What is a Compilation Post

December 13th, 2006 by Michael Gray in Random Thoughts, SEO, Social Networks

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I came across a post today that was actually pretty interesting. I’ve been trying similar things but I think this execution was really good, for lack of a better name I’m going to call this a compilation post.

I came across ThisNext - Blog - Gift Guide: The at-home spa over on Netscape and thought it was well done. The top of the post features some hand chosen items, and when you click on them it brings you to a more detailed review of the item. However I’d like to concentrate on the content part of the post. Inside of the post is a narrative that puts each of the items in the right context, tells a little story, and links to a page with an affiliate link.

Now if you were to post a link to an individual item or were trying to convince someone to link to it you’d have a real uphill battle. Most affiliates I know would put the links right in the article and IMHO that’s what would kill it. I don’t doubt that you would get better conversions from the direct link for that day, however I bet you’d get way less viral links with that approach. People often complain about social media visitors looking at one page and then running off, however with a very interlinked page, you’ll have a high likelihood of getting people to visit different parts of the site. SO to wrap it up here is what I think are they key point to take away:

  • Pages that link to other parts of the site instead of directly out to affiliate merchants will get you more links
  • More links over the long term should balance out any sales you lose in the short term
  • Using the proper internal anchor text will allow you to take full advantage of the link equity you gain
  • Having multiple page views per user may generate “positive” user data through toolbars or other means
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One Response to “What is a Compilation Post”

  1. Geoffrey Faivre-Malloy Says:
    December 13th, 2006 at 11:14 am

    That’s actually a pretty good idea. The only problem is that at times it’s hard enough to come up with the content to write about. Adding even more links into the mixture makes it even harder.

    Of course, they never said good rankings come easily did they?

    G-Man