We can all agree that the past year of link building, well SEO in general, has been quite the hot topic. Damn near ‘everyone’ participated in link building in some form or fashion. If you read someone that says they have never participated in link building, you can bet most of your money that they’re not telling you the whole truth. It was just part of the landscape and you had to do it to compete. A good analogy is like trying to compete in a marathon but not working out, you can still participate but you probably won’t finish.

All this rambling leads me to my point. Since the ‘so called’ hammer was thrown down, a lot of people have either turned their heads towards link building or have continued on as under the table as possible. Those that have turned their heads have found it impossible to compete, once again. Why? It’s because linking is still alive and well. The truth of the matter is it will always be alive and well unless the engines change the way they rank websites, a point that I’ve said over and over. Sure, they can try and slap people’s wrists, but if you knock 10 down, there’s 10 more waiting to take their place.

A great example of how well the text linking business still works, I bring to you exhibit A. If you look at the page source, you’ll find that it is nothing more than a frameset page with absolutely zero content. Only a title and meta description. It is currently ranked #1 for the term “Text Link Ads“, which is pretty competitive. I first thought our pals over at TLA were back on track but then realized it was just an affiliate page. Either way, I was thrilled to see what I was looking at. That gives even more proof that you can rank a page with nothing but a pure linking campaign. All you have to do is look at the back links listed and you’ll find their text links. It’s a beautiful thing.

If you have become a non-believer, what more proof do you need that we can help!

Do you have any good hypotheticals that you would like to have included in our rotation? If so, please send them to admin [at] linkworth {dot} com. If we use your submission, we’ll reference who sent it and a link to your website, if you would like us to.

If sending a hypothetical, mention the word ‘hypothetical’ in the subject. In the email body, after your hypothetical, give the name you’d like to be published and the website address you want published. If you are unsure how to make a hypothetical, it is real simple, present a situation and give two solutions. The idea is to make both solutions gratifying but with some sort of consequence.

Ok, back to the hypothetical at hand: Hitchhiking or UFO Riding.

You are in dire need to get on the other side of the world for a serious family matter. You have just a few days to get there but only have 2 options of transportation. Both will get you there, but what happens while in transportation is unknown. Which would you choose:

• You can reach to your destination by hitchhiking in cars, trucks, motorcycles, boats or any other land/water based vehicles. Flying is not an option. You will arrive in time, but the people you will come across will be some of the shadiest characters you’ve ever met in your life.
  
  or
• You can reach to your destination being abducted by a UFO. No one knows what or who is in the UFO..violent, happy, peaceful, hungry, a complete mystery. You will be pulled into the spacecraft and leave the planet, maybe even the galaxy. You could be gone a million years, but they know how to time travel and will get you to your destination in time.

Which risk sounds more appetizing?

And don’t forget to send in your hypothetical if you want to participate!

We haven’t mentioned much about our travel plans for this year, other than our trip to SXSW Interactive. I know we said we didn’t plan on attending the usual conferences this year, however, we are going to be exhibiting at a few. One being the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose, August 18-21.

This is one of the premier SES shows due to it’s location, right down the road from Googleplex. Google has their Google Dance which is always a blast. Kind of a time when everyone puts down their guns and all hang out together for fun, food and beverages. If you haven’t been, I’d highly recommend this one. Matter of fact, we can get you 20% off of a Conference Passport (aka Platinum Passport) or a 1 day pass. If you just want to go to the expo, this coupon gets you in for free.

SES San Jose 2008 Coupon

Future conferences we’ll be attending:

1. Dallas/Ft. Worth Franchise & Business Expo – May 16-18
2. SES San Jose 2008 – August 18-21
3. SMX East New York City – October 6-8
4. Pubcon Las Vegas – November 11-14

Look for discounts to the other shows as we get them.

