Fantomaster had a great comment about whether automated content generation is moral:

I don't really get the "moral dilemma". Would you say the same about press releases, product announcements, ads, commented statistical tables and other forms of corporate droidspeak? And if not - why not?

I mean, it's not as if the Web as a whole were particularly dominated by high end literary prose, deeply suggestive well crafted poetry or similar feats of human creativity.

And, when you think of it, what is Mahalo but a human compiled scraper? Why is it ok that the WSJ publishes auto-generated looking advertorials? Thompson, like search engines, already produces automated content.

Journalistic integrity matters most to those who need you to believe others are unethical for their business models to work.

Spyjax allows you to view the browsing history of website visitors. You upload a list of competing URLs and see which ones the browser visited before visiting your site, which can be used to let you know what competing sites people typically visit before seeing your site. By tracking this, you can replicate the features and/or marketing strategy of other well visited sites and move yourself earlier into the buy cycle.

Danny Sullivan's recently made a post highlighting the downside of human review for search engines:

[Tim] Mayer reminded that what's relevant for a query can often change over time. Google's Udi Manber, vice president of engineering, made similar remarks when I spoke with him about human-crafted results when I was visiting at Google yesterday.

One example he pointed out was how Google's human quality reviewers -- people that Google pays to provide a human double-check on the quality of its results, so they can then better tune the search algorithm -- started to downgrade results for [cars] when information about the movie Cars started turning up. The algorithm had picked up that the movie was important to that term before some of the human reviewers were aware of it.

Obviously human review is used at all major search engines, but even when outsourcing reviews humans have limits just like with producing content. Even if Google has 10,000 quality raters those people can only be trained to find and rate certain things.

Dan Thies recently launched his new SEO Fast Start book. You can download the PDF here, or sign up for his updates and join his community here. His guide is 100 pages long and aimed mostly at beginners, but it also covers a bit more, and as his community develops he will continue to give away more content in more formats. His book is generally quite straightforward and easy to understand. He wrote it in a way that is big picture oriented such that it won't need to be updated too frequently. His section on dynamic linking is worth a read. It mentions that by creating an internal navigational structure that places more PageRank deeper into a site, typically most sites will get more traffic than a site with a link navigation scheme that is top heavy (I have been reviewing a number of sites recently and this is a large recurring issue). He recommended using GSiteCrawler to generate sitemaps, and OptiSpider to view the internal link structure of larger sites.

You can see how OptiSpider compares a page's topic to what the internal links say the page is about by looking at the below picture.

Probably the only part of Dan's book that I don't agree with is on is his advice on how to use nofollow. Some of the advice, like add nofollow on all of the links that point to other sites, unless you have agreed to a direct link for some reason seems a bit aggressive to me. A web that consisted only of paid or nepotistic links would not be a web worth being on.

I don't like using nofollow on most (or all) outbound links for three major reasons

• If something is worth mentioning then I think it is worth mentioning to both people and search bots.

• I think excessive use of nofollow carves up the web, leaving scars in it and making it more wounded for those who use it.
• What was once white hat became gray then black. There is nothing saying that search engines won't eventually penalize sites for excessive or manipulative use of no follow. Just how nofollow magically made paid links evil one day, so might excessive use of nofollow the day Google realizes how damaging it is to the web.

Update: Dan describes what he meant about the use of Nofollow in a comment below, and further clarified his take on nofollow here.

I have been writing too many in theory type posts, so here is a post offering many practical tips to increase productivity and lower your site development costs.

Site Ideas

If you have a deep interest in a particular market or understand some general macro-trends (online or offline) that gives you a big advantage over others in choosing what to make a site about.

You can track memes. See what is hot on blogs, on Google's hot keywords, or the Yahoo! Buzz Index. You can track retail. See what is hot on Amazon or eBay. You can track advertising. Look at top performers inside ad networks or affiliate networks like CJ, Linkshare, ClickBank, Azoogle Ads, or Performics. Also, if you see ads that are highly off target (like auto ads on a site about recipes) it probably means that ad buyers in that industry are hungry for ad inventory.

I also like to look at sites like Elance or ScriptLance to see what kinds of projects other people are creating. Also look at some of the past projects from some of the better service providers to find rich markets.

Buying a Domain Name

Go to PsychicWhois to look for names in related fields. If you can get an exact match keyword .net or .org domain for $8 it might be worth registering it. If you are aiming for a local market your local .co.uk or .ca might be a nice buy too.

Beyond that, there are some free tools that try to generate name permutations, like NameBoy, and a couple (fairly inexpensive) firms that do this were recently mentioned in the comments section on my interview of Frank Schilling. GrabaGoodDomain and PickyDomains cost from $50 to $100 (as of writing this).

Sites like Afternic, BuyDomains, Sedo, and Fabulous offer domains for sale for set prices, while SnapNames, Pool, TDNam, and Sedo (again) sell domains at auction. A couple years ago Mike Davidson wrote an article about buying expiring domain names.

At domain auctions the domains tend to typically go for fairly affordable prices. The .net and .org prices are fairly reasonable because many of the top auctions are based on some multiple of type in value. If the .com names seem a bit more mainstream they can get really expensive unless you have a strong monetization model or a large passive revenue stream. Frank Schilling mentioned that he paid 140x yearly earnings for SnoringCure.com, (over $8,000). Prices can vary widely though. A .net or .org or a URL with keywords in an alternate order may go way cheaper.

If you are creating a new word or brand it is best to get the .com of it, but if the .com is already registered and not much is being done with it yet you might be better off going with a .org or .net and using the price differential for site design, content development, and marketing.

Remember that once you start developing a name many of the associated costs (site design, content, market, etc.) are the same if you have a good name or a bad one. Eventually a good name should be able to pay for itself through lower recurring marketing costs.

Website Design

Some people are graphically inclined while being bad at coding. Working with a bad site design wastes time and may kill your interest in a project. Requiring the designer to produce quality workable code or turning design into a 2 step process might make it more manageable. You can pay one person to create the graphics and use a company like psd2html.com to convert the design into code can keep design costs low while keeping the code usable.

Themespress is a $10 service that can convert your code into a Wordpress blog template.

Another great design option is to just get a free blog template or free site template, then buy a logo from an affordable source. You can buy the logos from logo designers like The Logo Company or Logo Design Works, contests in design forums, or outsourcing sites like Elance or Scriptlance.

Content Development

Cloak Affiliate Links

By cloaking affiliate links through your .htaccess file or a PHP jump script it makes it easy to change affiliate partners if merchants change networks or payout levels.

Dynamic Development

I like using dynamic programing or server side includes to make it easy to change sections of a site without having to edit pages one page at a time. For example, many of my new sites have blank server side includes where the ads go. When the site gets some good traction ads magically appear.

Track Your Progress

Install a tracking script to track your progress to see what keywords you are ranking for and where you need to do more work. If certain sections of your site are more profitable than others make sure to over-represent them in your internal link profile.

How to Write Content:

You can find writers from sites like Craigslist, popular industry forums, look for local college students, or people who are already blogging about your topic. Six keys to profitable content development

• use content as a marketing strategy: as noted here

• segregate content quality: make sure features rock. make the other content good enough to pass a hand check and lead to conversions
• grow your content in proportion to your link equity
• don't display ads so aggressively that people will never link at your site
• focus the content pages on inbound links and subscriber acquisition...show few ads on them
• focus the conversion oriented pages on conversion :)

Email

Use Gmail or some other service that makes it easy to tag, archive, and search your email. I have been a bit behind on email recently, but hope to be catching up in the next couple weeks.