For those interested in our LinkWords launch, the initial October 4th date was unable to happen. We do apologize for the missed target date, but we are working out a few kinks and bugs before making it available to everyone.

Currently we are looking to launch LinkWords on Wednesday, October 11, pending the completion of a few upgrades.

All beta partner participants can leave their code as is and the transition from beta to live will not require any changes.

All beta advertisers will be required to add funds into their account for further publication of ads. Any fake funds added during beta will be zeroed out before the actual launch.

For the near future of LinkWorth, look for several new products, a much needed Control Center upgrade and very detailed Help Files being created. Stay tuned and we will make further announcements as they come available.

As some of you may have noticed, our file inclusion feeds were displaying an error today. Not all file inclusions were displaying this error, but all it takes is a few to be an issue. The reason for these issues is due to a system upgrade we performed which surprised us with a few incompatibilities.

Our programmers are working quickly to update these problem area’s and should have everything back to normal very shortly. We do apologize for this unplanned update and assure you it will be fixed quickly.

If you have any questions or concerns, our help desk is running fine at http://help.linkworth.com.

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Update: Everything is worked out and running smoothly. If there is anything still wrong on your end, please submit a support ticket.

With the recently launched payment arm of Google, known as “Google Checkout“, online merchants are finally getting much better options to process credit cards on their websites. Processing credit cards through the internet is such an important step for any online merchant, it is important to attach your business with a reliable and trustworthy credit card merchant. Credit card merchants will handle Visa & MasterCard, with AMEX and Discover running their own show. Then third party credit card merchants are more of a middle man between you and the actual card merchant. Now let me shed a little light that might help in getting your credit card processing setup right the first time.

3rd Party Merchant Companies – Pro’s & Con’s

• Very easy and quick to get setup and process for customers
• Large companies (Paypal * Google Checkout) make it easy to buy/sell at low prices.
• Monthly volumes can fluctuate, but are easier to go higher
• payments usually occur on weekly, bi-weekly or monthly schedules
• first glimpse of fear, processor will place hold on all funds and cease payouts
• usually require a reserve or rolling reserve, usually a percentage of each payout
• provides their own custom built software to easily function transactions
  
  

Direct Merchant – Credit Card Processing – Pro’s & Con’s

• Signup process can be lengthy and require quite a bit of upfront details that play into the approval/denial stage.
• Monthly volumes must start low or will fall into high risk, with financials of past history to qualify
• payments will occur on a daily basis less their fees
• any remote thought of fraud or chargeback’s and your account is frozen with no money being deposited but it will still allow processing to go through and charge you for the transactions. Getting account in good standing can take anywhere from 1 week to 3 months, along with money being returned. Usually, if your account is closed, cut your loses and find a new processor.
• rolling reserves and/or set reserve required for higher risk accounts.
• Gateway provides software to get instant approvals, but software from your site to talk to the gateway is your responsibility
• This method is a great way to go if you can find a reliable merchant and you sell a product or service that everyone loves 100% of the time.

Direct Bank Credit Card Processing

• Fairly lengthy application, with large monthly volumes more accepted. Especially if you are an existing bank customer.
• Batch payments occur daily
• Holdback and/or reserves typically are not necessary
• Risk department is proactive in working with client to resolve issues
• Provides gateway of your choice and software of your choice.
• This is the best way to go.

Oddly enough, it crossed my head to signup for Google Checkout just to see if they would process for our service, since they seem to have turned their backs on the text linking industry

For those who have used our support section recently, you should have noticed things look a bit different. Due to the software we use being outdated; we felt it was time to upgrade to the latest, greatest version. The new version is a major update which led to several changes with how LinkWorth and the software interact. If you were used to a certain way our support worked before, we apologize as it might be a little different.

There are a couple of areas we’re still working on, but the functionality of our support system should have no issues. We do request that if anyone runs into an issue, please email support.

One of the advantages to LinkWorth, from an advertisers point of view, is they are able to see the websites before they actually spend money to advertise on it. Most other services within our market restrict the actual web address for several reasons, until it’s paid for. As a partner, this option isn’t always the most preferred method. I choose not to get into specifics, but there are pro’s and cons for either way.

