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Those of you who might remember, late last year I (and my family) moved out to the country. An exciting move and while it may be far more remote than where we used to live I'm sitting in the middle of so many interesting things to write about. It's crazy.
I didn't have much to do with horses before. Having only sat on one once before. I guess you could call it a horse ride, but it was more like I was being hijacked. By the horse.
Now I can hang out with horses whenever I feel like it. I'm often heading over to the neighbour who has a heavy horse stud. These things are giants. Gentle giants for the most part. Though there is a half Pinto half Clydesdale that wouldn't look out of place with a Native American chief sitting on top of him, if he didn't have that murderous look in his eye.
So I have myself a well researched lens on how to care for your horses feet. To get myself an on-topic quality backlink and also the chance to dip into a fresh stream of traffic I wrote up a more informal and personal ramble called Equine Pedicure which I published at Gather.
As well as people being able to post comments in the article they can also post comments in the image pages as well. And the good folk at Gather love looking at pretty pictures. Almost as much as I love taking them.
The important thing is, I'm not rehashing or summarising what I've published here at Squidoo. Otherwise it would be pointless for the visitor over there to click through and pretty much find the same thing here. What I am doing is giving them more specific information. Also not making it obvious by sticking it down at the bottom telling people "CLICK HERE!!!". I highlighted the most appropriate keywords, in this case horse's foot and linked it with http://www.squidoo.com/hooves
Whether you're doing it at Gather or any other place, be mindful of giving the reader the best experience possible. Treat them with respect.
Also you might have a side story which won't quite fit in your lens, and it's certainly not enough to build an entire article on. In this case I had 150 words and 9 photos. It would have made for a slim lens. But at Gather it's short and snappy and much appreciated.
For more of my thoughts on the matter check out my lens on Using Gather to promote your Squidoo Lenses.
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Wonderful information. Thank you for sharing.
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The pictures are really worth checking out. I need to get better with the pictures over there because that really is what people like.
Question about the backlinks, though. Are they no-follow (or some other terminology I don't know)? Just wondering because they never show up in my Squidaholic reports. And they've certainly been around long enough to do so. I haven't done a lot over there as yet because I haven't seen traffic come through, nor do I see where the backlinks are credited. Without one or the other, I'm uncertain as to the value.
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Glen you have advised this before and I appreciate the reminder. Putting the same information on multiple sites help no one. Each published articles on the same topic should be created with providing more and different information on the topic. This way both the author and the readers benefit.
I used to write one genuine article and publish it on 3 -4 sites. That wasn't very wise. I now create a new article for every site that I publish to. Don't know about the traffic, but personally I do feel better.
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Great Post! ![]()
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SusanVillasLewis wrote:
The pictures are really worth checking out. I need to get better with the pictures over there because that really is what people like.
Question about the backlinks, though. Are they no-follow (or some other terminology I don't know)? Just wondering because they never show up in my Squidaholic reports. And they've certainly been around long enough to do so. I haven't done a lot over there as yet because I haven't seen traffic come through, nor do I see where the backlinks are credited. Without one or the other, I'm uncertain as to the value.
They are "dofollow" or not "nofollow". There's no rewrite that I saw either. However, there are multiple ways to manipulate the search engines, unfortunately. There are other ways to block a search engine or nullify the "linkjuice" from being passed along.
Rajays wrote:
Glen you have advised this before and I appreciate the reminder. Putting the same information on multiple sites help no one. Each published articles on the same topic should be created with providing more and different information on the topic. This way both the author and the readers benefit.
I used to write one genuine article and publish it on 3 -4 sites. That wasn't very wise. I now create a new article for every site that I publish to. Don't know about the traffic, but personally I do feel better.
This is true. Rewrite the article, provide more info or whatever, so it's not seen as duplicate content and is of benefit to the reader.
**Very nice article/lens!! Fascinating actually. ![]()
Last edited by triathlontraining (05/18/2008 3:01 pm)
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Rajays wrote:
I used to write one genuine article and publish it on 3 -4 sites. That wasn't very wise. I now create a new article for every site that I publish to. Don't know about the traffic, but personally I do feel better.
Good work!
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SusanVillasLewis wrote:
The pictures are really worth checking out. I need to get better with the pictures over there because that really is what people like.
Question about the backlinks, though. Are they no-follow (or some other terminology I don't know)? Just wondering because they never show up in my Squidaholic reports. And they've certainly been around long enough to do so. I haven't done a lot over there as yet because I haven't seen traffic come through, nor do I see where the backlinks are credited. Without one or the other, I'm uncertain as to the value.
They're not nofollow (just checked).
I know I can see Gather as a referrer to my hubs. And I also see it in my lens stats.
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N376 wrote:
SusanVillasLewis wrote:
Question about the backlinks, though. Are they no-follow (or some other terminology I don't know)? Just wondering because they never show up in my Squidaholic reports. And they've certainly been around long enough to do so. I haven't done a lot over there as yet because I haven't seen traffic come through, nor do I see where the backlinks are credited. Without one or the other, I'm uncertain as to the value.
They're not nofollow (just checked).
I know I can see Gather as a referrer to my hubs. And I also see it in my lens stats.
OK. I've seen a few visits from Gather on a lens, but that's the only place. When I check the backlinks using Squidaholic (Yahoo), it doesn't show that there are any links from Gather at all. Oh well.
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Really appreciate the tips. Especially regarding the placement of any links...sometimes it's the more subtle things that elude me until pointed out. (I'm a social marketing retard) I signed up at Gather and have read and commented but not written thus far. I've used Zimbio a time or two.
Percherons (as well as Clydes) are another favorite of mine. I wouldn't have guessed huge draft horses would be a favorite but once you stand beside these creatures nothing else compares. Beautiful.
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I can also see Gather in my referals.
Zimbio I have hardly used, but the links show up really well in Google for some reason, so it might be worth experimenting more.
Great article Glen, I can tell you are really passionate about horses.
Nice to be able to move out into the country and to have that freedom of space - and sometimes even peace and quiet...
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poddys wrote:
Great article Glen, I can tell you are really passionate about horses.
Actually, I'm not.
That is to say, horses don't invade my every thought and conversation. I never grew up with them. But now being so close to them I do felt drawn to them.
Though denying that I'm passionate about horses may all be in vain, as I done a quick count and I've published 8 articles recently on horses, and a few more in the works as well as a some more ideas ![]()
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