“How do I create a high quality content farm?”

That’s the billion dollar question eHow answers. More than changing a fuse or installing an operating system, the knowledge database, full of instructive articles targeted at specific Google keywords, tells the world how to build a network of SEO-designed content – without suffering at the hands of Google’s ever-changing algorithm.

Indeed, Search Engine Watch points out that eHow attracted 54 million unique visitors in May 2012, higher than their 49.8 million visitors from March – an increase that spanned the arrival of Google’s Penguin.

Demand Media describes their work:

“Our innovative studios listen closely to millions of consumers, then create the relevant content they’re asking for.”

But if a site can use a team of freelance writers to create a massive infrastructure of interlinked articles to generate traffic, which critics allege are of “low quality”, does that mean we can all get away with it?

Long before joining Lead Galaxy’s team, I myself tried writing some content for eHow. Since then, users have been prevented from submitting their own articles to the site, leaving the content creation to a (very large) pool of experienced writers, of which I am presumably still a member. Each piece of content is then revised and edited multiple times to ensure the quality is good – or, at least, good enough to satisfy Google.

As a result, the traffic figures keep pointing upwards. So is eHow pointing the way to a new SEO approach?

SEW did some interesting research into the area:

Web search interest in “how to” has doubled in the past five years, while web search interest in “news” and “reviews”, by comparison, has remained relatively flat, according to Google Insights for Search. And web search interest in “how to” is forecast by Google Insights for Search to continue growing over the next 12 months.

Whether or not you believe that “content farms” can have high quality content, it’s certainly worth thinking about writing a few more “how to” articles – and eHow have already got the first one all sewn up.