Why I Hate Autoblogs
Wow I've been prolific recently! I hope you've been enjoying the blogs and training I've been putting up so far, and boosting up your SERPs with Social Monkee. Appreciate the 7 of you that have so kindly signed up through my affiliate link, and just to clarify, you don't need to actually BUY Social Monkee's premium membership, just refer it on to your friends like I have been doing and you can get the premium membership for free.
This started out as a comment in the previous post, and I realized I have so much to say about this a comment just wouldn't have done it justice. We've seen the rise and rise of autoblogs in the last few months, and it just amazes me how the promoters of autoblogging systems can spin and blow hot air around the fact that THEY'RE TELLING YOU TO STEAL SOMEONE ELSES CONTENT!
There, I've said it. The emperor is naked. Deal with it. Autoblogs are not providing value by way of one or two backlinks to their site. Autoblogs are not creating some kind of elaborate network of content distribution that really benefits anyone. Google HATES autoblogs because it creates duplicate content. So guess what? Google is going to penalize the autoblogs AND penalize the original article as well. Isn't it obvious that autoblogs seriously devalue the efforts of the original author of the content?
I'm not saying all this to slap you in the face if you're an autoblog user. The simple fact is: YOU HAVE BEEN DECEIVED. It's not OK to pull someone else's content off their RSS feed and slap it on your own blog without their permission. It's not creative commons content, nor does it say anywhere on the internet that you can do that. In fact, the DMCA explicitly prohibits it. And your site won't benefit a great deal in the long run, because there are many, MANY other autoblog users out there who will pull the same content, and in the end, everyone's just going to get penalized and/or delisted and everybody loses.
Except for the autoblog site sellers and the autoblog plugin promoters. They're going to be laughing all the way to the bank.
All the negativity aside, I still believe firmly in one thing:
There's never been a better time to publish original, quality content that connects to a real person in a real way. That's the only way that you're going to build a lasting business, and income, online.
Recent Comments
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I( ma glad to see a real thread here that discusses a relevant hot topic. Many of the top gurus are preaching to use original content while all the time using automated tolls article spinning and a few tweaks. This behaviour is very harmful especially to newbies who are easily confused and taken advantage of. It is also the behaviour that will lead to bans and that is behind the thinking of the FTC and Google etc in trying to clean up the web. Thank you Chad for opening up the discussion and lets drag all of .the less than ethical vendors and their products out into public view so that everyone who spends hours working on building their sites are not deceived by this. There are many tools that encourage this type of content spinning and it can be hard to detect (although not impossible. There is a fine line between journalistic reporting and plain plagiarism. This has long been an issue and the rich and famous are not exempt. Dare I mention Bob Dylan and more recently Rawlings Harry Potter Books? Both of these people have been accused of [plagiarism and yet both prospered well from their efforts! This has to be wrong and needs to be corrected for the publics well being.
Works great for backlinks...and you can't beat those content stealing **** believe me. I use autoblogs to post MY OWN, spun content...I spin to 70% unique as well and readability is usually very good. I hear ya though about people who abuse them and steal content...by the way it's not on the incline...auto blogging has been around for a while now!
An option to auto blogging with RSS feed is to use Free Traffic System to get content posted on your blog. I have heard pro and con on the technique but it is working on half a dozen blogs I have. Make sure categories are available on your site and don't be afraid to delete content that is not relevant.
I'd rewrite them to be honest, but if they're too junky I'd just delete them. I recently bought one that had absolute garbage on it that just wasn't ever going to rank, so I just deleted it and started from scratch.
Thad, so what would you suggest I do with regards to an old website that was setup as an autoblog? I posted a thread on the WA forum about this exact topic and would like to know if I should REMOVE all these "junky" posts, or if I should just leave them be and just start adding quality and unique content... thoughts?
Going to try out Social Monkee today. Interesting how things always go back to basics: the fundamentals, such as giving good value and getting the message out there. I've had one guest writer on my site. He's a renowned expert on feng shui. He's written one article and it's a good one. Guests are a good way to expand your content.
Problogger.net featured a great article on exactly this: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2011/05/04/is-blogger-copyright-dead/ It really doesn't take too much effort for us to take someone else's content and add our own opinion and value to it. Do we agree? What else can be said? What's your take on things? We can just continue the conversation, and that continuation IS our original content! As a matter of principle, I wouldn't put any content on my website that's not mine or that I haven't acquired via paid ghostwriters. And as far as what Klinkert is advertising, I think that instead of trying to get smart at trying to "cheat" Google into thinking you have original content, why not expend some EFFORT into building something that's not going to fail epically in a later Google update? Now that's a radical thought.
Thank you Thad. That sums up my thoughts although of course what you know about websites is still mostly foreign language to me. Just wondered how you viewed Klinkert's latest blog since you're promoting SM. Also just as a matter of interest what content would you allow on your websites that wasn't your own original work?
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The Dressage Husband, excellent comment. What a lot of affiliate marketers, new and old alike, just can't seem to accept is that ANY system that you create to cheat or shortcut the system will end up in Google's crosshairs - unless you keep it quiet and protect it like a hen sitting on her eggs.