Partners, are you tired of waiting around to be chosen for LinkPost deals? Advertisers, does sorting through our ever-growing inventory to find suitable LinkPost Partner blogs take too much of your valuable time? Now there’s an easier way! (Will go live tomorrow 4.29.08) Allow me to introduce LW Jobs – a new way to buy & sell paid blog posts here at LinkWorth. In the “old days”, Advertisers had to create an outline, search for Partner blogs individually, make a buy request, wait for approval, then wait for the post be written. On the flip side, Partners had to wait patiently for work to come their way, navigating payroll. Now there is a MUCH more efficient way for both Partners and Advertisers. LW Jobs allow Advertisers to simply create a Job listing using a LinkPost outline and let the bloggers find them. How does it work? Advertisers select a LinkPost outline to use, determine a set of minimum requirements that Partner blogs must meet, deposit funds, and then the Job is posted for all of our blog Partners to see and accept the Jobs that best suit them! Partners As a blog Partner, viewing the available Jobs is a piece of cake. Simply log in to your control center and view your Alerts to see what Jobs are currently on deck! If you’re job searching, you can also access the available Jobs by clicking the “my products” tab >> linkpost >> search linkpost jobs. At a glance you can see what Jobs you’re eligible to accept. If your blog meets the requirements and there are still available funds, the Job listing will appear green…GO FOR IT!! If your blog does not meet the requirements, the Job listing will be red and you won’t be able to accept it. Advertisers Log in to your control center and click the “my products” tab >> linkpost >> create Job (you must first have a LinkPost outline created before a LW Job can be created). Fill in a few fields, set your pricing, and sit back while the buzz about you begins! Check out the screenshot below to see how easy it is.

For those of you that follow the search engines and their cockiness that flies first class wherever they go, you should be very familiar with Google and their ‘unbeatable search algorithm’. The Google algo has probably been one of the most talked about, targeted, studied, tested, learned and contested of any other search algo in the history of search engines. Here are a few points that would put them in this position:

1. They own between 60%–70% of the search market/queries, so why not target the big dawg?
2. They proclaim to have the most detailed and steel proof equations of any out there.
3. They claim to know of all webspam and can stop most of it with their algorithms.
4. They have attracted some of the smartest people in the world to work for them.

With this knowledge at hand, how would you feel to know the ‘smartest algorithm’ in the world has had to resort to human editing to better their search engine results?

Well it is happening and the once untainted results will now be at the mercy of a Wikipedia type editor, which is paid by the hour and will undoubtedly be in bed with the market they govern, somehow. If not when they sign up, definitely once they have the power. Google is offering to pay $25/hr and that is great money, but who wouldn’t take side payments for doing whatever? “Hey Joe Blow, I’ll give you $50k to make site A vital and site’s B, C, D, E, F and so on non-relevant.” Would you take the bribe? I think most people that will be doing this would.

Here is the posting on Craigslist found recently:

Search engine results rating:

We need individuals who can work from home to perform search engine results ratings. The work is straight-forward; you log into a Website and then look at predetermined web pages or other similar material and rank them based on how relevant they appear for a given search query. The workload could be anywhere from a few hours a month to a few hours a week. You will need to have a PayPal account as that is how you will be paid.

When you perform this testing you must have the ability to sit down at a computer uninterrupted for 1 hour periods. Also, we will check the data. If the data is inconsistent or done with little regard for quality, you will lose your opportunity to do this in the future.

If you’re interested, here are a few more details:
-You must be willing to be interviewed for approximately 15 minutes on the phone.
-You must be totally and completely fluent in English.
-Please have a college degree, or an AA degree at a minimum.
-Please send your resume along with a brief paragraph about yourself, and also tell us how long you have been using the Internet, how many hours a day/week you use the Internet, and what you typically do on the Internet.

The pay is approximately $25 per hour.

It may take us up to a week to get back to you so please be patient.

Thanks!

And here are the guidelines handed out.

