Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo recently gave advice to his fellow content farm competitors. “The one rule of working with Google is don’t make them look stupid.”
Mahalo has revised their content farm game, out of necessity. The fear of getting hand-picked and black-listed by Google has made Calacanis rethink his whole approach to content optimization. It’s not just about tricking users anymore. It’s about being useful for users. Now, Mahalo is spending hundreds or thousands on every page of their site, filling it with useful, educational content. The exact content Google wants its users to stumble upon.
Now, here’s the reality. Mahalo probably wouldn’t have had this change of heart unless they had to – they were seeing other content farms get slapped. “But I can sleep at night again,” Calacanis says.