Dammit, dammit, dammit. Excuse my language but I’m a little fired up (and ticked off) because I just now noticed something on Helium that could potentially be sapping the effectiveness of the article.
For those that are participating in the 1000 article challenge or frequently write on Helium, listen up.
The Problem: You’re wrecking your SEO
I’m sure a few of you have caught this; I certainly didn’t up until now, but during the submission process you’re given an input for “search terms”.
This, from what I thought, was a way to tag your article so help with organization and potentially boost your search engine optimization. Of course, I would add in common terms that people would be searching upon but then the horror hit me.
Take a look at both of these screenshots:
See anything different? The URL! Ughhhh, the “tags” I thought I was adding to the article are actually part of the URL! It’s not entirely a big deal but one of the big elements of writing effective SEO articles is to ensure that your URL structure is accurate:
Example:
- www.murlu.com/seo-written-article
- www.murlu.com/writing/seo-written-article
- www.murlu.com/seo/writing/seo-written-article
You want to make sure your URL is short but keyword rich – something that got completely annihilated by adding in those search terms. Sure, the articles are showing up fairly well in some areas of search and on Helium but I’m well over a hundred in and feel a little frustrated to just find this now.
Blah, I feel stupid. But ya know, you live, you learn, you make mistakes and you correct them.
If you’re writing on Helium, I would suggest one of the following:
- Only use one, keyword rich tag
- Don’t use tags at all
I guess, in some ways, you could use this to help your rankings as well. For example, Helium generally doesn’t add numbers to the titles – with a tag (just using “7″) your url could then be 7-seo-written-article-tips vs. seo-writen-article-tips. Could help with SEO.
Either way, be a little conscious when you’re writing on Helium. Hope this helps.
Hi Murray,
I haven’t written on Helium yet but will keep this in mind. Thanks for sharing the tips.
I know what it feels like to have published hundreds of blog posts, videos or articles and then have to edit each one. Right now I’m changing resource boxes and titles on each one of my 300 blog posts, along with changing up titles and annotation tags on over 470 youtube videos.
We know that making mass changes is part of the game, but it can drive you batty at times
Enjoy your weekend.
Ryan Biddulph
Ryan Biddulph´s last [type] ..How to Slap Your Next Blog Post Out of the Park
Ouch Ryan,
Those edits are the worst but they must be done – you could always outsource those types of tasks. If it would have taken you 10 hours of mind numbing work – throw out some money and get it done while you work on other things
I remember having to work on a project for 4 months: it literally had to to changed every day down to the smallest detail; it almost made me go insane. So I feel ya, man.
I’m not entirely sure if I can edit the titles which kind of sucks but at least I caught it earlier than later
Good luck with your edits and have a great weekend as well.
Yeah I did already notice that the “tag” really ended up your meta name description AND your URL title BUT the meta TITLE will always be the title for the group of articles.
I have been trying to keyword optimize CLOSE to what their default title is because of this
so..
http://www.helium.com/items/1947558-the-powerful-link-between-url-and-seo
has a meta title (that they give you) of:
“The link between URLs and SEO – by Gene Patterson – Helium”
And meta description of:
The Powerful Link Between URL and SEO
Keyword Optimize it for a longtail of: “Link Between URL and SEO” and hopefully it will do allright
It kinda forces you to stay with at least a close derivative of their initial “title” suggestion but I guess it helps them make sure articles are on point and do not wander off topic
Gene´s last [type] ..20 Travel Horror Movies that Make You Want to Stay Home
Hey Gene, thanks for swinging by.
Thanks for the insights on Helium. I actually just got an email back from the help guys over there and although they did say it was intended to be basically that way it was still really alarming, ya know? You could use it to help boost your overall SEO but I think adding blindly (as I did originally) has probably hurt the article overall.
Additionally, what’s you’re take on adding Helium articles to social bookmarking sites. I usually cut out my name and Helium from the title because I try to keep it very specific, ya know?
I have been mixing it up. Maybe 50/50 on leaving my names in. Sometimes I am just too lazy to take the few seconds to go pack and cut out the name. It comes last, I figure it doesn’t really hurt that much.
For you since your name is closely associated with site branding, might not be a bad Idea to leave it in I would think. People who read this site might search you name and hit your Helium articles.
Very smart Gene,
It makes a lot of sense too because just looking at the analytics here on Murlu, I’ve found that quite a few will type in ‘Murlu’ to find the blog. I wish you could track Helium a bit more but I’m sure there are those that will find you through your name
As you said with the branding, it would also greatly help if you were to just say “google me” and bam, you have a TON of your articles appearing within search engines – it’ll immediately have people sit up because they see you’re serious.