We’re making the trip again to New York City for SMX East. It was a good show last year and we’re coming back for more. The dates are October 5-7.

If you are thinking about going and haven’t registered yet, register with our SMX discount coupon:

smx10linkworth

New York City is the center of it all. Millions of people in a small area and the shows always turn out great. If you’re in the area, or within a quick train or cab ride, do yourself a favor and make it there. If you make it there, stop by our booth and say “Hi”. We’re always happy to see familiar faces and/or names.

The venue is:

Jacob K. Javits Convention Center
655 West 34th Street
New York, NY 10001

For more details on the agenda and everything else around it, visit the Search Marketing Expo East site.

If you’ve been like many other customers, you’ve often wished we had better stats for partner listings. Believe me when I say, it’s been an extremely sore subject with us for quite a while!

With lots of new code and lots of new servers, we’ve managed to get a new process in place that will keep all sites in our inventory equal to or less than 30 days old thanks to a new website designers team who pitch in the process.

In addition to improving our stats data, we’ve also incorporated ways to purchase and/or add to your wish list(s) straight from the stats page, making the process of campaign building much easier than ever before.

Although we have a new product soon to be introduced (LinkBanners), the majority of our focus has been improving everything we have. We’ll keep everyone in the loop of new changes as they happen.

Follow LinkWorth on twitter to more current updates.

http://twitter.com/linkworth

The title is only off by one word…”Glory”! Authorize.net, the payment gateway for 10’s of thousands of online businesses, had a fire in their datacenter that caused the sprinklers to go off and fry the generators. They’ve been down for over 12 hours of posting this and they’re slowing pulling things back together.

What does this mean for LinkWorth customers? Well, if you typically use a credit card for purchases, the transactions will not work currently. We do also have Paypal setup as a backup which we would recommend if you wish to make purchases or need to have renewals process. You can go to ‘my money’ > ‘add funds’ > ‘paypal deposit’ to make the alternate payment.

If you are a fellow merchant that also uses Authorize.net, if you wish to read about the issue further, you can pop over here to read more. You can also follow Authorize.net on their Twitter page here.

UPDATE
Authorize.net has processing back online and all testing on our end has gone without error. Obviously they’re still working on things and it’s possible some attempts might fail, but what they’re saying is it should be working as usual now. If you are still having billing issues, please send any billing errors to admin ^at^ linkworth dot com. You can also check for any updates on our LinkWorth Twitter page.

We have decided to make 2009, the year of upgrading. We know there are many things people would like to see differently, so we’re putting ‘most’ of the new development on the back burner while we make what we have better. I thought it would be good to inform everyone of what to expect in the near future.

Here are a few changes to look for soon:

• REPORTING: – we are about to launch a much needed reporting upgrade. It’s something that has been one of the most requested, and we finally have the manpower to put it into production. We are about to launch our new reporting that will help display the numbers you have always wanted with LinkWorth.
• LinkBB (Billboard Ads): – our LinkBB has been around for a few years and was the first of it’s kind in our market. Almost like a magazine advertorial, but a web version. However, things have changed since we were the first to launch this type of product, so it is time to give it a much needed upgrade. Look for the upgrades you’ve always wanted with our LinkBB product within the next couple of weeks.
• LinkInTxt Upgrade: – our LinkInTxt product is a very hot commodity. It’s something that is becoming more popular by the day. The way we currently discover new keywords or key phrases is outdated. We are working on a more updated way to discover new keywords and key phrases on partner sites/blogs. This means more opportunities for partners and more opportunities for advertisers.
• Banner Ads!: – we announced the upcoming new product a while back but had to put it on hold while we worked on other improvements. The new product is back into production and we’re extremely excited about launching it soon. Banner ads have made a huge comeback, so offering it to our customers makes complete sense.

This is just a small list of upgrades we have on deck. Our goal is to make the Control Center much easier to use and maintain. Since our staff uses it daily, their feedback is usually very similar to much of our customers. If you have suggestions, PLEASE send them to admin **at** linkworth **dot** com.

I’ve read a few things here and there about social traffic and how ‘important’ it is to have. And with more and more businesses flocking to social media platforms like Instagram to promote their brand. That means more competition to get the most followers. While growing your following should not be the sole focus of your social media strategy, it still pays to have as many followers as possible on Instagram. And with companies such as Upleap that can help you get more Instagram followers, it’s now easier to boost your credibility on the site. I also have a personal blog and the social traffic is through the roof, however, the big question is, does any of the social traffic really matter?

Take StumbleUpon traffic, for example. If you’re a Stumbler, you know as much as any other Stumbler, you’re killing time and looking for things of interest. This usually doesn’t involve running around spending a dime, it’s just about finding funny pictures or things of interest without having to put much thought into it. I can honestly say I’ve never spent a single penny on a site I have stumbled on. I might have referenced something I found on my blog, but I can’t see any financial benefit that this type of traffic might bring.

Now let’s look at Digg traffic. I will admit I’m not a big Digg fan, mostly because I’ve read about how a group of power Digg users control what gets pushed up and what doesn’t so I don’t view it as as much a world view as I do a group of users view.Many users buy likes for instagram for increasing their traffic. The results are pretty much the same thing though, it’s either political, funny, shocking or just overall newsworthy, not financially beneficial to anyone. I did have one blog post that someone dugg and there was about a week of traffic that came from it, all which opens that one page, looks at the content, and then moves on.

