About StephenThiam
Rank 330
934 followers Joined December 2019
I have been working for more than 40 years in Chemicals and Plastic industry. I have retired since 2015. I have created an online website

Posts

14

Questions

12

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asked in
Social Engagement & Marketing

Dear WA members, please share your knowledge and experience to me on sponsored post.

The mail as below, how should I reply him? Looks like good things, am I right?

Hi - the client will be hoping to obtain backlinks from your website. He will have employed the company who sent the email to search for suitable websites.

If you were to agree, then the company would write a post for your site, and it would include links to their client's website.

There can be problems with this. You will not know the name of their client or details of their website until they send you the post ready to publish.

You may find that it doesn't align with your views or way of thinking, and you may not wish to be associated with that website. Or the post could be poorly written.

Or the website could be brand new and have a much lower domain authority than yours which could drag your site down.

Thank you Diane, your advice adds more pound to me not to accept the sponsored posts. You have elaborated more information about what is the possible happen later. Thank you very much for your time and experience sharing.

Hey Stephen, I get at least one email like this per day and I always trash them. One out of a hundred will be a genuine guest post request. Others are simply selling low-quality content in exchange for backlinks to their own or their client's sites.

Hi! Ivan, thanks for your comments. You are forever my coach. I will always follow your advice.
Your web site performance improved a lot since last year. I see your number of backlinks, ranked keywords, and visibility of 36% is really impressive. My website visibility is only 2.88%, but traffic is increasing to 300 per day.
If the reason is just backlinks, I think it is not worth to spend the time.
Thank you very much.

Thanks, Stephen! I'm thrilled to hear about your progress! 300 visitors a day is a great result. I'm sure this time next year that number will be much greater so keep up the good work.

I assume that that's the deal (low-quality guest posts + backlinks). If you want to build high-quality backlinks to improve your off-page SEO, you should check out HARO. https://ahrefs.com/blog/haro-link-building/

Thanks for the useful links. I am not lacking of backlinks. Your website has 500+ posts and 494 backlinks while my website has 200+ posts and 355 backlinks. My backlinks have a higher ratio than yours because some of my affiliate links not added "nofollow" to it, thus getting 2% spam.
When the spam at 5%, my website traffic cannot goes up until I start to reduce backlinks from 500+ down to 355. Now the traffic is hiking up. I will continue to add "nofollow" to the affiliate links.
Thanks Ivan.

Sounds like you’re doing great job with content and backlinks. Keep up the good work! It’s better to have a fewer high quality backlinks than tons of spam and hurtful links. Once again, keep up the good work and keep us posted!

I will do as much as I can. Thanks for always following up my issue.

I would be very cautious with this. the company PRchitects is real with the first two letters being capitalized and Prashant Sharma, is the Founder & CEO, PRchitects

I have not found this Pradumn Agrawal anywhere

They are a Digital PR and Marketing Agency and also do SEO.
Their website has a high authority rating.

You can go to their website and go to contact us and ask if this person works there and let them know that you got an email which you can give to them as you did here.
This way you will find out if the email is valid and if not it will help them know there may be a scam out there using their name.

There are many scams at the moment coming from India so always beware.
Just look up PRchitects on Google and check it out first before you send them an email.
Hope that helps
But judging from the letter I would be very cautious.

Thank you for your helpful feedback, I will check first the identity of people who send this mail to me. I appreciated your sharing.

You are welcome Stephan don't respond to the email itself but go through the real website.
Wishing you well

Andre

Good call Andre, I would also look and ask for some of their other social platforms. LinkedIn or Quora.
It may very well be above board and just a fairly new website.
If you do, Stephen, accept him as someone who can post to your website, put them on as a writer only..
Stephen, I hope it is above board for you. Maybe you could ask Pretam , from WA, if he can look at the social media platforms in India for this person or company.

Stephen

Thanks Stephen and agree if this is above board and works well for his website would be a great idea. Definitely only as a writer and no admin authority either.

