StumbleUpon a lot of traffic

If you haven’t tried out the social network StumbleUpon, I would highly recommend it. Last month one of the sites that I manage had over 15,000 unique visitors from StumbleUpon. Have you heard of the “Digg” effect? You know, when you get so much traffic that it brings down your server? Well, our server went down twice and we received 6500 uniques in one morning. It probably won’t be too long before people start referring to the “Stumble” effect.

Unlike a number of social sites like Digg, Reddit etc. where your chances of ever breaking into the first page are slim to none, on StumbleUpon every site has a fighting chance. The community is also set up way better than most social sites, allowing users to blog, post images and Stumble other user’s “blogs”.

You’ll need to download and install the StumbleUpon toolbar to enjoy the full features, but it’s definitely worth it. I have found that I am using the StumbleUpon toolbar almost as much as the Google toolbar… Well, maybe not that much. Stumbling lets you browse through sites that people have ranked instead of what an algorithm says is important. It’s the most refreshing service/site that I’ve experienced on the internet in a long time.

From Lavaball

Contest

I just discovered this great contest at jimkarter.com.  You can win $500.00 just by subscribing to his Blog feed and posting a message about his contest on your website.  Check it out!  If you win remember where you learned about the contest in the first place

“Page Rank will make you feel good, but higher conversions will make you rich.”

When I first started working with the search engine optimization industry I was drawn to Google’s page rank system. Google is – and most likely will continue to be – the largest search engine of our time, so when they say “we have created a system to rank webpages” you better pay attention.

If the leading search engine tells you that they have a way to monitor and rank your website, you would pay attention to what they have to say. And most web masters do. But some webmasters take the guidance from search engines like Google a bit too far.

Page Rank and linking = nasty taste in your mouth.

The problem with webmaster and search engine relationships arises when webmasters think that getting a high Page Rank from Google is essential to their website’s success.

Surprise surprise, having a high Google Page Rank does not mean more traffic, more site conversions, and more popularity online. All a high Page Rank means is that Google thinks your website is fairly important.

And yeah, if Google thinks your website is important, that’s great. And if you are building quality link partnerships with websites that Google thinks are important, that’s great too.

But focusing on Google Page Rank will not – in any way, shape, or form – bring you more traffic. Focusing on getting a high Google Page Rank will not make you more sales, or higher click-through rates, or more subscribers. It won’t.

So when webmasters focus on linking only with websites with high Page Rank, they are missing the point of Page Rank. In-fact: when webmasters focus on Page Rank at all, they are missing the point of Page Rank… which is authority and reputation.

Finish reading Tanner’s post at Internet Hunger.

SEO: surviving Google’s war on paid for links

By Lucy Allen, Netrank

Links back to your website are the ultimate food for Google’s search engine spiders, and it is, of course, very easy to buy links to improve your Google ranking. However, in December, Google caused a furore by hitting out at some of the world’s most influential blogs and news sites who had been engaged in selling plain text links for their PageRank benefit.

Finish reading here.

pets and pet care (anchor)

Simplepetcare.com is all about
pets and pet care (anchor)
We also have a free pet classified section, puppy names and free pet cartoons and images.
http://www.simplepetcare.com/

Relevant link partners, contact link.exchange007@yahoo.com

backyard gardening (anchor)

Everything you need to know about
backyard gardening (anchor),
including planting, caring for and harvesting your vegetable garden.
http://www.essentialgardenguide.com/
relevant sites contact link.exchange007@yahoo.com

Are You Interested In Trading Links?

If you’d like your site details and email address listed here, email it to me at link.exchange007@yahoo.com.

Within reason, I’m going to try and police the links here. My biggest complaint with this industry is people who say they’ll add your site to their link page after you add theirs and then they never do. Accident’s happen, emails get lost but some of this is being done deliberately. If I receive complaints of this nature about your SEO practices, I will pull your site from the list.

I’m not publicizing this site. Right now the only people who know about it are those I have traded links with so it’s starting out a fairly small community and it may stay that way. I don’t know. Obviously you can tell your contacts about the site and by doing so it will grow. What I’m trying to do is build up a database of honest, reliable link traders who have legitimate sites they are promoting. It may work. It may not but I thought it would be worth a shot.

I’m limiting links to the following categories:
Arts
Business
Computers & Internet
Games
Graphics
Health
Home and Family
Recreation
Reference
Regional
Science
Shopping
Society

If you have a form on your site, you may prefer to send me that link instead of your email address.

Link Trading Still Most Effective

Link trading is more effective than any other method in  SEO. Here’s why other methods are not as effective:

1.       Google is cracking down on paid links. They are getting better and better at identifying them and devaluing them.

2.       Article submissions are too easy for search engines to identify, making it easy for Google to devalue these links as well. Search engines know that webmasters and SEOs are spamming these sites for links.

3.       Press release links are pretty much the same story as article submissions

4.       Dofollow blog comment links are again too easy to identify. It’s also hard to get a relevant backlink unless you can find a blog that matches your vertical and allows dofollow links.

5.       Viral links or link baiting can get you a number of links, but you have little or no control over the keywords in the anchor text. Yes, you can get link weight, but will it help you to rank for your competitive keyword phrases?

6.       Directory submissions are again easy to identify and devalue.

7.       Social bookmarking sites usually apply nofollows on all links. Although I think that search engines are giving weight on these.