Reciprocal Linking Continued

When I looked into getting Link management software, most of what I found was quite expensive so I decided to take care of the task myself.

I used the following online link checker to scan my pages and tell me which links no longer were valid.

The links checker gives you the opportunity to view the page. I did that to make sure they were definitely dead links before I removed them from my directory.

What I found was disturbing. I found links that redirected to a different page than what the original exchange was for, and there was no links directory. I found links that go to a page that is simply a directory of links to programs that I assume are affiliate links. These sites had no links directory, my link was nowhere to be found on their site. I found links that redirect to affiliate program pages, not the site that the webmaster had given to me when they first asked for an exchange.

Link exchanges are supposed to increase your PR in Google, but what is even better is to have a one way link. That is, if someone links to your site because they feel it's a good resource and they don't ask for a link back, that helps to increase the popularity of your site. So the webmasters who solicit for link exchanges, then use the tactics above to make their site "appear" to be popular is very dishonest!

So besides removing the dead links from your directory, you will have to check for the re-directs and removed links directories. This can be a big job, but I just found an even better way and it won't cost you a dime.

Duncan Carver is generously giving away his links software for free! It will build your directory automatically, check for dead links, check the sites you reciprocated with to see if your link is still on their site, etc.

As it's free, there is no support in setting it up, however he does have a forum where you can go and ask for help if needed. Go here and read about it and fill out the form to request your free copy - Duncan Carver's Link Management Assistant.

Reciprocal Linking Tips

I have never asked another webmaster to exchange links. I have been online for 8 years and in the early days when reciprocal links started to become somewhat popular, I wasn't concerned about it all. It wasn't until some webmasters started asking to exchange links that I decided that it wouldn't hurt so I set up a page for it.

The past few years reciprocal linking has become extremely popular mostly because of Google's PR. Tons of articles were written about it. It seemed that everyone was jumping on the bandwagon. I started getting numerous requests everyday to exchange links.

My poor little Links page was becoming overloaded so I set up a new links directory with categories. Then the numerous requests became a daily abundance of requests for link exchanges. Some people would send me up to 25 or more links and ask for exchanges. One person actually asked me to add 100 links to my directory!

It was becoming a full day's job to keep up with all the requests. I was barely able to get anything else done. So I set up rules on my links directory page that I only accept 1 to 3 links per person. I also added an email address for links only, which included an autoresponder with the same message that I was limiting the amount of link requests per person. But people would still email me with the 25+ links. So evidently they weren't reading my links page.

So then I set up a form on my links directory's main page with the instructions that I only receive links requests through the form. Most people did follow that rule and submit their request through the form, but many still emailed me through my domain's main address, which showed me that they hadn't even visited my links directory.

In frustration and in need of time to get my own important work done, I temporarily suspended new link requests. I put this notice on my links directory's main page as well as on my site's front page close to the link for my domain's email address. But, I am still receiving numerous requests through that email address each day asking for exchanges. This leads me to believe that these people are not even visiting the front page of my site. They appear to be using some sort of directory that lists domains to contact for link exchanges.

If you want to do link exchanges right, I have some tips for you.

1) Visit the website first. Don't just search a directory or search engine using keywords for the type of sites you want to exchange links with. For you example, search for "home business" and when a site such as "http://www.url-about-homebusiness.com" comes up, you send off an email to "webmaster@url-about-homebusiness.com". This person may not accept reciprocal links or they may have specific rules about how to exchange links. If you don't visit the site first, this webmaster will know and disregard your email.

2) If the webmaster does accept reciprocal links, they will usually have an address for you to contact them. When you send off your email to ask for an exchange, always send your site's information in that email. Also, don't send the webmaster a link to your site's linking details. Webmasters are busy people. Don't make the webmaster have to email you back and ask for your site's linking details. Don't make the webmaster have to visit a link to get your site's linking details. I have received numerous link requests where they did not send their details. I had to either email back to get it or visit a link and most times that link didn't have the linking details, I had to search for another link on that page to find the information.

3) When you ask for a link exchange, give the webmaster time to add your link and reply back to you. Remember webmasters are busy people. Don't email back in a few days and say you are removing their link if they don't respond within 24 hours or so. Yes, I have received many emails like that. These are from people who never even visited my site and followed my linking rules. I just say "fine" and click "delete". That takes care of that.

