Day 3: LinkMachine, Google Website Optimizer, and ProBlogger

19 Jun, 2007 Marketing, Education Brian Armstrong

Here 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.

This post is part of a series on Website Marketing

6 Comments so far »

Jon West said,

Wrote on June 20, 2007 @ 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!

[Reply]
Brian Armstrong said,

Wrote on June 20, 2007 @ 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

[Reply]
Chris Goward said,

Wrote on August 9, 2007 @ 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.

[Reply]
Tracy said,

Wrote on March 26, 2008 @ 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.

[Reply]
Brian Armstrong said,

Wrote on March 28, 2008 @ 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

[Reply]
Tracy said,

Wrote on March 29, 2008 @ 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

[Reply]