Breaking Free
How to Quit Your Job and Start Your Own Business
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.
Table of Contents:
- Building Website Traffic – Three Items Per Day For A Month
- Day 1: FeedBlitz, SEO, and Post Series
- Day 2: New Article, Amazon Cover Upload, and Digg Comments
- Day 3: LinkMachine, Google Website Optimizer, and ProBlogger
- Day 4: Interviews, SEOMoz, and Technorati
- Day 5: First Page of Google, Bugs, Article Marketing Lifehack.org
- Day 6: Email Signature, Blog Carnival, StumbleUpon
- Day 7: Link Structure, Pings, MyBlogLog
- Day 8: FeedFlares, Reciprocal Links, Broken Links
- Day 9: Page Cache, 301 Redirects, and Submitting to Blog Search Engines
- Day 10: Removed Bad Links, Earning $5639 Per Year, Tracking RSS Subscribers
- Day 11: Article for ProBlogger.net, StumbleUpon campaign, and Longer Domain Registration (attempt)
- Day 12: Extended Domain Registration, More Incoming Links, Article Submission
- Day 13: Successful and Outstanding Bloggers list, Backlinks Advice from Yaro Starak, and DMOZ
- Day 14: MindPetals Article, Slow Server, Google vs. Yahoo indexing
- Day 15: Submitted MindPetals Article, Conversation with Liz Strauss, and LifeHack.org Article
- Day 16: Engaging readers in conversation, Interview on Calling All Authors, and a Research Tip from John Reese
- Day 17: Posted Interview Audio, Faster Server, and New Business Cards
- Day 18: Article for LifeHack.org, Contacted About.com Contributer, Updated my LinkIn profile
- Day 19: Barnes & Noble, Froogle, and Shopping.com
- Day 20: Meta Keywords and Descriptions, New Article, 37Signals Blog
- Day 21: New Video On YouTube, Creating a Personal Balance Sheet, and Article Marketer
- Day 22: Purchased a Water Buffalo, Apple’s Marketing, and RSS Confusion
- Day 23: A New About Page, ProBlogger Article Finished, and More Comments
- Day 24: Keyword Research, more Links Exchanged, Article Distribution
- Day 25: Translated into 8 Languages, A Version For Mobile Devices, and Submitted To Dozens of Blog Directories
- Day 26: More RSS Directories, Alumni Networking, Alexa Screenshot Update
- Day 27: New Article on Audio Books, Removed Translation, and Networking Tips
- Day 28: Amazon, Amazon, Amazon!
- Day 29: Zero Million, Yahoo Answers, Wikipedia
- Day 30: Wrapping Up With A Few Final Links
- Conclusion
7 Responses
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Breaking Free is a blog for people who'd like to quit their 9-to-5, start their own business, and achieve financial freedom. It's written by web-entrepreneur 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.