If you follow the above tips, you will find many webmasters who are willing to exchange links with you.

As I said above, I have suspended new submissions to my links directory for the time being until I get caught up on my work. I do think link exchanges are important, however, if you have read the article I mentioned in my post the other day, Google is making changes to their search engine and one of those changes concerns link exchanges.

Google as well as Yahoo! and probably most search engines are looking for sites that are updated regularly with new content. Old links do not count anymore, the amount of links you have do not count anymore. Link farms are a no-no.

It is now important to keep your links directory up to date. I have not done that for quite some time. So for the past few days I have been going through the links in my directory and removing broken links. I made some amazing, or rather I should say disturbing discoveries while doing this. I will write about that either tomorrow or on Tuesday as I have to go Christmas shopping tomorrow and may not have the time. As well I will give you some tips on managing your links directory.

The CAN-SPAM Act. Has It Made A Difference?

I came across an interesting article, What Good has the CAN-SPAM Act Done?

Myself, I have not seen any difference in the spam problem since CAN-SPAM came into effect. The spammers are still going strong. The legitimate people who use email, such as newsletter publishers have had to change the way they deliver their publications so as not to violate the CAN-SPAM laws. That's about the only difference it has made, it caused a headache for the honest marketers.

With the problems I have been having with spammers forging my domain's email address onto their bulk spam, I found this part interesting:
Phoenix Avatar is a homegrown operation; they’re based in Detroit, and they tap into the overweight-and-desperate market by selling bogus diet patches for $60.00. They also engage in spoofing -- that is, they use "innocent third-party e-mail addresses in the ‘reply-to’ or ‘from’ fields of their spam... When spam was undeliverable and bounced back, tens of thousands of undeliverable e-mails bounced to unwitting third parties, sometimes getting the third parties mislabeled as spammers, themselves," to quote from the FTC’s press release.

So this "spoofing" is quite a common tactic for the spammers.

CAN-SPAM says "It prohibits the use of deceptive subject lines and false headers in such messages." The penalty for this offense is a fine and between 1 to 5 years imprisonment and they must forfeit their computer equipment and any property that they bought with the proceeds from this offense.

This is all fine and dandy, but I could not find anything in the act that tells you how to report such offenses. I did report the first spammer who was "spoofing" my email address in the "from" line to the FTC, but they didn't do a thing about it, they never even emailed me back. I got the spammer such down myself by reporting them to their domain registrar. It would have been nice to see them have to pay for the problems they caused me.

You can read the whole article here:
What Good has the CAN-SPAM Act Done?

Google Is Updating More Often.

This is a very interesting article. Google is now updating their index frequently and the sites that get the highest rankings are those that are updated very often and I mean like almost everyday. This is going to be a big change for webmasters.

You can read the entire article here:
Google Moves to Continual Indexing

A few quotes from the article:
In this article he discusses how this changes the world for website owners, search engine optimizers, and anyone else trying to get on the front pages of popular search engines.

With the November 2003 Florida Update, Google dropped many of the offending webmasters who employed black hat SEO techniques off of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). This upset a great many webmasters whose sites sat on the front pages of Google.com for years, and who felt smug without preparing for the future.

This brought up Google's next move, one that also hurt webmasters. These webmasters weren't using black hat SEO tactics, but instead were buying, trading, and selling links with other websites--in fact, entire websites were built for brokering links. The latest Internet Back Link Update allowed Google to check the links from sites and rid its ranks of websites trying to manipulate their Google Page Rank Technology using questionable tactics.

Another area where freshness and relevancy are coming into play is in the reciprocal links that so many mistakenly think are the basis for good search engine results listings.

Trying to get as many reciprocal links as possible is no longer a good idea. You'll have to read the whole article to find out how to make changes to your reciprocal links program.

Other updates included Google's technological steps, such as having bots sit, so to speak, on servers continually looking for new fresh content.

Fresh content is now the big thing.

Those who are in the search marketing business, and who do not know how to keep sites current and relevant will soon be among the unemployed. Those website owners who use software to optimize their sites and believe that is enough to keep them on any search engine's front page for long will soon learn different.

