WebProNews

Tag: Suite101

  • Suite101 CEO Writes Open Letter to Google’s Matt Cutts

    Google basically called out Suite101 as the poster child site of what its “Panda” algorithm update was aimed at. Reports have found the site to be one of the hardest hit, and while the site has often been mentioned in the same breath as sites like eHow in the past, eHow has apparently gained from the update.

    When asked about it in a recent Wired interview, Google’s Matt Cutts said, “I feel pretty confident about the algorithm on Suite 101.”

    We had reached out to Suite101 prior to the publication of that article, but only since it was published, have we heard back. A representative for Suite101 pointed us to an open letter to Matt Cutt from CEO Peter Berger, in response to the comments from the Wired piece. Here is a sample of the letter (read the whole thing in its entirety here):

    Peter Berger, CEO of Suitie 101 Talks about SEO , Quality, and the long tailWe have certainly noticed that within the last week Google has stopped sending our content as many readers as it had in the past, resulting in a decline of 30% in overall traffic. We have been working to understand what separates successful content on our site from negatively impacted content, and have also tried to compare how other sites on the web rank for given Google queries.

    We do not get the sense that this “Panda” algorithm update is about filtering out “low quality” content. We do appreciate that Google is constantly trying to improve immediate user relevance for given search queries. That means that Google has to experiment with evaluating measurable properties of content in alternative ways. Engineers might refer to these properties or signals as “quality” (within the context of a given search query), but please do understand that when a representative of Google describes entire sites as “low quality” outside of engineering circles, this can be perceived as insulting by people who associate “quality” rather with an individual piece’s execution, angle and craft, and who have taken great pride in creating it.

    We take it that concise, high quality writing is a signal that Google de-emphasized with its algorithm update. That is a legitimate business decision, even if some of the content we currently publish does not benefit from it. Other factors have become more important, and we will try to understand them, and work to help those of our writers who feel that Google is the best distribution channel for their thoughts to improve their articles.

    For the sake of the web as the rich ecosystem it is, we hope that Google stays committed to:

    * a page-by-page evaluation of the web’s content, emphasizing its actual “content” over its display and polish

    * respect of copyright, diligently ensuring original content is not outranked by scraped content

    * impartiality in terms of content’s ownership, including treating publicly listed corporations’ as well as Google’s own content not differently from the rest of the web

    Another level of depth may be added to this discussion if the word “quality” were more fully defined. “Quality” without much more precisely defining it, especially when the quality mentioned does only seem to be a quality signal relating to a given search query, leaves a lot still misunderstood…

    We spoke with Berger last year, long before this update was realized, but during a time when search quality was really starting to come into question as content farm sites were really on the rise.

    Berger told us, “Every week, several thousand people apply to become Suite101 writers. While we only accept a portion of applicants based on our non-negotiable quality standards, we do have many successful writers on our site who do not consider themselves ‘writers.”
    “We see it as Suite101′s mission to enable people – anyone who can write well and with deep understanding of a subject – to achieve their goals,” he said. “These might be earning money, addressing large audiences, building up a personal professional brand, or simply enjoying creative freedom in a nurturing, peer-oriented environment.”

    Cutts has yet to respond to the letter, at least in the comments section, but it hasn’t been live very long, and Cutts is keeping pretty busy from the sound of things.

  • Can So-Called “Content Farms” Maintain Quality and Reader Trust?

    Sometimes sites like Demand Studios, Yahoo’s Associated Content, AOL’s Seed.com, and Suite101 are called names like "content farms" or "content mills". You can call them whatever you like, but the fact of the matter is that they’re attracting a lot of writers and producing a lot of content, which is appearing in a lot of search results for better or worse. WebProNews had a conversation with Suite101 CEO Peter Berger (who has said Suite101 is not a content farm, by the way) about this industry, how people are interacting with content in different markets, search vs. social media, and more.

    Do you find content from sites like these valuable? Share your thoughts.

    "Search might never be flawless, but it is the superior angle to access the web’s best content for any question a consumer or information seeker has at a given point in time," Berger tells us.

    Sites like Suite101, and those from the others mentioned are largely about "evergreen content" – content that doesn’t lose its usefulness over time. This content tends to cater more to search than to social media, because it often sets out to solve problems users are actively looking to solve, which isn’t necessarily going to be the kind of content they want all their friends to see. Still, social has its place for this kind of content in addition to the more share-friendly stuff. 

