A content farm, also referred to as a content mill, is a site that offers a very large amount of content in order to rank for numerous queries. This type of site, which can also be found on social media, is specially created to generate maximum revenue from advertising (commercial links, affiliate marketing, etc.).
These websites are quite similar to link farms, which have a link building strategy based on the massive publication of links. The difference is that link farms generally don’t offer any content.
What distinguishes a classic site from a content farm is mainly the quality of the content offered.
In order to rank for as many queries as possible, content farms regularly publish a large number of articles, generally of low quality. It’s not just the volume that’s important, but also the choice of subjects to ensure the best possible match with internet users’ searches.
Content farms are part of the black hat SEO techniques used to rapidly acquire significant traffic and thus increase a site's sales. They are distinguished from classic editorial sites by the following:
- Nature of their traffic: content farms obtain most of their traffic through SEO (search engine optimization), particularly for long-tail queries. No other marketing levers are used.
- Editorial strategy: to publish a maximum amount of content with high traffic potential, the editorial line is dictated by Google search trends. Some content farms can publish several hundred or even several thousand articles a day.
- Content quality: published articles are often quite short and of average quality. Unlike traditional editorial sites using effective content marketing strategies, they aren’t intended to provide relevant information to web users or to optimize a brand’s image. In fact, content is often written by volunteer contributors or even by automated content creation tools.
Content farms may seem like a good strategy for making quick money from advertising. However, Google’s algorithms favor sites with high added-value content and therefore tend to hunt down low-quality content, over-optimization with the use of exact match domains, and backlinks. That’s why these sites are gradually disappearing from the web.
