I've been working at generating backlinks for a couple weeks now and have a few questions: 1) For article posting, is it bad to post the same article to multiple sites? On the same token... does it do any good to post multiple articles (unique) to the same site? 2) What article forums/sites are best for SEO? 3) Is there a target #, or ballpark #, of articles for SEO effectiveness? Same question about commenting on forums/blogs/etc... is there a target # I should be shooting for? Just trying to analyze how many I should be aiming to post a day/week/etc. 4) I notice a lot of people post comments on blogs to the effect of "Good post!"... or "Thanks for the info!" with their URL in their signature. Do these types of posts ad any SEO value?? 5) I've been struggling with analyzing keyword "competition". Google shows that green bar to denote competition level... but it isn't a very detailed measurment. How can I get an accurate analysis as to weather or not its realistic to think that I can compete for the keywords I am using?? Any info/direction/criticism on any of my questions would be greatly appreciated!! I'm new to this game and just want to make sure I don't develop any bad habits out of the gate! Thanks in advance! Moose77
I'll give this a shot. Mind you, I'm no expert so I'll just be sharing my understanding of things. I'm sure someone will be along shortly to correct anything I get massively wrong. As I understand it, duplicate content only affects the site that's hosting it, not what the content links to. So no, it's not bad for you to post duplicate articles to directories. However, don't post the same article on your site or you'll be penalized for having duplicate content. The way around this is to post the article on your site first, wait until it's indexed (if it's an established site this could be a few days to a few weeks; a new site could take weeks or months so this isn't really viable for new sites). Once it's indexed then you post it to article sites for the backlinks. That way, as far as the search engines are concerned, your site was the original source for the content and you'll get SEO credit for it, plus backlinks from the article directories. As far as posting multiple articles to an article directory, I'd say that it's a good thing. More articles means more links pointing to your site and more chances someone will see one of them in a Google (or whatever) search. It probably adds a bit of rep (or authority, or whatever you want to call it) with the search engines to see all of the links pointing to your site. EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com are the two big ones, I believe. A quick Google search should find a good number of blog posts about the Top 10 or Top 50 or whatever sites for article submissions. The more the better. As far as I know there's no "sweet spot" that you can hit. Just write and submit as many as you can before the tedium drives you insane. If you've got some extra cash you could have a ton of articles written for you and even have them submitted to the article sites. Someone around the forums would probably be more than happy to quote you a price. Depends. If the blog/forum is "DOFOLLOW" then yes, it helps. Most blogs, however, aren't for just that reason: to keep people from spamming one liner useless comments just to get a link. There was a list of "DOFOLLOW" forums floating around here somewhere, though I'm not sure where the thread is. There's probably a similar one for blogs. Again, a Google search would probably yield some sort of blog post or forum thread somewhere or other with a list of such sites. Other than for SEO, it gets your link out there and people might see it and click on it. Particularly if you're posting something useful/helpful. If you're going to go this route, at least post something meaningful whether or not the blog/forum is "DOFOLLOW". Google is probably the best you're going to find. They have, I believe, a 60% or so market share in internet searches so their info is the best available. How you interpret what Google shows you is a bit of an art. There's lots of methods, some of it rational and a lot of it just pure speculation and guesswork. I don't really have any advice on how to get an accurate analysis for such things, though someone who stops in here may. My advice is to read the forums. The only real problem I can foresee would be your question about the keyword analysis which is a tough topic anyway. You could try asking it over in the Pay Per Click forum or, maybe even better, in the Google AdWords subforum. Since it's a problem they have to deal with all the time they may have some advice. You're welcome. Hope at least some of it was useful/correct.