Action through Internet Marketing Techniques!

[Advocate]

We've found out that its very important to Google to place descriptive keywords in the titles of posts - it makes a huge difference. So putting XMRV in the title of a post is good. If its on the CDC putting the CDC in there, etc. We had a huge thread going with the last imperial college study that got on play on Google until we changed the title - then it sprang right up there.

Cort, does it work for post titles, or only for thread titles? If it works for post titles, then should we be using "Go Advanced" for all our posts? (I have some wicked suggestions for what to put in the titles, but trust you to come up with the same ideas behind the scenes.)

 

[thefreeprisoner]

What Google likes in terms of forum posts

It works best for thread titles, not post titles.

In general, Google likes:

• Titles of pages with keywords
• Links with keywords in them pointing to a page
• Keywords in the page address
• Headers, paragraphs, main text with keywords in
• Internal links with keywords in
• People staying a long time on a site before returning to search results
• Recently updated pages
• A domain name that's been registered a long time
• Images with keywords in the alt tag or description
• Links from well-known websites that are known to be reliable (eg Wikipedia, BBC and so on)
• ...and a bunch of other stuff

So, because titling a thread well creates links to that page from the main forum page, plus an address with keywords in, plus a page title with keywords in, Google likes it a LOT.

Hope that's helpful and not too technical.

Rachel xx

 

[Dolphin]

It works best for thread titles, not post titles.

In general, Google likes:

• Titles of pages with keywords
• Links with keywords in them pointing to a page
• Keywords in the page address
• Headers, paragraphs, main text with keywords in
• Internal links with keywords in
• People staying a long time on a site before returning to search results
• Recently updated pages
• A domain name that's been registered a long time
• Images with keywords in the alt tag or description
• Links from well-known websites that are known to be reliable (eg Wikipedia, BBC and so on)
• ...and a bunch of other stuff

So, because titling a thread well creates links to that page from the main forum page, plus an address with keywords in, plus a page title with keywords in, Google likes it a LOT.

Hope that's helpful and not too technical.

Rachel xx

Thanks.
Are tags of much value?

 

[Dolphin]

Anyways, I've been playing with Internet marketing for a little while. I believe the most important is to have good content, not quantity. Internet marketing is the tool you use to help get more viewership to the good content.

One measure of how good the content is how many people bookmark it on bookmarking sites like delicious.com, or if it's an article, if they leave comments like "thanks! good article. that solved my problem." I have a handful of article/blog posts but only one of them gets bookmarked. So that gives me a signal that maybe the other articles aren't that useful to other people.

I tried AdWords when there was the Chase Community Giving contest. I spent a few dollars to send some traffic to the voting page for WPI and CFIDS Association on relevant search terms. Despite our dismal community participation level, it was an interesting experiment.

Thanks for the tips, charityfundraiser and well done for having the initiative to pay for the Ad words.

I have just signed up to delicious.com following your message. Where is your blog so I can see what you are talking about (PM if you prefer)? Also, what you describe gives you feedback on the article but does it help increase traffic. I get the impression Digg it (or whatever it is) might although have generally ignored those things up to now. Maybe I need to change if I want to highlight stuff more.

 

[citybug]

From the first post I thought you meant running internet ads for WPI. Maybe there could be a book list page here with links to amazon to collect money for WPI, other research projects and the forum or link page to the vitamin purveyors . Advertising for Advocacy.

For the posts I think it would be good to choose a few articles a month to attach keywords, tags etc.

 

[Dolphin]

Thanks charityfundraiser.

 

[Anika]

It works best for thread titles, not post titles.

In general, Google likes:

• Titles of pages with keywords
• Links with keywords in them pointing to a page
• Keywords in the page address
• Headers, paragraphs, main text with keywords in
• Internal links with keywords in
• People staying a long time on a site before returning to search results
• Recently updated pages
• A domain name that's been registered a long time
• Images with keywords in the alt tag or description
• Links from well-known websites that are known to be reliable (eg Wikipedia, BBC and so on)
• ...and a bunch of other stuff

So, because titling a thread well creates links to that page from the main forum page, plus an address with keywords in, plus a page title with keywords in, Google likes it a LOT.

Hope that's helpful and not too technical.

Rachel xx

Thanks for the tips, charityfundraiser and well done for having the initiative to pay for the Ad words.

I have just signed up to delicious.com following your message. ...

My site isn't yet ready for publicity although it does show up in search engines. (It doesn't have anything to do with CFS, yet.) However, you can see on delicious.com that there is a number to the right of each bookmarked link showing how many other people have bookmarked it, and you can surf other users' bookmarks.

It doesn't directly nor immediately increase traffic. However, it does help for repeat visitors (that's why they bookmarked it!) and for readers to share the link with others when the occasion arises (that's also why they bookmarked it!). I agree I get the impression that Digg is more for immediate real-time popularity, but I also get the impression that a lot of it is noise you read because you see it but forget about it afterwards.

It's mostly feedback on the quality of what you're putting out there. Internet marketing with low signal-to-noise ratio starts looking like spam or scam, not a good impression in my opinion.

This is helpful information. Thanks for the tips!

Maybe we should have a sticky on this thread that keeps this information readily available.

Would that make sense? Who can do that?