8 replies to this topic

[Jem]

About 18 months ago I blogged about needing lunch ideas for work, as I'd be taking in a packed lunch. Quite quickly the post hit #1 in Google (.co.uk, anyway) for 'lunch ideas' despite being a crappy two paragraph post.

I get quite a large amount of hits for the phrase (Google webmaster tools tells me it's my 3rd most popular referral keyphrase) and I've often thought about adding some of my recipes and ideas and linking them from the original post.

I'm concerned, though - given that my blog is mainly about Internet related stuff (coding, etc) - am I likely to dilute rankings for other things or make myself look spammy by doing so? I'm not necessarily looking to make money from this but do want to make the most of visitors.

[iamlost]

There are two considerations:
* remember that Google (and other SEs) index URLs (pages) not domains.

* if the blog is presenting you, the person, as well as you, the business, then personal details are not only acceptable but a requirement.

I consider a services site (especially when a blog) an interview - not only are you selling your knowledge and capabilities but the person behind the skills. Of course if you can manage a little twist such as relating a particular recipe to increased productivity that's a bonus. Personally I would be tempted to associate each recipe with a particular code algorithm - they are similar.

[bwelford]

I agree with iamlost, that provided your posts are appropriate to your audience, then it's great to get them anyway you can. Adding more posts may help you get more long tail searches favoring your post, thus more traffic. You might want to check whether there is any way you can subtly get them to visit some of the 'money' pages on your blog or website.

[EGOL]

We put up several blog posts per day - all of them very short but related to the theme of our site. When one of them ties into serious traffic we produce a nice article page with lots of detail about that topic. Then we either link the blog post to the article or redirect the blog post URL to the article. (redirecting is done if the article ranks as well as the blog post but is not in the top 5 positions on Google)

[bwelford]

Then we either link the blog post to the article or redirect the blog post URL to the article. (redirecting is done if the article ranks as well as the blog post but is not in the top 5 positions on Google)

That's a very interesting approach, Egol. Do you redirect via .htaccess? If so don't you end up with a large number of redirects? Or could you cancel some after say 6 months?

[EGOL]

We are using .htaccess ... however, we are placing separate .htaccess files in folders of the blog... that way it does not bloat the .htaccess file in the root directory.

So far this is working well. The long articles usually rank better than the blog post and pull a lot more long tail traffic. Redirecting the blog post to the article usually pushes the article up a couple more positions - enough that a single listing in the SERPs pulls more traffic than a double listing a couple positions lower.

[AbleReach]

Thanks, EGOL. I've been wondering about something similar. This gives me a good place to start from.

[Jem]

Thank you for the feedback and suggestions. Given me something to think about.

EGOL - I like your method, that's actually provided me with a few ideas for some other posts of mine, cheers!

[A.N.Onym]

EGOL, suppose I have post URLs such as domain.com/post-title, how would you use folders and .htacces files here?

Thanks.