In the early 2000s, certain website owners began using deceitful tactics, such as link exchanges, invisible keywords, and meta tags, to trick search engines like Google into ranking their sites higher. These websites were often filled with ads and offered little to no valuable content. However, when Google updated its algorithms, these scammers turned to content farming, which involved hiring poorly paid freelance writers to rewrite existing articles. This resulted in a plethora of low-quality, barely readable content flooding the internet.
As the publisher of Hypergrid Business, I regularly receive numerous offers from content farms for guest posts. However, I always mark them as spam and delete them. Any email containing keywords like “SEO,” “100 percent unique,” and “Copyscape protected” inevitably ends up in the trash. These spammy articles provided no new information and were solely created to generate revenue from ads.
Unfortunately, some legitimate business owners fell into this trap as well. Believing that they needed to game the system to drive traffic to their websites, they resorted to buying meaningless content from content farms instead of creating genuinely useful and valuable content based on their company’s expertise.
These tactics backfired when search engines caught on, and these business owners and website editors were pushed further down in search rankings. They had to put in even more effort to regain their previous positions.
Content farms can be likened to crash diets – they may appear to work initially, but in the end, you’re left worse off than before, seeking the next quick fix or SEO solution. Instead of focusing on short-term gains, it is essential to prioritize creating genuine, valuable content that caters to your audience’s needs and preferences.
While AI can be a valuable tool in organizing information into readable form, AI content farms have become a new problem. These farms churn out articles with titles like “10 top ways to cook with chicken,” yet lack any fresh insights or value. They are simply a cheaper and faster version of the old content farm junk, now produced by AI.
These articles are easily generated by asking AI tools like ChatGPT to write on a specific topic, resulting in countless variations of the same article. Companies have been built around this concept, but they provide nothing more than generic, repetitive, and useless content. The fact that these posts can pass AI detection tools is irrelevant because they still offer no value.
Google does not differentiate between content written by AI or humans; its main concern is whether the content adds value. Therefore, falling for the quick fix of AI content farms will not benefit your website in the long run. It is important to focus on providing unique perspectives, personal experiences, and brand-new information that hasn’t been seen elsewhere.
If you genuinely need assistance with writing articles, you can consider using AI or hiring freelance writers. However, the emphasis should always be on creating valuable content rather than churning out more meaningless fluff. Avoid vendors who promise “SEO content” and concentrate on delivering quality instead.
As for me, I will add the term “guaranteed to pass AI detection tests” to my spam filter to avoid any more frustrating encounters with AI content farm offers.