Thanks Stephen. Good advice to me. I will act accordingly. Thank you.

It appears they are interested in a post exchange. I would check into this first. If that proves successful, then you could look at sponsored posts.

Also you could request to view the post, before allowing it to be posted A veto.

Alex

Thanks Alex. In fact, I am not sure why need sponsored posts from them, I have to write posts per my plan.
I do not want to exchange posts with any website because my post format is unique to my website as compared to the competitor.
Any benefit I have to exchange posts with them?

The only benefit would be if they have a reader base that might follow his readers back to you when you post there and or if he tells his readers to go to your site when he does a post.

It would depend on how big his site is and if you think you need it.

From reading further comments, you probably do not need the hassle.

Alex

Thanks Alex, The majority of experienced members do not favor to go ahead. Thank you again.

It depends, I never got an email like the one Rowe described. I had one request from a tech site and we exchanged guest posts. I posted on his website and he posted one on mine and it worked out great.

But then there are other people who just email me to ask me if I can link to an article on their website, which I don't do.

Thanks Christine, It looks like he is asking for exchange guest posts like yours. From your experience, what are the benefits you get after you have exchanged a guest post with them? Can you share some light to me?

We both established guidelines for what we wanted in the guest posts, word count, how many internal and external links, affiliate links, - yes or no ., amount of images, etc.
He wrote a good post and made it relevant to my niche; and he let me post an article about how to build a website on his technical site, I was allowed to include an affiliate link to WA. So, I thought that was great. It was a one-time thing, though. We agreed to stay in touch.

I have received similar emails from other people, but they never offer an exchange, they're always asking me to post their links ... which I don't like. They seem fishy to me. I guess I got lucky with the guy from the tech site.

Thanks for your detailed sharing with the good guy. The person approached me look like a good guy too. But the benefit does not look good to cover the risk so I have decided to give up.
Thank you very much.

See more comments

Sponsored post request - should I accept or not?

Sponsored post request - should I accept or not?

asked in
Social Engagement & Marketing

Dear WA members, please share your knowledge and experience to me on sponsored post.

The mail as below, how should I reply him? Looks like good things, am I right?

Hi - the client will be hoping to obtain backlinks from your website. He will have employed the company who sent the email to search for suitable websites.

If you were to agree, then the company would write a post for your site, and it would include links to their client's website.

There can be problems with this. You will not know the name of their client or details of their website until they send you the post ready to publish.

You may find that it doesn't align with your views or way of thinking, and you may not wish to be associated with that website. Or the post could be poorly written.

Or the website could be brand new and have a much lower domain authority than yours which could drag your site down.

Thank you Diane, your advice adds more pound to me not to accept the sponsored posts. You have elaborated more information about what is the possible happen later. Thank you very much for your time and experience sharing.

Hey Stephen, I get at least one email like this per day and I always trash them. One out of a hundred will be a genuine guest post request. Others are simply selling low-quality content in exchange for backlinks to their own or their client's sites.

Hi! Ivan, thanks for your comments. You are forever my coach. I will always follow your advice.
Your web site performance improved a lot since last year. I see your number of backlinks, ranked keywords, and visibility of 36% is really impressive. My website visibility is only 2.88%, but traffic is increasing to 300 per day.
If the reason is just backlinks, I think it is not worth to spend the time.
Thank you very much.

Thanks, Stephen! I'm thrilled to hear about your progress! 300 visitors a day is a great result. I'm sure this time next year that number will be much greater so keep up the good work.

I assume that that's the deal (low-quality guest posts + backlinks). If you want to build high-quality backlinks to improve your off-page SEO, you should check out HARO. https://ahrefs.com/blog/haro-link-building/

Thanks for the useful links. I am not lacking of backlinks. Your website has 500+ posts and 494 backlinks while my website has 200+ posts and 355 backlinks. My backlinks have a higher ratio than yours because some of my affiliate links not added "nofollow" to it, thus getting 2% spam.
When the spam at 5%, my website traffic cannot goes up until I start to reduce backlinks from 500+ down to 355. Now the traffic is hiking up. I will continue to add "nofollow" to the affiliate links.
Thanks Ivan.

