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How To Make Your Text Link Ad Campaign Work
If you pay any attention to the SEO world and the forums, blogs and articles written about text link advertising, you will know what a hot topic this has become. We were able to pay a visit to the recent SES (Search Engine Strategies) Expo in Chicago and the topic had a few sessions that were focused around it. Matter of fact, one of the sessions was a Q & A with representatives from Google, Yahoo & MSN. While there were some great questions, the answers from the reps were good and not so good. What I mean by this is, some answers provided were helpful in response to the questions, however, other answers were just wasted breath and time. In other words, they didn’t want to give out too much information to protect their product, which is completely understandable. Of course, with answers, a breeding ground of helpful tips was created I wanted to pass along. đ
Of course I want search engine results to be relevant and helpful because I use their search tools as much as the next guy, however, as a business owner, you should have the ability to build effective websites with all the right aspects to gain the edge on your competition. Relying on a search engine to hopefully give you a good listing is just pure hogwash, if I can use that word :), so companies like ours will constantly innovate and keep up with changes in search engine ranking systems. Now we’re not here, by any means at all, to spam or create linking scheme’s to beat their product! So to those who may want to put words in my ‘blog’mouth, make sure you include this part as well. We will continue to help our advertisers build extremely effective link building campaigns, as well as optimizing their site to make it as search engine friendly as it can be. There are right and wrong ways to do this and we are very careful to do everything the right way. So with that being said, lets move on to this little tutorial on this post.
1. Building Your Text Ads
Tip #1:
Do not use the same anchor text on every link you acquire! For one, you are limiting yourself to that one keyword or key phrase. Natural search engine listings have a certain keyword that you should pay attention to; NATURAL. What you need to do is make your text linking campaign look as natural as possible. Use as many variations of the anchor text you want to push. Examples would be: (text link, text links, text link advertising, buy text links, sell text links, text ads, text ad link . . .). So create many different ads to use and put a limit to how many times a given text ad will be placed and make that number 10 or less.Tip #2:
Use variations of the url placed with each text ad. So instead of pointing all of your text ads to your home page, mix things up and point them to internal pages of your site. Preferably, make each text ad about the page the user will be directed to. So with our anchor text examples in Tip #1, build a text ad with the anchor text of buy text links and instead of linking it directly to the home page, link it to an internal page that actually talks about buying text links. Then build a new ad with the term sell links and point it to a different internal page that talks about selling of text links. This will allow your entire site to become popular instead of just your homepage. This also is a very natural way of linking, which is important.Tip #3:
Consider using some text ads with the WWW and some text ads without it. (www.linkworth.com and linkworth.com). Search engines actually give different ranking to both versions of this url. One way to really test this is if you have the Google toolbar, open your homepage with the WWW, notice your PageRank, then remove the WWW and refresh to notice your new PageRank. Feel free to click the links to our home page and notice the different rankings of our own.Tip #4:
Create catchy descriptions for each text ad that a user interested in your service would want to see. Of course, not all partners accept descriptions, but it’s still a wise idea to make your description something you would read and want to hear. What this means is, do not fill your description up with keywords! Remember, the key to everything you do in search engine marketing (SEM) is to bring traffic to your site that is interested in what you have to offer. If our customer type was on a site and read our text ad, tell me which text ad you think would be more attractive to bring a potential paying client:A: Buy Text Ads – LinkWorth offers link buying strategies to increase your visibility and shoot your traffic through the roof with targeted customers.
or
B: Buy Text Ads – buy ads, text links, text ads, text link, text ad, buy text links online, buy online links, get links, link popularity, increase link popularity.I think you can see which description looks a little more appetizing to a potential paying customer. So take time to create extremely effective descriptions so not only will you build your linking reputation, but your CTR (click through ratio) will be much higher.
