Questions for SEO's & Moderators

[andrewjgitt]

Questions for SEO's & Moderators

Hi, I have 4 “hard” questions, at least IMO, here they go, I hope others can learn from these as they aren’t the typical basic questions people ask over and over again.

1) I have a list of articles on my website. I am going to provide other websites in my industry with ONLY the link of the articles. Now I understand about duplicate content, however does Google view just article links pointing to my website as duplicate content? Do I need to give each website a unique title to avoid duplicate content even though they are just articles. The page will look similar to <snip> which is not my website, but you get the point.

2) Using the above link as an example, should I hyperlink the ENTIRE article or is it better only to hyperlink the keywords of the article. Do the backlinks counts just the same when ones keyword is hyperlinked as part of a longer sentence?

3) Additional, does google favor and give good PR to pages only with links as the above link I gave as an example or would it be better to have regular text and only hyperlink part of the title (ie. I would hyperlink just the keyword)
Example: title of article is : Learn how real estate investing can increase your profits. (I would only highlight real estate investing) This way there is lots of normal text and the links are embedded within the a sentence

4) I plan on building an affiliate program for these websites and when they refer visitors that come to my site via these links I’ve mentioned above, will that effect the backlinks? Usually affiliate links look at ?affiliate=121906 or something like this, can you please explain how I could have code written where I can still track where visitors come from and yet not be detrimental to the quality of the backlink?

Thanks everyone for advice!

[shaneekirk]

Here's my question... I don't see how "affiliate linking" is different from buying links?? Aren't you in effect paying these people to link/send you traffic? Seems like a grey area.

As for Q1, I don't think that a link is duplicate content, even if the copy is the same. Duplicate content would be if you posted the same article all over the place.

Q2, As a practice I don't like it when you are linking to an article and only the main keywords are highlighted/hyperlinked. It looks messy and "fishy" on a page. I would suggest reworking the title for the keywords to be up front, and still just link the ones you mentioned. For example, "Real Estate Investing: Learn to Increase Your Profits" It just looks bad if the title is only linked in the middle.

[jimbeetle]

1) Links to articles are not viewed as dupe content, but yes, varying the link text to the articles would be a good idea.

2) If the other sites are just going to link to the articles I don't understand the "should I hyperlink the ENTIRE article" part. Again, as above, varying the link text including different keywords is a good technique.

3) Basically the same question again. Yes, you can link the entire title, many times that's the appropriate way to do it. Again, if you can vary the link text to sometimes include related terms, that might also be beneficial.

4) Affiliate programs and building backlinks really don't mix. Run an affiliate program for the sake of running an affiliate program.