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So, Tell Me Again, Which Links Will Count In The Future?

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SEO extraordinaire Dee Barizo discusses the topic of long-term linkbuilding and how you should focus on the sort of links that will most likely still be relevant in the future.

Following on a video posted by Rand at SEOMoz, Dee suggests that the best way to answer this question is to focus on “links which would exist even if Google wasn’t around.”

Personally, I think that there is a major flaw in this line of thinking. It assumes that there is a definite answer to the question “Which links would exist even if Google wasn’t around?”

In asking this question, we’re supposed to answer a counterfactual that *just doesn’t match reality* – Google does exist, and Google’s existence colors the environment in which links exist.

Rather than focus on the sort of links that might exist even if Google wasn’t around (which asks us to build links as if we were in some alternative universe) I think that Dee’s answer to the question “What are the sort of links that will still be relevant in the future” is best found in another post that he made entitled The Value of a Balanced Link Portfolio.

You want a simple answer to an eminently important question? Here it is: if you want links that will count in the future, then focus on building a stable, balanced portfolio. Don’t use just one single strategy.

So really you just two need things: 1) links that will still be there in the future and 2) links from a variety of sources (directories, blog comments, blog posts, article posts, run of site sidebar, etc.)

One more principle: not all links need to be niche-relevant, but at least 60% of your links should be.

So let’s sum it up. For long term linkbuilding, it’s pretty straight forwad:

1. You want links that stand a fighting chance of still being there 12 months from now
2. You want links from a variety of sources, 60-80% of which are niche-relevant.

Yo Problogger, Where You From?

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My friend David Peralty is doing something that should be lots of fun. David has started what will become THE comprehensive list of probloggers around the world.

If you make at least $100 per month, make sure to submit your name and location. David is taking submissions in the comment section of his eXtra For Every Publisher blog.

Looking forward to seeing where everyone is from!

Oh, and David has told me that it’s ok to just post your name, URL and location in the comment section of this thread and he’ll pick it up.

23 Simple Health Tips For Bloggers

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Last week, I asked a simple question and one which bloggers and Internet freelancers often ignore: What do you do to stay healthy?. Such a question is easy to ignore, and any discussion of the topic is easy to dismiss as irrelevant mumbo-jumbo. But I can assure you that it’s not.

I also made the case in that post that health is a topic of vital importance. Think about it. Why do you work? You work, fundamentally, to preserve and enhance your own life and the life of your family. Many of us get so obsessed with work that we forget why we do it, and in the process, neglect the very things we work for: ourselves.

As a blogger, your well-being should be something you think about. You should pay attention to the state of your body and the state of your mind. Do you find yourself feeling sluggish a lot of the time? Do you find yourself feeling depressed? These are signs that your body is giving you that are indicative of something being wrong. By taking these signs seriously, you can use them as cues for action.

The good news is that I can personally attest to the fact that respecting and committing time to the health of your own body can pay huge dividends. Your mind will be clearer. Your motivation to act and be productive will get stronger. Your ability to interact with and enjoy other people will increase.

Over the last two years I’ve been systematically trying to take my body seriously. I’ve taken its cues and made every attempt to improve my overall quality of life. Below, I’ve listed 23 tips that will help you do the same.

Twenty-Three Health Tips For Bloggers

1. Before you drink coffee in the morning, drink a glass of water (keep a steady supply of water at your desk). This will help minimize the negative fidgety-buzz that coffee can give you.

2. Start your day off with a 20 minute walk

3. Walk away from the computer at least once every two hours and take a step outside

4. Keep at least one 10-25 pound dumbell by your desk, and use it at least once a day when you notice that your in the middle of a productivity funk.

5. Eat one small meal every 2-3 hours

6. Start your day off with twenty minutes of Yoga or Pilates. I’m personally a fan of the GAIAM series.

7. If you can’t sleep, take a sleeping pill. Sleep is critical to your overall well being. Just make sure not to take sleeping pills more than 3 days in a row.

8. If you feel sluggish, get down on the floor and do some push-ups

9. If your mind feels twitchy, it’s probably because you’ve had too much coffee. Drink some water and get some fresh air.

10. If you feel depressed or sad, immediately find a friend on AIM or in a private forum to talk with. It does wonders.

11. Buy an odometer/speedometer for your bike. Then go for a bike ride around 2pm each day. It’ll give you a “second-wind” for the day. Challenge yourself to go a little bit further and a little bit faster each day.

12. If you’re in a healthy relationship, have sex at least once every 3 days. I’m dead serious about this. It can be critical to both mental and physical stability.

13. If you’re addicted to IMing, porn, RSS reading, movie watching, shoe shopping, music searching or whatever else dominates your time…. TAKE BACK CONTROL OF YOURSELF and YOUR TIME … addictions of any kind are not healthy – a healthy person has full control over him or herself.

14. Once a quarter, try something new. A hobby, an online project, a daily habit. Trying something new and succeeding at it is both physically stimulating and mentally liberating.

15. Buy a dog. While a puppy may result in mental torture and sleep deprivation for a few months, the benefits are pricless. Dogs lift your spirit and can give you the incentive you need to take a walk. But please don’t buy a dog unless you are serious about giving it a walk at least twice a day.

