Breaking Free
Experiments in tech entrepreneurship
Day 3: LinkMachine, Google Website Optimizer, and ProBlogger
19 Jun 2007Here we are on Day 3 of my 30 day challenge to bring more traffic to this website.
Today I:
1. Reinstalled Linkmachine which helps build reciprocal links (where you and another website link to each other to help improve search engine optimization). I had it on my old website and hadn’t ported it over yet to my new site. Reciprocal links are important because they establish credibility with search engines. I had a number of links on there to page rank 4 websites and better.
2. I set up a Google Website Optimizer test on my book sales page. I used this plugin for WordPress which made it easier, although I’m still working out one bug with it. Specifically, I’m testing the Guarantee section which promises a refund to see if I can improve it. I’ll continue to post results of these sort of tests over time.
3. Finally, I submitted this marketing challenge article series to ProBlogger in the hopes that Darren will post a link to it.
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Breaking Free is a collection of articles on tech entrepreneurship, business, and life written by Brian Armstrong. You can read more here »
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Jon West
June 20th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
Howdy,
I just wanted to comment on the part about LinkMachine. Reciprocal links have very little importance nowadays and you can/will get penalized by linking out to a lot of websites that are (probably) not very well established. Even getting a lot of reciprocal PR4 links will not help a website rank in a remotely competitive market. The best thing to do is get one-way links with relevant anchor text. Aside from that, three-way links work better than two-way.
I hope this is helpful!
Brian Armstrong
June 20th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Hi John,
Good point. I’ve heard that as well that reciprocal links are declining in importance, but I’ve also heard the opposite that good reciprocal links are enough to achieve top 10 rankings. I decided that as long as they were relevant links (as you pointed out that was important) it couldn’t hurt, and would most likely help even if it was only a little. One resource I’ve found invluable when learning about SEO is http://www.warriorforum.com
Thanks!
Brian
Chris Goward
August 9th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
This is an interesting challenge, Brian. How did your GWO test go on your book page?
Your readers might be interested in an interview we recently had with the GWO product manager, Tom Leung.
We’ve also developed a simple calculator to determine how valuable multivariate testing services could be for your business.
Cheers.
Tracy
March 26th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
I know this is an old post but hope you are still looking at it. How did you integrate Linkmachine into your wordpress site? I haven’t been able to figure that out.
Brian Armstrong
March 28th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Hi Tracy,
It doesn’t really integrate with wordpress. I just installed it separately and then put a link to it in the footer called “resources” you can see it there at the bottom.
Brian
Tracy
March 29th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Thanks Brian,
I figured that was probably the only way to do it. I think I am going to wait until WP 2.5 is finally released and see if one of the WP directory plugin authors will update their plugins, since all of the ones I have found “broke” with WP 3.2.
Tracy
Terry Zulit
November 22nd, 2009 at 5:12 pm
Have to disagree with the 2-way link theory being useless. I use my linkmachine on some of my WordPress blogs, and it really helps. As long as your sites are on-topic and similar it works very well.
Todd J
October 6th, 2010 at 3:45 am
Ok, so now it’s 2010 and everyone is still saying how link exchanges are bad and so on. I just have one question to ask. Don’t get me wrong. I love SEO and search marketing. However, for a business owner, why and I mean why would you put all your eggs in one basket? And why would you invest and rely in something 100%, that can be taken away from you tomorrow in an instant?
Again, don’t get me wrong. SEO is great and can bring great qualified traffic. However, it should only be one part of any websites marketing. Link exchanges still work and work great if they are relevant. Think traffic and relevance when seeking links and forget about seo. Sure optimize all your pages properly. But if you forget about the engines and put them in their proper place rewards will follow.
Link machine is a tool and just that. Used properly you will gain. Use it to spam and you will be out of business.
Notice link pages. They can bring tons of traffic along with other linking practices when done properly. If you lost Google traffic tomorrow, what would you do?
frederik grootherder
December 10th, 2011 at 11:39 am
thank you hope this helps me with traffic, and you
f grootherder