Maybe the business of the future will be to load up a building full of employees, who all apply for the ‘human search project’, and then they become the online service who can apply spam, Non Relevant or Off-Topic tags on the competition listings and then tag the customer sites with the vital mark. Google will basically pay for your entire workforce salaries, maybe you make money off of the newer employees, then give the veterans the full $25/hr plus a little compensation from sales you earn for the service provided to individual companies, seo agencies and other search related marketing firms. The great part is getting off the ground would require very minimal costs, since salaries are usually the biggest cost.

The underlying point here is after all that we’ve heard from Google about having the smartest search algorithms out there, no matter what they do, people will always be smarter than machines. However, once you start inserting humans into the mix, the chances of corruption goes through the roof, as my example company above illustrates.

Google, don’t become Mahalo! They suck for a reason.

PS. (If someone takes my business model idea, at least give me a thank you!)

Here’s a good survival hypothetical. I’m a huge fan of Survivorman and Man vs. Wild, which made me think of this one.

Would you rather be stranded in the middle of the hot Amazonian forest for a minimum of one month, but you are stranded without any food or water? You would have to live off of the land around you, which is full of food and water.

or
Would you rather be stranded on a raft in the middle of the ocean where you are not rescued until a month into it? You would have enough water and food to get you through the entire ordeal, but you will have to ration yourself to ensure it will last the full month.

I was first going to give an extremely confusing title that parodies the common generic linkbait titles you see everywhere, but then decided to make it super generic. I think I’ve read this particular title, or some variation of it hundreds, if not thousands of times. Matter of fact, ‘Beat Your Competition’ is found over one hundred thousand times!

Here is where I stray from the generic title, but give some key suggestions that might help. I’m not saying it will do the job, but they’re just obvious observations I’ve made the past few years. They are more mentoring tips that I would give to anyone, so before you think to yourself, “He’s giving away his secrets”, think again.

• Keep Your Secrets to Yourself! – I realize that sharing your knowledge and proving your ability by speaking your mind helps potential customers see what you’re made of, but there is a fine line to not cross. I think bloggers thrive to appear like wizards in their particular field but all they’re doing is giving away their secrets to competition or even creating new competition.
• Don’t Be So Social! – This one makes my head ‘sphinn’. People try so hard to be involved in every single social app that pops up, but the problem is, just one social app is time consuming. Save that time for helping your customers or bettering your product or service. Also, most social apps allow others to see who all of your contacts are, a sort of window into your soul that your competition has easy access to.
• Take off that Target shirt! – throwing your weight around about how popular you are or who you work with has it’s pluses but it also has it’s minuses. If I came on here and stated we were an approved G00GLE vendor (which I will neither confirm nor deny), sure it could bring business our way, but it also puts a huge target on our back. If you steer your ship down the right path, you’ll be successful and there will be no need to make such a big splash. Take a step back and let your competition wear the target.
• Don’t be so damn picky! – We’ve all witnessed it, businesses would rather hand pick their customers, aka deep pockets, and leave out the little guy/girl. You NEVER know what the future holds. Turning down someone that only has $100 to spend today might be the same thing as turning down someone that has $100,000 to spend in a year. And another downfall to large accounts, if you have 10 accounts that gross your business $25k each, then your competitor has 100 accounts that gross $2500 each, while it seems to be even, all it takes is one lost account and you’re down a big chunk. I remember a college instructor that told us one day, “God made more poor people than he did rich people.” In other words, it’s a lot easier to get a million people to give you $1 than it is having 10 people give you a $100,000.
• Don’t Become Complacent! – Think about how lions hunt their meals. They feed on the weak, or the one’s that appear to be weak. Same thing goes for the business world. No matter how nice you think your competition is or how friendly they are to you, the minute they have the opportunity, they’ll crush you. Stay ahead of the curve and don’t be content with where you are. Think of ways to make what you do even better, or maybe come up with a completely different way of doing it. Don’t be scared to take chances because that’s where success happens. You may fail several times, but eventually the odds will be on your side and everyone will be following your lead.

Ok, I feel like a motivational speaker now and it’s making my stomach upset. Again, these 5 tips have nothing to do with our industry specifically, it applies to any company or market. If you were hoping to learn how to crush your competition with relation to what LinkWorth offers, I would recommend calling 866.LNK.WRTH and one of our Account Managers can lead you down that path.

