Articles and what to do with them
-
I realise there is a wealth of information out there regarding content etc. But Im getting slightly confused about what to do with my articles for my site.
Each week we have 3 articles written, 2 x 300 word articles and 1 x newsletter
The question is what the heck do i do with these I apologies but I'm so confused.
Do I publish them to my site?
Get them on a blog?
Publish them on a forumHow many times do i get them published and whats the best way, and after all this , is this the right thing that Iam doing, and what else can i do to
a) attract back links with this content
b) get it published
c) get google to index this and benefit from the contentsorry if this has been repeated , but different people/companies offering different advice.
Thanks
-
nick I have had similar problems with "experts" in this field. Everything's expensive and is most probably not going to work out the way the expected. So far I have had more help in moz than any seo company has provided. I just keep reading and it's starting to get better. It's no fun being screwed over repeatedly but it seems to be a right passage as a webmaster.
-
Keri asked an extremely important question....
You probably know that the niche you are in is ultra super competitive. So what I said in my first answer to you will apply......
** If you are in a competitive niche I think that this much work is not going to move the needle for you at all. Why? Anybody who is serious about winning is spending way more effort.**
-
Thanks for your answer , but me deciding and deciding wrong costs me money at the end of the day. Hence why I'm asking
-
yes , its ended up one big mash up , needs an overhaul but so scared of losing rankings and money we are in a mess
-
Are you speaking of the site that's listed in your Moz profile?
-
Ok the reason i wrote this is because I'm getting mixed messages and still as above , people contradict each other.
You can decide "what" you want to believe or "who" you want to believe.... or a combination of the two.
Offers of ... "quick".... "easy".... "cheap".... Are going to be the wrong offer 99% of the time.
-
Hi Nick,
Would be happy to take a look at your site see if there is anything we can do for you.
Good thing about the digital age you can always bounce back!
-
i would be willing to pay for some help , but we have had some really bad experiences.
one company took our adwords account and ruined it , we were getting 40 apps a day and they managed to being it down to three , then blamed the world and its daughters .
we have employed an seo company who in three weeks has emailed us once ??
we employed an affiliate company , world leader who charged us a fortune to get 20 enquires a month and they blamed the world too.
Google changes have messed our home page , we don't know why as there have been so many changes to google we have lost the will to live.
Want to cry really
-
Glad it helped, if you're finding openers are not working out you could look into your subject lines or the content or the emails, unfortunately it can happen. It's like SEO just keep playing with it until you find that sweet spot.
-
Ok the reason i wrote this is because I'm getting mixed messages and still as above , people contradict each other.
If we take a vanilla site and pack it full of 1000 articles and blogs and its about "pickled eggs" , i understand google will index this, but will it give my site any importance with zero back links ??? and therefore will my content be sat there getting no visits ?
Great tip about the newsletters , will be using that from now on, normally we send a full article to our 40k news readers.
however only 5% open the email which is heart breaking -
Don't forget you can have a "sign up for news letter option" and then you can even start to build up some email lists of people who are engaged in your brand. you can use the likes of mail chimps to send for nearly no cost.
It can be a great way to announce new articles or new items on sale or for sale etc. There are some really great tips above though so this is just another helpful bit of advice.
-
You can talk with your customers, and talk with the person/people who talk with your customers. What questions do they get all the time? Write content about that! You'll have content for the web that meets the needs of your users, and you'll free up time of the staff that deals with the customers. Some of the posts on the Moz blog have come about because an author has answered the same question so many times in Q&A that they wanted to write a blog post on it, then be able to just give people a link to that post as the answer.
-
If you give your content to other websites that will place them in competition with you. This feeds existing competitors and creates new ones. It also creates duplicate content in the search engines that can result in your site being filtered from the results or demoted with a panda problem.
Your goal should be create a site that is a unique source of value. If you give your value away then nobody needs to visit your website.
You are going to receive conflicting advice on this. I hope that you have the strength of mind to build a site of unique value.
