While writing the original contents for a blog, people always wonder as to how the sources used should be attributed. In other words, it can be said that they want to learn how to place the resources in an article that were used for writing it. Recently, one webmaster contacted Matt Cutts, Google Engineer, to know more about this issue and its importance in terms of SEO. Matt Cutts offered some answers that were really surprising.
The thing is, where the attributes are sourced does not actually matter. While building up SEO for the site and staying within the guidelines of Google Webmaster, people always think that where the links are placed within the article decides the PageRank flow and helps the site to achieve better ranks. But, that is not actually true. As a matter of fact, Matt offered the webmaster with different tips, preferable from the point of view of a reader.
Keeping that thing in mind, Matt feels that links to original source of an article (article from where the writer got the information) should be placed higher up in the post. Ideally that should be the 1st paragraph. He also stated that, one cannot just mention “According to popular auto blog…” or “According to (name of the website)….” the webmaster should place the actual link within an article so that readers are directed to source material. If this isn’t the case then, although, the source is being technically attributed but one is not concentrating towards PageRank flow. This also means that, the writer is not considerate towards the readers who are in search of additional information which is no doubt an essential part of SEO.
There is obviously no harm in placing the source link at the article’s bottom, as long as it is defined like “Source: Website” where the website is the link. However, when the article is quite big, there are slim chances that readers will scroll to its bottom which means that the source is not being acknowledged at all.
Matt Cutts advises bloggers and webmasters to acknowledge the source from where they obtained the information. This not only means citing the sources but being considerate about where the attributes are being placed within the link. The readers should find it easy to search for additional information related to the topic of an article. Responsibility on web is much more than simply SEO.