Maximising Article SEO

[Niche Products Ste]

Hi folks - newbie here so please be gentle.
I'd appreciate it if someone would clarify something for me please.
I am the owner of a website looking too boost performance in 2014 and I have a 700 word article ready to post up to help boost my rankings for a particular keyword phrase.

Let's say we sell wooden toys.
Out of ten main categories we do well with is "Dolls House".
To aid seo we have created a 700 word "Dolls House Guide" which will hopefully include a lot of useful information and whose link would sit on the home page.

So far so good.....
How should the "Dolls House Guide" be set up?
Amongst the guide there are different sections - such as "Edwardian Dolls House" and "Victorian Dolls House" and "Custom Built Dolls Houses". The phrase we really want to rank on is the generic term "Dolls House". In the past I would create hyperlinks on the individual sections so an interested reader could click through to the appropriate section for them to peruse. But does having multi-links weaken the power of the page link juice? ie, should there just be one link at the end of the article (ie, the anchor text of "Dolls House" linking to the Dolls House main category page).

Also I am a bit unsure about whether I need to be pushing the anchor link text back to the main home page of the website (either in addition to a link to the "Dolls house" category page or in replace of). As I type this makes no sense at all but I have just been reading an online SEO article which seems to suggest just that. I imagine there may sometimes be a trade off between user experience/navigation and maximising SEO.

As it happens, when performing a Google search on "Dolls House" it is the deeper category URL which currently lists rather than a the homepage URL. I never really understood why sometimes this varies and was once told that the deeper URL is better as it shows that the search engine spiders are going deeper into the site.

I hope this query makes some kind of sense and that someone who knows more about this than me might give me a shout. Many thanks in advance.

 

[zigojacko]

Your whole view and approach to this just sounds wrong and artificial. And this is what a search engine will detect and pick up on.

Firstly, generic targets such as 'dolls house' is less likely to convert as well longer-tail keywords but that's a whole different conversation with lots to it. If you're going to create content and link back to your site using the anchor 'dolls house', it's not going to appear natural (even for a human, let alone a search engine).

You need to dig much much deeper into the creativity of the article you wish to produce.

Synonyms and semantic relationships on the web are far more superior now when search engine algorithms total up relevancy of web pages. This means you don't have to focus on your primary target 'dolls house'. The quality and value of your published content will far outweigh the usage of your target keywords.

Consider a more useful title:-

• The Buyer's Guide to Dolls Houses
• Step by Step Guide to Buying a Dolls House for Children
• 10 Periodic Styles of Dolls Houses Available

Please bear in mind that I have carried out no keyword research into this subject so these are just suggestive titles that will catch a far wider audience than just 'Dolls House Guide'.

The copy of the article body should be useful, don't think about getting your keywords in there. Think about writing for the intended audience, what do they want to know, what questions will they be asking, are you solving their problem?

Linking out in articles to useful sources or citations that back up sections of your article is good. Don't worry about "leaking juice", it's the wrong approach entirely.

All you need to focus on is serving an awesome piece of content to those interested in your guide on dolls houses. When linking back to your website, deep linking to the most relevant pages of your website will prove more valuable as this will likely drive a higher conversion rate. When linking to your homepage, branded anchor text will most likely serve more use and look more natural - using the anchor text 'dolls house' will not.

I'd advise completely rethinking your strategy here because going the route as per how you've discussed it will not even come close to the maximum potential you could achieve.

 

[jdluckhurst]

In essence I agree with:

Synonyms and semantic relationships on the web are far more superior now when search engine algorithms total up relevancy of web pages. This means you don't have to focus on your primary target 'dolls house'. The quality and value of your published content will far outweigh the usage of your target keywords.

Please bear in mind that I have carried out no keyword research into this subject so these are just suggestive titles that will catch a far wider audience than just 'Dolls House Guide'.

Linking out in articles to useful sources or citations that back up sections of your article is good. Don't worry about "leaking juice", it's the wrong approach entirely.

I'd advise completely rethinking your strategy here because going the route as per how you've discussed it will not even come close to the maximum potential you could achieve.

you have the right idea of increasing your exposure by putting something out there that is useful to the industry you are operating in....you just need to stop thinking old school page rank and start thinking about the user. What zigojacko is saying is correct, don't worry about leaking link juice or keywords. This gets you off on the wrong foot. Just write for the user.

