More questions have come in over the last week or so. Here are a few more Q&As for you.
== Keywords in Anchor Text ==
I wanted to ask you if you thought making some of the keywords like “example 1” “example 2” etc. as anchor text links pointing to articles on the site might be a good thing?
Only if those are terms being targeted on the pages. You want to keep the same keyword throughout. They should be a matched set 🙂 If you put “example 1” or “example 2” in your title tag, description tag, page copy, ALT tags, etc., then yes, you can use those terms as anchor text with links pointing to the pages. But don’t target a page to “blue widgets” then use “example 1” as anchor text pointing to it. That defeats the purpose.
== Article Marketing == (An excerpt from my post on High Rankings Search Engine Forum)
I have over 100 articles on my own site, all original content. 30 days after they have been posted on my site, I submit them to specific article directory sites with a back link to the original article as well as multiple links to the site I am trying to promote.
Do you think this is a valid SEO strategy?
Yes
I do not want the sites I submitted the article to, to out rank the original article.
Why not? As long as the reader still has access to the link back to your site, what difference does it make? If they are interested in what you offer, they’ll click to your site.
Do you think that by adding a backlink to the original article this will tell Google who had the article on the web first and who should be ranked for the article?
Doesn’t work that way. Google will know you’re the original source for the article because it was published on your site/blog/forum/whatever first. Once it’s spidered and included in the index, you’re good. They know you were the first. Being first to publish doesn’t mean you automatically get ranked higher than others. There are LOTs of elements that go into deciding which pages get ranked where for what.
Does it help to wait 30 days to re-publish the article?
No. Once Google picks it up, you’re good. Just type the title of your article into the Google search field (using quotes). When it shows up, go for it!
Also would you syndicate all of the articles to various sites or maybe 10-20 articles to 5 different sites?
It’s not the quantity. It’s the quality. There are a bazillion article directory sites online and most of them are fly-by-night pieces of trash. They have no visitors (thus, no people to read your article and click to your site), they have lousy PageRank, etc. Be selective. Don’t worry about quantity. It’s not the article directory link that will do you a lot of good anyway.
You get the power of article distribution when other sites pick up your article from the article directory and republish it on their high-quality site.
When marketing people talk about a “127% lift” in conversion rate what does that mean? Will I get a conversion rate of 127%?
No. That’s a common misunderstanding. The lift is the amount of increase shown. So, if you started with a conversion rate of 2% and you experience a 127% lift (or increase), your new conversion rate will be 5%, not 127%.
== Punctuation in Keywords ==
I know you can split key phrases with punctuation. But can you split key phrases with line breaks, paragraph breaks or bullet points? Will Google ‘jump over’ the gaps and see the key phrase in its entirety?
You can split keyphrases with *most* punctuation. The common stuff like commas, periods, semi-colons, dashes, etc. Tildes, brackets, etc. are iffy sometimes. When in doubt, check. Go to Google and type in the keyphrase without the punctuation and write down the top 5 sites. Then type in the query with the punctuation and see if the same top 5 sites come up. If they do, Google sees it as the same thing.
Yes, you can split with line breaks, paragraph breaks and bullets. Spiders will read right through. Except that bullet points count as special formatting and *might* give you an extra point or two as far as SEO goes because the info in the bullet list would be considered important.
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Absolutely valid point about original page being outranked by article pages. How does it matter anyways. As long as your offer is sound people will take the effort to click on your link and come to your site.