9 replies to this topic

[newhat]

One of my sites deals with leading users to do something on my site that can have several different good keywords. Let's say it's a quitting smoking website. Right now I have a page that is an intake form titled nicotine-addition.php and a user can fill out the information to send to vendors to help the user stop their nicotine addiction.

So here's a thought -- if I'm trying to insert advertising into my own blog pages. I don't really need Adsense or other advertisers, just secondary. But I don't think it's a good idea to have 3 links all going to the same page from every article, e.g. a house ad in the sidebar, one in the article and another in the header as a banner. What I can do is create a second intake form with somewhat different text (although many of the same intake links to different vendors) and call it "quit-smoking.php" and have 2 of the ads go to the original intake and another 1 (or maybe additional for a long article) go to the new intake form quit-smoking.php.

Wondering what your thoughts are regarding this strategy. I'm trying to avoid having every page lead to home and having negative effects while also spreading the wealth by using a few, carefully selected keywords.

[chrishirst]

Well, personally I'm confused to what your stategy is and what it is you are actually asking about.

Intake form?? is a what exactly.

But I don't think it's a good idea to have 3 links all going to the same page from every article, e.g. a house ad in the sidebar, one in the article and another in the header as a banner.

Why not?
If that is the route you want visitors to take the more chances you give them to choose that route the better it is and the more chances you have of converting them, especially if you track the clicks on each link and thereby get to know your audience a little better and find what makes them tick (or click), knowing your users is of paramount importance in this game

[newhat]

Well, personally I'm confused to what your stategy is and what it is you are actually asking about.
Intake form?? is a what exactly.
Why not?

Intake form = lead generation. You can have either ( A ) 4 links on one page all leading to the landing page with the intake form for users to fill out or, ( B ) two links to intake form 1 and two links to intake form 2, both of which basically do the same thing but at different internal URLs and with slightly different text. The issue is whether many links on the same page to another internal page is harmful on your page ranking or whether splitting them up to different pages is a good strategy.

[Jill]

If I understand you correctly (and I'm not sure that I do) it doesn't make any sense to have multiple contact forms for the same service.

I think perhaps you're getting wrapped up into thinking that your URL and the keywords in it are going to have some sort of great optimization effect for you. That's the only reason I can think why you want two forms and why you mentioned what their URLs would be.

[Michael Martinez]

You can NoFollow the links or use 302-redirects (which is what most experienced affiliate site operators do) or embed the links in InLine Frames.

[newhat]

If I understand you correctly (and I'm not sure that I do) it doesn't make any sense to have multiple contact forms for the same service.
I think perhaps you're getting wrapped up into thinking that your URL and the keywords in it are going to have some sort of great optimization effect for you. That's the only reason I can think why you want two forms and why you mentioned what their URLs would be.

You hit the nail on the head. I've noticed that my forms do get index and, in some cases, they also rank.

You can NoFollow the links or use 302-redirects (which is what most experienced affiliate site operators do) or embed the links in InLine Frames.

Ah... perhaps this is what I should be doing. However, I've been warned not to nofollow internal links to my own pages.

Bottom line is - do I gain anything or lose anything by having four links to one destination page on many of my pages? As I mentioned above, it's a lead generation site with a lot of content and you want to have a link in the sidebar, two in the article and one in the header or footer area. It might seem like overkill but the ads are small and people generally ignore them. I'd use those instead of adsense so the page wouldn't be cluttered with other ads.

[Michael Martinez]

You hit the nail on the head. I've noticed that my forms do get index and, in some cases, they also rank.
Ah... perhaps this is what I should be doing. However, I've been warned not to nofollow internal links to my own pages.

*sigh*

I'll warn you not to try to "sculpt" PageRank, as that doesn't work, has never worked, and has no hope of working. The once preferred method for "sculpting" PageRank was to use "rel='nofollow'" and once Google changed how it handles the PageRank on pages with "rel='nofollow'" link attributes people in the SEO community panicked and assumed that using "nofollow" on internal links was completely wrong.

There are times when it's perfectly fine. I see it used wisely on many Websites these days for internal links. Do it sensibly, not for some stupid SEO trick.

Bottom line is - do I gain anything or lose anything by having four links to one destination page on many of my pages? As I mentioned above, it's a lead generation site with a lot of content and you want to have a link in the sidebar, two in the article and one in the header or footer area. It might seem like overkill but the ads are small and people generally ignore them. I'd use those instead of adsense so the page wouldn't be cluttered with other ads.

Think of it only in terms of usability. Don't fuss over possible SEO implications.

[chrishirst]

Why not simply add a robots meta element with a "noindex" directive to the form?
Or block them in robots.txt?

[Jill]

Bottom line is - do I gain anything or lose anything by having four links to one destination page on many of my pages?

Not SEO-wise -- it's neither bad nor good. But its fine to do to increase conversions.

[newhat]

Not SEO-wise -- it's neither bad nor good. But its fine to do to increase conversions.

Super - thanks. Much appreciated. I've started to experiment as curiosity given the indexing of the other pages, even if it ends up being nothing. Panda has forced me to try out different things.