Sounds like you’re doing great job with content and backlinks. Keep up the good work! It’s better to have a fewer high quality backlinks than tons of spam and hurtful links. Once again, keep up the good work and keep us posted!

I will do as much as I can. Thanks for always following up my issue.

I would be very cautious with this. the company PRchitects is real with the first two letters being capitalized and Prashant Sharma, is the Founder & CEO, PRchitects

I have not found this Pradumn Agrawal anywhere

They are a Digital PR and Marketing Agency and also do SEO.
Their website has a high authority rating.

You can go to their website and go to contact us and ask if this person works there and let them know that you got an email which you can give to them as you did here.
This way you will find out if the email is valid and if not it will help them know there may be a scam out there using their name.

There are many scams at the moment coming from India so always beware.
Just look up PRchitects on Google and check it out first before you send them an email.
Hope that helps
But judging from the letter I would be very cautious.

Thank you for your helpful feedback, I will check first the identity of people who send this mail to me. I appreciated your sharing.

You are welcome Stephan don't respond to the email itself but go through the real website.
Wishing you well

Andre

Good call Andre, I would also look and ask for some of their other social platforms. LinkedIn or Quora.
It may very well be above board and just a fairly new website.
If you do, Stephen, accept him as someone who can post to your website, put them on as a writer only..
Stephen, I hope it is above board for you. Maybe you could ask Pretam , from WA, if he can look at the social media platforms in India for this person or company.

Stephen

Thanks Stephen and agree if this is above board and works well for his website would be a great idea. Definitely only as a writer and no admin authority either.

Thanks Stephen. Good advice to me. I will act accordingly. Thank you.

It appears they are interested in a post exchange. I would check into this first. If that proves successful, then you could look at sponsored posts.

Also you could request to view the post, before allowing it to be posted A veto.

Alex

Thanks Alex. In fact, I am not sure why need sponsored posts from them, I have to write posts per my plan.
I do not want to exchange posts with any website because my post format is unique to my website as compared to the competitor.
Any benefit I have to exchange posts with them?

The only benefit would be if they have a reader base that might follow his readers back to you when you post there and or if he tells his readers to go to your site when he does a post.

It would depend on how big his site is and if you think you need it.

From reading further comments, you probably do not need the hassle.

Alex

Thanks Alex, The majority of experienced members do not favor to go ahead. Thank you again.

It depends, I never got an email like the one Rowe described. I had one request from a tech site and we exchanged guest posts. I posted on his website and he posted one on mine and it worked out great.

But then there are other people who just email me to ask me if I can link to an article on their website, which I don't do.

Thanks Christine, It looks like he is asking for exchange guest posts like yours. From your experience, what are the benefits you get after you have exchanged a guest post with them? Can you share some light to me?

We both established guidelines for what we wanted in the guest posts, word count, how many internal and external links, affiliate links, - yes or no ., amount of images, etc.
He wrote a good post and made it relevant to my niche; and he let me post an article about how to build a website on his technical site, I was allowed to include an affiliate link to WA. So, I thought that was great. It was a one-time thing, though. We agreed to stay in touch.

I have received similar emails from other people, but they never offer an exchange, they're always asking me to post their links ... which I don't like. They seem fishy to me. I guess I got lucky with the guy from the tech site.

Thanks for your detailed sharing with the good guy. The person approached me look like a good guy too. But the benefit does not look good to cover the risk so I have decided to give up.
Thank you very much.

See more comments

asked in
Search Engine Optimization

I wish to delete this bad post. Can anyone help to teach a proper way to delete a published post?

Learning, looks like Trish has great advice.

Hey Stephen,

Seeing as Ivan has already provided you with awesome instructions to follow, I would like to add a piece of advise when deleting a post... and that is to create a redirect to a similar topic so that Google's script won't become upset with your post missing when the offer it in their search results.