So, it looks like a good time for you to learn all you can about the RSS/ATOM technology and apply it to your websites. By using RSS you can easily keep your site automatically updated and get listed higher in the Search Engines. By using RSS you can also get listed in Yahoo! within 48 hours or less for free. Be sure to check it out.

Update on my Spam Rant post on Nov. 24

The registrar of the spammer's website and the spammer's webhost has posted this reply to my complaint ticket "Domain(s) set to HOLD, web and email are now unusable". So they shut them down, however my problems are not over. The spammer just set up a series of new sites and is still forging my domain's email address in the "From" line.

So if I report these sites to their registrar it is going to take another two weeks to get them shut down. I feel like just giving up, but this is hurting my website's reputation so I have to keep fighting.

A "whois" search on the new domains set up by the spammer, brings up different contact information from the last spammer, a woman in Ohio this time. However, I believe it is the same person with an alias as all the spam emails with my site's address forged on them are identical.

I sent an email to this person and of course it bounced back. So then I sent emails to webmaster at all his/her domains as well as to his/her domain registrar, which this time is Tucows. Hopefully they will be a little quicker in checking out the inaccurate information in the registry and shut them down soon.

Tip: Another Good Resource, The Free Advertising Forum

The Free Advertising Forum is another great place to advertise. I have found that posting in the Free Advertising Forum is very effective. You must register for an account before you can post, but registration is free.

There are several categories to post you ads in, Computers & Internet, Money & Employment, Marketing & Advertising, Sports & Recreation, Business to Business, Health & Fitness, Home & Family, Fun & Entertainment, Society & Culture. You must follow the forum rules and post your ad in the appropriate category. You cannot spam the forum by posting your ads in all categories.

Try to come up with some good ad headlines as that is what people will see first. Try to convince them to click on the headline to read your ad. Make sure your headline relates to your ad copy as another rule of the forum is no inappropriate thread titles. Trying to trick someone into opening your post is not going to work anyway. No one is going to trust you if your ad copy is totally unrelated to your ad, such as what spammers do when sending bulk email.

So give the Free Advertising Forum a try. Be sure to read the rest of their posting rules before you begin. Not following the rules could get you banned.

Rant: OK Spammers, Enough is Enough!

Usually spam does not bother me. Very little of it ever gets to my inbox because I use MailWasher. It will download the headers only from my mail server and I can see the spam, delete and/or bounce and blacklist it before it ever gets to my inbox. If I'm not sure if it's spam or not, I can also preview the message in MailWasher. I wouldn't go without it now.

Anyway, I about a month ago I started getting hundreds of bounced messages daily. Usually I would delete them as they were just spammers spamming my autoresponders and the autoresponder were replying back to the spammers' invalid email addresses. They rarely use a good address in their spam. After all, they don't want you replying back to them and asking them to stop spamming you. They don't want you to complain to their ISP about their unsolicited emails.

Since the amount of bounced email I was receiving had more than tripled, I decided to preview some of them in MailWasher. to see if I could tell who was heavily spamming my autoresponders.

What I discovered was not what I expected. A spammer was sending out bulk email and forging my website domains' main email address in the "From" line. Of course I was furious!

The spam was selling all sorts of medications and using several different websites. I did a "whois" search on the sites and they all belonged to the same person. I sent an email to the address he had listed in his registration information. It came back as undeliverable.

I sent an email to their webhost. It came back as undeliverable. I guess this webhost must cater to spammers so they also don't want anyone emailing them to complain.

Since all contact information must be correct when you register a domain, I decided to make a complaint to the company where these sites, as well the webhosting site, had registered their domains. As of yet, they have not responded and my complaint ticket is still open. It does say that the domain contacts have until Nov. 24, which is today, to respond. If they don't, and their contact information is still false, the registrar will cancel their domain registration. This will probably be the case as the registering company is probably unable to contact them to tell them to provide valid contact information. I would assume that where they used false email addresses in their contact information, they probably used false mailing addresses and false telephone numbers as well.

I did contact my webhost, Host Assured, and as usual Mike got right back to me immediately. He said he would see what could be done about this abuse.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much he could do as it was impossible to contact the spammers and their websites all traced to servers in China. Mike did set my domain's email account to automatically delete any bounced messages as soon as they come in. So that took a big load off the amount of email I was receiving.