2. Selecting New Partners to Link From
Tip #1:
Relevancy is as important as ever these days, so when selecting partners to acquire a link from, stick with sites that are similar to your own in content and theme. As stated previously, your primary goal is to acquire more traffic, so you are much more likely to get new customers from a partner site that has something to do with what you are promoting or selling. It’s unlikely that a person on a car dealership site is looking to buy a text link ad, so it wouldn’t make much sense to place our link on hummer.com.Tip #2:
Consider indirect relationships as well. There are MANY situations where a text link might fit on a site that isn’t necessarily the same content or theme. Products can compliment each other and might meet the users desire based on what they are looking for. For example, a website that sells GLOVES, isn’t necessarily relevant to cars, but some drivers enjoy to wear driving gloves, so in this case a text link ad for gloves would indirectly match well with hummer.com. So stay relevant but do not limit yourself to only your theme because there are many situations you could associate your product with on non relevant sites.Tip #3:
Add your links slowly to partner sites. Remember the term we referenced earlier? NATURAL. Acquiring several hundred or several thousand links overnight or in a very short period is an obvious flag to search engines. Remember also, we’re not doing things to scheme or spam the search engines, we’re doing this to build your traffic and visibility on other similar sites. Linking is a very important part of ranking your website well, so it’s something that has to be done, just make sure you do it in a natural and non-spammy fashion. So consider adding like 5 to 10 to 15 links “throughout” an entire week. Not all at once, spread them out through the week. There is really no limit as long as you do things in a slow and natural methodic fashion. One thing which was mentioned was to look at your competition and see how many links they have, but that is such a ridiculous comment it makes me laugh. No one, not even Google, can honestly and truthfully say there is a limit to the number of links any given website can receive based on their competition. Site A could be a very useful and popular website with Site B and Site C being worthless and not worthy of mentioning by anyone. So be smart, but don’t limit yourself either.
3. Tricks & Secrets of the Above Mentioned
T&S #1:
Alternating Anchor Text Secret – If you want to buy an “ALL PAGES” text link on a large website, don’t use the same ad because it will be the same thing shown on every page. Again, back to your main goal, you want to optimize your ability to grab users to visit your site, so you want to appeal to anyone and everyone that might be on any given page of that website. How would you do this? We call it our Rotating Link Ads and it gives you the option of showing a different anchor text on every page. We are soon going to offer unique url’s for each anchor text as well, so it will give you the opportunity to show a unique anchor text and url, whether it is to your homepage or an internal page, for every page view. IMHO it’s the only way anyone should be buying all pages text links now. The important thing is the main domain url does not change, only the landing page of a given domain. Currently you list all of the keywords and/or key phrases you wish to use on the ad and it will rotate these on each page view. So it turns into a stat-namic (static + dynamic) link. The CTR of these on all pages links have been so much higher than using the same text ad on every page of a site.T&S #2:
Creating Relevancy Secret – Some partner sites might be seesawing back and forth on being relevant or not relevant. It’s a great site and you want to link from it, however, you also don’t want to hurt yourself. Well why not make this site relevant? How would you do this? We call this our Billboard Link Ads and as the true pioneer to this product, we cannot begin to tell you the effectiveness this product can give any text linking campaign. Not only do you get your own entire page to talk about your product or service, but you get to plant content links throughout the content that you write. You write an entire page of content, then the partner places this page on their site and link to your page from their site. You can make the site a mirror image of their site or create your own look and feel. It’s a sort of in-between text ad that resides on the partner’s website. Most importantly, you give relevance to that website and create a given relationship between their site and your own. It’s one of our favorite products due to the CTR and the ability to say as much as you want about a given product or service on other websites.
These tips, tricks and secrets are many things we have practiced here for quite some time and some that have just recently been executed with much success. Nothing we suggest goes without our own testing and practicing, so know that these tips are not just guesses. Link building is the heart of any SEO company whether they will admit it or not, although optimization of a site is also very important. The optimization part of it we like to call their diversion of what really goes on. Of course I’m generalizing right now, because there are many very good SEO guys out there, as we have links to many of them on this blog, but there are also some big SEO firms that have a lot of smoke clouds circling their practices. I just hope this tips and tricks post can help a few of you out there. đ
Advanced Use of Robots.txt
With all of the SEO tips, tricks, and tutorials available to you, probably the easiest to achieve is the use of the robots.txt file. This is a simple file that gives instructions to search engine robots, or spiders, on how to crawl your website, and which files and directories to stay out of, and to not index in their databases.