We’ve been on more of a bi-weekly hypothetical Wednesday’s lately, so my apologies if you’ve missed them.

Today’s hypothetical revolves around something that goes on here at the office. I realized that when it comes to being healthy (eating and exercise), there are those that are good at it and those that are not. Which one are you? Which one would you want to be?

When we exercise, the body releases chemicals that boost your sense of well-being and suppress hormones that cause stress and anxiety. Among the chemicals released are endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine neurotransmitters which are related to pain and depression emotions. For anxiety you should take cbd gummies for anxiety , they can help reduce anxiety symptoms by interacting with the body’s endocannabinoid system. This system regulates mood, stress response, and other physiological processes, and CBD can help it function more effectively. CBD gummies offer an easy and discreet way to consume CBD, allowing individuals to manage anxiety symptoms throughout the day.

The hypothetical:

Would you rather be extremely healthy, in shape thanks to the best weight loss pills and the best fat burners, basically in the best health possible and have a clean living, however, you have the unhappiness of never being able to eat all of the things you absolutely love to eat? You could only eat mulch from the mower, few fruits, shaved wood and dry baked potatoes, as an example. You’re just never happy with what you’re eating and find it difficult to deal with most of the time, but the important thing is, you are as healthy as you can be.

or

Would you rather be out of shape, eating anything you want, whenever you want, unclean living, however, you have the unhappiness of always wanting to be an extremely healthy person? You would not be to a point of life or death, more like 20-25 pounds overweight, maybe a bad habit, but the important thing is you eat whatever you want, whenever you want.

CBD gummies can be used to alleviate anxiety caused by being overweight.CBD gummies offer a discreet and easy way to consume CBD, as they can be taken on-the-go and offer a consistent dose.

Pick your unhappiness

While thinking of the clever April Fool’s post, I realized that everyone has already beaten this whole bit up before it even turned midnight in our part of the world. So instead of throwing any curve balls here, I figured I would list the jokes I’ve already come across.

• One great thing about being in Australia is you get everything before the rest of the world thanks to the International Date line. Darren Rowse over at Problogger.net announced their launch of PayPerTweet, a service that pays Twitter users for tweeting about products and services. He then issues a further explanation of the joke which is pretty interesting.
• Over at Techcrunch.com, I learned of a new phenomenon called RickRolling. Basically, you click a link you think is interesting, but it actually takes you to a youtube video of Rick Astley’s song “Never Gonna Give You Up“. Horrible song, but I think I liked it back in the day. Anyhow, Youtube is RickRolling everyone who clicks the Featured Videos from their home page.
• Of course, the reason I was at Techcrunch is because I noticed Arrington had a ridiculous claim of suing Facebook, so I had to read. He claims users were using his picture to advertise products and services through Facebook and he was suing them for $25 million. I guess knowing the whole April 1st bit I knew it was a joke with the headline, but when I started reading how he was claiming to be so important, it was tough to read. Like reading a joke of why the chicken crossed the road or a knock knock joke, too predictable.
• Google Australia announced the release of a new service that searches ‘tomorrow’s web, today’. It’s called gDay™ and the core technology that powers it is MATE™ (Machine Automated Temporal Extrapolation).

**Updated List after day is over**

• BBC definitely has my vote for the most creative of the day. They released this video:
  
• CNET announced that Techcrunch acquired Tigerbeat and will rename it to CrunchKids.
• Google and Virgin partnered to create “Virgle”. This is called the ‘interplanetary Noah’s Ark’ where it will create a Mars expedition and eventual colonization of Mars.

Here are a list of sites that breakdown all of the internet pranks:

• Lifehacker Top 10 Harmless Geek Pranks
• SearchEngineLand has a recap of April Fool’s Day
• CNET Fool’s Day Lineup

***UPDATE ENDS***

This is just a few. I’ll post more tomorrow as April Fool’s hits this side of the world. Plus I think we might have our own fun to show.