It's important to contact your webhost immediately if you find that a spammer is forging your email address. Your webhost will then know ahead of time what is going on before they start receiving spam complaints.

In the meantime I had to deal with angry people emailing me and asking me to take them off my mailing list, which of course I never even had. I had to write emails explaining that my address was forged and I was doing everything I could to stop the abuse. I had to deal with ISPs telling me that I was blacklisted for spamming. This incident has cost me a lot of time and money. There were much more important things that I could have been doing rather than having to clean up behind idiotic, low-life spammers.

Spam has become such an enormous problem that ISPs have spam filters set up which actually blocks a lot of your legitimate email. This I totally disagree with as I am no longer receive many of my favourite ezines and even email from friends and family. They are being blocked by the filters. I think that each person should have the right to decide whether they want the spam filters on their email accounts. If they do, that's fine. But I would prefer not to have them on my account and use my MailWasher to filter out the spam myself.

The ISP's filters are far from perfect. They block a lot of legitimate email but still let some spam come through. But there is not a thing we can do about it. The ISPs are trying their best to help stop a problem that costs everyone time and money as well as overloading servers. It's probably safe to assume that the spammers have pretty much ruined email.

Should You Try Safelist Advertising?

Awhile back I decided to give safelist advertising a try. I had always thought that it probably wouldn't be worth the effort as most people use an email account that they can just go in and empty every now and then. I didn't think that my ads would get a response. But, I would never know for sure until I tried it.

I decided to give YourAdBlaster a try as they said that their lists were the highest quality email lists in marketing and all the members had to opt-in and verify their memberships. So there was no chance of anyone accusing anyone else of spam.

YourAdBlaster is a software program that you download to access their safelists.

Once I got everything set up, (be sure to open another email account, such as Yahoo Mail for this) I started receiving thousands of emails. I was still unsure at that time if this would work. However, when I would go in to start deleting, some ad headlines would catch my attention and I actually opened them. So I was thinking that maybe others do the same.

I started watching my website's stats and sure enough, I was getting lots of hits to my website from email programs, most of them from Yahoo Mail. My sales also picked up which I believe was because of using the safelists. So safelists definitely are another source of advertising that does work.

YourAdBlaster is not free. There is one time memebership fee to access their safelists.

Since I started safelist marketing, I have found some lists that are free to join:

Optin Planet - Free Members can post many times a day as long as they have the credits. To get credits you have to open other members' emails and click on the credit link at the bottom. This guarantees that all members emails are opened. Free Members get 40 credits for each email they open and click the link. Pro Members get 80 credits for opening and clicking the link. So you will want to try to have some good ad copy in the body of your emails as well as a good headline to entice people to click on over to your website as well as clicking the link to earn mailing credits.

Killer Safelist - Free Members can post to the list once a day.

Big Blue Safelist. - Free Members can post once everyday. To be able to post, you must first earn mailing credits. You earn these by clicking on a link in other members' emails. This guarantees that all members emails are opened. So you will want to try to have some good ad copy in the body of your emails as well as a good headline to entice people to click on over to
your website as well as clicking the link to earn mailing credits.

To get a good response from your safelist ads, as with the Free Classifieds you need to write good attention-getting headlines. Also be consistent. Try to post your ads to the safelists everyday.

This next free program is one I highly recommend. It is much more than a safelist.
Click4Ads - It is guaranteed that people will visit your website. As a member you will receive points for viewing other members banner ads, text link ads and solo email ads which can be redeemed for an advertisement of your choice, which will in turn be viewed by the active membership of webmasters, buyers and sellers. I like the solo email ads. There is a low amount sent out and they bring a good response.

How Effective Are Classifieds?

To see results from placing your ads online, you need to be consistent. Make it a habit to place at least 5 ads per day, however the more ads you post each day, the better.

With hundreds or thousands of ads on some of the sites, you will have to try to come up with a good headline to catch people's attention. If the headline doesn't get their attention, the rest of your ad will never be read. You should test different headlines and when you come up with a winner, stick to that one.

You can check your website stats to see which classifieds sites are bringing you traffic. If you are trying different ads or different headlines, make note of the sites where you are posting these ads.