In an earlier tutorial by Clint Dixon, he showed you how to write a robots.txt file, and what information to include, such as User-Agent and the Disallow directive, instructing the search engine spiders on how to crawl your site. In this article, I want to build upon what he showed you, and give you more information on the importance of the robots.txt in your SEO efforts, and some of the consequences of not having one, or having one written incorrectly.
Behavior of Search Engines When Encountering Robots.txt
Search engines behave differently upon encountering, or not, the robots.txt file during a crawl. You only have to follow your web stats to know that the robots.txt is one of the most requested files by search engine spiders. Many spiders check the robots.txt file first before ever performing a crawl, and some even pre-empt crawls by checking for the presence of, and commands in, the file; only to leave and come back another day. In the absence of this file, many search engine spiders will still crawl your website, but you will find that even more will simply leave without indexing. While this is seen as one of the most extreme consequences of excluding the robots.txt file, I will also show you consequences that I consider to be far worse.
Some of the major search engine spiders and robots have distinct behavior patterns upon reading the robots.txt that you can track in your stats. Sometimes, however, it is nice to have an outsiderâs perspective on robot behaviors in order to compare it to what you may have noticed. I view a lot of robots.txt files, and sites with and without them, so Iâve been able to come up with a few behavior patterns I would like to share with you.
Search Engine Optimization
1. What Is Search Engine Optimization?
Ask ten different people what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is and you
may receive ten different answers. For the purposes of this guide, SEO will
be defined as the process of making changes to your site to make it more
accessible to search engines and the people that arrive at your site from
the search engines.
Search engine optimization is not about tricking the search engines. It
is about understanding what elements search engines look for on a page to
help determine the relevance of the page to a search term. By understanding
what page elements the search engines take into consideration, and making
adjustments to better present your page, you can improve your rank for a
search term.
Search engines use programs called "spiders" or "crawlers" that visit the
pages of your Web site and index the information on those pages. This
includes the content that your visitors see when viewing your page and some
of code used to build your page.
Taking search engine optimization into consideration before you build
your site is the best approach. Fortunately, search engine optimization can
also be performed after a site is built, but it will require making changes
to your site.
It is important to understand that it will likely take more than a month
before you see the results of your work. This is due to the fact that it
takes time for the search engines to update their databases.
A basic overview of the content and basic code that the spiders or
crawlers will look for on a page is covered here. The information provided
is not specifically geared toward one search engine. Instead it takes a more
general approach that will work well with most, if not all, search engines.
Each section starts with a brief description of the page element covered.
You will then be provided with sources for further information including:
- Recommended Articles
These are articles that do a good job explaining the key concepts of the
topic discussed. Each articles is linked with the option to open it in a
new window. - Check the Article Archives
Search Engine Guide provides a directory of thousands of search engine
articles from experts across the Internet. This section will provide a
link to the relevant category covering the page element being covered. The
articles are arranged by date with the newest articles first. This will
allow you to get the most up to date information and then do further
research on older articles. - Recommended Forum Threads
These are pointers to specific threads in search engine discussion forums
that cover the page element being discussed. - Books and Reports
In some case, there are books and reports that are available that cover
the page element being discussed. For those that wish to have further
research material, we provide links to sources that provide the books and
reports.
2. Domain Names
Having keywords in your domain is not a major consideration. For example,
having a domain such as www.keyword-keyword-keyword.com isn’t going to do
much, if anything.
If keywords in your domain naturally make sense and would make it more
memorable to your visitors, then don’t be afraid to use keywords in your
domain name. If you already have a domain name, don’t worry about switching
just because it isn’t packed with keywords.
Don’t purchase multiple domains with the idea of having multiple copies
of your Web site to get multiple listings in the search engines. This will
likely result in a penalty from the search engines.
To learn more about Domain Names:
Recommended Articles:
Attacking the Search Engines – There’s no need for an additional
domain. If you have additional products or services, simply add pages to
your existing site. Every page is a gateway to the rest, and they can all
rank highly if properly optimized.
