Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
It takes me several days of research, proof reading and polishing to write an article. I sometimes wonder if it's worth it and would like to know what the best stragegy would be.
Anyway, you keep up the good work! At least you can rest easy knowing that you are adding value to the Internet as opposed to more spam.
Satisfied with articles, people will give you genuine backlinks, so you'll get better PR and anchor text than artificially made sites, and you'll outrank them in Google in time.
Even if Google algo has its weaknesses and lets in some spammy sites, on a long term the algo will be improved, and there's nothing better than quality, carefully written content.
The idea is to add new content and optimise it for the search engines so it appears high in the SERPs for its main keyphrase. Thus this increases the total number of keyphrases that your site targets.
If your new content adds value to your site and is useful for your customers then obviously that's good all round whether the new content ranks high in the SERPs or not.
However, if your new content truely is useful, and your existing content ranks well in the SERPS, it should do well in the SERPS automatically. Maybe you need to look at your SEO strategy?
It takes me several days of research, proof reading and polishing to write an article.
I follow the same process for each article, just in a more compressed fashion. I am able to write an article a day part time. The cycle is like this:
Day 1 - Research and Draft Article 1
Day 2 - Proof Article 1, Research and Draft Article 2...
On average I spend about 4 hours on each article. The length ranges from 500 - 1200 words.
Through the law of averages, the more words, the more chance of being found. But some moderate SEO will also help. Pick your keyphrases carefully, eventually the traffic will find you.
I've found RSS feeds and Blogs particularly effective in generating good traffic too.
It seems that having more pages really helps many of you but I don't know why.
More pages of content means more opportunity for anchor text, for one thing. In my experience, even site internal anchor text has a positive influence on overall ranking.
WBF
It seems that having more pages really helps many of you but I don't know why.
The more pages with articles/text you have, the more traffic you're going to draw. Your overall site may target widgets, but article #745 that you write may be specific to "red bouncing widgets," in which case you'll catch the 20 people a week that search for that three word phrase rather than the more generic "widgets".
It seems that having more pages really helps many of you but I don't know why.
The more pages with articles/text you have, the more traffic you're going to draw. Your overall site may target widgets, but article #745 that you write may be specific to "red bouncing widgets," in which case you'll catch the 20 people a week that search for that three word phrase rather than the more generic "widgets".
Well taht's the theory behind it, but in annej's case, her red bouncing widgets pages aren't ranking in the SERPS.
But to add pages on new topics I will have to add pages that will be on more obscure topics so fewer people would be searching with related key words so I'm not sure it will add that many visitors.
I have followed Brett's 25 steps pretty closely except I just can't get out that many articles.
I want to find a way to add interesting stuff fairly quickly. I have plenty of ideas of fascinating tidbits that wouldn't make a whole article, more a short note. Would short blurbs like that hurt in search results? I'm talking 100 to 150 words.
I've come to the conclusion that certain types of sites reach a limit to the number of pages able to deliver worthwhile content.
Once you go beyond that limit you start to generate fluff pages that are there just to follow the mantra of "Content Is King" ... but which offer nothing of value to the viewer.
I do a lot of work in the field of holiday resorts and apartment properties and you can give the potential guest every possible thing they need to know in 8-10 pages tops. Once you have covered it all there is just simply nothing else OF VALUE to add.
Accept it and look for other ways of boosting the site performance.
I want to find a way to add interesting stuff fairly quickly. I have plenty of ideas of fascinating tidbits that wouldn't make a whole article, more a short note. Would short blurbs like that hurt in search results? I'm talking 100 to 150 words.
Why would it hurt? There's no reason why you have to write only articles of XXXX number of words. Pose a question that might help a visitor and answer it. So what if it only takes two paragraphs to answer? Lots of very popular blogs specialize in 1-2 paragraph posts. I know it's easy to get caught up in what we think the search engines want this month, but that's too fickle a concept to built a site around, at least if you're in it for the long term.
I can see there would be some limits but mine is a pretty wide open topic as it includes all history of my hobby topic. The limit would be more as the bits of information include the less known fewer people would specifically search for it. The information is fascinating though and would increase the value of the site at least for regular visitors. It's that balance of adding pages and time restraints that I have to work out.
