Basicus Inc. » Link Building

Testing out Submit Edge for directory submission

Bjorn A. Solstad — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 23:37:02 +0000

Up until now we have done more or less everything ourselves when it comes to building links for our sites and our client’s sites as well.

So, when we (Devenia that is), decided to test one of the directory submission services around, we landed on Submit Edge. We are currently testing their “submit to 600 directories” package, and it will be really interesting to see the results over the next few months.

Using a service like this really is a big time saver, because finding and submitting to directories manually is really, really tedious.

What is your experience with manual directory submission services like the one Submit Edge is providing? Do they submit to the number of directories they promise?

God vs. sex

Bjorn A. Solstad — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 20:52:05 +0000

On CNN yesterday there was a story where they claimed that the word “god” is almost as popular as the word sex when people search in the search engines. So I figured I’d have a shot at doing a bit of research on the search terms surrounding the word god.

Sex on the other hand is not much to research about. We all know this is one of the most searched for terms ever. So there is not much of a challenge in that one

What I will do is build a few (well actually I believe I need a ton) of links to this particular blog post for the word god, and see what it takes to get it to the top of Google, Yahoo or Live.

Since Google returns more than 150 million results when searching for god, I will probably not get it to the top this year – or next year for that matter.

In another post I wrote about my personal believe – or the lack of believe in god so I will not talk so much about that here.

Update: I had to add a couple pictures regarding god and well.. a girl representing the other word.

What do you think, is it possible at all to rank for the word “god”?

Update: I just looked through the logs, and it looks like this post is starting to rank for the key phrase already

I am now the happy holder of the first position when searching for “God Girl Sex Games” in Windows Live search Go ahead, try searching for the phrase God Girl Sex Games.

The quality link syndrome

Bjorn A. Solstad — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 23:54:55 +0000

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)

Front page links devalued

Bjorn A. Solstad — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 12:53:44 +0000

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?