Multiple Domain Names Pointing to One Site – I have heard through the
grapevine that if you buy many domain names and point them back to your
home page, when the search engines find this out they will shut you off.
Is that true at all?
Keyword-Rich Domain Names – The myth of using keyword-rich domains for
SEO purposes has been perpetuated for way too long, and quite frankly I’m
tired of seeing it written about as if it’s an all-important SEO factor.
Check the Article Archives:
-
More Articles About Domain Names – Check the Search Engine News
Archives for articles about domain names and the impact they can have on
your rankings. The articles are arranged by date with the newest articles
first. This will allow you to get the most up to date information and then
do further research on older articles.
Recommended Forum Threads:
3. The Title Tag
The title tag for each page of your site is very important. If you look
at the code of a web page, you will find it in the head section and it will
look something like the following:
<head>
<title>Your Page Title Here</title>
<meta name="Description" content="Your Description">
<meta name="Keywords" content="Your Keywords">
</head>
Your title should include your keywords or keyphrases and help describe
your site, or the specific page, in a concise manor. When people are viewing
a list of search results, they typically will scan down the list. Make sure
your title tells them what your site, or the page, is about.
For the title, your keyphrases are more important than your company name,
unless your company name is a well known brand.
Repeating keywords and keyphrases over and over is likely to be penalized
and looks terrible in the search results.
To learn more about the Title Tag:
Recommended Articles:
Search Engine Optimization Basics Part 2 – Title Tags – Not only is
the structure and content of the Title tag used by the search engines when
calculating your webpage’s relevance, but it is also displayed in most
search engine results pages. It therefore needs to be carefully
constructed in such a way that it influences your website’s position in
the SERP, but is also attractive enough to encourage a surfer to click on
your link.
Check the Article Archives:
-
More Articles About The Title Tag – Check the Search Engine News
Archives for articles about the Title Tag. The articles are arranged by
date with the newest articles first. This will allow you to get the most
up to date information and then do further research on older articles.
Recommended Forum Threads:
4. Meta Description and Meta Keyword Tags
These tags are also in the head section of the code of a web page and are
not seen by the visitors of your site unless they happen to look at your
source code. If you look at the code of a web page, the Meta Tags will look
something like the following:
<head>
<title>Your Page Title Here</title>
<meta name="Description" content="Your Description">
<meta name="Keywords" content="Your Keywords">
</head>
Of the two, the Meta Description is the most important. In fact, many
experts will advise that it isn’t even necessary to bother with the Meta
Keywords tag because most search engines ignore it.
For your home page, your Meta Description Tag should briefly explain what
your site is about. Each page of your site should also have a Meta
Description Tag that explains what that specific page is about. Keep it
short and to the point.
To learn more about Meta Description and Meta Keyword Tags:
Recommended Articles:
Search Engine Optimization Basics Part 3 – Meta Tags – As part of the
continued series ‘Getting Back To Search Engine Optimization Basics’, Andy
Beal takes a closer look at Meta description and Meta keywords tags. Do
you still need them and what benefits do they bring?
What Exactly are META tags? – You probably know that META tags are
important for search engine optimization and that they need to be included
on your Web site. But what exactly do they do? What is their purpose and
how exactly do the search engines interact with them?
No Meta Keyword Tags – Unfortunately, once Meta tags became spam
magnets, we SEOs started telling people to only use words that were
already on the page and no others. From what I discovered, that advice was
actually wrong — and in fact, probably useless!
Check the Article Archives:
-
More Articles About Meta Description and Meta Keyword Tags – Check the
Search Engine News Archives for articles about Meta Description and Meta
Keyword Tags. The articles are arranged by date with the newest articles
first. This will allow you to get the most up to date information and then
do further research on older articles.
Recommended Forum Threads:
The Truth About Reciprocal Link Networks
Happened across a nice little discussion regarding reciprocal linking and thought we would give a snippet of it here with a link to the authors blog if you are interested in the full story. Good stuff from WebGuerrilla. . .