16. Try detoxing your body for a week. When I’m feeling really bad physically, I use two principles: A) Drink nothing but water and B) Eat nothing but fruits, vegetables and nuts

17. Get some sun. Seriously. Half an hour of good skin exposure to the sun can revive the body.

18. Find an excercise partner to help stay motivated. If you can’t find an exercise partner, motivate yourself through the habit forming stage with a massively enticing reward (50 inch Samsung LCD with a PS3 anyone)?

19. Minimize your intake of processed breads and carbs. Keep a healthy stash of nuts and fruits (grapes and walnuts are a great snack) to satisfy your snack cravings.

20. Guys, challenge yourself to work on the beer gut everyday for 10 minutes and stick with it. Take that challenge as seriously as you take your latest internet project or fantasy football team. Girls, challenge yourself to work on the cellulite areas. Take that challenge as seriously as you take your latest internet project or the your desire to get your 101st handbag.

21. Don’t drink alcohol after 7pm. Not only can it prevent you from sleeping deeply, but it can also result in more carb-based weight gain. Or…you might wake up the next day with a bad headache;-)

22. Challenge yourself to save alcohol and desserts only on the weekends. Your body will feel much more stable during the week if you keep it toxic free.

23. Your mental health demands that you are working on projects that you enjoy and that elicit creativity. If you find yourself bogged down in meaningless, tedious work, start taking the steps to transition into healthy, rewarding work by carving out time each day to pursue your own interests (rather than those of your boss – even if your boss in an alter-ego of yourself;-)

Blogger Health: What do you do to stay healthy?

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A lot of people are going to skip over this series of posts because it doesn’t address 50 Ways To Make 4 Figures Per Day From AdSense – instead, it focuses on a topic that most bloggers ignore. A topic of vital importance. Not only because it affects the very core of your being, but because it actually has a fairly direct correlation with productivity, and to be honest, monetization. So let me suggest to those of you who have made it thus far: pay attention. This might be the most important series of posts that I make at Performancing.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to be doing a series of posts on Blogger Health. Quite simply, it is the most overlooked issue in blogging and needs to be addressed. Money, afterall, is no good if you’re unhappy, sick, depressed or dead.

But enough of the scare tactics. Your health is directly correlated to your blogging success. Over the last year, by paying close attention to my body’s needs, I have been able to increase my overall daily productivity in both quantifiable (measurably better ideas, faster execution, etc.) and qualitative (enjoy my work, less depression, etc.) ways.

As probloggers, we have the advantage of working out of our homes and on flexible hours. We should take advantage of that fact and take time out of the day to fine-tune our bodies. Unfortunately, many full time internet people don’t leave their homes more than once or twice a week. We should aim to change that.

But before I start writing this series, I want to invite Performancing readers to do a gut check. What’s the state of your health? How seriously do you take your health? Do you think about your health on an hourly, daily, monthly, quarterly basis? Or did you wake up one day like me faced with the seeming Catch-22 that not only had you grown a beer gut but that it’s also hard as hell to stop work in the middle of the day to pump some iron?

Don’t Be Shy, Show Us Your Blogging Rig

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Following Darren over at ProBlogger, I thought it would be cool for Perf members to post images or video of their ‘puter and office setups. Post them in this thread, but make sure to kill 2 birds with one stone by heading over to Problogger to share there as well.

I’ll kick things off with my College Startup / Performancing HQ

It’s a 2 computer setup. One laptop (old and borderline useless), one desktop (a souped up powerhouse with 4GB RAM). Each computer has its own distinct public IP address. I prefer safety in redundancy. If one machine goes down, the other is there. If one IP address gets put on some blacklist, the other is there.

Porn 2.0: Is the porn industry missing out on Web 2.0?

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I was listening to NPR this weekend and out of the blue there was an interview with the Sex editor of Wired Magazine. She was talking about Web 2.0 and the porn industry.

The gist of the interview was this: historically, sex and porn have been technology drivers. But for some reason, the porn industry seems to be lagging in Web 2.0 options.

The first premise is obviously true. Nobody with half a brain seriously thinks that the internet and broadband would have developed as quickly as they did were it not for porn demand.

But you can go back even further. Porn was a major driving force behind VHS and home movies (privacy and secrecy) – guys didn’t have to go out of their homes to get a porn fix.

The fact is that porn has driven technological advance. I say that without a moral judgment. It’s just a fact.

So why might porn be lacking in Web 2.0? Well, a few answers were given:

1. The porn industry has historically relied on static, easily produced, non-changing content that is passively consumed.
2. There are major legal issues with giving users full control over content development (age restrictions, etc.) Policing content is notoriously hard to do.
3. Web 2.0 would decentralize and potentially destabilize a multi-billion dollar industry
4. Porn has historically been a “fleecing of the lambs” industry that caters to basic instincts and doesn’t need complexities

What would Web 2.0 porn look like?

It would include mashups, user provided soundtracks, user created content, social voting to highlight the best content, etc. All of this takes power of delivery away from the money makers and holds them accountable to the product they are producing. That, and the legal issues, are the main repressive forces that are causing the lag.