I like to save our Hall of Shame posts for the special candidates that really deserve it. Yesterday someone all but requested it with the most unprofessional email I’ve received in a long time. Here’s the story.

We have been seeking out companies that specialize in usability in hopes of making our customer Control Center easier to use and navigate. We are well aware that improvements are needed and we’re seeking outside help from a specialized third party. This project is going to be a big and lengthy process and isn’t going to be cheap, so it only makes sense to find the right company to do the best job. After searching through many companies, we selected what we felt were the best 5 companies. I spoke with all 5 and explained what we were looking for, then asked for ballpark proposals to be sent. 4 of the 5 sent detailed proposals, with one sending a PDF of screen shots that really didn’t tell me much. This one company was theUEgroup.

Even though all the other companies were able to propose something, theUEgroup said it was too difficult, which I could understand, but kind of weird that everyone else could. That wasn’t what killed the deal for me. What killed the deal is the President of theUEgroup, Tony Fernandes, sent this PDF which was named Linksworth briefing. Is it too much to ask that the company trying to earn our business can not only name the file how we display our name “LinkWorth? And if you can’t do that, at least SPELL IT RIGHT!

Since I have to narrow the 5 companies down to 1, I have to find reasons why 4 are not a good fit. Spelling our name wrong was an easy decision. If they can’t spell our name correctly, how many other mistakes would they make? No proposal, wrong name, deal breaker. I responded to his email with this message:

> Hi Tony,
>
> I appreciate the time and the examples. This project is definitely
> something that is extremely important to our company. Attention to
> the slightest detail can make or break the results.
>
> There is no doubt that you and your company could probably help us,
> but when I get a file from you spelling our company “LinkWorth” as
> “Linksworth”, it unfortunately was a deal breaker for me. Simple
> mistake, I know, but a project of this size can’t have simple mistakes.
> In my eyes, if you’re trying to earn my business, you can at least get
> our company name right. It makes me think not much thought has been
> put into it.
>
> Best of luck.
>
> Regards,
> Ron Wicker
> LinkWorth.com

I thought I was being honest and polite. I would rather know that I screwed up a big job because I spelled their name wrong instead of never hearing back from them, which is why I explained why I was not interested.

Shockingly, I received a very rude response from Tony Fernandes at theUEgroup.com, who I’m not sure if I said already, is the President of theUEgroup. Evidently he says he tried to call my direct line and my mailbox was full, even though I only had 1 saved message in it. We have a complete digital phone system and everyone else was able to leave messages during the day without issues. Anyhow, this was his response to my message above:

I appreciate the reply. I think that calling the President’s number and winding up in a general voice mail box that is full is a deal breaker as well. If you want a company like us to work with a company like yours, we need to believe that you are real enough to have a working phone system with more than one voice mail box. It makes me believe that you haven’t put much thought into your business or how it appears to the outside. Its a small detail I know but in a world where we are turning away work, it helps us decide who’s real and who isn’t. Best of luck with your venture.

Am I missing something here? Were we hoping to strike a deal with theUEgroup? Does a phone, whether it had a glitch or not, tell you whether or not we are a real company or how much thought was put into the business? Wouldn’t the fact we were trying to contract them for this project tell him we put a lot of thought into our business and how it appears to the outside?

I think it is safe to say that Tony Fernandes from theUEgroup is unprofessional and is a little bitter that he screwed up the chance at winning our project. I doubt Mr. Fernandes would appreciate any of his employees speaking to potential customers that way. I know I wouldn’t. And I really like how Tony says “If you want a company like us to work with a company like yours“, as if he considers theUEgroup is far and above our company. I’m pretty sure if we matched details to details, he’d be surprised that we are much more prominent than he thinks we are. We also will be getting advice from HKM.

Needless to say, Tony Fernandes from theUEgroup has earned the Hall of Shame Award. I guess he hasn’t put much thought into how he wants his own business to appear to the outside. Guess they’ll all know now.