For sure "Dolls house Guide" is a pretty unimaginative title and a red flag for spam article directory marketing, although I do have a slightly different approach. Writing an article and then getting it posted on sites is a bit like trying to put a round peg in a square hole, and if you want to be pedantic ZIgojacko this is also artificial (it all is...). If you are going to listen to zigojacko and do it the right way (which you should) then you MUST think about the user. 'Who wants to know what' in your industry, but more importantly the users of different websites or blogs want different things. I find it much easier to contact websites having had a read through previous articles and then suggest an article title that maybe follows on from one of their articles, or is on a tangent. At least you show that you care what their followers want to hear, and it will also increase engagement with the article itself. You can then think about deep linking, other sources, etc.

In regards to an inner page ranking instead of your homepage for 'dolls house', without seeing the site I cannot comment. Although this is likely to be an onsite optimisation issue.

Hope this helps!

p.s be careful with optimised anchor text. It is powerful but if used to often Google comes down hard and penalises...this will only continue as well because it is very obvious!

 

[Niche Products Ste]

Many thanks for the considered and constructive responses.
I'm pleased that someone managed to understand my midnight meanderings!
One thing I thought of after I posted was that I perhaps didn't make it clear that the 'article' I have created I was looking to publish as content on my own main site....not an effort to submit externally to be published on a different site.

As you have taken your time to give such good feedback I thought it might be useful to give you a bit more info about my company. This may help give a bit more information or 'colour' about my position and to what it is I am trying to achieve.

My company is at an interesting stage of development. After seven years we have gone from start-up to one of the market leaders. My strength (and hindrance) is that I have a curious mind that just won't let go of anything! I'd really like to outsource our SEO but can't help but feel that it really helps to have a solid understanding of what it is you are outsourcing before letting it go. Otherwise how can you judge whether the outside advice you receive is good or bad, and hopefully a client with a broad understanding will result in a more productive relationship.

I have focused on product as my core efforts while building the business and believe that this will stand us in good stead in the long run as a competitive differentiator. Efforts in this area have included trialling new products, recording customer response and feedback, then sourcing as far up the manufacturing chain as possible to achieve (hopefully) lowest costs. Now we have in our armoury an exclusive own-brand (registered trademark, consistent colour packaging, products that the market has shown it wants) to sit alongside existing supplier brands. This means we can offer something a little unique to our customers.

Over the years we have bent over backwards to offer the highest levels of customer service - answering telephone queries within 3 rings, no quibble returns, 99% stock availability with a similar level of next day delivery. We sell to consumer trade only at the moment and also produce a 100 page printed catalogue to use in mailings, in response to requests and for parcel bounce-backs.

So I feel that we have a lot going for us going into the new year. We have built up a lot of goodwill.
Unfortunately the website is also 7 yrs old and showing its age.....this will be put right soon, but it still converts well, is easy to navigate, fast to load and performs well on search.

Over the years I have looked at outsourcing SEO but kept getting put off for various reasons. As a start-up I had a bad experience outsourcing PPC and ended up bringing it back in-house. Many hours of work in this area mean that - though I would never consider myself an expert - I have certainly analysed the figures again and again and now have a solid understanding of our keywords.

What I think I need is a partnership with a SEO expert. In the past I have had companies offering to write articles for me but I could never understand how I could allow someone else to produce such pieces for us when they had no real grasp of what we sell or what our customers need to know.

I understand that 'content is king' in terms of SEO and I like that. It is similar to the wider business principle of 'product is king'. I truly believe that a business such as ours starts with the product as that provides the margin which is the oxygen for all of the other activities.

So we have approximately 3000 sponsored key phrases. But three generic major terms account for approx. 80% of all conversions. In terms of natural search we are position 1 in Google for the main term, 5th for another and 14th for the third. It is this third term I am looking to promote.

Fortunately the competition in my market is relatively weak. There is a nagging part of me that feels we are ranking incredibly well almost by accident - though part of me also realises that I am pretty self-critical and that Google has probably awarded our hard effort (ie, regular new products - each with unique text descriptions, solid well thought out original website architecture etc).

Over the years I have dabbled and introduced to the site the suggested SEO tactics of the day. An external blog was set up (last entry 2012....I know!), an internal articles section was launched with about 50 useful articles (guess what...last entry 2011). We have a rudimentary Facebook and Twitter account. I will occasionally go 'Link hunting' by copying competitors links - particularly industry related. All of this seems to have helped but has been a bit ad-hoc.

