Thread: website/article help- to post or not to post?

Just full of questions today!
I wrote an article because I want people to know the information contained therein. I am also trying to boost my visibility in general. Do I post the article on my personal dance website, hoping to make the website more attractive & boost web presence, or do I submit the article for consideration to somewhere like Gilded Serpent which already has a wider readership & will hopefully help more people, since that was the original intention in writing the article?

WWBD?

I would think that submitting it to something like the serpent would get you more readers. I might be wrong but unless someone is checking out your site already, how would they know the article is there to read?

makes sense to me- but my 'web-guy' is pressuring me for more content to up the google standing & I don't know the first thing about that. Whenever I come up with content, I want it to go straight to a broad audience, which leaves the 2 of us at a face off of sorts!

I think if you post an interesting article on a well-read site like GS it will RAISE your visibility. For one thing, GS will add a profile linking back to your site, and that's a very high-quality link as far as search engines are concerned.

Can't you put them both places?

How able are you to provide more material for webguy? I would agree that GS will up your profile online well and would be a good forum for your article. But webguy is right to be pestering you, your website should be as appealing as possible. If you don't have much material for him, then you have to use what you already have available.

Can you write a couple of shorter articles for your site, maybe touching on the info in your original site, just to keep webguy happy for now? If you get the OK from GS, then the next story would be "Lana to write for GS", followed by "Lana's article appears on GS- here's the link", which is two stories for the price of one, which will help your site visibility because it's being regularly updated. And if GS turn it out for whatever reason, you've still got the article available for your own site.

@ Linnyg- if it's already published on Lara's site, GS won't bother to publish it, because it's already Out There.

Definitely go for publishing on the Gilded Serpent.

Ask your web guy for more specifics regarding key words, where they should be placed and how many of them you need. Unfortunately, it isn't the content so much as it is the words within the content. Decide what you want to be optimized for and ask for it.

Or if you publish an article in one of the print magazines, you can post it to your site AFTER it has appeared, with a note "originally published in ___" and the publication date.

Originally Posted by dunyah

Or if you publish an article in one of the print magazines, you can post it to your site AFTER it has appeared, with a note "originally published in ___" and the publication date.

Depending on the rights you sell. If your contract includes all rights, or electronic rights, you can't.

Most of the bellydance publications don't pay, or don't pay much. So hopefully they're only asking for one-time rights, or first North American serial rights or something light like that.

(pet peeve of mine. Should I write an article for no pay about how we should never dance for no pay? LOL)

For Gilded Serpent, they ask for 6 exclusivity & if you republish after that, they will take it off their site & you need to site 'originally published in the Gilded Serpent' on the reprint- I haven't checked with any of the print magazines yet.

I don't know why I'm waffling so much- I know I don't have time to work on something as comprehensive as Shira's site, for example, & right now the website is mostly to attract local students & local gigs. Hmmmm. & this is all assuming anyone even WANTS what I have to say :)

I think I will go ahead & submit it- maybe I can think up a great tag line for my webpage to go with a link to the article that will make webguy happy.

thank you for helping me think this out!

Originally Posted by Lauren_

(pet peeve of mine. Should I write an article for no pay about how we should never dance for no pay? LOL)

Totally hear you on that one, but for what publishers are paying now, the only way I can see around this is to put a tip jar on my blog... I once got $10 for a poem submission- wooohooo, I can now say I am a professional writer, right?

Both, if possible.

Why publish it on your website? Because it should indeed help your google ranking, if it's on a topic that lots of people are interested in. As an example, my site is one of the highest ranking BD sites in my local area, without having paid for that privilege. I believe it's much to do with the articles I publish on my site. According to my google stats, one of the biggest search terms that creates hits to my site is 'How to make a hip scarf.' It just so happens I have an article titled exactly that on my website. Now, I don't get any money from people finding this article on my site, but it increases my ranking markedly, so when people search for classes or gigs, they find me easily. Cool, huh? And I didn't even do it deliberately...

I think I will work on a few costuming articles specifically for my website- good resource for my students anyway, but the kind of thing I wouldn't think is AS appealing for a national/international magazine, since there's a lot of it out there anyway. Thinking about it yesterday, I'm setting a goal of sending out a monthly newsletter with actual helpful information (instead of just class info) which I can then publish to the website as articles. Maybe that way I can pace myself rather than just ignore my very nice mr. webguy.

Hi Lara, I write & edit for GS intermittently, and I encourage you to submit your article(s) for consideration. You can link from your site to GS so that people can access your article through the magazine.