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personally I find it works best to name them as you listed in #1 since when you mouse over the images it will show that text. you may also title it to be more descriptive so the user know what they are being linked to. the alternate text you want to be the text you would use as if it was a text link, so also the format of #1 however the difference from the title choice is that the title may be better to be more descriptive to improve the user experience. hope this helps

I agree with everything John shared but wish to clarify one point: We want to run multiple blogs on different categories If the categories are different but related, then I prefer John's approach. If you have a site that talks about "cars" and you want to offer a "Ford" directory, a "Toyota" directory, and so forth then I prefer the approach John shared. On the other hand, if the categories are completely unrelated, then I would recommend using the subdomain approach so each domain can keep their focus. If one blog talked about cars, the second was about diabetes, the third was about poker, then these blogs clearly lack a uniting theme. To help each domain remain relevant for their primary topic, I would suggest using different sub domains.

I think that the number of links you're gaining might cause a problem, not to mention the quality of those links. Google assumes a natural pattern in link acquisition, so when you suddenly jump from 5 links per week to 500, that triggers a red flag because it doesn't appear natural. How many hours are you spending on this link directory? Perhaps you could take the same amount of time to write a well-researched guest post, or some other type of op-ed piece. That type of content is much more likely to earn the type of high quality targeted links you're looking for, without junking up your link profile.

Ok thank you, I believe that my new posts are less well classified because of that...

I'm not sure. It was the first thing that popped to my mind. I'd have to spend some time googling it though as I've never actually done this.

Thanks. Is there any way to set up the RSS feed so it contains the canonical?

I have also had some great success via the University avenue.  Not only for writters......... Great points!

I would pick a different angle to the same topic and completely re-write the article.  It's a lot of work but guest posts on other sites/blogs need to be completely unique in my opinion - not just for SEO reasons but also to ensure your readers and the readers of the sites you post on are getting quality content each time.

Elance has been a great resource for us as well.

I guess a pro for a separate themed site is that you wouldn't be stuck with the contraints of keeping things on brand. EG: you could stray from standard fonts for the sake of a 'pretty' design and generally not have to worry about making one thing look like the other. Would likely give you a lot more freedom. Another pro would be that your blog could also be perceived on it's own merits as well as that of your main site. EG: Perhaps you have topics and content that you don't want to be directly associated with your original brand.   If it's not directly associated with an established brand then perhaps it might attract a different audience who doesn't see the content as influence by a parent brand. Pro's and con's for both here. Technically of course, there's no issue i can see.I guess it all boils down to brand recognition and best practice UX.

A site with a lower domain/page authority may get filtered out by Google. Why don't you use cross domain canonical tags if you can't fix the duplicate content issue at the moment. There is a good post on this topic on seomoz. You just need to search for it.

Steer clear of duplicate content. If the article is a high quality one then in my opinion it doesn't belong in an article directory - it belongs on a blog or site with a solid readership who can then respond and promote it. If you're creating lower quality articles for the sole purpose of article directory submission then I would still say one submit the one, there aren't many benefits from duplicating this content.

No opinions here... just facts.... PDF files show in your Google backlinks PDF files can contain anchor text backlinks PDF files accumulate pagerank PDF files pass pagerank If you place obvious links in PDF files people will click them and land onto your .html pages Other people sometimes grab your PDF files and place them on their own website giving you backlinks from their domain if you were smart enough to embed links within them PDF files can be optimized, rank high in the search engines and pull in a LOT of traffic Some types of content displays and prints much better  in a PDF file than it does on a webpage PDF files allow you to control the "look" of printed documents A huge report is often better posted as a PDF than as html documents You can lock PDF documents to keep others from monkeying with your content (determined people will get around this). Contrary to popular belief, PDF documents can be monetized... just toss in a shopping link or links to pages where money can be made.  I have not heard of anyone paying for ad space in a PDF but there is no reason why that could not be done.

Hi Thanks for the reply. I think you may be getting confused with textlinkbrokers. We're talking about getting content written by textbrokers! Totally agree with not buying links. Wouldn't dream of it. Best wishes Trevor

Thanks Joe - not every post is about it so I think I might just revert a little bit to more manually massaging titles and work a bit on my whole structure.  I have about 100 posts and they all append this tag which probably a bit too much.

It kept hitting quantcast and others that go away too soon for me to see. And I tried again and audio that sounded like a radio commercial was playing after about 1 minute having your page open.

I agree that it's better to add it to your own site. What if people like your blog and link to it, but it's not on your site? You've lost some link juice there. You can submit it to blog directories too - more direct links to your site. For ecommerce sites there's a lot of content duplication with other sites when the same products are sold, so like you say in your last sentence, a blog adds regular unique content.