Minor case study/example: stats and deep linking = success

[GuruGazette]

Hey All,

Here's an example of why paying attention to your stats plus linking directly to article pages instead of the main page of a site can create some nice success:

Thursday or Friday of last week (few days ago) I dug into my EZA article stats to generate some new topic ideas and found that one of my older articles had consistently been getting 5000-6000 views each and every month for 6+ months.

I double checked on Google and sure enough it was number 1 for a couple of key phrases, but the site it linked to wasn't getting nearly as much traffic as it should.

So I looked at the bio/resource box on my article and decided I could do better. The existing one was fine and on topic, but nothing to write home about and barely generating a 1% CTR. When possible I prefer to link to something closely related to the topic of the article at EZA and that generally gets at least 20-25% CTR.

So I took 15-20 minutes and spit out a custom article of ~700 words on the same topic and published it on my site. Then I edited my EZA bio for the article there, and pointed it directly to the related article on my site.

Since that change was approved I've seen closer to the 20-25% CTR traffic levels, ~$2 a day in AdSense from the page, and today a $15 affiliate commission appeared in CB from it too

Just food for thought and FYI for those who wonder whether they should link to pages/posts/articles or their main homepage

[dvduval]

It's so important to analyze your stats on different levels to see how can improve, and your example is a great illustration of this. Thanks for sharing.

[Odhinn]

Hmm...I thought EZA wouldn't let you point links to individual articles, just to the homepage. If that's the case, then I'm going to have to check that out. Thanks for the tip!

[ultraeternity]

That's nice to hear and it's something I'll be implementing in the future. I've always linked to my site homepage that redirects to an affiliate offer. I'm getting around 15-20% ctr with it, but that might be because I kinda hype up the resource box a little. My resource box is like a mini salespage.

By the way, how do you manage to get that many article views? You must be a really good writer.

[AlphaWarrior]

I have never tried to modify a published article or resource box on EZA. Is it easy to do? Does EZA have to re-approve the modified article or modified resource box? If EZA does have to re-approve, is the article treated like a new article?

Thanks!

[GuruGazette]

Originally Posted by ultraeternity

By the way, how do you manage to get that many article views? You must be a really good writer.

Yes I am a great writer actually I've been freelancing for ~12 years now and published in print magazines, etc.

Where EZA is concerned that doesn't matter too much though. It's just basic keyword research, finding something untapped or undertapped then writing an article to hit it.

Most of the time I put my best stuff on my own sites because they rank well pretty easily. I still put the once in awhile article at EZA for added oomph tho and I have ~350 that have collected there over the years so I rework them here and there to make sure they're working at their hardest for me

[GuruGazette]

Originally Posted by AlphaWarrior

I have never tried to modify a published article or resource box on EZA. Is it easy to do? Does EZA have to re-approve the modified article or modified resource box? If EZA does have to re-approve, is the article treated like a new article?

Thanks!

Yes it's easy to do and yes the article is pulled from the site and put back into the moderation queue. If the article was written under one set of rules/guidelines and those have changed though, the edits will have to comply with the new guidelines.

For example, you used to be allowed many more links and different kinds of links. If you edit an old article that has more links than what's allowed now though, you'll have to remove and change them in order to get that edited article accepted.

So it is treated as a new article and once approved it's also listed in your account as a new article. This is cool though because it also shows on the main and category pages as if new too.

[AlphaWarrior]

Thanks Guru. A couple of months ago I submitted several articles with the author box pointing to both my home page and a specific "on topic" article on my site. The article on my site received a lot of hits from EZA. I didn't know that I could modify prior author boxes. Now, I think I will modify some boxes because this idea works well.