Hi Gang

I was talking to one of our first SLS members the other day and he was reporting how he was getting new blogs indexed and cached within Google in under 6 hours and we both realised that this was being done because he had activated and was using the SLS Premier Ping Server List. This is available as another one of the free members bonuses found at Simple Leveraging

I then realised that that although members were aware of this list, perhaps the newer members had not found time or the necessary location to download this list. This list is a real killer of a list and will improve the efficiency of your Wordpress Blogs no end.

The process is the usual one whereby you login to your blog dashboard and go to “settings” and then “writing” then insert the contents of the text file and replace the entry for Pingomatic – Pingomatic is included in this list anyway.

This list kicks butt and is yet one more way that we can say yet again, thanks for being a member. It is at least 30 servers bigger than any of the other services available and as I said, delivers.

Cheers

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Why am I being so flippant today? I’m not too sure; perhaps it has more to with the fact this it is a Friday and that within a few hours I can stop by at my favourite “Watering Hole” on my way home and generally reconnect with the real world i.e. those who don’t make their living from life in this massive “Goldfish Bowl” we call the Internet?

Perhaps it is also due to the fact that I have spent quite a bit of time this week looking at existing link Building Campaigns from folks who should know better and wonder how they have ended up getting their butts kicked by the “Mighty G”.

Some people really should know better and I know those who are reading this will know better but let me reiterate this message for once and for all. There is effectively no such thing as a bad inbound link. There are good links and there are very good links but effectively there is no such thing as a bad inbound link.

The reason for this? Well one of the things that Google likes to see is a nice spread of inbound linking types as well as sources of IP’s. Hence to take full advantage of this Google is expecting to see direct links, indirect links, redirects, dofollows, nofollows, typos you name it. Why? The answer is simple, Google wants to see an inbound Links landscape that very closely resembles what humans would provide and that includes mistakes.

If it doesn’t see that then look out as your entire approach could be seen as too controlled and manipulative?

Have a great weekend and keep those messages and emails coming in.

See ya soon folks!

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Hmnnnn, this one’s actually a biggie and speaking as someone who is the main principal behind a keyword rich site name i.e. Simple Leveraging then technically that should “nail my colours” to the mast.

In the interests of fairness let me highlight two opposing viewpoints on the issue and then give you my take.

First up there is Scott Boyd at Fused Nation ( http://www.fusednation.com/seo/q-are-keywords-in-your-domain-name-an-important-ranking-factor/ ) who is of the opinion that “there was a time when keyword domains were synonymous with spam (because as I said, spammers used to buy up keyword domains and throw up spam sites because they used to rank well because of the keyword in the domain). Personally, I ignore link requests and business requests from keyword domains for that reason – this may be the exception rather than the rule, but I believe there are probably a good percentage of website owners who feel the same.”

Whilst I agree with him on certain points in that it did cause a whole wave of “brain dead SEO” i.e. never mind about anything else just get a domain name linked to your keywords I still think having your keywords in a domain name still does have a certain amount of kudos.

These probably relate more to branding awareness and associate issues more than anything else. For example David Airey in his post about the “Real Value of Keyword Rich Domain Names” (http://www.davidairey.com/domain-name-keyword-importance/ ) uses two of his own sites as examples, logodesignlove.com and davidairey.com. He states that: “logodesignlove.com has significantly gained ground on davidairey.com because people use the text ‘logo design’ within their links, as opposed to ‘David Airey’.

An inbound link (one coming from another website) pointing to davidairey.com is most likely to be typed as David Airey. A similar link to logodesignlove.com is most likely to appear as Logo Design Love.

Considering the importance of anchor text on inbound links, this will have quite a bearing on web searches for ‘logo designer’.

With that in mind, the main point still reverts to your content, because if it’s not good quality, you won’t create any inbound links.”

I can understand and agree in parts with all that the above are talking about but as of the date of this post it has to be said that in empirical tests that if possible give me a keyword rich domain name (if available) any day of the week. I am currently looking at a domain name (a .com) registered as part of a potential joint venture in an ecommerce project over 3 months ago that as I write this piece has only a Title tag, a few lines of text and nothing else but is 100% keyword specific for its market (this is DIY and Home Refurbishment) and the domain name is sitting at No 1 in both Google and Yahoo in categories where there is over 450,000 competitors and a limited amount of traffic.

So to sum, if you can, get a keyword rich domain name but don’t lose any sleep if you can’t as a successful name and profile can just as easily be built up using great content (now that’s another issue) and smart SEO.

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Anyone that deals with marketing and advertising on the Internet knows that link popularity is one of the main causes for high rankings.  And as we all know, high rankings lead to more traffic, which in turn leads to higher sales.  The biggest problem with doing link exchanges and using programs that automate the process is that you run the risk of gaining bad links on your site.  Bad links lead to reduced link popularity and in turn can eventually lead to being banned on search engines.  Everyone can agree that if you are banned from a large search engine like Google or Yahoo, then your website is in trouble.  I have come across a few places that allow you to grad good reciprocal links from ranking sites.   You want to do more reciprocal linking because it provides an incentive for both sites to keep the links up.

If you already have a large link directory on your site, you might want to think about using the program Arelis.  This gives you the power to control all your links and make sure they are still linking back to you.  It also gives you the control to find more targeted links for your website.  If you want to find more links for your website, then you should check out www.Link2me.com.  This site allows you to search for websites and then the company gets in touch with that website asking for a link exchange with you.  It is very easy and hassle free, which I know will help everyone that is spending 60+ hours on Internet marketing.  Any little bit helps.  This link exchange program is growing and with the more websites that sign up, which is free, the more potential links for the members.  Check it out and increase your link popularity the ethical way!

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A Lot of Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing Professionals are voicing their opinions and saying than directories are dead. But remember, these are the people that also say that Page Rank is dead, SEO is dead, and the latest this is dead theory.  So is directory link building no longer worthy? well only the Search Engines can tell you for sure.

I believe the real issue with directory links is that only some of them are good and worthy, while some others are junk, being able to tell this difference is the key between loosing your time and having a fruitful link building campaign.  How you can tell if a directory is good enough or that you should pass it.  Here are the 3 main criteria of identifying a good directory from a bad one.

1) The director is listed in the Search Engines and most pages are being crawled.

You can find the directory in the most popular search engines, Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask. Also the category pages of the directory are cached on the search engines, if the directory offers detail pages, these should be indeed too.

2) The links are plain text, no redirects or javascript.

Check the source code of the pages of the directory. Look to see if the links are plain a href’s, without the rel=”nofollow” attribute, and no sneaky redirects are present. By validating all these you guarantee that these links are seeing and counted by Search Engines.

3) Doesn’t link to bad neighborhoods.

The directory doesn’t link to questionable websites, specially topics like gambling, casino adult, and illegal content websites. Be very wary about directory that offers sitewide likes to these type of sites.

Hopefully these guidelines will help you do more quality link building campaigns getting links from quality web directories.

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