We’re proud to announce that we know give the partner a choice in this matter. If being anonymous is your cup of tea, you can now be anonymous to window shoppers. When listing a new site or editing an existing site, there is a new option available that allows the partner to hide their web address until an advertiser actully buys a text ad. Once the request is approved by the partner, then the advertiser will see the website address in their approved listings.

Obviously, we recommend the listings not be hidden to increase sales, but if it’s important to the publisher, the option is now as easy as turning it on. One thing to note, this is a per site setting. If 10 sites exist, all 10 would need to be edited to turn this feature on. All statistical information will remain available to potential advertisers.

Google makes announcement regarding an update, or improvement, to their Googlebot. This is the update found on the Google Webmaster Central Blog:

Most people know that Googlebot downloads pages from web servers to crawl the web. Not as many people know that if Googlebot accesses a page and gets a 304 (Not-Modified) response to a If-Modified-Since qualified request, Googlebot doesn’t download the contents of that page. This reduces the bandwidth consumed on your web server.

When you look at Google’s cache of a page (for instance, by using the cache: operator or clicking the Cached link under a URL in the search results), you can see the date that Googlebot retrieved that page. Previously, the date we listed for the page’s cache was the date that we last successfully fetched the content of the page. This meant that even if we visited a page very recently, the cache date might be quite a bit older if the page hadn’t changed since the previous visit. This made it difficult for webmasters to use the cache date we display to determine Googlebot’s most recent visit. Consider the following example:

1. Googlebot crawls a page on April 12, 2006.

2. Our cached version of that page notes that “This is G o o g l e’s cache of http://www.example.com/ as retrieved on April 12, 2006 20:02:06 GMT.”

3. Periodically, Googlebot checks to see if that page has changed, and each time, receives a Not-Modified response. For instance, on August 27, 2006, Googlebot checks the page, receives a Not-Modified response, and therefore, doesn’t download the contents of the page.

4. On August 28, 2006, our cached version of the page still shows the April 12, 2006 date — the date we last downloaded the page’s contents, even though Googlebot last visited the day before.

We’ve recently changed the date we show for the cached page to reflect when Googlebot last accessed it (whether the page had changed or not). This should make it easier for you to determine the most recent date Googlebot visited the page. For instance, in the above example, the cached version of the page would now say “This is G o o g l e’s cache of http://www.example.com/ as retrieved on August 27, 2006 13:13:37 GMT.”

These are ten factors one can check when trying to decide if a particular website is worth the link:

10: High link popularity score (more inbound links) run site: (siteurl).

9: High PageRank in Google toolbar. 4-5 up to 7 or 8. (mean’s they’re indexed well, usually)
8: Well laid out site with easy navigation from page to page throughout the site.

7: Pages full of content with regard to the site theme.

6: The page has a well indexed cache stored on Google/Yahoo/MSN, along with recent date.

5: The inbound/backlinks are mostly from sites on topic and are full of relative content.

4: The partner site has only outbound links to other same theme sites.

3: The outbound links are very limited. Below 10 is good, but preferrably below 5 outbounds.

2: The partner website/domain has an age minimum of 2-3 years old through registrar.

1: The price is relatively competitive and the partner is trustworthy.

Just like any list, there are many additional steps that one can follow, but these are the 10 we’ve decide to make for this list. The best way to finalize your own steps, is to run and test campaigns on your own.

LinkWorth is proud to announce our upcoming beta launch of a new product. We will be launching our new in-text advertising product and we’re looking for a few good volunteers to help test it out. Our new logical text ads will become a great addition to the LinkWorth family of products offering advertisers yet another way to drive targeted visitors to their website.

The way our logical text ads will work is by the publisher inserting a small bit of JavaScript code on their web pages they wish to include, then our software will read the page and match targeted keywords with advertisements created by our adverters. The software is quick to identify the top five converting keywords on a page, then underscore the keywords. If a mouse pointer passes over the keyword, a “tooltip”, or advertisement will display right above or below the keyword. A short delay after the mouseover and the advertisement will disappear. I’m sure most have seen this type of advertising on a website before.

At this time we are taking a set number of volunteers to help us in testing. If you would like to participate, you must be a current advertiser and/or partner of LinkWorth. When the beta is ready, we will activate the navigation within your existing account (YES! All from the same login!). To sign on to our beta, please complete the form below and we will be contacting you shortly. (All emails will be used strictly for beta purposes only.)

