Content/Article Creation

[mypokercorner]

Q1 is almost impossible to anwser. But just so you know, I'll write you 1000 articles for just 45K!

I would suggest a completely different approach, but that's just me. Suppose you have 1000 articles right now. I honestly think it would be a mistake to put them all on one site. I would take 200 articles and put them on my main site, and I would phase out the release. I wouldn't just dump 200 articles at once.

With the remaining 800, I would simply give them away to all sorts of other websites with each including a couple of backlins to my main site.

What this does is it allows you to have a comprehensive main site where you can SEO the hell out of each page, then by giving away the rest, you actually setup back links to target yoru specific keywords on your various pages you want to promote. I'd have about 1/3 of the 800 articles giving backlinks to my front page, and 2/3 linking to various internal pages.

This is what will generate your search engine traffic. The article itself isn't really driving the traffic. Oh sure, someone could stumble uppon an artile, find it interesting and click the links to end up on your site. But don't put all your eggs on that basket. You want to move up the SERPs with the keywords you target. This will do it for you.

Back to Q1, one reason why it is so dificult to predict the traffic you can expect has to do with your keyword selection. This is truely the most important factor in this entire plan, and if you manage to screw that up by either selecting keywords from a market that has too much competition that you can't beat, or ismply target keywords that nobody searches for, this greatly affects the overall results. You can have a billion articles, if they don't target the right keywords, you've wasted them.

Q2 - If you did what I proposed above, then the 800 articles out there that are linking back to you permanently help you maintain your SERP. But you can never just walk away. Your keywords are your bread and butter and eventually, you'll need to remarket them to ensure you don't start droping rank in the search results. Competitors will eventually figure out your strategy, mimic it, and beat you at it if you just walk away. It's a constant battle.


Those are my own thoughts on the whole thing.

[BootyCraze]

Is the UK language that different? I know the spelling is but the spell checker sorts that out. I read US content a lot so I dont really notice.

Having 1000 pages of content would be great, it will uncover a lot of hidden keywords that can be targeted with quality. Adding too much content to the one site will probably flag you for having an unnatural growth.

If you are just starting out, how do you know what terms to target? Im sure you will get more success by testing the water first.

[mypokercorner]

Originally Posted by BootyCraze

If you are just starting out, how do you know what terms to target?

That's the million dollar question isn't it? The truth is that keyword selection is so critical in your success that people generally don't want to share that information. I guess all I can tell you is don't go for terms that are to generic, like "poker" because the competition is just to great. Thousands and thousands of sites have been targeting that word for years. Why would a new low traffic site be ever considered by google in such a market?

Try to think keyphrases instead, and think about what people will actually type in the search engine. If your site is called bananapokerman, don't target "banana poker man" because no one is ever going to search for that. Your site name is often completely irrelevent.

[mickn888]

Thanks mypokercorner for that info. Absolutely legendary stuff. I wish I had 1000 articles, but I don't as yet!

Luckily we have a niche within the poker industry. It's not hugely competitive (reason being, its difficult to monetize). I should be able to nail some decent keywords (fingers crossed).

Another question (to mypoker corner or anybody that can help): Say for instance, I give away an article about "Poker Chips" to cardplayer.com. The link in the article links to an internal page within my site about "Poker Chips"..... I presume this is the most effect linking strategy. What if the article on cardplayer about "poker chips" links to a page about "online poker".. Is it fair to say that the latter scenario will not be as effective as the former?

[mypokercorner]

your inbound links will always be more effective when they come from sites that are in the same theme than yours, and the page you're getting the inbound link from is directly related to the content of your own page.

A PAP member recently created a great site where you can submit your articles. This is a great way to get some back links. Check out rsspoker.com. You can also submit articles to various websites, exchange articles with other PAP members, write for ezine articles, etc. All of these are ways to get backlinks. Bigger sites, like cardplayer won't bother with the articles. They can afford their own writers, and they don't need to give links back. They just write their own stuff, or pay for articles. If you're not sure if a site will accept free articles in exchange for back links, you can always ask. You can also browse the site and see for yourself is they have out bound links in their content or not.