The Automated Web – It’s here to stay

I continually debate different methods of automotive seo with a close friend of mine that I met online.  He is against automation in principal for seo purposes and for the most part I am too.  A completely organic presence from content and developing linking partners is really the best way to avoid any kind of penalties from the search engines.  However that is not how the web works.

Especially in automotive automation is the key.  Most of the true authority sites, as far as marketing dealers inventory, rely on automation.  Autotrader.com, Cars.com and AOL Autos would not exist in their current form if it were not for automation.  The very basic fact that they aggregate information that is already available online by pulling feeds of dealers inventory mixed with some basic unique content that is basically repurposed reviews.

Even big players such as Google and Commission Junction facilitate the ability to create automated content via their affiliate networks by providing product data feeds to affiliate marketers.  Which allows them to build out complete websites with little or no original content.

The automated web is here to stay, it will be around for as long as I am alive.  Blogging is replacing some of the automation that is so prevalent however it will never eclipse the amount of content that is produced daily in an automated fashion.

We have been working on ways to tie automation into blogging platforms to help dealers sell more cars, a good example of this is a site we built targeting Texas direct auto auctions.  We are pulling in feeds from ebay and interspersing original content to keep our content unique.  This is not the only type of automated content we are testing however we are not ready to share it at this point in time.  We will compile data through the end of the year and publish a case study outlining our successes and failures.