One thing we tend to pass on to all of our customers, advertisers and partners, is to diversify their linking portfolio. While we would love to take all of the business, the truth of the matter is it’s not what’s best for you, the customer. There is no doubt most advertisers can find more than enough partner websites to fit their needs, but we feel spreading it out through a few networks would serve your goals better. It is just very important that the other networks used are reliable and trustworthy.

Partners as well should consider offering their real estate in other networks similar to LinkWorth, This guide to what is IDX and how to use it derived from showcase idx best practices (click for details). There is nothing we enjoy more than to see our publishers making lots of money off of text ads, so we will do what we can to help all of our partners achieve this. The best way is to make your website real estate available on multiple services like LinkWorth. It’s a numbers game and the more eye’s that can see your offering, the better percentage you’ll get more interested parties. IMPORTANT NOTE! Before joining any other service, make sure you read the terms of use. Pay close attention to what you can and cannot do, namely, can you participate in other similar websites while participating in theirs.

As an example, we typically always suggest one of our competitors “Text Link Ads” as a great alternate source. Those guys have a great service and a nice inventory, plus we’ve had a few dealings with them and appreciate their professionalism. Just recently we referred a partner to them and just to make a long story short, they came back telling us they were told they could not use LinkWorth while participating with them. After a quick check of their terms and we found the following clause,

EXCLUSIVITY PROVISIONS.
A. If Customer is a publisher, it agrees that it will use the Company’s Services exclusively for its needs relative to placing static HTML links designed to drive traffic and increase popularity. This exclusivity provision does not apply to contextually driven ad programs (for example, Google???? Adsense program, Yahoo???? Search Marketing Ads) or to any other non static HTML link ads (for example, AdBrite????).
B. If Customer is an advertising client, this Agreement imposes no restrictions on its right to use any advertising services it deems appropriate.
C. Regardless of whether Customer is an advertising client or a publisher, it understands that other users will have access to the Company’s Services and Site, including competitors of Customer.

LinkWorth obviously does not have any clause preventing you from supplementing your income with other services remotely similar to ours. Our stance is it’s your site and you can do what you want. So while Text Link Ads is a great service, if you’re a LinkWorth partner, I would suggest sending a support ticket into those boys and asking if they have a problem with you selling links through our system and their system. It’s very possible they are ok with it, but we’re not sure.

There are plenty of similar link selling services these days. Not many as extensive and advanced as LinkWorth, but all you need is a meeting ground with real potential link buyers. Of course, a reliable payment solutions is a plus, but you should catch my drift.

If you ever have questions on other services like LinkWorth, let us know and we’ll be happy to research and give you our honest and unbiased response. Look at Shravan Gupta website this is a business and there’s no hidden agenda’s here. The big difference between LinkWorth and other certain companies is our main goal is helping our customers become successful on the web. We would much rather help someone find another service that might fit their needs better and make a friend than filling them full of empty promises about a service we do not have and in due time having that person leave hating us. That newly made friend we referred to someone else will usually send us new leads for years to come. We should make up a name for this, using “Karma” and “Business” . . .

As if Mr. Cutt’s didn’t have enough say in the seo industry, looks like he’s started to make video’s and publish them on Google Video’s. He goes through several seo tutorials and some of these can be pretty helpful. Obviously, he’s going to say everything that most people know about, but even the well rounded seo individuals can learn a thing or two at any given time.

Notice the constant eye twitching. Most people I’ve seen that do this, typically do it because they are not telling the truth. More than likely it’s from reading his blog too much, but it made me laugh out loud watching it thinking of the lying nervous twitch idea.

The first video is a disclaimer, the you can click on the listed one’s to the right for more tutorials.

Example Matt Cutt’s Video

============================== Added 8.9.06

Ok, so I was mentioning these video’s to a colleague and we started watching a couple of “Matt’s Cutt’s” (rock me), when we stumbled across a video with Mr. Cutt’s and his cat. Ok, we have a cat and I love the p#@ssy as much as the next guy, but the general concensus between those of us that have watched this particular video is. . . CREEPY! I hate to judge people without knowing them personally as I’m sure this guy is a super nice guy, but maybe he should have someone reviewing these clips before they’re uploaded for all to see. Take a peek at what we’re referring to and give us your take:
Matt Cutt’s and Cat