-
Hi Nick,
The question you have is one of the most basic questions that even seasoned SEO's don't have a perfect answer for. But I would like to compliment you for the fact that you are moving in the right direction.
The primary goals you have mentioned are different in nature and would need different strategies:
a) attract back links with this content - If this is your main goal then this article should rather go on high visibility forums and websites related to your niche. If the content is engaging enough and is crisp you can exploit social media too. However unless you are a product based company or fall into categories of Sports / Music & Entertainment / Arts & Photography / News & Media / Deals & Promotions , chances are that even the best written content won't be able to generate too much traction on social media.
b) get it published - By getting it published, if your objective is outreach, use some good PR sites like http://www.sbwire.com or http://www.prweb.com . If you have a decent budget I would recommend writing high quality content and spending to get proper exposure through high visibility PR distribution sites. While more is always better, every business has limitations in terms of resource allocation for indirect marketing methods such as content generation, your best strategy would be to produce high quality unique content that has the capability to grab eyeballs and shares. Please do not forget to make all links no-follow in your press release.
c) get google to index this and benefit from the content - Google indexes everything unless specifically denied access to using no-index tag. Remember a golden rule for content creation, create your content keeping end users in mind not google. Google by default would pass authority to content that is perceived well by your audience. That's what google is trying to refine over the years, make search result relevant for consumers.Let's say for example you write an article keeping google indexing and authority in mind and (without going into details) you manage to rank 1 on google search results for the targeted keywords. Now when traffic comes on to your website, and they don't find this content relevant to their search, all you would see is a high bounce rate on the website and no conversions, which I don't think could be the goal for any legitimate business.
So I would strongly recommend that you need to analyse your requirements based on goals and then develop content accordingly.
I hope my little explanation is of use to you. Please feel free to send me any questions you may have.
Wish you luck and success.
Regards,
Prateek Chandra
-
I spend almost zero time link building. Instead, I spend that time on more or better content.
Most people spend almost zero time on content and all of their time on linkbuilding.
Which website do you think will be the most successful? You know where I am placing my bets.
-
Thank you that's very informative, do we need to link in content creation with link building .
or is link building dead ?
Thanks for for spending the time
-
Each week we have 3 articles written, 2 x 300 word articles and 1 x newsletter
First, I am glad that you are making content and working to get a plan for using it effectively.
I don't know who you are competing against... but 900 words a week is not going to do much in most niches. If you are in a competitive niche I think that this much work is not going to move the needle for you at all. Why? Anybody who is serious about winning is spending way more effort.
If what you can afford to do is about 900 words a week, I would make one 900 word article with great photos and graphics and publish that on my own site. My newsletter would include a one paragraph teaser for this artlcle that the subscribers can click through to see the whole thing on your website.
Look for content that you are already making and get twice the use out of it. When someone writes an email to you with a question, write them a fantastic reply and then beef it up to a nice article.
I run a three person office. We have two people working 90% of their time on content and another person who takes care of orders, inventory, shipping, just about everything else. Most of our content is going up for adsense but we also solicit some retail sales through a small store on the site and a couple of niche retail sites.
Try to double your effort on content and when you can do that try to increase it a little more.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google displays multiple titles for same article. What does this mean?
I've linked to some screenshots so that it what I'm talking about makes more sense. Sometimes, when I perform a search, I see an article with the correct article title listed as the page title in the SERPs. Other times, I see the wrong page title – it's a generic somethin' or other done by my client's web design company with a bunch of keywords thrown in. The latter (not the correct article title) also appears at the top of the browser tab for every article on my client's site. I know this is bad, but what can be done about it? This would never happen if my client used Wordpress or some easily modifiable CMS, but they're using a proprietary one maintained by the group that designed the website. open?id=0BxB_dYL1ylGgVVF1dHlwdXp2dFU open?id=0BxB_dYL1ylGgdWJjdlJoRlRIR00
Technical SEO | | Greenery0 -
Internal duplicated content on articles, when is too much?