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Shortly after stage 2 of the recent Google algo update began, I received an email from a panic stricken ex-client. He woke up on a Monday morning to find all of the recent gains we had made Google were gone.
I was a bit shocked to hear this because this particular project was as âwhite hatâ as they come. And from a keyword standpoint, it wasnât even close to being a space that any competent SEO would consider competitive.
My initial reaction was to simply ignore the email. He was no longer a paying client, so why waste the time looking into it? But then curiosity got the best of me. So I fired up some tools and started to do some digging.
What I discovered was that my ex-client had been very busy building links since our contract expired. In fact, he had managed to pickup about 7000 new links in about a month and a half. Almost all of these links were coming from a reciprocal linking network called GotLinks.
When I wrote him back and told him that developing that many links in such a short period of time probably wasnât the smartest thing to do, (especially when the top site in his space has been around since â95 and has only managed to collect a total of 250 inbound links) he promptly cancelled his GotLinks account and wrote the owner and asked that all his links be removed.
That led to a bunch of defensive emails from the owner which basically said that all the sites in his network were kickinâ ass and I was just an idiot who didnât know what I was talking about.
5 Ways Google Will Help You With Your Traffic
If you’ve ever had a severe drop in your Google rankings in search results, you may think of Google more of an enemy than an ally.
But if you knew what I do, you’d realize that there are tools provided by the search engine that help you learn more about your traffic, and may even help drive visitors to your site.
Here are five ways that Google provides free traffic assistance.
#1 – Google will Help Your Pages Get Discovered with Google Sitemaps
https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login
Google Sitemaps is a program that gives you the opportunity to present your site’s pages to Google in XML or text. Google will then come by and spider the pages, getting you indexed faster.
Take note that this doesn’t necessarily mean that your pages will be listed for your favorite keywords, only that discovery will take place a lot faster than with manual submission. Google Sitemaps will also give you some basic site stats if you verify your site, such as the top keywords for discovery, errors it found when crawling, and the types of documents at your site, if you need other ways to manage your documents at your website, then we recommend you visit a site like Digital WarRoom.
If you find compiling your sitemap for Google in the correct format difficult, try the SOFTplus GSiteCrawler Google Sitemap generator. It’s my favorite Sitemap generator, free and easy to use.
#2 – Google Will Talk To You or Your Webmaster with the Webmaster Section
http://www.google.com/webmasters/
The Google Information Page for Webmasters should be your first stop when you want to know more about anything that has to do with your site and its relationship to Google and any of its many flavors of search such as Froogle. Particularly for new site owners or operators, checking this page first has saved many from needless anxiety.
Most of the basic information is in straightforward language, with links to details for geeks like me.
Measuring Importance
Usability is already a critical component of successful online ventures but with the advent of Google Analytics and the implementation of the Jagger algo update, user-activities and behaviours are going to play an influencing role in search engine rankings. How people act when they visit a website or document is being measured and accounted for, even for sites without Google Analytics tracking codes in the
section of the document source-code.Google is concerned with how people find information and what they do when they access a document found in the Google index. Which document in a site they tend to land on, how long users spend on that document and how much, if any, time does a user spend exploring information in a domain, are all pertinent to how Google perceives the relevance of documents listed in the index. As long-term online marketers know, this is where usability comes into the picture.
Usability, as defined by Kim Kraus Berg is, â⌠the ability to successfully, comfortably and confidently learn or complete a task. For the web site designer or application developer, it’s the mechanics of designing and building a web site or Internet-based application so that it can be understood and easy to accomplish any task.â
According to local (Victoria-based) website marketing expert, Michael Linehan, a focus on site usability is simply common sense marketing. Leading visitors towards goal-orientated outcomes makes as much sense for a functioning website as it does for a functional building and, to follow through on the analogy, it all starts with a smart architect.
Michael knows his stuff, so much so StepForth considers him to be one of our marketing and site usability gurus. If our assumptions about user-behaviours and the post-Jagger Google SERPs are correct, Michaelâs talents will play an important role in our overall SEO techniques.
New Features in Control Center
It’s been a little while since we have spoken of new features added to the control center. There have been a few added recently and it is time to point them out and give brief explanations to each.
