Archive for January, 2007

The quality link syndrome

Published on January 29, 2007 in Link Building. 1 Comment

I have observed many threads on places like v7n, Digital Point’s forums and other webmaser forums something they refer to as “quality links” and “low quality links”. Every time I read those statements, it is in the context of this or that site provides good or bad quality links.

So, as the kind soul I am, I will now tell you what is the difference between a high, and low quality links.

This is a high quality link, and this is a really crappy link.

So, there you have it.

Do you se the difference between them? No? Are you sure?

This is where the problem lies. It’s not possible to see any difference between one link from another.
The above example is a bit of a joke by the way. Because there actually is some differences between links.

Let me explain what I consider to be a quality link, and why.
Traffic
If having a link somewhere sends me traffic, then the link has some quality. If the traffic converts well, the quality goes up even more.

PageRank
Now, this is a hard one to estimate. How much PageRank juice will the link pass on to my site? This question is quite simple to figure out. You just need to count the outbound links from the page you want to get the link from, and of course if the link is tagged with nofollow or not.

Directories selling high quality links
I’m not gonna point at anyone special here, but there are quite a few of you trying to talk about your “high quality directories”. Let me put this straight: There is no such thing as a high quality directory untill the directory starts sending some serious traffic because it ranks well in the serps. Everything else is just sales pitches and crap.

Yes, I said crap because that is what it is.

Oh, I forgot to mention: We run three directories ourselves. And, yes you have to pay for inclusion. But actually we don’t need anyone to pay for getting included, because we make very good money on them without begging. The explenation is simple: They convert 30% of the pageviews into AdSense clicks.

Here they are if you want to have a look.

TheNewAd.no (norwegian), TheNewAd.com (english), KXL.pl (polish)

Googlebombs hand edited out of the serps?

Published on January 27, 2007 in Google. 0 Comments

I’m reading a very interesting thread over at threadwatch.org regarding the latest announcement from Google about removal of the well known googlebombs namely “miserable failure” going against President George W. Bush and “liar” going against Great Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair.

To give a bit of background for new readers, a googlebomb is a technique used to make a sertain page rank for a search term that is not on a page. I could for exaple try to rank this page for the term “click here” without the text “click here” being on the page anywhere.

Try to do a search in Google for “click here” and you will see that the website of Adobe.com is on the first position in the search engine’s results pages (serp). This used to be the case for the “miserable failure” and “liar” as well.

When you search for these terms now, the sites of the President and the Prime Minister are no longer on the first places in the serps.

What does this mean then? As far as I can see, Google has by this change in policy actively entered the political landscape in a much stronger degree than before. By manually removing these terms they are making a political statement -and I am not to sure if I agree that they - as a publicly traded company, should actually make political statements like this.

It sends a very strong signal to the public: “Don’t try to make political statements through the serps that we don’t agree about. We will simply REMOVE your opinions”.

So there you have it folks. Googlebombs are no more.

Postcards to strangers

Published on January 25, 2007 in Entertainment and Sitenews. 0 Comments

When was the last time you sent a postcard? I don’t mean the eCard-variant. No, no. The REAL thing. You know, the old-fashion cardboard thingie your grandparents used to send to people.

Well. I just came by a guy sending postcards to complete strangers. Randomly!

Not only is he sending them postcards, but he does it without even telling them that it actually is a prank. Funny!

Have a look at the postcards he has sent so far. Some of them are hilarious! Have a look at the card he sent to Chuck Norris. It really made me laugh!

Front page links devalued

Published on January 25, 2007 in Link Building and Sitenews. 0 Comments

I was discussing with Odd the other day if there is a change in the way Google values links occuring on the main index-page of a site.

We have both seen the same tendencies on several sites.

Of course there is no way to prove if this could be a correct assumption or not, but I find the theory to at least be logical.

If I was working at the Googleplex, I would definitely devalue front page links, and sitewide links as well (as they have done also).

If we are right in our assumption, it will have a big effect on the value of selling links for many site owners out there. After all, the front page and site wide links has been the one’s that has been sold for the highest prices.

I believe Google is doing the right thing here.

What is your opinion?

Global warming awareness campaign

Published on January 25, 2007 in Global Warming and Sitenews. 2 Comments

As you can see on the big stop-sign on the sideline her, I am involved in a campaign to spread awareness around the subject global warming. You should head over to our site regarding this, and sign the petition we are running there.

Some claim that the whole consept of humanly caused global warming is just a big fraud, and that other planets in the solar system is experiencing the same higher temperatures as we do on Earth. They might be right of course.

But, what if they are wrong? What if the global warming is caused by human activity? Can we afford taking the chance?

This is what the campaign is about. Can we really afford taking the chance that our conduct has nothing to do with the global warming currently going on? I don’t think so. My children - and their children don’t think so.

Do you?