WordPress Web 2.0 Spot-Er

It’s been almost a month since I gave life to Reciprocal Review Carousel and today is as good day as any to give some summaries. But before I even begin I would like to express my deepest gratitude to everyone who already took part in it and to anyone who decides to continue running with it.

Reciprocal Review Carousel idea was born from the basics of building popularity of your blog or site and latest Web 2.0 trends. It only made sense to combine the two and make sure that everyone participating gets to benefit from it. And while results vary – personal performance depend on each participant promotional efforts. Some fared better, some slightly worth but I hope benefited none less.

I would love to hear your story in comments! Share your results and perhaps we will kick off another round of this one!

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The following article is my own speculation based on personal research and rejections, so before you decide to take anything for granted – please be advised: I’m only human. I’ll site the sources for some of the info I have used and you make up your own mind … I’ll start with a statement and then attempt to prove it.

Google Sandbox has direct impact on your blog monetization efforts.

Have YOUR blog been rejected from some of the major monetization sites, such as PayPerPost.com, RevewMe.com, Text-Link-Ads.com? Then read on, perhaps I will shed some light on as to why …

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Yep, here I go again and perhaps this time I will actually insult people but hey … I think this message is important.

Will your blog be considered a link farm by Google?

You might be surprised by the answer but it also might be too late. If you have participated in Viralink, Viral Tags, Viral Images etc., you might be running dangerously close to that definition. And instead of getting higher ranking – you might actually get penalized by SE. Now let me explain.

I participate in Viralink and still consider it a great way to build your technorati popularity. But I have done it after careful consideration. From my days as webmaster I know that when you create a link building strategy you always build you link pages that they contain no more then 30 links per page. Many reputable sites will simply refuse to exchange links with you if their link is placed on page with more then that number of outgoing links. All this is done to avoid being penalized if search engines decide to label it as “link farm”, I highly suggest you look up the definition on Google.

Now, consider this: Viral tags and other strategies rely on interlinking the participating sites, over a hundred when matrix is full (now is the time you quickly glance over “link farm” definition). Add to that all other outgoing links on your blog to MyBloglog, technorati (if using tags), and other useful offsite services and what do you think your chances are of being marked as “link farm”? I’ll let you re-read the definition and answer it yourself.

But the part I have just described above is not the worst thing you can do. What I have seen recently is that some blogs (couple I have visited had a PR5 and higher) create ONE blog entry and on very same post they participate in Viralink, Viral Tags, Viral image. That can potentially turn into OVER 400 outgoing links just on that post page!

And now is the time for a kill! Do I think you should stop participating in these viral link exchanges? Absolutely not! I have personally participated in Viralink and I think it is a great way to increase your technorati rank and popularity. I have benefited tremendously from the idea and highly recommend you join me!

What to do to avoid penalties? Answer to this one is actually a lot simpler then you might think.

• If you participate in these viral exchanges – dedicate a separate post for each one of them!
• If your blog main page presents summary of the post and not full entry – make sure that the actual links that go with each system go AFTER “more” tag.
• If your blog displays a full post entry – I highly suggest you make sure that your front page does NOT display all these links. Split the post using “more” tag or separate posts entries that they are not shown on any one page together.

Is there any alternative? Yes, good old content text links or one-way links. If your blog popularity important to you and you don’t mind parting with $49, do what I did – purchase 5,000 one-way links coming from content sites while it is still available.

I have to admit I’ve been seating on my hands and flopping around while I should have contributed to this one a long time ago …

Almost 3 weeks ago David Ledoux, nominated my blog for as his entry for Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs in 2007 Contest run by Janette Toral at Reflective Thinking blog. My delay was also due to research as to present my own entry into this contest I wanted to make sure that it would be meaningful to you – my reader and present my own view. Also second part of that would be sorting out which blogs were new , as it never occurred to me to investigate this fact while reading blog posts.

