Are you content with your content? More importantly is Google?

There’s been a great deal of talk recently about content farms and low-grade website content. Often deployed by Search engine optimisation companies in the form of cheap articles, pointless video, submissions to useless Q&A sites and filler Google fodder, this mind-fill is being churned out in depressingly large quantities. In the States, Demand Media does 5,700 pieces per day, AOL 1,700 per day and Yahoo’s Associated Content pumps out 1,500 pieces per day across sites such as ehow.com, encyclopedia.com, chacha.com and 123people.com

And it’s not just blockbusting American companies churning it out. Rubbish content is being dumped on the web from all angles. Content of precious little value that probably exists in a much better form elsewhere and that adds absolutely nothing to the Internet. Content for content sake that gums up the system and exists purely to rank.

Well now, much in the same way that Google zapped out a whole raft of cheesy directory sites a couple of years back, the content farms now seem to be firmly in Google’s cross-hairs. Interestingly though, they wouldn’t be the first to rid their results of trashy content. Search engine start up Blekko has picked up a lot of coverage (and users) by allowing searchers to mark results as spam and even running a ‘spam clock’ that has so far identified 743 million (and counting) pages of spam on the web.

Says Matt Cutts of Google: “As “pure webspam” has decreased over time, attention has shifted instead to “content farms,” which are sites with shallow or low-quality content. In 2010, we launched two major algorithmic changes focused on low-quality sites. Nonetheless, we hear the feedback from the web loud and clear: people are asking for even stronger action on content farms and sites that consist primarily of spammy or low-quality content.”

Google knows full well that if quality is buried under SEO, users will now use social media to get recommendations from friends and contacts. They HAVE to do deliver relevance. And if you want to make the most of your Internet potential – so do you.

Talk to your SEO agency about how to use sustainable, high quality content to develop your Internet profile and build your business online.