look , including nav links,
adsense, graphical ads, headers,
footers, etc., and uploads it to www.thirpartydomain.com.
B then places a link to www.thirdpartydomain.com/targetkeyword.html
from either the index page of thirdpartydomain.com or an interior page no more
than one level deep.
The
Buyer
The Good:
By virtue of the possible
trust of this domain and depending on the supporting theme of the domain
compared to the content , this page could place and start generating qualified
traffic sent directly to you in a matter of hours to days!
Typically, this type of
linking passes page rank as one would expect.
This type of linking has
shown to generate more qualified traffic than traditional text links.
Intent doesn’t come into
question nearly as much as traditional text links
Concern over competitors indentifying
your linking partners is greatly reduced
Gives you control over not
only anchor text but more importantly the message you want delivered with that
anchor text
Get multiple links for one
price
Gain the reputation brownie
points from an established domain
Easier to spider and track
than traditional text links
The Bad:
The webmastering community is
not as familiar with the concept or terminology as with traditional text links
and that makes it difficult to explain. It can get frustrating.
More difficult to set up
correctly in the beginning due to the above
Unlike text links where you
can write one 5 or 10 word ad with the same anchor text and be done, with
content hosting, each page needs to be unique to avoid duplicate content issues
You only control the text
part of the page and not the layout or design
You don’t control the source
of the page, (unless agreed upon beforehand but my experience is this is a
problem), so the title tag, meta description, h tags etc, may not be what you
would choose.
You must respect the
integrity of the hosting domain
The Ugly:
If you break the agreement,
(stop paying), the content you provided is now generating the traffic you REALLY
want but the webmaster is no longer sending it to you. This is really no
different than if you had a deal for a text link and broke the deal except that
text links don’t generate placements, but pages do. My experience has been that
when you pay for hosted content and then the webmaster re-directs the links
that used to go to you to his own affiliate program, it’s a big pill to have to
swallow.
The
Seller
The Good:
Low-
risk, (relatively speaking), stable
revenue
High
profit margin recurring income. You can make money for months and even years
for about 10 minutes of work.
Content
provided for you and get paid to take it!
Placements
going directly to YOUR domain generated by THEIR content. You keep these
placements even if the buyer cancels.
Any
inbound links generated by this hosted content increases the visibility of YOUR
domain
You decide
what , where and how the content gets displayed. After all, it is YOUR domain
You
display your adsense, your banner ads, your header, footer, nav bar and you didn’t
have to write any original content yourself. It’s almost like getting paid to
make more money.
The Bad:
You
have to deal with other people trying to tell you how to add content to your
site. They can be a little demanding.
You
have to deal with the sales and customer service aspect even though you are
always in control.
You will
likely be expected to provide stats of at least page views.
The Ugly:
There
is a risk of varying degrees because at the end of the day, content hosting is still,
arguably, very similar to paid links. While intent is much more difficult to
ascertain by any third party, patterns do emerge and you should be diligent
enough to at least periodically check that duplicate content isn’t being added
to other domains.
The
Search Engine
There really isn’t a good,
bad or ugly for the search engine. It is simply another web document that needs
to be dealt with. Since there are those who will attempt to use this technique
for the sole purpose of increasing their page rank, and lean towards this type
of process because of it’s more difficult to identify intent nature, we can
expect as much controversy to swirl around this topic at some point as we have
seen with the paid links issue. In fact, the more popular this technique becomes,
(and it’s popularity WILL increase because it works), the more discussion we
will see.
I would fully expect the stance
of the engines to be very much the same as the stance with paid text links. FUD
spread directly relative to the amount of public discussion.
If there is any upside for the engine, (and
the buyer and seller to a large degree), it would lie in the Don’t Make Google Look Stupid concept I referenced in my last post. A video by Shoemoney
illustrates the concept perfectly.
Shoemoney’s don’t make Google look
stupid video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOBcXEja_dM
With
the intent of the hosted content being much more difficult to identify, the outings
with complete certainty will be less likely. And of course easier to defend
even if it is outed. As long as a
content hosted page is not shoved in the face of an engine as being obvious, it
does not force them to take some kind of action to not look stupid or appear not
in control as much as they would like the public to believe. This at least
increases the chance of longevity and decreases the risk of penalty.
The Key to Making it Work
Respect. Respect for the hosting webmaster and his
site, respect for the search engines and above all respect for the people who
would be reading the content.
If you try to shove as much unrelated
crap as you can as fast as you can into as many domains as will take your $50,
then the benefit content hosting can offer will be short-lived indeed.
But if you provide quality original
content with links to content that can further the sales process, choose only
domains that offer related, makes- good –sense themed topics, and do it in a
way that does not make the engines look stupid, this technique can offer a
stable and superior reward vs risk ratio.
Peace Y‘all
G
now get outside and play but
if you mess up them new shoes, I’ll make you wish you hadn’t!