REPURCHASE LINKS – Advertisers
This new feature gives advertisers the ease of repurchasing links they have previously purchased but have either not renewed, cancelled, declined or expired. Rather than having to go through the buy links section and find the partner listings and take the steps again, you can simply login to your account, go to >> TEXT ADS >> LINK HISTORY and select either TEXT LINKS, BILLBOARDS, PACKAGES or ROTATING ADS. It will show all of your past history and any links available for repurchase will have a checkbox located to the left of the listing. Select any and all partner listings you wish to repurchase, and then click the “REPURCHASE” button on the bottom of the page. It will direct you to a summary page of all listings you selected and the option to set the link location you want your link to appear on. Once these selections are set, click the REPURCHASE button once again and you will get the confirmation page showing prices. Confirm and they are repurchased. For those of you who might miss renewals and the text ads are not renewed and cancelled, you can now easily get your campaigns back up quickly with this new option. It will save advertisers quite a bit of time if in this situation.
LINK HISTORY – Partners
Why we did not have this before is a bit of a mystery. It has always been a feature for advertisers, but not for partners. Now partners can navigate to >>MANAGE LINKS >> HISTORY and select either TEXT LINKS, BILLBOARDS, PACKAGES or ROTATING ADS. This will provide a listing of all previous activity which has occurred in your account. If a link appears and disappears, you can now see the status of the link in your history. Sometimes advertisers will send a request and cancel before the partner ever gets to their account and it’s a bit of a mystery. Now you have full access to see the link and what the status is, i.e. . . . if it’s cancelled, cc failed and so on. Also, if you have a question on if a link should be published or not, you can visit your link history page and see what the status of any link is.
ADDITIONAL BUY OPTIONS – Advertisers
Based on several requests about adding more than one text link on one single partner site, we have implemented an options tab for advertisers when buying text links, packages, billboards and rotating ads. If the checkbox for Show Additional Options during checkout is selected (located next to the BUY LINKS and/or ADD PARTERS buttons), the advertiser will be taken to a new page that gives the option to add multiple text ads on one given partner website. You’ll have the ability to add multiple text ads on *ALL* partner listings selected, or go through individually and select one or multiple text ads no each partner listing selected. On the new page, each partner listing will be shown with all of your text link ads you have created. Each of your text ads will have a checkbox next to it and a link location drop down menu. Place a checkbox next to each ad you wish to place on the given partner website, select the appropriate link location/price and then move to the next listing until you have gone through all of them. When finished, click the CONTINUE button and it will direct you to the confirmation page. If all looks good, select the payment method and then the BUY LINKS button and you’re done. This is an option that may not appeal to everyone so we just made this step an option to select when buying. This allows those uninterested to skip this step. It definitely saves those wanting to add multiple ads on one partner site a TON of time.
SORTING OPTIONS – Advertisers & Partners
For those of you who might manage your clients linking campaigns and have hundreds of purchased links, we have been adding sorting options to all of the pages which might contain a lot of listings. This will help locate specific listings in your account easily and save a lot of time. Advertisers can access their APPROVED LINKS section and notice at the bottom of the page where we now show how many listings are on the page and also total up the link prices. This can help advertisers easily calculate prices paid for specific ads and or listings.
TAX FORMS ONLINE – Partners
Partners no longer have to fax or mail their tax forms before getting paid. Due to popular demand, we have discussed the option of receiving tax info online with our tax advisors and have been given the green light. We setup a simple wizard similar to other online tax forms you may have experienced with other companies that payout money and it’s easily entered inside your LinkWorth account. All information is received with secured encryption methods and is instant.
LINKWORTH MOVES TO NEW OFFICE! ! !
We have finally gotten moved into our new office. To be honest, we didn’t think it was ever going to happen. We constantly questioned whether we should have just found an existing location to get in quicker rather than having a brand new office built for us, but now that we’re moved in, we couldn’t be happier. This new office now allows us to increase our staff. More staff means more business for everyone. We are aggressively seeking new sales/account management personnel to catch up with our demand. We have set our goals very high for 2006 and expect to reach all goals set, if not surpass them. One of the main goals is to make all of our partners and advertisers happy to be part of our success. We appreciate everyone that makes LinkWorth what it is and want to show our appreciation with success for all. If you are located in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area and are looking for employment, give us a call.