    Peter Berger, CEO of Suitie 101 Talks about SEO , Quality, and the long tail"The ongoing development of social media is certainly one of the most significant developments we are seeing on the web right now: the social web is creating incremental opportunities beyond purely search- or destination-centric ways to navigate content," says Berger. "This varies of course by the individual content piece: while a story about the latest soccer match between Madrid and Barcelona may spread like wildfire socially, another, more timeless article on giving childbirth might prosper over longer time horizons as friends tell their friends about it when they need it. And a great manual on how to repair a punctured bicycle tire might never get any social attention, but will help a lot of people searching for immediate help."

    Evergreen content is only as useful as its ability to be trusted, however. That means these sites have to consistently produce quality content that users can trust enough at least to click on and read before establishing a real opinion about it. 

    Look at Wikipedia

    "Wikipedia was probably the first content site that became a search-driven utility the general public is aware of: most web users today possess a concept of what they can and cannot do with Wikipedia definitions in their search results," explains Berger. "New content models like Suite101…and some of our competitors will soon have built a reach that will foster a similar kind of public brand building where users judge web sites purely based on how well and trustworthy past search results helped them achieve their goals."

    "One does not have to go back to the debates around Wikipedia’s content creation model several years ago to predict that content quality will be decisive for our space to win the user trust needed to keep growing to large scale utility status," he says. "We think that the high-touch, editorial model of Suite101, enabling only high quality writers to publish content, is one of the key ingredients to success as our industry matures."

    While sites like these (particularly Demand Media’s offerings) have seen a great deal of criticism over quality, it is for the reasons Berger is talking about that it is in these sites’ best interest to maintain a level of quality so people will not be afraid to click the results in search engines even if they do rank well. 

    Regardless of how any of these sites are perceived (and there is a pretty broad spectrum of perception), they’re certainly attracting the interest of writers looking for money and experts (or those striving to be thought of as experts) looking to build their credibility and brand reputations. 

    "Every week, several thousand people apply to become Suite101 writers," Berger tells us. "While we only accept a portion of applicants based on our non-negotiable quality standards, we do have many successful writers on our site who do not consider themselves ‘writers’. 

    "We see it as Suite101’s mission to enable people – anyone who can write well and with deep understanding of a subject – to achieve their goals," he says. "These might be earning money, addressing large audiences, building up a personal professional brand, or simply enjoying creative freedom in a nurturing, peer-oriented environment."

    Content Interaction in Different Markets

    Suite101 has expanded into several foreign markets, and Berger had some interesting things to say on how people in these markets interact with the site’s content. "After launching versions of Suite101 in German, Spanish and French, with specialized teams and physical offices on the ground, we have learned a great deal about language- and market-specific differences," Berger tells us. "Social signals, for example, gain ground rapidly in all major markets as a factor influencing content usage, and non-English markets prove to be quite receptive."

    "Case in point: our French and Spanish language sites receive a three times greater traffic share from Facebook pages than our English and German sites," he adds. "Third-party referral traffic, on the other hand, is particularly substantial for our German content."

    "But so far we find that the similarities to our North American home market by far outweigh any differences," Berger notes. 

    Monetization

    "The best option to monetize most online content is (and will be for some time) advertising," says Berger. "Advertisers today have sophisticated options to ensure their ads generate impact, which means that monetization varies strongly between subject areas, geographies and sites. At Suite101, we help writers who want to generate significant incomes understand how they can focus their articles on attractive niche opportunities."

    "With the launch of our Spanish site last year, we entered all Latin American advertising markets – all of which currently lag a few years behind the US or German markets, for example, in terms of maturity and general level of monetization," he says. "As e-commerce penetration and advertiser sophistication improve in those markets, Suite101 and its local writers will directly and increasingly benefit from the traffic reach we are creating today."

    Currently, Suite101 is claiming 28 million unique visitors per month. 

    Are sites like Suite101, Demand Studios, Associated Content, and Seed good for the content industry? Tell us what you think. 

