Suggestions For Creating External Links In Articles (Good On Page SEO)

Hey everybody,

I was building a wizzle and came to realize that sometimes I use terms that may not be commonly heard. I realize we should write with the most common language but some topics I feel are better said with specific words used fluently in the industry I'm writing about ...

I also know that people like me love to learn a new word and figure out what it means so I came to the conclusion that if I use a word that many may not have heard of (but sounds great anyway and the context of the sentence could tell them what it means pretty easily) that I'd link the word itself as anchor text to a site that explains the words meaning.

example:  "Firms may have several motives for divestitures."

Most people would just get the jest of the words meaning (from the sentence context) and keep reading but a few would love to learn the word and it's definition so what I came up with is linking to sites like Wikipedia and dictionary .com to the page the word is defined or even explained on. (Edit: BUT IN MODERATION)

This ads a layer of value to your article as well.

What this does for SEO is provide you with external links to a high PR site which is good SEO practice, (Edit: and Google likely sees these as extensions to the information thus good research help for the reader!) You should have external links and internal links on your Wizzles for SEO in the first place so this provides an interesting way to do that. (Edit: BUT AGAIN IN MODERATION RELATIVE TO YOUR PAGES ALREADY PRESENT EXTERNAL LINKS)

________________________________________________________________________

Edit: Removed the comment links tip as it was, as chef pointed out to generously- invalid and I hadn't thought it through...

- Jerrico

I don't like the idea about "moving comments".

1. People commented on HP, in that environment and context. What if you've changed your articles? Your previous commenters did not give you permission to reuse their content for other sites. It's a form of sneaky manipulation, I'd say. And the big question is...why?

2. You certainly do not need any more content for your already very lengthy articles. Old comments---especially those of the fawning variety ("Great article! It helped me a lot!")---do not add any value to your page. 

3. You'd pass a lot of link juice to irrelevant profiles on HP. What's so useful about that?

Stick with the honest basics, m'friend. Write easy-to-understand and compelling articles that people love to read, to comment on, and to share. Is all.  

(Post updated/rewritten, to remove wind and charcoal *Smiles* )

Hi Chef,

In retrospection I see your point about comments. The links back to HP profiles would be counter productive and may actually hurt your SEO. I don’t agree fully with you about comments requiring permission or it being sneaky or unethical to move them if the same article they commented on is being moved, but I do see why you feel that way none the less. At first I thought you were being overprotective of Wizzley (after all who wants their writer partners helping the competition out? and I for one don't want to help HP with anything! Lol)…

I’ve come to the conclusion that instead of even risking offending a commenter or upsetting Wizzley staff *smiles* I could compromise by moving the article over and in the midst of updating it for tighter content, grammar, etc… I could take the comments given from the other site and consolidate the “useful” information and use it like any other research and build it into the article (in my own words and based on further research to confirm it’s not opinion of the commenter). I think it will serve my article and Wizzley better in the end.

I will be removing all comments migrated from my articles and apply the more reasonable concept above. Don’t worry it won’t lengthen my articles, in fact I have been working on shortening them, consolidating ideas more tightly and so on.

I’m a writer work in progress in this respect- I was a bit peeved at first by your telling me my article were long as if they had no value, but I can see how evolving into writing shorter, tighter, more easily assimilated information is better.

I still believe 1-3k is not overzealous (but trying to keep it closer to 1-2k- Google does love a 1K+ article but it also loves faster loading ones as well. I’m finding I can use images, videos, and the like to convey some of the information in a more condensed fashion, and videos after all, keep people on the page longer thus minimize “bounce” rate :)

I’m still of the opinion that linking to wikipedia for words you want to use but that people may not be aware of (i.e. can figure out the meaning by the rest of the sentence/paragraph’s context) but want to really get the idea of what it means so they can use it themselves :) (linking the word to a wiki page that explains it’s meaning etc…) and providing a valid and useful outbound link is a good idea- but in moderation…

Sorry for my winded post yesterday, I consolidated it here with more common sense- I just needed to take your advice and think it through not emotionally, I swear I feel you have it out for me for some reason- but really your just trying to help and keep WZ in the lime light.  Hope all is well!

