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Visibility Generating
Authority Building
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Writing and Marketing Information
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| Febuary 18, 2015 / Newsletter 021815
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Be SUPER Careful of the Content Marketing Strategies You Use
A Tip on Penguin 3.0 (Linking)
By Karen Cioffi
In November of 2014, I noticed my Global and U.S. Alexa rankings were rising. The lower these numbers the better.
I had pretty good rankings before Penguin's newest update hit the internet. I went from U.S. around 50,000 to U.S. around 300,000.
As an ethical writer and marketer, I work hard to maintain my online
presence and build a strong and reliable platform – a platform that
helps others through high quality information.
Well, what worked yesterday, doesn’t work today. In fact, what worked
yesterday and doesn’t work today will get you knocked upside the head
and thrown to the wayside.
Okay, I was and still am a bit peeved and very disappointed.
As I mentioned, I’ve been hit by Google’s new Penguin algorithm update
that deals with the links on your website. I haven't done any link
maintenance on my site and it's finally caught up to me. My search
ranking has dropped because of it.
LINKING
There are two types of linking to be concerned about with Penguin:
1. Internal links
These are links you use to bring the reader further into your webpages.
You can link to a webpage or a blog post. The idea is to keep the
reader on your site longer and motivate that reader to move onto other
pages on your site.
This is an excellent marketing strategy as long as ALL the links you created function properly.
Check for broken links. Google hates broken links.
2. External links
These are links from your website out to other websites.
There are two noteworthy mentions here:
A. Make sure you're not linking to a 'spammy site.'
This one takes a lot of care. You absolutely need to 'check out the
sites you're linking to. And, if you accept a guest blog, you need to
'check out' the link the author will include in the post.
Then there are blog comments. Some unscrupulous people or bots will make
a generic comment just to stick a 'spam' link in it. Again, you need to
check the external links on your site. If the comment link is
suspicious, delete the comment.
B. Make sure none of the links are broken.
If you've been blogging for a while (years and years), the sites you
linked to 5 or 10 years ago may not exist any longer. This is one type
of broken link.
In fact, a site you linked to a year ago may no longer be valid.
You have to periodically check for broken links.
Blogger vs. WordPress
My two blogs are on Blogger. BIG MISTAKE.
As far as I can tell, Blogger doesn't offer any 'broken link' tools. So,
I have to go through every single one of the 'around 1000' blog posts
on my site, starting with the oldest.
Note: since I started this process, I deleted around 300 old posts that didn't offer any relevant information or weren't relevant to the site's brand.
It's REALLY time consuming.
I'm finding I have lots of broken links.
WordPress on the other hand has 'broken link' tools (plugins) that are very convenient.
I'm seriously thinking of starting fresh on one of my WordPress sites. Not sure yet what I'll do.
One major reason for thinking of changing is that although I'm checking each post now for 'bad' links, I'll need to do this periodically, as sites come and go. I really think I'm at a crossroad.
And, there's another SUPER-HUGE reason that has to do with Sharing capability. That'll be another post though.
P.S. There are three types of website links: internal (deep
linking), external (linking out to other sites), and inbound (links
coming in from other sites). You really don't have control over who
links to you, so I didn't include it in this post.
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Learn the tips, tricks, and strategies to the four core elements of inbound marketing: optimizing your website, blogging smart, email marketing, and social media marketing.
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You may reprint this article from "The Writing World” in its entirety in your own blog or print/electronic newsletter. But, please include the following paragraph:
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Karen Cioffi, Freelance Writer
For Individuals (Academic Papers, Essays, Editing, and More)
The Article Writing Doctor
Your Content Marketing Prescription
(For Small and Home Businesses)
karencioffi [at] ymail [dot] com
I'm an affiliate for some of the products I recommend. I only tell you about products I've checked out.
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