How Do I Link Thee, Let Me Count The Ways

When your site gains links from other sites, its authority and ranking can increase. I say can because the authority of sites linking to you has some influence on the ranking you receive (though there are many other factors). I’m not going to claim to be an SEO. Still, it’s safe to say that linkbuilding is something you want to do, and regularly.

Many bloggers have covered ways to build links to your site. I’d like to discuss it in the hopes of hearing what you have tried and whether it’s worked for you. Here is a shortlist of linkbuilding techniques. I’m not commenting on whether or not I think these are any good because I’m hoping you’ll say what’s worked for you.

1. Comments.
   Some sites apply a nofollow to links in comments, so you may not benefit SEO-wise. However, your comments, if intelligent (or sometimes controversial), will draw visitors. If these visitors are bloggers, they might link to you after visiting. (Use tools to track comments.) Unless of course you’re an anonymous commenter.

2. Trackbacks.
   Trackbacks are an automated technology that most of the bigger blogging platforms have. If you write about and link to someone’s blog post, your platform will notify the other one. The other blog will then display a snippet of your post, with a link. While trackbacks are still prone to spam, they seem to generate less than comments might on some sites. (Yet some bloggers say it’s worse.) Blogs can have any combination of commenting and trackbacks turned on or off. Note that some trackbacks may have nofollow as well, and may be moderated.

3. Conversations.
   The VoIP bloggers seem to have this down to a pratice. I write about VoIP (ghosted) and subscribe to something close to 80 blogs that discuss communications, mostly VoIP. There’s a small group that regularly write posts that bounce off of topics another one of them wrote. So they link to each other almost daily. Personally, I think they should diversify their outbound links, but that’s their call. Liz Strauss has talked about link leaking on her Successful-Blog, and I’m definitely a link leaker, linking to relevant posts on as many blogs as possible, hoping to strike up a blogversation. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. (It helps if you do it from a blog where your name appears on each post – not so much if you ghostwrite.)

4. Purchased reviews.
   In addition to PayperPost and ReviewMe, there are also at least LoudLaunch and SponsoredReviews, and others I’m forgetting. Some people are using these for linkbuilding campaigns, by paying people to review their site. For example, fans of John Chow have been purchasing reviews from him through ReviewMe.

5. Link exchange/ request.
   While not everyone is comfortable doing so, people sometimes just ask for a link or offer a swap. Darren Rowse tells you how to go about requesting links.

6. Purchased links.
   This amounts to either offering a blogger money for a link, or doing it indirectly through a service like Text-Link-Ads or Text Link Brokers.

7. Linkbait and social bookmarking.
   This is combo technique. Publish compelling flagship content, including linkbait, then have someone “seed” the URL on a social bookmarking network such as Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Fark, etc.

8. Blog carnivals.
   Blog carnivals are an incredbly good way not only to get known in your niche but to also get and give links, and build visitors.

Did I miss anything? Which of these have you tried? Did it work? Which technique do you prefer? Which one would you like to try but are not sure how to go about it?

How To Beat The Blank Page of Doom

Sometimes when I write blog posts I know what I want to say but struggle with how to say it. Do you ever have that problem? I guess it is partly due to my perfectionism, and maybe kind of down to my now infamous “analysis paralysis”. There are just so many times I can rewrite the start of a post before the post gets too late to publish!

Here is my approach for combating this affliction. It is not perfect by any means but hopefully you guys can help me improve upon it.