If it is NOT appearing in search results, then you can ignore this suggestion, but if it has been appearing in search results, then adding a redirect is best.

The reason I suggest this is that when updating my local business site (years ago now), I deleted a lot of stale posts that I felt were not worth updating, and I merged other posts that were related... and... I did NOT provide redirects for all of the URLs that I deleted in doing my updating.

That site suffered a massive drop in rank right in the middle of my SEO campaign, hoping to improve my ranking, and it was my updating information WITHOUT adding redirections from the old URLs that cause the massive drop in rank.

Yes, I am talking about SEVERAL posts in this case, but it is always best to practice proper procedure so that it becomes natural.

Hope this helps you.

Great advise, never did this before. More to learn indeed, thanks Trish 👌

Thank you. I think it is what I am worried. Last event, when 404 came out, I go to Google Search Console to remove the post. Then settle the 404 issue but not sure is it the right way.
When I test my website by Pingdom, it has 11 post facing 404 issues, but do not know which one. So I have to be caution do not add more.

Following for answers.

You are welcome.

Here’s a quick step-by-step:

Thanks Ivan. Have a good day.

No problem, Stephen! :)

Hey
This may help
https://passwordprotectwp.com/remove-indexed-pages-files-google/
Thank you.
Lula

Feels like a look of detail needed to properly delete a post!

Thank you very much for the excellent information. I am trying to revise the bad post if can but hopeless I should delete it.
I found some posts have been indexed and ranked, but now not appeared on Google pages. I read again and I feel the content is inferior, so it is better update it or dump it.
I have not read all the file you give, hopefully, have a proper way to dump the bad post.
Thank you again.

Awesome resource Lula

Yeah :)
Thank you.
Lula

You're very welcome.
Thank you.
Lula

You're very welcome.
Thank you.
Lula

See more comments

Bad post due to product has gone?

Bad post due to product has gone?

asked in
Search Engine Optimization

I wish to delete this bad post. Can anyone help to teach a proper way to delete a published post?

Learning, looks like Trish has great advice.

Hey Stephen,

Seeing as Ivan has already provided you with awesome instructions to follow, I would like to add a piece of advise when deleting a post... and that is to create a redirect to a similar topic so that Google's script won't become upset with your post missing when the offer it in their search results.

If it is NOT appearing in search results, then you can ignore this suggestion, but if it has been appearing in search results, then adding a redirect is best.

The reason I suggest this is that when updating my local business site (years ago now), I deleted a lot of stale posts that I felt were not worth updating, and I merged other posts that were related... and... I did NOT provide redirects for all of the URLs that I deleted in doing my updating.

That site suffered a massive drop in rank right in the middle of my SEO campaign, hoping to improve my ranking, and it was my updating information WITHOUT adding redirections from the old URLs that cause the massive drop in rank.

Yes, I am talking about SEVERAL posts in this case, but it is always best to practice proper procedure so that it becomes natural.

Hope this helps you.

Great advise, never did this before. More to learn indeed, thanks Trish 👌

Thank you. I think it is what I am worried. Last event, when 404 came out, I go to Google Search Console to remove the post. Then settle the 404 issue but not sure is it the right way.
When I test my website by Pingdom, it has 11 post facing 404 issues, but do not know which one. So I have to be caution do not add more.

Following for answers.

You are welcome.

Here’s a quick step-by-step:

Thanks Ivan. Have a good day.

No problem, Stephen! :)

Hey
This may help
https://passwordprotectwp.com/remove-indexed-pages-files-google/
Thank you.
Lula

Feels like a look of detail needed to properly delete a post!

Thank you very much for the excellent information. I am trying to revise the bad post if can but hopeless I should delete it.
I found some posts have been indexed and ranked, but now not appeared on Google pages. I read again and I feel the content is inferior, so it is better update it or dump it.
I have not read all the file you give, hopefully, have a proper way to dump the bad post.
Thank you again.

