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
-
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 -
Syndicated content outranks my original article
I have a small site and write original blog content for my small audience. There is a much larger, highly relevant site that is willing to accept guest blogs and they don't require original content. It is one of the largest sites within my niche and many potential customers of mine are there. When I create a new article I first post to my blog, and then share it with G+, twitter, FB, linkedin. I wait a day. By this time G has seen the links that point to my article and has indexed it. Then I post a copy of the article on the much larger site. I have a rel=author tag within the article but the larger site adds "nofollow" to that tag. I have tried putting a link rel=canonical tag in the article but the larger site strips that tag out. So G sees a copy of my content on this larger site. I'm hoping they realize it was posted a day later than the original version on my blog. But if not will my blog get labeled as a scraper? Second: when I Google the exact blog title I see my article on the larger site shows up as the #1 search result but (1) there is no rich snippet with my author creds (maybe because the author tag was marked nofollow?), and (2) the original version of the article from my blog is not in the results (I'm guessing it was stripped out as duplicate). There are benefits for my article being on the larger site, since many of my potential customers are there and the article does include a link back to my site (the link is nofollow). But I'm wondering if (1) I can fix things so my original article shows up in the search results, or (2) am I hurting myself with this strategy (having G possibly label me a scraper)? I do rank for other phrases in G, so I know my site hasn't had a wholesale penalty of some kind.
Technical SEO | | scanlin0 -
Step by step article on migrating domain for personal blog
Greetings! I have been running my personal blog on first-lastname with a .me extension and I finally managed to acquire first-lastname.com!!! Now I would like to migrate my Wordpress implementation to the new URL. It will exactly the same. Where could I find a detailed step by step on exactly how to do this? Appreciate your time 🙂 Alex
Technical SEO | | seomozzy0 -
Should i do "Article Marketing" for my quotes site?
Hello members, Should i do Article Marketing for my quote site to have quality backlinks to my site? will it improve my rankings?
Technical SEO | | rimon56930 -
Link to Articles for news sites in Google SERPs
I'm trying to figure out why when I search for "international news" or "world news", for example, some sites in the SERPs have links to news articles, while others don't. For "international news", result of Fox News and New York Times have links to articles, while CNN (the top result), only have sitelinks. I would appreciate any theories on why this happens. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | seoFan210 -
How long does it take for an article or a page to be listed by google
Hi, my question is a two parter. I think i must be doing something wrong. With my site map, it is set to show different section of my site while on my old site the site map listed every single article - i am not sure if setting it to each section is correct, can someone please advise me on this. The second part of the question is, how long does it take for an article to be listed by google. This article on my site was written today http://www.in2town.co.uk/lifestyle/holidaymakers-ignore-the-importance-of-travel-insurance-according-to-survey Holidaymakers Ignore The Importance of Travel Insurance According To Survey but when i check to see if google has listed the article yet by putting in the whole title, it does not come up, i even added the website name at the end and still it did not come up. This is worrying me a bit as a lot of my articles are news stories which means they are current articles so if google is not picking them up then no one else will be. can anyone let me know what i should be doing so google picks them up quicker please.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Does posting an article on multiple sites hurt seo?
A client of mine creates thought leadership articles and pitches multiple sites to host the article on their site to reach different audiences. The sites that pick it up are places such as AdAge and MarketingProfs and we do get link juice from these sources most of the time. Does having the same article on these sites as well as your own hurt your SEO efforts in any way? Could it be recognized as duplicate content? I know the links are great just wondering if there is any other side effects especially when there are no links provided! Thank you!
Technical SEO | | Scratch_MM0 -
When creating articles what are the rules of thumb for titles and url links.
For example lets say I'm looking to rank for “Window Glass Replacement”. What kinds of articles should I create for this? Does it matter? Should I create articles such as How to know if your windows need replacement, then have the text in my link say “Window Glass Replacement.” Should I try and vary the link name? Should I vary the titles of my articles, or just make sure the content is different?
Technical SEO | | marker-3115280