• Know what you are going to say – The most important thing to remember is that you need to have formulated what you are going to write about before you can write it. Some of my posts evolve but they always have a core message that I am trying to get across. Work this out before sitting at the scary blank screen from hell.
• Have a point, just one – This isn’t so much a rule but more a tip, it is easier to write a post about one key point than more complicated multi-point articles.
• Write your title – I leave my title to the end here, in fact usually Nick writes them – he is so much better at it than me, elsewhere though I am on my own so spend a lot of effort (not always effort that shows) on getting headlines right. They can attract the majority of your readers but also help in the writing of the post itself.
• Beginning, Middle, End – Recall what you learned at school, you need an introduction, something to tease the reader to keep reading, then you need to make your point and summarise at the end.
• Imagine a virtual reader – I find it helps to articulate what I need to say by imagining someone at the other end. What do they need to hear? What parts need explaining? Will they find it interesting the way I am presenting it? Do I need to be funny here?
• Use an outline – Sometimes I write posts as bullet points then rewrite as paragraphs, other times I leave them as bullets. I find outlines very useful for structuring my posts especially as I have a really bad memory.
• Write it out as an email – If you have difficulty starting the actual writing you might find it easier to write it out as an email to your friend. A lot of people go into “formal thesis” mode when writing that they would never do in an email. While an email and a blog post are not identical, it will help you get the information across in a more relaxed way. You might find there are less changes necessary between email and post than you expect.
• Call a friend – The act of explaining what you need to do can be enough to break the back of it, but also a friendly conversation about the topic can bring out a lot of unexpected and interesting angles. Some of my best posts here have been after discussing the subject with Nick.
• Tell the cat, ornament or a rubber toy -  This will sound daft but try it, it works. Just like telling a friend can help sort out your issue in your own mind it even works with inanimate or uninterested objects and pets. Because you have to make sense of a problem in your own mind in order to explain it to someone else you do not even need a reply, just to articulate it. The best name for this I have heard is “Rubberducking“. I usually tell my friend Bender the robot my problems. He doesn’t care.
• Just get it out of your system – Just write, get it out of your head. Pump it onto the page as a stream of conciousness. Some people find editing much easier than writing.
• Edit Edit Edit – Don’t expect to get it right first time, you can edit until you have it the best you can make it.
• Walk away – If you find you are spending too long on it then you will get brain cramp. Walk away, get some fresh air, make some tea. In fact I recommend this regardless, I find I can improve whatever I do with some time away from it if you have the opportunity.
• Read it back, aloud – The written word and the spoken word can be quite different beasts, strange thing is a lot of us actually silently vocalise in our minds as we read. If there are any awkward passages that trip up our minds tongue it can be very off-putting. Reading your content aloud can overcome this, highlighting places to make edits and making the final work easier to digest.
• Post it and move on – At the end it is worth remembering you are not aiming for a Pulitzer, just a great blog post. Rather than agonising until the cows come home, get it as good as you can make it, post it up and move on to the next one.

As I say above I am pretty much an “agonise until the cows come home” kind of guy myself, I know what it is like. These points and tips work for me though usually so I hope you find some use out of them.

Do you ever suffer from the “blank page of doom”? Please do share your own advice in the comments.

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What Schmidt Isn’t Saying About Click Fraud

It took me a while to track down this comment from when Google CEO Eric Schmidt originally said that Click Fraud was a “non issue”. Now ZDNet are bringing up the Schmidt quote again in light of recent high profile Click Fraud cases, it’s worth pointing out what he’s not telling you…

Schmid said:

Eventually, the price that the advertiser is willing to pay for the conversion will decline, because the advertiser will realize that these are bad clicks, in other words, the value of the ad declines, so over some amount of time, the system is in-fact, self-correcting. In fact, there is a perfect economic solution which is to let it happen.

But back in March, noted Search marketing expert Greg Boser blew away Schmidts assertions by pointing out that this would depend on all Adwords advertisers tracking ROI on a direct CPA basis:

That doesn’t account for all the big spending advertisers who are bidding to generate leads that won’t produce revenue for quite some time, or advertisiers who are trying to acquire long-term customers. If you remove click fraud for those types of comapnies (who also happen to bid in many of the highest per click spaces) you will not see any of them raise their bids. That money will simply go back into their bank accounts.

And that to me sounds about right. I don’t claim ot be a click fraud expert, but to dismiss it as “self correcting”, whilst appearing to be very neat and clever (particulary as the GOOG biz model depends upon PPC), just doesn’t ring right, and Bosers arguments make a lot of sense in context.

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Why ActiveCollab Wont Nix BaseCamp

I remember reading Paul’s Being 37Signals for Free a while back and thinking yeh, that could happen. ActiveCollab, a free BaaseCamp clone won’t be what brings 37Signals down though, not even if Techcrunch say so.

With ActiveCollab, you have to download and install it. And the fundamental point Marshall Kirkpatrick misses is that essentially, people are lazy. BaseCamp is inexpensive, AND you can use it pretty much immediately via free trial.

Now, if someone were to use the open source ActiveCollab code to open a new hosted service for free, with a tolerable business model, that’s be a proper threat…

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