Social media branding is about consistently using the right methods to engage with your target audience on social media platforms. The aim or purpose is to boost brand awareness. Social media branding makes it easy for you to get more relevant people into your sales funnel by giving them a reason to trust you. People use social media for various reasons. But for marketers, it is mainly to reach more consumers with their brand message. Reaching more people helps grow your brand awareness and generate leads. Magnify Signs in Denver is a company that creates custom signs for businesses. These are not your typical, simple signage, but rather they’re works of art with clever sayings and messages to make you laugh or smile. Whether it’s the sign outside of an office building welcoming people each day as they enter or one at the entranceway telling them what floor their destination can be found on, Magnify will take care of all aspects from design layout to installation!

I’ve also blogged some time ago about Facebook Ads and how poor they performed. Granted, this was millions of new users ago and they’ve probably put more work into their ad platform, but what are you looking for when you login to Facebook? Something to buy or pay for? I would say 75% of the time I login to my account, the ad I see you can see to the right. Yep, it’s a mugshot of Matt Baker, who works for us. Just seems like a big waste to show that ad over ads that might actually convert for serious advertisers. (not that I don’t enjoy seeing Baker’s peace sign) As I said before, other than branding, I still can’t see a huge benefit in running ads on the Facebook system.

I would love to see a study that compares the value of a social media site to a large company with thousands of employees, and the company spends millions of dollars in advertising with that social site. Then determine how much employee time is wasted on that social site during a typical workday. Total both sides of the study and see what the true benefit to the company really is. What if it was found that social websites are a proven way to cost companies millions of dollars in lost revenues because their employees spend more time being social than being productive?

I’m not here to say social sites are worthless, I’m just asking if they really matter when it comes to paying the bills. If you have a site that averages a thousand uniques per month without any social traffic and you convert 5% of the traffic, and then after bumping your traffic up another thousand uniques of social visits, would that translate into the same number of conversions? I’ve searched and haven’t really found much by way of real life examples or data to prove it’s worth the time, so if you are reading this and know of a good study or two, please post a link or any real life situations you might have been involved with.

Holding true to being a one stop shop for all types of online marketing needs, we are in the beginning stages of development for banner ads.

This method of media used to dominate the market, but then disappeared as a type of advertising that most people never paid attention to.

Lately the display ads have been making a comeback and we’ve decided to create the ability for advertisers and partners to participate in this area through LinkWorth.

Stay tuned.

There are many fly by night services out there now that offer you thousands of links for a dirt cheap price. To the untrained eye, it will look like a great deal. Why pay for each individual link when you can save yourself tons of time & money by only paying a couple hundred bucks for 5k, 10k, 20k links or more?

You will definitely get what you pay for. Think of it like buying a car. If someone offered to sell you a car, one being $300 and the other being $3,000, which would you trust to get you where you need to be? Of course the $300 car sounds like the perfect deal, but what are the chances of that car actually working right? More than likely if you pay $300 for that car, you’ll end up spending thousands more dollars making it last more than a few weeks. Or you’ll just junk it, lose your money, and then spend money on a good car.

It’s no different with paying money for text link ads. An example of a $300 link service is called TNX. They promised people thousands of free links and extremely cheap links beyond that. Next thing you know, not only was their network wiped clean from the net, but their own site was as well. Helpless people that jumped into what seemed to be a great deal walked away with nothing but lost money and time.

If you are going to head down the link buying path, be wise about it. There are a few reputable networks (wink, wink) that aren’t going to sell cheap, worthless links. You’re also not going to stack thousands of links out there all at once. Take your time and do your link building the right way by finding relevant sites that make sense. Maybe even find someone that can lend a helping hand.

We (LinkWorth) now offer free account management to all advertisers. Let our Account Managers manage your account, or at least get you going in the right direction. Customer retention is what benefits us, so we’re not going to steer you down a dead end road with a junker car.

Just remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

Obviously LinkWorth is here to make your link building step much easier, however, it should never stop here. In a perfect world you can hire your own staff and have them do all of the leg work for your company and find great links for your site.

I’ve been wanting to make a very educational post on this topic but after doing some digging around, I found one of the more well thought out and informative posts that says it all. For those that aren’t familiar with SEOmoz, Rand is one of the more well known public figures of SEO and often speaks at the search related trade shows. He published his presentation from a recent show and it says everything I would have said and more. When you have a little time, read his “Give It Up” presentation.

We have updated our Terms of Service, section 8, Price Schedule and Payout. This update is mainly applicable to Advertiser accounts.

This change will also bring future offerings that will benefit both Advertiser and Partner accounts. Look to see something announced within the next month.

LinkPost Jobs has been well received since the launch. We expected our initial launch would bring many comments and suggestions on what might be needed in order to make it better. The suggestions did pour in and we appreciate everyone who sent them in because it was exactly what we were hoping for.

The two biggest suggestions were the ability to pre-approve blogs for jobs and the option to exclude certain domains. Advertisers felt there needed to be a middle ground between a regular LinkPost and a LinkPost Job. They like the idea of handpicking blogs, but also like the feature of having bloggers come to them. They also wanted the ability to block specific domains if they don’t want a certain blogger type.

Blog Candidates
When creating a new job, you’ll see a new option that says:

• Bloggers will be automatically approved if they meet my job criteria.
• I want to review/approve Blog Candidates.

If you select that you want to ‘review/approve’ candidates, then once a blogger accepts your job listing, the system will notify you that there is a blog candidate to approve/decline. Once clicking the blog candidates, you’ll see all candidates interested in writing the review. At this point you’ll have the option of visiting their blog and making the decision of whether or not it fits your needs.

Exclude Domains
The other new option is the ability for advertisers to disallow domains from accepting your jobs. If you wish to not allow blogspot.com, wordpress.com, typepad.com or any other blog service you deem invaluable, this is where you can block them. When creating a job listing, the ‘exclude’ option will now be part of the job listing process.

We are always looking for more suggestions to make our products better. If you have a suggestion, please email support {at} linkworth {dot} com.