Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Article Marketing / Article Posting
-
I am working on the SEO on a few different websites and I have built out an article marketing campaign so that I can get high quality backlinks for my website.
I have been writing the content myself and I have been manually building out the top Web 2.0, Article Directory, and Doc Sharing sites.
today I was creating an account on squidoo and I wondered if it mattered if I had the username be one of two things:
-
my keyword as a user name, like: [keyword+geotag] example: roofinghouston
-
just my first and last name as the username (or just a username I always use)
(The reason behind #1 would be to have the optimized keyword and location I am trying to rank for, inside of the username. The reason for #2 would be that I don't want to get into trouble by having "too much" optimization.)
I know a bit about optimization and that getting your keyword out there is great in a lot of areas, but I am not sure if it looks "suspicious" if I have my username be the keyword+geotag.
I am just worried that all of this hard work will be torn down if I look like I'm trying too hard to be optimized, etc etc.
There is no one answer, I am mainly looking for shared experiences.
If you do have a definite answer, then I would like that too
Thanks SEOMoz!
-
-
Unfortunately, article directories didn't carry much link juice to begin with, and as Francisco said, Panda and Penguin have pretty much negated them as SEO tactics entirely. You might want to look at guest blogging, but make sure your articles are really something your readers will enjoy.
Good luck!
-
Hi Matthew,
if you haven't heard of the Penguin update, you HAVE to learn about it. It was an algorithm change on April 24 2012 that hit sites like squidoo. Many people have abuse article marketing (spinning) to try and get more rankings.
What I would recommend is to make some friends in your industry be using Followerwonk. Post on YOUR site and perhaps they can link to you. There are many blog posts on how to do this.
Also i recommend you read chapter 7 http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Disallow: /jobs/? is this stopping the SERPs from indexing job posts
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamesHancocks1
I was wondering what this would be used for as it's in the Robots.exe of a recruitment agency website that posts jobs. Should it be removed? Disallow: /jobs/?
Disallow: /jobs/page/*/ Thanks in advance.
James0 -
Paragraphs/Tables for Content & SEO
Hi Does anyone know if Google prefers paragraphs over content in a table, or doesn't it make much difference?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Should brand/company be included in meta title?
Is there any point/benefit/requirement in using brand/company name in the meta title, I realise search engines like Google prefer brand focused pages, However it is unlikely that someone would be including the company in our search terms. Any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Why is Google ranking irrelevant / not preferred pages for keywords?
Over the past few months we have been chipping away at duplicate content issues. We know this is our biggest issue and is working against us. However, it is due to this client also owning the competitor site. Therefore, product merchandise and top level categories are highly similar, including a shared server. Our rank is suffering major for this, which we understand. However, as we make changes, and I track and perform test searches, the pages that Google ranks for keywords never seems to match or make sense, at all. For example, I search for "solid scrub tops" and it ranks the "print scrub tops" category. Or the "Men Clearance" page is ranking for keyword "Women Scrub Pants". Or, I will search for a specific brand, and it ranks a completely different brand. Has anyone else seen this behavior with duplicate content issues? Or is it an issue with some other penalty? At this point, our only option is to test something and see what impact it has, but it is difficult to do when keywords do not align with content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lunavista-comm0 -
Is it worth removing date from Blog Posts / Articles
Wondering, is it worth to remove date from articles from seo perspective. Am sure, Google search algorithm would like demote a post written a year back, as against an article on the same post (unless a year old post has very strong Authoritative links) May be it can turn out a bad user experience of removing dates, but if can hide date using Javascripts so as to show it as image to user and hide it from search engines, is it a good idea !!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
Article/ Blog Post submissions
Hello All, I'm looking to perform a 'Standard' guest blog post link building tactic, but i'm a little unsure as where to start. Does anybody have a list/ guide to websites that accept guest posts? Preferably ones that are useful for SEO purposes, I have been link building for about 3 months now, but to be honest, most of these links are NoFollow, which isn't too great! Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul_Tovey0 -
How to beat Wikipedia article from the top spot on SERPS?
Hi Guys, One of our clients has a good web site with lots of content that is ranked already on #2 for the top keyword (singular and plural) on Google UK. The keyword itself is a competitive one. The top spot is occupied by a wikipedia article that doesn't have much content in general. Can anyone come up with an advice what strategy we have to apply to outplace that article? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | myclicks-1636030 -
Do search engines understand special/foreign characters?
We carry a few brands that have special foreign characters, e.g., Kühl, Lolë, but do search engines recognize special unicode characters? Obviously we would want to spend more energy optimizing keywords that potential customers can type with a keyboard, but is it worthwhile to throw in some encoded keywords and anchor text for people that copy-paste these words into a search? Do search engines typically equate special characters to their closest English equivalent, or are "Kuhl", "Kühl" and "Kühl" three entirely different terms?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TahoeMountain400