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Proper Contexual Linking Feature

This is the biggest feature thats missing from GSA SER. People need an easier way to add contextual links.

I suggest a new section which allows the user to add the a list of URL's and a list of keywords, If the keyword is found in the article add a random link. There should also be setting to allow the user to specify how many contextual links should add.

The macro feature just doesn't cut it and makes things very messy.

Contextual links leaves less of a footprint over the common link in the bottom, and provides a way to create a more genuine article.

Comments

  • AlexRAlexR Cape Town
    It already does this! Just make sure your anchor is found in the article and it will place the link there rather than at the bottom. It places at bottom if it can't find an anchor to hyperlink. 
  • Maybe you miss understood, GSA's current way of doing this is not what it should be.

    You want natural looking content yes? So it should contain not only a link to the site you want to promote but other sites as well. For example in an SEO article i may want to add links to SEOmoz, a Matt Cutts blog post and my own site.

    Currently 1 out of 20 odd submission it will add a contextual links even tho all articles contain the keywords to be used. (not a user error)

    This is a very important aspect of getting content indexed and looking natural that i personayl feel it needs its own settings.

    A article with one external link promoting a site, its pretty obvious what the content is for and looks like very thin content.

    What if i have 90% of engines selected and 100 anchor text added but on social web 2.0's i only want to to use 3 of the anchor text in that list of 100 and have them contextual links

    See my point? Global settings are not enough.

  • SvenSven www.GSA-Online.de

    Well this would be way to complicated to handle in my eyes. You have the option now to place X number of random Links in the article. But yes, these links go to "Im lucky google search with anchor text", image sites or some news sites with that anchor text. You can edit that of course to match other urls you prefer. Though they will not link to keywords you define but random once.

    The only way I see how this can be managed better is another option for the URLs in that file to link to special keywords...while writing this, I got an idea how to do that....so next version will have this.

  • SvenSven www.GSA-Online.de

    OK here is how you can define exactly what you want. You edit the file holding the Random URLs. In that you put...

    http://www.seomoz.org/#SEO,Search Engine,Some Other Anchor,...


    This will make sure that once that URL is chosen and one of the anchors are found, it will place a link on that.

  • Not sure if you have ever used Article Kevo Sven but they have the feature which i mean and it really does work great.

    This is what i looks like

    image

    So if the anchor text is found in the article it will randomly replace the text with a anchor text to what URL it corresponds with.

    Settings also allow for multiple links in an article

    This is what i was trying get across which i think would be a good feature to add into SER.

    Thanks for looking into it tho :)
  • OzzOzz
    edited May 2013
    SER also does place a link if keyword/anchor is found (if allowed by the platform within body text)??!
  • SvenSven www.GSA-Online.de
    Yes and with that new feature you can create your own list of URLs and Anchor texts that will be inserted randomly. But yes, there is no GUI for this new feature (yet). But what @Ozz said is happening already without the need to configure something.
  • AlexRAlexR Cape Town
    @sven - am I correct in that you can only do this custom external list globally? So if on my VPS I have health and sports sites, I can't have a set of health external URL's for health projects and sports external url's for sports projects? If we could have it per project where we specify external URL's, that would be a great development for this feature and allow us to keep links niche contextual. 
  • Ill try the new feature out you added and report back.

    Just trying to help improve on the quality of articles SER can churn out
  • SvenSven www.GSA-Online.de

    @AlexR there is no need to make a project based file. You can just add your niche related external URLs with the keyword in the file and it would be OK. Because if you have it set like...

    http://www.some-sport.site.com#Sport,Cycling,Football

    you would properly not find that keywords in other project articles not related to that keyword.

  • AlexRAlexR Cape Town
    @sven - very smart workaround! Now to compile a very large list of url's in correct format... :-)
  • Maybe @m3ownz can make a neat little tool to format this :)
  • where is the option for enable this feature?
  • SvenSven www.GSA-Online.de
    @baba under the article input you enable the option to insert up to XYZ random URLs. Next to that is a EDIT button where you can add more URLs.
  • okay boss

    thank you.
  • ronron SERLists.com

    I have to say that this is a very cool feature @sven. +1

  • Why would you want to link to anything but your own properties?

    Is it to "contextualize" the property?

    It would make sense to me if you wanted someone to read your content, like "in this article *link* he explains that...", but this is link spam. What am I missing?
  • Your missing the point of quality... Google likes content that is valuable to a user. Have a 700 word article with just a silly little link at the bottom is not valuable at all and 99.% of the time it will contain a link to your page.

    If you switch it up and create contextual link articles with relevant links in the article body that lead to other resources the reader might find useful then its become a quality bit of content.

