Creating an AutoBlog for SEO purposes

[ITMDB]

Is creating an autoblog for SEO purposes a good idea? It wouldn't be one of those blogs that steal content or spin crappy articles. But more of a news type blog, takes the content and links back to the original source. Each post would contain the rel=canonical tag to avoid duplicate content.

I wouldn't monetize the site, just use it as a method of driving targeted traffic to my main blog (see signature link)

I'm only asking as I have seen a few articles online about this and I wondered whether this is actually a good method of driving traffic.

 

[PTTed]

I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to do with this autoblog?

Are you trying to create the autoblog so that you will have a site under your control that you can then use to link back to your money site?

or

Are you trying to create an autoblog that gets its own traffic and then divert that traffic to your site?

or

Are you trying to do something else? Please explain it more or clarify what you mean.

 

[ITMDB]

Sorry, the first option

If the blog is set of into the internet completely automated (again no copied content) would it be usable as a link back to my money site? Also if its in a similar niche to my money site and traffic sent from it would be targeted.

 

[PTTed]

PTTed

Okay. Gotcha.

Couple things:

1) That autoblog is very unlikely to generate any meaningful amount of traffic by itself. It will very likely be a complete waste of your time. These worked much better before Google Panda came out. I used them before and after Panda. I consider them a complete waste of time now and have felt that way for at least a couple years.

2) As a link source - if you push enough PageRank to the autoblog and you funnel that PageRank to one page on the autoblog and then link from that page to your site then yes it could be a good link. Here is the problem with doing that. In order to get PageRank for that autoblog you will either have to buy it by buying links or else you will have to engage in a massive webspam campaign. Neither one of those is an awesome option in this scenario in my opinion.

If you want to have a site under your control that links back to your site, then that is a totally fine idea assuming you are going to keep it under Google's radar. However, don't bother using an autoblog for that. You can use Web 2.0 blogs for that. You don't need to publish many pages on them. A handful of pages will do. And you can produce decent content for a handful of pages can't you?

Or go buy yourself some expired domains that already have link juice. Add content to them and link back to your site. Still a better option than the autoblog.

Or go launch a new domain and publish decent content on it (again you don't need much - a handful of pages will do) and then juice that website up by getting PageRank for it however you can. I will leave that up to you - wink wink.

Or go publish a guest blog post on someone else's website with a link back to your money site. Then go push some PageRank at that guest blog post without using massive webspam. You could use webspam but you will probably piss off the owner of that blog and you might end up nuking his site in the process. So don't bother.

If you really want to go the autoblog route, then setup a system where you publish unique content to the blog that is indexable even though it has very little PageRank. Then use internal links within that site to funnel the PageRank where you want it to go (to one specific page). Then link back to your site from there.

In all honesty though, there is no reason to engage in webspam at all anymore or to use spinners to create unique content or use autoblogs or anything like that. Some people choose to do it that way and it works for them and that is okay if you choose that path. But don't feel like you have to do that in order to get rankings. There are other ways like the ways I mentioned and then some. You really don't need a crap ton of links to rank well unless you are targeting very competitive keywords. And don't bother doing that until you have enough experience to do it with some confidence.

Just my opinion. Others have different ones I am sure.

 

[paulgl]

Is creating an autoblog for SEO purposes a good idea? It wouldn't be one of those blogs that steal content or spin crappy articles. But more of a news type blog, takes the content and links back to the original source. Each post would contain the rel=canonical tag to avoid duplicate content.

I wouldn't monetize the site, just use it as a method of driving targeted traffic to my main blog (see signature link)

I'm only asking as I have seen a few articles online about this and I wondered whether this is actually a good method of driving traffic.

It could be a good idea if you can update more articles on these blogs (it is not quite a auto blog) but how many articles are you going to update to?

What is link building strategy for these blogs? on free blog platforms (wordpress, blogger) or on your own domains?

 

[Nemanja]

If you want to have a site under your control that links back to your site, then that is a totally fine idea assuming you are going to keep it under Google's radar. However, don't bother using an autoblog for that. You can use Web 2.0 blogs for that. You don't need to publish many pages on them. A handful of pages will do. And you can produce decent content for a handful of pages can't you?

Web 2.0 blogs are very hard to develop and getting good traffic because it has more disadvantages if compared with a self blog. Even if you want to get backlinks from web 2.0 then they are very weak and are a waste of time and money.

Or go publish a guest blog post on someone else's website with a link back to your money site. Then go push some PageRank at that guest blog post without using massive webspam. You could use webspam but you will probably piss off the owner of that blog and you might end up nuking his site in the process. So don't bother.

Yes guest blog post is a good way to improve SEO rankings but to be honest it is not easy to have blog posts on other websites, or you have to pay for that.