My Multiple Streams

Better Related Content

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nRelate Related ContentWhat is Related Content? I’m sure you’ve seen them on many blogs, at the bottom of the post you would see a few links to more of the blogs post with a nice caption “Other posts you may like” or something along those lines. Related content is a great way to give your viewers a link to other posts that they may enjoy and keep them interested on your site. It also provides an easy way to have internal links on your posts which is great for SEO!

There are many plugins that will provide this for you, most perform the task by comparing categories or tags but I have a better one for you!

nRelate is a plugin that takes related content a step further in a 3 distinct ways

Better Related Content

nRelate actually spiders your cites content, indexing all your posts and keeping it in a database on their servers. This allows them to use the actual content of your posts to find other related posts rather than just same category or tag. All this is done on their server as well which means faster delivery and freeing up your server for other content delivery, making your site just a wee bit faster.

The set up is very easy as well allowing much of the editing from the dashboard rather than tweaking the CSS. You can have as few or as many links as you wish as well as changing the size of the thumbnails. Some other features that you can adjust in the dashboard:

  • Post titles and length
  • Excerpts
  • Exclude categories
  • How far back to go
  • Several built in styles or use your own css
  • Location of related posts
  • Thumbnails or plain text

I have used many related posts widgets and most of the time I had to fidget with css and code to get it the way I wanted. This plugin has I’d say 95% of what you would want to change in the dashboard for quick changes.

Add a Little Revenue to Your Site

nRelate also gives you the ability to earn a little money with the plugin. You can simply sign up for ads through the plugin and it will then show one of the related links as an ad which you will earn revenue each time its clicked. gain using the indexing of your site it will show related ads that should be of interest to your viewers. You have control of course on how many ads you wish to show in your related content from 1 to 10, as well as postion of the add (either first, last or random).

You dont have to worry about black hat tactics as it will clearly have a “sponsored” overlay letting your viewers know it is an add

Your Own Blog Network

Another cool feature of nRelate is networking with other bloggers in your niche. By adding other blogs to your blogroll (or any other category in your links) you can have nRelate show related content from other blogs. nRelate server will spider and index the other blogs you choose and serve up related posts. You again can choose how many of your related posts links are from other blogs and it will let your viewers know, like the ads, that the link is from another blog.

This feature is great for SEO providing links to fellow bloggers and hopefully they will do the same for you and provides a benefit to your viewers giving them more related content to follow.

Putting it all together

All of this is easily tracked from your nRelate account on their website. You can track information from all your blogs from one account, seeing how many clicks you get for your own related content as well as click to your networked blogs. Of course it als tracks the ad clicks and revenue you earn.

 

I think if you try it out you will like it over any related post plugin you are using now. To get the plugin just go to plugins and search for nRelate. They do have 3 plugins so be sure to get the related content one.

If you do decide to use it and want to use the network feature, let me know and I’ll add you!

Link with yourself: SEO Tip of the Week

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Link to your own postsNo you won’t go blind linking with yourself but it could be fun. If you have been blogging or involved with the SEO of your own site for any length of time Im sure you have come across the term “Back Linking”. If you havenet it is simply getting links to your site from other sites out there in the intrawebs. Good quality links from good sites are good for your SEO mojo (more on that on another post) but did you know that liking within can be just as helpful and as important.

internal linking is just as you suspect it is, linking to content within your own site and is often missed as a tool to boost your SEO as well as some other benefits:

  • Provide additional links to buried posts. Google likes links internal and external!
  • Provide paths to some lesser trafficked posts, hopefully bringing them up in stature.
  • Providing paths to other material you readers may wish to see, keeping them on your site longer. Google likes lower bounce rates!
  • Links to other posts provides search engines more paths to content and helps with indexing. Tells google what you think is important.

Of course just like external linking there is the good side and the dark side, avoid the dark side.

Good Ways to Link Within Your Site

Avoid linking to the same content more than once if you can. Google is going to place the most importance to the first time it is linked, more is not necessarily better in this case. Even to your readers, linking to the same content several times can get repetitive and seem needy. They’ll most likely decide to move on.

Avoid linking to to much content in the same post as well. Just like linking to the same content is a no-no, linking to a dozen older posts is just as bad. You;ll have your reader hoping all over the place and lose them very quickly. One or two internal links from a post is more than enough. Personally I would shot for one or two internal and one external link in your post if you could.

Make one of the internal links in the first paragraph, first sentence even if it fits. be sure it makes sense but any link that is visible when your vistor first hits your page (with out scrolling) will give you maximum SEO juice.

Above all make sure you are linking to content that is relevant to your current post. If you are writing about latest twilight release (and if you are maybe you should stop) you dont want to link to posts about your new puppy, unless you named it bella… well maybe. Goggle is pretty smart and can look at the two and see if they are relevant to each other. Not to mention your readers will for sure ba bale to tell if you are just linking for linking sake

Anchor text, that is the text that will be linking to the old post, should be relevant and make sense in the posts context. Dont just through a link in that dosent read naturally to your visitors. The anchor text should be word(s) that are relevant to both the context of the current post and the one you are linking to.

The Darkside of Linking Within Your Site

You kind of got the idea above I hope of what not to do as well but just in case heres a quick list of what to avoid.

  • A dozen links in one post all linking back to the same older post.
  • a dozen links in general are to many. Just 2-4 max
  • placing all your links at the bottom of your post.
  • Anchor text like CLICK HERE
  • Linking for the sake of linking. Make your links relavant to your post

Random concluding thoughts

Linking within your own site can be one of the easiest SEO techniques for those that blog and yet it also the most under utilized. I’m guilty of it myself, I often to forget to see if there is a way for me to link back to an old post or even a page if I cant find a post. Really simple to include at least one link to yourself and the benefits over time