Creating an updatable News/Articles page on my site

[allreal]

Hi Guys - Thanks for all the great help so far.

To generate links and recurring visitors to my site (Food & Drink category) I am incorporating a News/Articles area of the site which I plan to updated 2 times a week. During each of these times I plan to release an exclusive article written by someone on our staff and link out to maybe 3 or so relevant news articles.

What is the best way to go about doing this? I assume all my original articles should open in a new browser, but what else should be included with it to ensure it gets the best exposure? Should it have a comments section? Mail to a friend? etc. etc.

As for the third party/industry articles should I just link out to them? Or should I copy and paste them on my site with reference? If so should the link be a certain title, length, keyword similar to my site? Whats the optimal number to list to enhance the site? Any drawbacks?

As an example of what the site does (if it changes how this should be done):
It is a listing of Food & Drink including the items descriptions, reviews and online sellers who have the products with reviews. No inventory, but a directory.

Thanks if you read this far! This could be great help for any beginner.

[digiweb]

Originally Posted by allreal

What is the best way to go about doing this[original articles]?

I don't know why they should open in a new browser. They're on your site so the extra browser window isn't all that called for.

For what you include, why not look at the way blogs do it. Comments, emails and trackbacks (who links to that article).

In fact if would suggest you implement it with a blogging tool since so much of what you need is already there. I've written content management tools in a couple of different languages. They're easy, but wordpress is free (i think?).

As for the third party/industry articles should I just link out to them? Or should I copy and paste them on my site with reference? If so should the link be a certain title, length, keyword similar to my site? Whats the optimal number to list to enhance the site? Any drawbacks?

Do NOT paste them onto your site. Those articles are copyrighted.

Either get permission to post or go to a writer/article source for your content and follow the license. It's very, very easy to find plagarism on the web, you'll get trouble from the article owners.

The reason you'd publish an article is to give your readers content. The content should be about what you and your readers have in common. If the content is something that interests your readers it will have the appropriate keywords by nature.

The formula is:
Good content produces keywords produces search relevancy and readership.
Not:
Keywords produce stuff to throw at search engines that they're smart enough to ignore.

Keep it relevant and you will succeed.

[allreal]

Wouldnt using word press mess up the SEO campaign?
Also I will be working with a standard page layout from our site and dont want the articles page to look completey different.

Also when I link out to another article, should the keywords be different than my site or the same?

What is the good mix of original articles vs link outs to maximize the campaign?

Thanks!

[allreal]

Bump...

Thanks for help. Anyone else have any experience on ideas on the follow up questions?

[cimmeron]

links coming in are better than links going out.