Future services to be offered by LinkWorth
Pay Per Click Management
Since PPC can be a very effective method of instant targeted traffic, we plan to incorporate PPC services within your existing LinkWorth account. We will use our proprietary software to integrate your keywords into Yahoo and Google PPC programs.
Traffic Analyzer
This service will be free to all managed accounts and for a small fee to unmanaged accounts. This will allow webmasters to place a code snip on their pages and track all visitors with all stats detailed out in your LinkWorth account. We will relate it to your LinkWorth efforts and put it in very easy to understand terms.
Banner Advertising
Even though this is an old method of marketing, many people still prefer banner ads. It is a great way to build name recognition and visibility, along with traffic generation. This will also be incorporated into your existing LinkWorth account as an option.
As always, we will continue to improve our system to your needs. We listen to each and every suggestion and/or request. If it makes sense and others want it as well, it’s on our new tasks list. Without you, LinkWorth is nothing, so we will continue to tailor to your needs.
We also want to wish everyone a very safe and happy holiday season.
Contest Money Giveaway
As most LinkWorth customers know, we are always trying to make LinkWorth a better and more user friendly atmosphere for all. Over time, we have grown to learn that what might seem trivial to us, might be confusing to others. After many discussions of how to make our control center interface easier, we have come up with a new and unique idea. We are calling it our “Facelift Contest“.
With any software program, one of the most important parts is the initial homepage. It can be constructed to give a quick insight to all major aspects of the program, much like having a bird’s eye view of an entire city. We, at LinkWorth, feel our initial login homepage could use a major facelift to better illustrate important features and/or sections of your account. It could provide more accurate statistical information about your account and be laid out in a much more user friendly manner. So instead of us putting our thoughts into the layout, we feel the best way to get something everyone could greatly benefit from was to allow our customers, who use their accounts on a daily basis, the power to do it.
This leads us to the actual contest. We want you to submit your best login homepage of how you think it should be laid out. It can be submitted in the following formats: jpg, gif, bmp, pdf, html or psd. While the design/artwork is a plus, we are looking mostly for the art of information provided on the homepage. What bits of information would you like to see on the login homepage? How would you like to see it shown? . . . and so on.
There are TWO (2) login homepages; Advertiser Home and Partner Home. There will be one winning submission for each homepage with either one or two actual winners. The contest will run until January 1, 2006. After the deadline has passed, we will select the top 5 submissions for each homepage. We will then construct demo pages of each and open the voting up to the LinkWorth customers. The voting process will run for a total of 30 days and at the end of the 30th day, we will crown a winner for the advertiser homepage and partner homepage.
Now for the part everyone is reading this for! ! ! The prize.
Grand Prize Advertiser Homepage – $500 credit to account (total of 1 prize)
Grand Prize Partner Homepage – $500 credit to account (total of 1 prize)
Runner Up Advertiser Homepage – $25 credit to account (total of 4 prizes)
Runner Up Partner Homepage – $25 credit to account (total of 4 prizes)
This is a view of the current advertiser homepage:
This is a view of the current partner homepage:
To submit your entry, login to your LinkWorth account and look for the submission directions on the homepage, located in the announcements/news section.
Tips and Hints to participants are:
1. Be creative and informative
2. Fast loading page (low image use)
3. Great use of statistical data
4. Detailed labeling
5. Extremely User Friendly
6. Simplified but detailed
Best of luck to all who participate! We are excited to see your idea’s.
Be sure to read our rules and regulations of this contest.
