Yet another 'kick' from Ezinearticles.com, if you think so! There are only a few weeks left before you will be forced to comply with their new '4-link' rule instead of the currently prevalent '6-link' rule. You can find the original post of ezinearticles.com at:
http://blog.ezinearticles.com/2008/05/6-link-max-becomes-4-soon.html
Thankfully, you can still submit your articles with 6-links throughout the month of May, as the rule won't be effective until 1st June. So you still have a few weeks left for merry-making ;-)
Personally, I have had good results even from one link in the resource box; I don't put links in the article body because most publishers won't publish an article full of links. I also have no problems with this new rule of ezinearticles.com (oh by the way, it has been too long since I submitted an article to them).
But then again, when I speak, I speak on behalf of others. I do agree with some of Chris Knight's points, such as:
1. An article with less links would convert more. The more links you put in the resource box, the more confused the reader will be as to which link to click and ultimately he may leave clicking nothing! This is the reason why more often than not I don't use more than 1 or 2 links in my articles.
2. I also agree that articles are used by some SEO-obsessed guys to pull in some link juice to their site; they would simply put up a 200-word or 300-word crap and then put three links in the resource box! Truth to be told, such articles suck! In fact, I have been thoroughly disappointed reading some of the recent articles of EZA; most of them offer little or no value to the reader while others are simply 'rewrites' of old articles; the ultimate aim of the 'expert' authors, as you can understand. is to make the affiliate sale! :-(
Now, here is my 2cents
Instead of victimizing all authors (good and bad) by imposing the 4-link rule on them, why not have a rule where:
1. A 300-word article of low quality deserves just 1 link in the resource box
2. A 300-word article of high quality deserves 2 links in the resource box
3. A 500-600-word article of high quality deserves 3 links in the resource box.
I am seeing an ulterior motive of ezinearticles.com in this as well. I don't know if you have realized it or not, but since according to SEO rules, the fewer outgoing links your site has, the less pagerank juice you will pass on to others. The ultimate result would be that your site's pagerank would increase and also gain better position in Google! So maybe another reason why they are reducing the number of links in the resource box is that they would have fewer outgoing links and better search engine position, which would also benefit the expert authors as well! :)
To me, YOUR opinion matters the most! So, tell me what you think!
I never use more than one link in my article bio’s. More links only confuse the reader, so it’s a bad habit to do.
Yup! That is what I said in my post. Basically, what I do is: I put an anchor-text link as well as a hard link in my resource box; both are basically the same link, but if a publisher wants to publish the text version of my article, then the hard link would help ;-)