I have an automotive rental blog with articles that explain the pros of renting a specific model. So in this articles the advantages of rental versus the buying of a new model. This advantages are a list with bullets like this:
Technical SEO | | markovald
Rental | Buy new car
Rental:
Free car insurance
Free assistance
etc.
Buy new car
You have to pay insurance
You have to pay assistance
etc. etc. I want to do this because i want to make all articles like landing pages...
This "advantages box" have 100 characters. The general length of articles on my blog is 500/600 characters. So i have an average of 15/20% internal duplicated content on all my articles. Is this bad for seo? Any alternatives?0 -
An article we wrote was published on the Daily Business Review, we'd like to post it on our site. What is the proper way?
Part 1
Technical SEO | | peteboyd
We wrote an article and submitted it to the Daily Business Review. They published the article on their website. We want to also post the article on our website for our users but we want to make sure we are doing this properly. We don't want to be penalized for duplicating content. Is this the correct way to handle this scenario written below? We added a rel="canonical" to the blog post (on our website). The rel="canonical" is set to the Daily Business Review URL where the article was originally published. At the end of the blog post we wrote. "This article was originally posted on The Daily Business Review." and we link to the original post on the Daily Business Review. Should we be setting the blog post (on our website) to be a "noindex" or rel="canonical" ? Part 2 Our company was mentioned in a number of articles. We DID NOT write those articles, we were only mentioned. We have also posted those same articles on our website (verbatim from the original article). We want to show our users that we have been mentioned in highly credited articles. All of these articles were posted on our website and are set to be a "noindex". Is that the correct thing to do? Should we be using a rel="canonical" instead and pointing to the original article URL? Thanks in advance MOZ community for your assistance! We tried to do the leg work of our own research for the answers but couldn't find the exact same scenario that we are encountering**.**0 -
Should I just have links on my home page or intro to articles
Hi, i am having problems optimizing my home page for the words, lifestyle magazine, online magazine and lifestyle news. my site is here www.in2town.co.uk I am just wondering if i have to much content on the page for google to understand that it is a lifestyle magazine. I am wondering if i should just have the links on the page and no introduction to the articles which i have seen here with a site http://www.femalefirst.co.uk and i am wondering how sites like this are ranking better than ours when they have hardly any content on their home page http://www.nelifestyle.co.uk/
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-184886
http://www.lifestyle.org/
http://www.internationallifestylemagazine.com/ any advice would be most welcome0 -
Moving articles to new site, can't 301 redirect because of panda
I have a site that is high quality, but was hit by penguin and perhaps panda. I want to remove some of the articles from my old site and put them on my new site. I know I can't 301 redirect them because I will be passing on the bad google vibes. So instead, I was thinking of redirecting the old articles to a page on the old site which explains that the article is moved over to the new site. I assume that's okay? I'm wondering how long I should wait between the time I take them down from the old site to the time I repost them on the new site. Do I need to wait for Google to de-index them in order to not be considered duplicate content/syndication? We'll probably reword them a bit, too - we really want to avoid panda. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | philray
Phil0 -
Does Google count the same article in different languages as duplicate content?
If the "content" is the same, but is used in separate articles written in entirely different languages, will Google see the articles as duplicate content? How do international companies handle information that needs to be distributed in different languages?
Technical SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Should I ping Each New Article And How Will It Help Me
Hi I am looking for advice to get my new articles out there and my news stories. I would like to know if i should ping my articles and news stories each time i write a new one and if so which ping services do you recommend and what do they really do. Can anyone recommend any other services that i could use to promote my new articles and news stories to gain more traffic. Many thanks
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848861 -
Should I include A Description Tag for an article page
Hi, I am wondering if i should include a description tag for an article page where the news on that page will change around five times a day. I am not sure if to fill a description in for local news or to leave it blank so the search engines pick up the latest local news and then the next day they show the latest local news again in the search engines instead of having a static description of the news page. any help would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860