By Andy Beard
Black Hat SEO
A fairly common black hat search engine optimization tactic isto build multiple websites on a general theme. The sites arethen cross-linked to other sites in the same network, and wouldalso include one-way links to the primary site with varyinganchor text. The whole aim is to give one or more sites a hugeboost in search engine results pages (SERPs), and for it to alsobenefit from additional traffic flowing from the various networksites.
People undertaking such methods generally create the websiteswith automated tools, use scraped content from other peopleswebsites, and most of the sites have no purpose other than todrive traffic to the primary site.
White Hat SEO
First it is important to understand a little about linkingstructure. I am not going to go into excessive details.
It is widely understood that internal linking on any website canrepresent as much as 50% of the page rank attributed to anysingle page within a site. How your pages are linked together,for which terms, and whether links are reciprocated all play animport role in the calculation.
If I told you that there are hundreds of websites on theinternet, with very high page rank on multiple terms themselves,who would be willing to create a niche portal within theirpages, highly optimized for your website, niche and keywords, itis something you would probably be willing to pay for.
We are not talking about a simple directory site. We are talkingabout high quality content pages, that will pass on pagerank toyour site, plus a central hub, similar to a home page, thatbenfits from all the content pages linking to it, and that inturn also points directly to your website.
Of course:-
- You will have complete control over the content of each ofthese sites.
- You will be provided with an interface for managing the site'scontents.
- You will be able to add content whenever you like, on almostany subject.
- They will even act as brokers to encourage other people tocreate hubs which will also point directly to your website
- Most of these sites have powerful linking structures, thatmagnify the value of your content, and the links both to yourwebsite, and to the central hub.
This is all "white hat". You will never be penalised for usingthis tactic by the search engines, and it is permanent! Yourtraffic hubs will be a permanent fixture. Some of these hubswill disappear, but many more will appear to replace them.
Is this something you would pay for?
You can get this highly powerful promotion of your website forfree!
Simply write and submit articles to article directories.
Every day I see questions on multiple marketing forums along thelines of:-
"Does article marketing really work?"
"I submitted an article 2 weeks ago and my search engine resultshave stayed the same, why?"
"When I submit an article, how long until I will see traffic tomy website?"
Describing exactly how this all works in words is verydifficult, but lets look at a very simple math formula.
1x1x1x1x1=1
It is not very impressive is it?
You have to remember however that an individual article youpublish gains incoming links in a number of ways.
- Snippets from your article will appear on the pages of otherarticles in the same niche.
- You will have a link in the main topic.
- you will most likely have a link for some time in the RSS feed.
- if a website uses that RSS feed for content, the article onthe directory site would gain at least a temporary link, butquite often a permanent one.
So we may be looking at more like
1.3x1.3x1.3x1.3x1.3=3.71
Some of the numbers however are going to be bigger or smaller,depending on the authority of the page linking to the article,the number of links from that page etc.
You might well have to use addition rather than multiplicationwhen regarding many aspects of a real formula.
What is important however is that not only is each individualarticle you publish gaining in pagerank, but also your authorprofile.
Lets take some examples.
These are the current top 5 article authors listed at EzineArticles:-
Lance Winslow 2029 Articles Jeff Herring 340 Articles Tim Gorman306 Articles John Mussi 303 Articles Dennis Siluk 286 Articles
Now do a search for any of those author names in Google.
Every single result has a reference to their Ezine Articlesprofile within the top 3 positions.
This isn't true in every case. Well known (and popular for goodreason) internet marketer Willie Crawford's profile only appearsat the bottom of the first page, but he has hundreds of linkspointing to his popular websites, and has a baseball playercompeting for ranking.
Profile pages concentrate and magnify the linking benefit ofevery article you publish, thus the links from a profile pagecarry a lot of weight.
Some author bio pages allow a lot of customization. Most allowyou to have some text (which can be keyword targeted), alongwith website links. A few even allow you to set anchor text forevery link in your profile.
Thus to answer all the questions I see every day on variousmarketing forums.
- Yes, article marketing does work.
- the more articles you submit, the more effect you will havefrom using articles as one form of marketing. A hub with asingle page has very little weighting. A hub with 10, 20 or even100 articles will carry an immense amount of weight, and havinglots of hubs pointing to your websites will have a massiveeffect on search engine results.
- you might see an immediate burst of traffic within a few daysof when you submit an article, however article marketing is ashort, medium and long-term solution.
Short term it can be a fast route to having a websitespidered by search engines. Medium term, you will gainsome exposure within your niche as other sites and ezinespublish your content. Many of them don't write about your topicevery day. Long-term is really up to you. The morequality articles you write, the larger your hubs will become.Large article hubs pick up traffic from a larger variety ofsearch engine traffic, but also make your author bio moreprominent, thus magnifying the value of external links placedthere.
Article Source: www.ArticlesBase.com