Jerrico

Thanks Wendy, I see that now, I try to limit my external links to 4 or so and didn't think about how all those comment links would likely be counter productive in the SEO sense, didn't think that one through :)

I also didn't realize but Chef pointed out that links to profiles are utterly useless for external linkjuice and as you said could actually hurt your SEO. I don't generally worry about SEO while writing an article but afterward I try to add a few externals in relevant places (if needed) but even then I'm more worried about making the articles interesting (that's what gets natural link juice)... Google has announced another algo upgrade coming and in this one they are really taking a close look at link relevancy so I think I'll just let the readers handle that stuff :).

Jerrico

Yep, I don't even put much thought into monetization at first, I know that Google is looking to see the ad to content etc... ratio, especially when a page is first crawled and indexed- it's generally a good idea to publish an article with very minimal (like 1-2) monetization (you already have adsense and what not the wizzley team inserts automatically so your not losing anything really at first, mostly wizzley authors reading it and they don't click/buy really), then as traffic starts to come and comments rack up you will get a better idea of what kinds of amazon/ebay vigilink etc... will work best for your "audience".

With all the ads pollution on the web these days, this also encourages your initial readers to want to bookmark and share it because it's so "clean"... later when it gains traction add a few more proportionately but don't overdo it...

You also get a better idea of what kinds of products/ads to put in there later when your brain cools down from all that editing, building modules and such. It's like when you lose something and you ask your brain where is it- then try to not think about it- your brain is wired to do an offline search for it based on what you know (but may not concisely remember at the time)... with all those thoughts in the way it's hard to process anything else :) so when I get my comments I revisit the page and scan over it and eventually will get ideas for what to add to it.

You also leave it alone for a month (don't look!) and come back to read it over for a fresh perspective- like your readers- and that will help you see flaws, overzealous wording (due to likely emotion at the time of writing), and even where ads would flow nicely.

I become vested right away in preserving the look and feel of the page too- when you add too many modules for monetization you lose perspective I think, and may have displaced desires to keep a bunch of things that are polluting the page on there...

I like Wizzley's slogan: "Create Beautiful Articles" not "Publish and Earn"- which to me makes the stoppers by (readers not authors here) feel better about reading articles, not oh I'm here to earn the author money- pssst. :)

By the way Wendy, you really got me thinking about my article grammar (read your wizzle), and I double checked the article I just published and found (BEFORE publishing it) 12 "your" where "you're" is supposed to be :) thanks for that! Think I'll comb over my other 15 articles just to be sure!

Jerrico

I just love mutual beneficially helpful sharing!

The one thing I REALLY miss from HP was their impression earnings. I'm not sure and can't find it anywhere on the site where it says we get paid from impressions ($ per 1000 impressions?). Although currently I'm so new that impression income wouldn't likely benefit me, I was making probably 80% of my income there from impressions to my popular articles (some with 2500 uniques a day). I like impressions because all you have to do is get them to the page and entice them to say for 20 seconds or whatever isn't a bounce rate point of time, and I'd see daily income that ramped up so nicely it was totally exciting!

But these things are counterbalanced here with more monetize options, more potential, and because we can build such incredible looking pages I think we'll get more "share" time (backlinks to our wizzles) than a "hub". I really can't say either way about earnings here- I'm in the crappy position of losing a lot of income I was making monthly (sometimes thousands) over there and starting over here- moving articles is proving not to be in any way a fast process so it may be a year before I can get even 300 articles migrated and start to see the logistics of earning here... but I do enjoy building the business- one thing I love about these sites is your literally building your business-

Your own mini article directory SEO Juiced for you by the wizzley team (and of course your own efforts but many are here because of this necessity not being needed so much i.e. like you'd have to on your own domain)  :) and you never have to stop building the business so you keep the fire burning, they keep the site churning and quality- and bringing that magic traffic we so adore.

Think I'll stop rambling now.

Good luck, and thanks!

p.s.  I revamped my previous posts to remove wind and charcoal- you may want to revisit them to see the thought through versions :)