More Jagge’d’ Information
This post is from Matt Cutt’s blog. Matt is a resident Google-ite who appears to be a fellow collaborator on their search inventions (his name appear on patent applications as inventor). Here we go:
Okay, Brett Tabke decided to call it Update Jagger. Here are the ways that Iâd use to contact us if you have feedback on Google search results:
Reporting spam in Googleâs index
I especially want to hear about webspam that you see in Google. The best place to do that is to go to http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html . In the âAdditional details:â section, I would use the keyword âjagger1âł (thatâs âjaggerâ and the number one with no spaces in between).Reporting non-spam issues or problems in Googleâs index
Do the search that youâre interested in on google.com, then click the âDissatisfied? Help us improveâ link at the bottom right of the page. Again, fill in details and use the keyword jagger1 so that folks at Google can separate out feedback specifically about this update.You think your site has been penalized
If your site is not showing up at all, and you recently had something like hidden text or hidden links on your pages, I would recommend doing a reinclusion request. I wrote up my advice on the best way to do a reinclusion request. Note that a reinclusion request wonât make much difference if our algorithms/scoring are what is affecting your site though.You see a low-quality site that is running AdSense
If you run across a site that you consider spammy and it has AdSense on it, click on the âAds by Goooooogleâ link and click âSend Google your thoughts on the ads you just sawâ. Enter the words spamreport and jagger1 in the comments field.You want to talk about data center IP addresses amongst friends, or âupdate speculateâ
Lots of search-related discussion goes on at WebmasterWorld, but bear in mind that you wonât be able to mention specific urls or searches on WMW. If you want to mention specifics to Google, Iâd go with one of the ways above. Visit site if you want to have a Free IP Geolocation APIHope that helps to let people know where to send their feedback based on what they see.
As Easy As Jagger 1 – 2 – 3
We wanted to give a new update to those who might have not heard about this Google update. According to one of the Google inventor’s of the recent patent, “Matt Cutt’s“, this latest updated labeled Jagger, is a 3 step program. Jagger 1 is up and live and has seemed to kill a lot of webmasters natural listings. Jagger 2 is currently in the process of spreading like a virus throughout the web, with the final step of Jagger 3 starting next week.
Reading through the patent, it appears they are really going after spammy technique’s and link purchasing employed by webmasters. What we’ve noticed is some sites originally took big hits in the SERPs, however, Jagger 2 has begun bringing them back to the top. We expect after the Jagger 3 has completed, we will see more stable listings as previously shown. Here is the recent post from Matt Cutt’s blog. . .
It looks like Jagger2 is starting to be visible. GoogleGuy posted over on WebmasterWorld with what SEOs should expect:
McMohan, good eyes in spotting some changes at 66.102.9.104. I expect Jagger2 to start at 66.102.9.x. It will probably stay at 1-2 data centers for the next several days rather than spreading quickly. But that data center shows the direction that things will be moving in (bear in mind that things are fluxing, and Jagger3 will cause flux as well).
Matt Cutts posted how to send feedback on Jagger1 at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/update-jagger-contacting-google/
If youâre looking at 66.102.9.x and have new feedback on what you see there (whether it be spam or just indexing related), please use the same mechanism as before, except use the keyword Jagger2. I believe that our webspam team has taken a first pass through the Jagger1 feedback and acted on a majority of the spam reports. The quality team may wait until Jagger3 is visible somewhere before delving into the non-spam index feedback.
If things stay on the same schedule (which I canât promise, but Iâll keep you posted if I learn more), Jagger3 might be visible at one data center next week. Folks should have several weeks to give us feedback on Jagger3 as it gradually becomes more visible at more data centers.
Not much more I can add to that. Even on 66.102.9.104, it will still take a day or so for the changes to be fully visible at that data center. Just to re-emphasize, if you send new feedback on a data center such as 66.102.9.104, be sure to use the keyword jagger2 in spam reports or index feedback so that we can tell this is newer feedback. Jagger1, Jagger2, and Jagger3 are mostly independent changes, but theyâre occurring closely enough in time (plus they interact to some degree) that itâs clearer just to act as if they were one update for feedback purposes.
I think the moral of the story is, it’s very possible your site will drop off initially, but eventually rebound . . . IF…AND ONLY IF … your site employs whitehat techniques and full of content related to your subject. Keep building your linking campaign with relevant partner sites and build pages and pages of relevant content. Make your pages or site bookmarked accessible as this is a new feature Google will watch for ranking.