    For example, im in the SEO niche. I write an article about onpage SEO and add a link to a SEOmoz blog post about onpage SEO, a link to Wikipedia about SEO and a link to an experts blog in a certain SEO field, and a link to my own site.

    None of the sites i link out to in the article effect my site in terms of rankings so its safe to add some links to these sites and increase the value the article is giving to the reader.

    Ill add a some pictures and an embedded video to one of the SEOmoz whiteboard Friday Youtube videos. Making the whole article look natural.

    Perfect your spinning and think outside the box makes getting links indexed like taking candy from a baby.

    Regarding your term "this is link spam" I would suggest you take a bit more time in setting up your projects. if you call your own work spam then what ever your linking to is heading in a downwards spiral. work on this and your rank sites easy.

  • @sven
    since this is a hot topic for me too - I would love to have final clarification of your a.m. used format
    http://www.some-sport.site.com#Sport,Cycling,Football

    means
    anysite.om/page.html is linked with one of the following # comma separated keywords ??

    and that is project based
    is there an identical easy way to make the very same URL#anchor list available to any other project / tier ??
    like auto import random links from xyz project
    or
    define such random URL list as global ??
  • SvenSven www.GSA-Online.de
    Thats the correct format and way it works. However it is pulling that data from just one file and it is not project based but globally. Though with that format is should not matter.
  • @sven
    not working for me ... pls advice

    So I edited that global list and added a bunch of URLs#anchors in exactly your a.m. format
    to assure I see it working I configured a minimum of 2 (max 4) contextual links to see at least one more link than the default contextual link

    BUT

    it seems NOT to work and add only the one default contextual link into the articles and NONE of a.m. global list of random links#anchor-texts

    I have viewed multiple pages allowing contextual links, specially wiki pages and other article pages and none had any additional contextual links.
    hence I am doing something wrong

    I love that feature and did completely edit that global file - for me global is perfect since I have projects only about one single site.

    1. what are possible errors to prevent links to be inserted with this feature?
    2. is there ANOTHER format to enter in this global file that SER may prefer over a.m. format?
    3. I can also give you HERE or via PM a precise page and a small list of possible additional links#anchors from that file matching exactly that page if helpful.
    4. I have single keywords, but also short precise keyword-phrases that occur exactly in submitted articles - is that feature only working for single keywords?
    your help is appreciated and valued
  • SvenSven www.GSA-Online.de
    Hmm did you leave the other URLs in as well? It takes one random URL from that file and if oyu leave the others in, it might not see a good chance to use yours.
  • I removed ALL original content of that file and replaced it by my own random links

    I checked syntax of all lines of the file with the URLs#anchors and added even more lines.

    I found one error = 2 lines joined (my texts are prepared in Linux, then imported on the win7 machine for SER, hence may be a end LF/CR error ofter import into SER)

    I am trying to figure out if there are any special characters that could confuse SER when parsing my URL#anchor file - like single quotes " ' " or  " - " or empty space between keywords ... ?

    my SER crashed just minutes after my above post, then I rebooted my laptop and SER started all the email and link re-verification - that lasted a long while (nearly 2 hrs).

    It takes now a while until I can see new submissions appearing to verify results or improvements

    I have currently some 40 lines / URLs#anchors
    and for the published pages/articles verified there would have been several options from several lines to insert one or more additional anchors. there are several single word anchors as well as short or longer key-phrases that have matches in texts ( I do self write all articles and hand edit all spintax to assure matches in anchor texts variations)

    Is there any max length of those lines or max number of comma separated #anchor-texts for that file or any illegal character that might confuse SER ??
  • SvenSven www.GSA-Online.de
    No limits on that.
  • @sven
    the last few hours I have NO new successful submission links to verify anything at all. my Lpm currently 0.37
    SER doing all kinds of stuff
    I have to wait, hope, pray and take a brake to see what happens

    If it is of any help to you - I can either PM the complete file or eMail - its just 7KB

    @KayKay
    Since the file in question is a system .txt file and with 40 lines small enough for manual visual editing,
    I see currently no use for the tool

    that file of course has to properly process NON-ascii (=UTF8) characters since in a multi lingual environment typically we have UTF8 and EU or other fancy language characters as anchor texts

    for the moment I am stuck and waiting for SER to produce more new submissions to see what happening
  • SvenSven www.GSA-Online.de
    @hans51 yes send it to me in zip format to my email.
  • edited August 2013
    @sven
    Great job
    after today's SER update it works like a charm with nice random links / anchor-texts appearing in submissions.
    thanks for your fast support / fix
  • SvenSven www.GSA-Online.de
    your welcome :)
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