Until Google gets a better hold on sites like Mahalo from Jason Calacanis, there will remain a huge hole for thin, aggregated type sites. This is not new as you without a doubt have heard of WP Robot and most recently the Keywords To Websites Wordpress plugin by Mark of the old site 45n5.com fame. A few of my readers pestered me a while back to buy WP Robot and I have been playing with it on the side after several full site revamps of mine. It is quite an intriguing plugin, especially with the recent addon modules of Commission Junction listings, Shopzilla comparisons and Twitter tweets.
The difference between thin and aggregated type sites can be a little confusing. The more unlinked text the better, the more aggregated from different sources the better, but all in all if you think about it, they both are thin and both are aggregated or scraped so to speak. The Keywords To Websites plugin I bought a few days ago when I saw it on the Warrior Forum and while it is a bit on the crude side and clunky, it does build as advertised and I expect Mark will slowly evolve it on along.
Now with the sudden popularity of this plugin on the Warrior Forum and the WP Robot plugin now in full swing for a while, you can only imagine how quick the web will inundated with these type of sites. Will they earn? Will they stay in the index? These are the biggest questions. I can attest that WP Robot sites earn, especially if you feed these into Twitter and other sites and backlink with spun articles. The newer Keywords To Websites plugin just has not been out long enough to get a long running test on, but it is, what it is in appearance. It is pretty straight forward.
The key with any of what we will call "auto blogs" and "turnkey keyword aggregated sites" is to try to make them as unique as possible. Sounds like an oxymoronic statement I know, but hang with me. To do this, I suggest adding the SEO Search Terms Tagging 2 plugin and Recent Searches widget for starters that I talked about not long ago. I like to set the SEO Search Terms Tagging 2 plugin to not be linked either, just the text only. In addition, the Twitter for WordPress plugin works well as a widget and you can show Tweets in the sidebar.
The basic plugins like the XML Sitemap Generator, Privacy Policy and Easy Contact are a must as well as free. The Sitemap Generator Plugin for Wordpress is also recommended by me, but not a must. You may seriously think about linking out in a sidebar Blogroll to like sites or reputable authority sites like Wikipedia pages or eHow pages in addition. This shows you are trying to link out to reputable sites to provide a better user experience. This will help a bit in getting it to look like a little more unique in nature as well.
No one likes to hear this part, but if you can throw up 4-10 pages of truly unique content or article type pages, it can help. Also perhaps a news page that aggregates several of the niche headlines using the Yoast RSS short code plugin as well. Just adds one more page that others likely will not go to the trouble to do.
If using WP Robot you can shoot the RSS feed out using Ping.fm and the WP Syndicate plugin that I talked about here recently. In fact the WP Syndicate plugin was just updated and now automatically post to the exterior sites once a post is published where as before you had to push a button in the admin. Everything now goes automatically. A few spun articles using the Best Spinner and through the Article Ranks Network and SEO Link Vine, which I have long advertised and sit back and cross your fingers.
Do I advocate building your whole site profile this way? Absolutely not. In fact I would start small and watch what does and does not work and how the SERPS respond to your setup. If you are going to do a ton of these sites, you better be on a VPS server and not a shared server as you will be expelled quickly if you try to run a ton of these type of sites. Just a warning up front. If you buy either through my links and need a quick one and one just let know. WP Robot is easier than the videos make it out to be. lol. I tried to watch them and my head nearly exploded. Once I just installed and played with it, it was easy to understand.
These sites are what they are. Crap, for the most part. It is just another way to build sites. The lazy folks love it, but you have to wonder about their long term life. If you are looking for long term, you need to build a traditional content heavy, review type site or authority blog site. These crap sites can make money and the more you can get them embedded in exterior 2.0 sites and social media type sites and less reliant on Google, the better off you will be when Google decides they have had enough of the Calacanis type sites.
As I always preach, the more natural you can look and the less you can look like what every lazy niche site builder is trying to do, the better chance you have to stick around a while. If you expect to do anything right out of the box and expect it to stick like the 1000's of other webmasters are doing with either of these products, you are better off not buying either. There is a Keywords To Websites Coupon Code that will save you 30 bucks. Just type use coupon code WSO at checkout to get the discount.
2 comments:
Does the KTW plugin auto blog? What is the difference of the two?
@Anonymous It has a feature where you can choose a start date and all keyword posts will be approx. 24 hours apart from the date you choose, with a randomized post time. You will see this on the right side of the setup page in admin. I have only set sites up with the full site creation method thus far. If you are wanting an auto blog, I can tell you you will like WP Robot better. I think of this Keywords To Websites plugin as more of a turn key complete site builder. I have not tried it as a full auto blogging platform as of yet, but not saying that it can't do it. I have used WP Robot long enough now that I know it does auto blogging fine.
Dave
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