Sorry for going on but hopefully some of this will be of interest.
To summarise, I am in the fortunate position of having a growing company that has almost everything it needs in place to push on. I am comfortable producing useful content for my customers but need to know how to then maximise my SEO return by adopting 'best practice'.

What do we do next?
We have a low link count (a couple of good Wikipedia links etc). This used to be key but seems to have fallen out of favour a bit?
Articles - better to publish on-site, published externally or a bit of both?
A gentle stream of regular blog items perhaps?

I know this question is broad - probably too broad.
My frustration is that I know my market and keywords inside out.
I have a rudimentary knowledge of SEO but want to push on and don't know my next step. What would you do?????

 

[zigojacko]

@Niche Products Ste

1. Make sure your website is structured well and is easy for humans and bots to navigate.
2. Make sure there are no duplicate instances of the same content at multiple URL's on your site - if there are, fix this.
3. Research topics and keywords surrounding topics to come up with sought after content to blog about.
4. Frequently blog (at least once per week or two), writing creative fresh content for your audience and where relevant, deep link into pages of your website (such as product/category pages).
5. Share this content to your social media channels, not just once but multiple times over a day at different hours (consider a post scheduler for this).
6. Measure the traffic to your blog content, the content this drives to the rest of your website and if this traffic converts.
7. If this starts to work, look to publish quality great content at other great websites where your target audience are likely to visit.

 

[Annoying Donkey]

Some good advice there from both zigojacko and jdluckhurst.

We have a low link count (a couple of good Wikipedia links etc). This used to be key but seems to have fallen out of favour a bit?

Links are still the most powerful ranking factor, but you just have to be selective about how you obtain them. (Actually, you should always have been selective!)

Articles - better to publish on-site, published externally or a bit of both?

A bit of both. Basically build out your own site, but also post on other sites in order to show off your expertise and knowledge and bring in targeted traffic.

I remember reading about the marketing of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios. Apparently they only told 7 people about the new attraction and the word spread to 350,000,000 people virally. They picked the top 7 people on the Harry Potter fan sites and told them about the new attraction and let them spread the 'exclusive'. Zero cost marketing that bought in the crowds. Think about how you could apply that to your situation... (Albeit maybe not on such a large a scale...)

A gentle stream of regular blog items perhaps?

Regular blogging useful stuff will indeed help. With a seven year history, you should have plenty of raw material - frequently asked questions, customer experiences, unusual uses of your products, maybe funny things that have happened.

What do we do next?

Perhaps consider making videos that are of interest to your audience, again FAQs, customer experience, unusual or interesting details about your products... Shows off real people in your business and can attract customers that articles don't. Videos that show up in SERPs can potentially get more click throughs.

 

[Elliottc26]

For commercial blog posts you need to focus on two aspects:

1. Useful and interesting content
2. Conversions

Great web content places a journalistic angle and a copywriting additive into the mix for results. After all, you need your visitors to share your content and buy from you.

If targeting 'dolls house' keyword, you will find if it is a general term and it will be good for traffic if you rank well, but bad for conversions. Aim for the longer keyword phrases buyers are using.

Therefore, titles may be:

• Beautifying tailor made dolls houses in the UK
• Decorate your wooden dolls house and bring the 18th century alive

Whatever it is your posts must be:

• targeting keywords
• targeting customers
• 100% unique and original
• Functional

 

[Jeff Guest]

If targeting 'dolls house' keyword, you will find if it is a general term and it will be good for traffic if you rank well, but bad for conversions. Aim for the longer keyword phrases buyers are using.

Therefore, titles may be:

• Beautifying tailor made dolls houses in the UK
• Decorate your wooden dolls house and bring the 18th century alive

So... if your content is of good quality - i.e. helpful and informative and written in a natural way BUT including keywords in a more semantic way, this is current best practice. Does this make copy writing blog posts easier, because you don't have to mould the text around a clumsy phrase, e.g. Plumber Loughborough. Am I right?

 

[Jeff Guest]

This article helped me... until I read the comments!

searchengineland - just-say-no-to-seo-sometimes

 

[sirearl]

Unfortunately the website is also 7 yrs old and showing its age.....this will be put right soon, but it still converts well, is easy to navigate, fast to load and performs well on search.

Rule 1 don't muck about with a site that is performing well.

Rule 2 build another site to run alongside existing site if you must muck about.

Rule 3 putting things right often ends in tears.