Our seo services website, www.startrankingnow.com offers the service of writing and submitting original articles to article directories. As we provide this service, I have seen some of the same errors repeated over and over by our clients. When we open a new project with a client, we ask them for a list of the keywords and the landing page (url) they would like us to build links to. Here are some of the common errors we see over and over again:
1. Using multiple keywords for one url. A common error is to try to build links to one page with multiple keywords. While it is good to use keyword variations, it is not recommeded to use completely separate keywords when building links to one page.
The correct way to build links is to match the anchor text of the links with the headline and topic of the page you are building links to. For example, if you had a page on your site that had a headline of “baby swings” then you would want to build links to that page using the anchor text “baby swings”. You could vary the anchor text so that there were variations of the anchor text such as “cool baby swings” “battery operated baby swings” “baby swings for newborns” and so on. Note that the anchor text always has the words “baby swings” included but can also include other words. You would NOT want to build links to the “baby swings” page with the anchor text of “swings for babies” or “baby toys”. For the keywords “swings for babies” it is not recommended to make another product page on the site with all of the same prouducts as listed on the page of “baby swings”. The correct way to do this would be to create an article on the site that has the headline of “swings for babies” and is keyword optimized for “swings for babies”. The exception would be IF the keyword phrase “swings for babies’ was also included somewere in the text of the page “baby swings” and the search volume for “swings for babies” did not justify creating a new article page just for that phrase alone.
2. Building links to duplicate urls.
Most webmasters or site owners do not realize that the urls http://mysite.com and http://www.mysite.com are actually conidered to be TWO domains by google. The same goes for the page http://www.mydomain.com and http://www.mydomain.com/index.html . You should choose ONE version of your site… either the one WITH or the one WITHOUT the www and also choose ONE version of the home page… the one with the index.html or the one without the index.html to build links to. The key is to be consistent in link building.
3. Not including the keyword in the title of the article.
The title of the article is the most important part of the article. The article title will determine if your article will be read or skipped over. Getting your article read by customers and more importantly, other webmasters, is the first step to getting your article picked up by other webmasters for placement on their sites. Of course to be able to include the keyword in the title, the article must be relevant to the keyword. This is not always possible, especially if you are writing about indirectly related topics. Whenever possible, it is best to include the keyword in the article title.
4. Not using two links in the author resource box.
If you are going to go to all the trouble of writing an article and submitting it to article directories, why wouldn’t you get the most bang for your buck and have as many links in the author resource box as the article directory allows you to? You should always read the terms of service by the article directories and put in as many links as possible.
5. Not having one url in the author resource box as a link.
Since most article directories allow for two links, it is best to have one link as an anchor text and the second link as an url. The second link should be an url because some webmasters will “steal” your articles from the article directories using automated software and post your article to their website without the links. The software automatically strips out the html deleting the links if you only have anchor text links. The less sophisticated software however, will sometimes leave the url as a hyperlink. Even if the software strips out the hyperlink, a potential customer can still see your url and copy and paste it to visit your site if they really liked your article.
6. Using your real name as the author.
Please, please, please, use a pen name. If you use your real name and later sell your site… which should be the goal for all site owners, then you will one day have your name associated with a site you no longer own or control. Also, if you own multiple sites you are leaving a footprint to your competitors of all the sites you own. Another reason to use a pen name is if you are having your articles ghost written and you are not reading them to check the content. Please don’t put your name next to anything unless you actually wrote it. Most article directories allow you to have multiple pen names. It is best to have a different pen name for each web site.
7. Linking to the same site twice in the author resource box.
If you only have one site, it is fine to do this in the beginning. Once you have multiple sites or multiple web properties, it is always better to spread your link building as much as possible. You can submit one article to an article directory and link out to two separate web properties. A good way to do this is to have a blog on a separate domain… or at least on a subdomain of your money site. You can also build a network of mini sites that are thematically related to a section on your money site. The article you submit for distribution can then link once to your money site and once to your blog. You can vary the links so that one article links to the money site with an anchor text link and the next article links to the money site with an url link.
SUPER SECRET TIP
One excellent strategy we have recently started to implement is to have all articles written in sets of three. A keyword is assigned to the writer and the writer writes three topically related articles of 500 words each. One article is placed on the main money site. This article utilizes internal linking strategies to send links to the inner pages of the same site. A second article is placed on a blog. The blog article links out to the article placed on the main money site as well as to other topically related web properties. (Think Web 2.0) The third article is submitted to multiple article directories with two links: one to the blog article and one to the article on the main money site. This strategy is further developed using web 2.0 properties and social bookmarking sites to send traffic to the articles.
When considering the use of hashtags in your Tweets, it may be worth the time to perform a bit of research to see if your particular keyword is already being used in a hashtag thread. As you use hashtags, the key is to use them sparingly and to use them when you really want something to be followed. By looking around a little bit on Twitter, it is easy to find users who hashtag just about every Tweet they type. Really, nobody wants to read “I had the most amazing #chocolate #milkshake from #Carl’s Jr. today!”