Awesome resource Lula

Yeah :)
Thank you.
Lula

You're very welcome.
Thank you.
Lula

You're very welcome.
Thank you.
Lula

See more comments

asked in
Authoring & Writing Content

Here is the copy of his message.
DavePaton Monday September 20, 2021 03:51 PM

Hi Stephen, my name is David.

I have been almost killed in a serious car crash

Hi

It doesn't make sense.

Thanks for response and support. Does WA check this kind of publishing? I hope Kyle and Carson should notice this kind of message. There are many WA guards I know, but where are they now.

See more comments

Can this kind of message send to other members?

Can this kind of message send to other members?

asked in
Authoring & Writing Content

Here is the copy of his message.
DavePaton Monday September 20, 2021 03:51 PM

Hi Stephen, my name is David.

I have been almost killed in a serious car crash

Hi

It doesn't make sense.

Thanks for response and support. Does WA check this kind of publishing? I hope Kyle and Carson should notice this kind of message. There are many WA guards I know, but where are they now.

See more comments

asked in
Everything Wordpress

Hi! I hope everybody are fine and well.

When using classic or in the beginning of creating website, I remember already attached the image to "About Me" page. Today I foun

Thanks to site support, Ivan Broz, Abie, Lisa, and young brother.

Finally the problem is solved by directly upload image from PC to the content page. Then go back to the Media Library, image is saved and attach to the right post or page. Just need to add Alt text and caption to complete the job.

No more unattached images showing in the media library.

Maybe you have accidentally deleted the image from your library. You can try and upload it again in your WordPress admin area. Or if you are suspicious of some technical problem, you could check out with SiteSupport. Maybe they could give you a clue.

The image does not delete or lost. Just cannot attach to "About Me" page as attached file. Thanks for response. Sorry for miss leading.

I honestly can't see why you can't attach this image to your page. But I'm sure that SiteSupport could help you.

I can't find the "About Me" page in the list. Last I will ask to site support.

If you have published the page, it should be in the Pages section inside the WordPress admin area.

Have you deleted the images in the library on your computer? If you have it removes them all from your posts.

Hi! Lisa, My image not lost in the Page content. But in the media library, I cannot make attach to a page.
Thanks for your response.

Hi brother, maybe need a bit more info.

But couldn't you just go to the About Me page to attach the same image again?

Ah, I just notice all your images in your other posts seem to be missing too?

Not an image deletes or lost. Is cannot attach to "About Me" page as the attached file.

Perhaps reach out to SiteSupport for help?

Yes. The last to call.

Hi

If you edited a document in site content and published it, future edits has to be done in WordPress. Site content and WordPress work independently.

I'd place my images in a document in site content and publish it to my site. it will be added to my WordPress media library. Then delete the “temporary image” doc in site content so that it does not get indexed as well.

However I may also check an incompatible plugin, or improper file permissions or not pointing to the correct url.

.
if issue persists, I may follow up with site support

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/websites/support

Hi! Abie,
Please look at the attached file. How to attach images to "About Me" page.
Thanks for the response.

See more comments

Images cannot attach to a page?

Images cannot attach to a page?

asked in
Everything Wordpress

Hi! I hope everybody are fine and well.

When using classic or in the beginning of creating website, I remember already attached the image to "About Me" page. Today I foun

Thanks to site support, Ivan Broz, Abie, Lisa, and young brother.

Finally the problem is solved by directly upload image from PC to the content page. Then go back to the Media Library, image is saved and attach to the right post or page. Just need to add Alt text and caption to complete the job.

No more unattached images showing in the media library.

Maybe you have accidentally deleted the image from your library. You can try and upload it again in your WordPress admin area. Or if you are suspicious of some technical problem, you could check out with SiteSupport. Maybe they could give you a clue.

The image does not delete or lost. Just cannot attach to "About Me" page as attached file. Thanks for response. Sorry for miss leading.