So here we go, my nominations not including my own:

1. Income.com blog
2. LinkRain
3. Andy-Coates.com Blog
4. DidYouSmellThat Blog
5. The IM Truth
6. PlugIM
7. The Co-Authored Marketing Blog
8. We Bet UR
9. Fit For Freedom

I know its only 9 and not 10 but these are the new blogs I read on regular bases for the info they provide and innovative ideas shared within.

This post is not meant to be an insult but a simple statement covering generalities. While more and more webmasters starting to realize incredible power that blog platforms offer, in general majority of Bloggers are content creators. And it’s a good thing!

People share their passion and deliver their message to the world, some simply more successful then others. But this also means leaving out some of the fundamentals of website building that greatly impact your success or failure.

In this post I want to talk about link building and some of the fundamental differences used by blogs and regular websites. I also want to discuss some of the ways we, as Bloggers can address and improve on it. I will only speak on most common and generic techniques and not try to cover the full spectrum of this very large seo subject.

• Traditional Websites rely mainly on separate site sections containing links to other partner sites and build linking strategy around exchanging links with similar sites. Great attention is given to reciprocal link anchor text that weighs heavily on your Page Rank. Unless somewhat automated this can be a very tedious process that many times simply outsourced to save time.

• Blogs for the main part rely on referring to each other posts that directly relate to the current discussion topic. Blogroll was one of the ways to somewhat mirror link exchange of traditional websites by creating references to relevant blogs. Biggest issue with these strategies is luck of “anchor text” in backlink that you receive. Links coming back to your blog can contain any random text that author of that blog decided to use for linking to you.

Why is “anchor text” of the link so important and why should it contain YOUR KEYWORDS and not random text? Google, being the biggest player, places tremendous amount of importance on this very simple fact and uses it heavily in algorithms for calculation of your Page Rank. It is not the single thing that is used by them and many other factors contribute as well, including quality of site the link is coming from and relevancy of content to your topic. And yet this very key factor is something that is missing from the most blogs linking strategy.

We go on participating in “link trains” and “viralink” that improves our technorati rankings but do very little for search engine rankings. We go on posting comments on relevant blogs in attempt to generate traffic and do many other things all the while ignoring one factor that can create a sustainable flow of targeted traffic – Search Engine positioning by using proper linking strategy.

Blogs are loved by search engines and I have seen some of my posts being in top 5 search results for short periods of time after initial posting due to search engine optimization done on that specific post. But every time they go away simply due to the fact that my site in general has a low priority according to Google and other less relevant blogs but with higher ranking take my place. So how do I fix this issue and how you can follow my lead?

I decided to adopt a variation of traditional website link exchange strategy and got myself over 4,000 one-way backlinks to my blog. Most of them are direct links from relevant content pages, coming from multiple sites that contain my main site keywords as “anchor text”, while others are keywords or key phrases linked directly form relevant content spear across multiple site. Will it pay off on next Google dance? I’d like to think so! Considering the low cost investment I made to accomplish this task I cannot loose, even if initial Page Rank will not be as high as I anticipate. How well you blog will rank? If you would like to learn more and get yourself some “backlink love” with relevant “anchor text” visit this page while they still accept new customers. I don’t expect they will be open for too long due to a no-brainer solution they provide as superior price

Good and frequent commenter’s should be rewarded. I strongly believe in principal that “no good deed should go un-rewarded”. I know my site doesn’t have a Google Page rank at this point to make this offer seem very attractive but it will change soon.

I’ve been working hard and next Google dance should display at least 5,000 backlinks to my site. How will it benefit you? Simple – have a look on sidebar, “Top 5 Commentors” will be displayed with direct and SE counted links to their provided sites.

Get a head start and start commenting now.

Links from quality sites determine your worth in terms of Search Engine popularity and relevancy. It is a well known fact that unless your site or blog gets some quality backlinks – any popularity you might be gaining with each new post is short lived.

I have experienced it time and time again and the only way to stay ahead of the game is to get some quality sites link back to you consistently. And I’m not talking about link farms, links exchange sites or anything of the similar type. I’m talking about a New Concept – Viralink.

Read details and for possible participation.

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