I do think the suggestion here to just try the shorter pages makes sense. I can follow the pages and see how they do over the next month or so, then decide if the short pages are worthwhile. And I needed to reminder to optimize carefully even for short pages. I need to consider what key words would fit the article and still be used in searches.
Thanks everyone for all the good suggestions.
My site is a niche content site for writers and illustrators of children's books. There are fewer than 200 pages. People give me articles to post, but I haven't had time to write one myself in a while.
But I do answer people's email questions. And I get a fair number, because my FAQ and other info. just can't address every possible question.
My blog consists of people's questions and my answers, minimally edited for presentation. I use 5-7 in each installment. I only started this in December, and have done several installments, aiming at one or two per month. It's a popular feature with my regular visitors, definitely draws some SE traffic, and it's much less work than an article of equivalent length. If you want to see it, check my profile for my home page, and you will find a link to it there.
The last year I've mostly focused on adding content with fairly little increase in incoming links. Went from around 20 pages up to about 600 (adding 1-3 pages / day).
The articles are of only fair quality at best. No one links to them (as they're not really worth linking to).
I now get about 500 hits / day. It's not scientific - but cause / effect looks pretty solid to me.
For the most part - it's not the new pages that are ranking. It's my old focus pages that the new pages link back to (around 5-6 links per 200 word article). Internal anchor text is worth a alot.
I've gone ahead and broke my blog down into individual pages for each entry. I also eliminated some that were outdated, mostly announcements about events in my topic. I think the pages of several blog entries were too long for most Internet readers. I'll see how this goes and if it goes well I have ideas for a couple of new features involving shorter pages. One would be combining bits of history with related old time quotes.
Rich, I think you are right that linking within a site helps. I'm wondering at what point it is too much. Right now I'm only linking back to the topic index and the homepage on each little blog page. On longer article pages I have links to all the main sections of my sites.
...I think you are right that linking within a site helps. I'm wondering at what point it is too much. Right now I'm only linking back to the topic index and the homepage on each little blog page. On longer article pages I have links to all the main sections of my sites.
I've found the trick is to link back to lots of different pages with keywords they already rank for.
For instance - if I had a page that ranked #14 for "green sprockets" - I'd continue add more links back to that page with "green sprockets" as the anchor text.
Usually the links are in the body text - but sometimes I'll have one or two elsewere.
I also link back to the page with variations on the keyword - "sprockets that are green" - etc. I think this keeps the spam filters from getting too concerned.
overtime I've built up to about 250 different keywords and maybe 30 different associated "focus" pages. It's certainly worked for me.
I've found the trick is to link back to lots of different pages with keywords they already rank for
So do you think Google pays attention to the pages you link to and not just the the incoming links to the page. I know there has been talk of this but wasn't sure if it really made any difference.
I need to look over my sites. On one I usually have a link to all the main pages from every page. On the other I just link back to the home page and the topics index.
Interesting that I get about a 1% or more better click through rate with adsense on the site where I have fewer links to the rest of the site but the site that has more extensive internal linking has about one point higher PR.
It's hard to know what to do sometimes.
So do you think Google pays attention to the pages you link to and not just the the incoming links to the page. I know there has been talk of this but wasn't sure if it really made any difference.
I've seen circumstancial evidence of this - but nothing solid.
I've found the trick is to link back to lots of different pages with keywords they already rank for
let me clarify that. the pages I'm linking to are pages on my site that already rank for the anchor text I'm using in the links. linking to them seems to further improve their ranking for the targetted terms.
the new content I'm adding rarely ranks well. it's the pages the new content links to which ends up ranking better.
"I add 10 articles at a time, they seem to rank for about a week and then slip down the SERPS"
Has anyone any experience on this?
they seem to rank for about a week and then slip down the SERPS
I thought this was more true in the old days when new pages instantly inherited PR from the page linking to it. Now I don't know.
But it seems like when a new page is first picked up the place in the serps isn't permanent. It can drop but that doesn't mean it won't come back up later. It's like it can be lost or maybe much lower in the serps for a while.
With search engines you really have to look at how it goes in the long run. I know that's hard. I just added a new section to one of my sites based on the discussion above and can't tell how it's doing even tho the pages are in. If it works I will add more pages along the same lines but I guess I have to be patient and let time tell.
