Eric Kingsbury Business, Innovation, Marketing, Strategy and More.

It’s an old truism of the web that content is king. By content, of course, we mean the textual narrative of a web site, including product descriptions, company information and, of course, articles. The fundamental assumption of the web, dating back to its inception, is that a web page is first and foremost an information vehicle similar to traditional publications such as newspapers, magazines and journals. Think for a moment how printed media metaphors dominate the vocabulary of the web (page, bookmark, etc.). Though content is now broadly defined to encompass video, audio and other digital media, from the perspective of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), textual content still plays the central role.

Textual content remains king because text-based search is how we access the web, and information is generally what we seek. This reality is deeply embedded in the formulae employed by those divinities that pass out search-result crowns, the Search Engines. The on-page component of Google’s Page Rank algorithm returns search results primarily based on a match between the search term and the textual content of the site. The more relevant content you have, the fresher the content is, and the degree to which the content coheres to the overall keyword identity of the site — the higher your site will rank in the search results. And as we all know, a high ranking results in significantly more traffic. And if you’re doing business on the web, more traffic equals more potential revenue.

Though I’m no guru in the SEO/SEM space, and I’m not up to date on all the latest intricacies, I have noticed a shift in emphasis in SEO practice from keyword optimization to content. Specifically articles. Part of the impetus of the shift, from what I can tell, is a series of adjustments Google has made in its Page Rank algorithm to account for the rise of blogging and to counter various “black hat” techniques for manipulating keyword searches. Google adjusted Page Rank to punish various black hat practices and (presumably) put relevant content back in the throne, but given the value of a top-ten search result, new ways to game the system have emerged. The most prevalent seems to be “re-journalism.”

Re-journalism is the practice of revising existing subject-matter articles and posting them on the web in the guise of fresh, original content. To the degree that Google gives search-result preference to sites with a lot of relevant content, sites with fresh content (new content posted frequently) and links to and from a site, re-journalism emphasizes a keyword focus, a sufficient rearrangement of the language and embedded links. It’s now possible to grab a few articles off the web, reshuffle the words, add a few of your own, do some linking to other sites, throw the content up on a WordPress template, and voilá — you can get some Google love.

The net result of this re-journalism frenzy is a lot of reshuffled, rehashed and reformulated content on the web. Much of it fails to plumb even the middle depths of the subjects it treats. Little of it has been fact-checked. Many “spun” articles contain and repeat errors from the original. Little of this content includes credit or citations to other authors.

The practice of re-journalism has inspired in me a range of reactions, which are probably rather typical of anyone who might think about the issues involved. Is it right? Is it wrong? Is it evil? Google’s informal motto, after all, is “Don’t be evil.” Have they spawned a final debasement of journalistic ethics? Or of artistic integrity — of originality, in short, of the value of original creative work?

The old English major in me is appalled by the loss of respect for authorship, for original content. Does the web really need more regurgitated, redundant content? The latent cultural critic in me tells me to relax, remember my literary theory courses and Roland Barthes — the idea of the “author” has been dead for years. And finally, the businessman in me watches with fascination as the web bubbles up another micro-industry.

Yes, re-journalism is simply one of web marketing’s new micro-industries. No matter how much you might view article rewriting as plagiarism of the most base kind, SEO mavens will insist that you miss the picture. Everyone in the business knows what the re-journalism game is about, and none of them think it’s about traditional journalism or the integrity of one’s original ideas. In fact, much of this content was created with the specific intent that it be spun, rehashed and republished by others.

Re-journalism is a business now. The freelance job boards are filled now with ads looking for article rewriters by the hundreds. There are ads at freelancer.com, for example, calling for rewriters who can do 10 or 20 articles a day. There’s an ad looking for 5,000 articles of 350 words in two months’ time. Each article pays around a dollar, it seems, and none of it needs to be completely original. Just original enough to boost a site on Google so that search visitors can find a product or service.

It’s a business, but so is selling academic papers to students. Is re-journalism ethical? Can Google stop it? Should it try?

A final question is whether the rise of re-journalism has completed a shift in the nature of the web that some say has been coming for some time. Is content still the king that search serves, or have the roles reversed? And if so, is that a good thing?

I’ve been reading and thinking a lot lately about the relatively new discipline of Business Design. Simply put, Business Design is the development of business models. It’s a holistic kind of architecture that takes in all of a company’s operations and seeks to create new ways of structuring the organization in order to better compete in the marketplace.

And what is a business model? To quote David Weston’s book Business Models: Investing in Companies and Sectors with Strong Competitive Advantage, “A business model describes a company’s operations, including all of its components, functions and processes, which result in costs for itself and value for its customers.”

I’m admittedly marketing-oriented, so to me, a business model can be boiled down to how you set up your operation in terms of the marketing imperatives of creating and delivering value to the customer. Obviously, you’ll want a business model that allows you to turn a profit, and more importantly, you’ll want a business model that delivers superior value to your customers (superior to your competitors, that is). Your business model, ideally, should also provide important strategic benefits such as differentiation and barriers to competition.

If you read the business press, you’ll note that business models, and Business Design, are hot topics today. They’re hot because they provide opportunities to innovate and grow your business. The potential is so huge that business model re-engineering has the potential to completely disrupt industries. And disruptive innovation itself can create tremendous barriers to competition, because you can simply change the playing field to your advantage.

As a classic example we all know, Blockbuster had a traditional retail business model — you drove to a store, rented a DVD and returned it later. As a customer, you had the benefit of a movie at home, but you also had all the baggage that went with the model — membership, driving, products out of stock and most of all, late fees.

Netflix, on the other hand, invented a new model, and it wasn’t just an online Blockbuster. The new subscription model — you pay only a monthly fee and get new videos when you return the previous ones — solved consumer pains by eliminating late fees, out of stocks and the inconvenience of driving. This kind of business model insight is at the heart of marketing — understand what consumers value and engineer an offer and organization that delivers it in a superior way. Netflix understood that customers didn’t want just a DVD, but wanted a home movie experience with as little hassle as possible. A simple insight, but highly disruptive when the right model was developed. It killed one big business and built another in its place. That’s the power of Business Design.

Given the primacy of value creation and delivery in the discipline of Business Design, I have begun to think of it in new terms. I call it “Value Architecture.” I would even go so far as to say the new marketing imperative is Value Architecture — we must understand intimately what the customer values and create (or modify) the overall business model in order to create and deliver that value in a superior way. Even if it means giving up organizational sacred cows and traditional market or industry assumptions.

I’ll be developing this idea further in the future, but look around and ask yourself if the old differentiators (technology, quality, service) have reached a parity point in your industry. The only way forward for many businesses may be innovation in the business model. Marketers, with their close connection to customer insight, have a unique opportunity today if they embrace their role as “value architects.”