    Related: 

    SEO and Quality Key to Competing in the Long Tail
    Suite101 Shares Thoughts on Google/Demand Media Patents 

  • Suite101 Shares Thoughts on Google/Demand Media Patents

    Google was recently granted a patent called "Identifying inadequate search content" that the Financial Times says appears to replicate part of the Demand Media approach to algorithmic content – a style of content production that is becoming increasingly popular among media companies (Yahoo’s acquisition of Associated Content and AOL’s new content strategy to name a couple).

    Bill Slawski at SEO By the Sea has some background on the patent, as well as a patent now filed by Demand Media. Peter Berger, CEO of Suite101, another company targeting the long tail with content, reached out to WebProNews to contribute his thoughts on the subject.

    Peter Berger, CEO of Suitie 101 Talks about SEO , Quality, and the long tail"The Google patent seems to be specific enough to leave enough room for a variety of approaches to identify underserved content areas on the Web, so even if Demand Media’s current algorithm was at risk, it should not be too hard for them to evolve it," he says. "Demand Media’s counter patent applications seem to be very broad – at superficial reading, a lot (if not all) of this will likely have to be classified as prior art as it describes methods that were in use well prior to the filing."

    "The Google patent constitutes a very interesting opportunity if Google has learned its lesson that it works best as an algorithmically-driven enabler and provider, not a content publisher itself: if exploited with the web ecosystem in mind, e.g. as a feed to content publishers, it would open up the opportunity to retrieve better, actionable data from the leading search engine for our entire industry and serve the web much more useful information," he adds. "Looking at the level of investment several companies have made in this field, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this kind of data becoming a commodity soon. Google, as the owner of the most precise data, has an obvious advantage and would be virtually impossible to challenge. And, in this case, sites like Suite101.com can focus on where they have their edge: creating superior, editorial-grade content on any topic people want to read about."

    We’ll leave the judgment of quality up to the readers, but Berger’s comments are interesting, and it will be interesting to see what happens in this growing industry of content.  What do you think?

  • SEO and Quality Key to Competing in the Long Tail

    A while back, WebProNews had a conversation with RateItAll President Lawrence Coburn about how the long tail of search is getting more competitive. Companies like AOL and Demand Media are working on dominating long tail searches with content across a broad scope of article subject matter. We had another conversation with another company that is doing this, called Suite101, which is placing an increased amount of emphasis on SEO to up the competition in this space even more. Suite101 President and CEO Peter Berger took a break from Olympics mania in Vancouver (home of the company’s headquarters) to tell us about it.

    Peter Berger, CEO of Suitie 101 Talks about SEO , Quality, and the long tail "Making sure well-written articles get found online involves continuous hard work and search engine knowledge," says Berger. "We know that in order to help our writers get their stories found, we need to increase our expertise in the area of search." That’s why the company just hired search strategist Aaron Bradley as its SEO Director to implement new SEO tactics across its articles.

    Berger tells WebProNews Suite101 attracts over 25 million unique monthly visitors. The company’s revenue comes from advertising – mainly AdSense, but other networks have been integrated as well. They don’t charge writers fees, but they have a strict submission process. Only 20% of writers are accepted, with 80% being turned away. Writers are required to submit work samples and resumes before being accepted. The first article must be submitted before it goes live, but after that, articles go live and are then reviewed by editors.

    Berger says "quality is key," and is the reason he doesn’t seem too worried about competition from big name brands like AOL. That, and he says most writers want to write for numerous publications, so even if a writer does work for AOL, there’s a good chance they’ll submit to Suite101 as well.

    Presumably Berger is hoping the hiring of Bradley will help with the competition in terms of search engine traffic, the company’s biggest traffic source (though they do see spikes from social media as well). One writer for Suite101 achieved a monthly earnings record of $5,000 for articles published at the site, which splits revenue with its writers. It will be interesting to see how quickly that record is surpassed with the company’s new SEO efforts.

    Naturally, the more quality articles the site is able to obtain, the more content it will have out there in the search engines, and if their SEO efforts are as effective as they hope, they will be getting a lot more eyeballs and clicks on their ads. Berger thinks writers like Suite101 because it’s the "closest" they can et to "actual professional editors in a lot of cases. Quality, he says, is the "key differentiator" between Suite101 and its competitors. 

    There has been a lot of talk about how SEO practices can hinder quality, because you should write for people, and not search engines. Berger thinks they can achieve both.