You don't want to rely on getting replies from your ads through email. You will get lots of email, but it will mostly all be spam. So be sure not to use your main email account when posting ads.

Most people who really are interested in what you have to offer in your ad will prefer to visit your site for more information anyway. With the spam problem so huge today, people are getting wary of giving out their email addresses.

If you are serious about running an online business, you should get your own domain rather than using the free web sites. Getting your domain name is not expensive. It only costs anywhere between $10 to $15 per year to register your domain name. I registered my domain at 000Domains. It was $13.50 per year, but the last time I renewed it, they had a special deal of only $11.00 per year. I always pay for two years each time I renew it.


Web Hosting:
I use Host Assured. The price is right and the service is very dependable, support is very fast. You should shop around and check out the web hosting companies and find the one that is best for you. The lowest price doesn't always mean the best deal. Be sure to see what you are getting for your money, such as how many MBs of web space, how many email accounts, does it support FrontPage, PERL, PHP, MySQL, cgi-bin & FTP access.

Contrary to what you may hear, posting in the Free Classifeds sites does work. At least it does for me. Being consistent and writing good headlines are the key. Some classifieds, such as Adlandpro, bring better responses than others. You will discover which ones those are when you start watching your website stats.

If you find the stats that come with your webhosting package confusing, you can use another stats program, such as FreeStats. With the free version you will have to place a banner somewhere on your page. I use both FreeStats and my domain's stats to gather as much information as I can about my website's traffic.

Tomorrow I will write about safelists and give you some of the best ones to send your
email ads to.

How To Save Time When Posting Ads Online.

There is a software program that you can download for posting ads that will save you a lot of time.

Dropit takes the drudgery out of filling in Internet forms by letting you drag and drop information into the required fields.

You just type up everything that you may need to put on a classified ad form and open it in the DropIt program. You do this by opening the DropIt list.txt in your Notepad program (or create a new text file) and type in your name, address, phone number, email address, website URL, your ad headings, and all your ads, etc. If you have ads typed up in your word processor just copy and paste them to your DropIt ".txt" file.

DropIt stays on top of your screen and you just highlight the text you need and drag and drop it into the form. You can also choose to copy and paste from DropIt instead of drag and drop.

If you want the DropIt program out of the way temporarily, just push the "Min" button and it will minimize to an icon on the bottom of your screen. When you need it again, just click on the icon to bring it back up.

This is a great time saver! It will cut your ad posting time in half, if not more. Be sure to get a copy of this or a similiar program. You need it!

Another software program that makes placing ads much easier is RoboForm. This program stores all your usernames and passwords. It will pop up whenever you need to login to a site. You click the "Fill Form" button and away you go. Much easier than trying to remember and type in all those passwords and usernames.

It will also fill in web forms that ask for you name, address, email, phone, etc. It's a great time saver. It has no spyware attached and it does not produce pop up ads like Gator does. There's even a converter to migrate your data from Gator to RoboForm.

Now you will be able to place your ads quite quickly. The only thing that might slow you down is waiting for pages to load if you have a dial-up connection. However, there is also software that you can get to speed up your internet.

Check back tomorrow for more online advertising and marketing tips.

Tips For Advertising Online

To begin, I will start at the first for those who are new to advertising online. Over the next few days I will include more tips for those who have had more experience.


If you are placing a lot of ads online everyday, it can seem like a tedious and slow process. However, there are a lot of tips that you can use to speed up and the process and make it more enjoyable.


Always keep a file where you will be practicing your ad writing. Take your best ad that you want to post on the free classifeds or if you are posting paid ads online, you will be referring to this file often as well.


Next, take your best ad and count the number of words it contains. (Don't include the heading in your word count.) Use the "Word Count" feature in your word processor if it has one. You will find this feature on your toolbar under (most likely) "Tools". Under your ad put in brackets the number of words it contains. Example: (50 words).


Then cut your ad down to 40 words, type the word count under your ad. Cut it down to 30, then 25, and lastly 20 words.


The Classifieds Sites all have a different limit on the amount of words that you can use in your ad. By having the word count after each ad, you will save yourself a lot of time when you go to post at these sites.


Some Classifieds will state that your ad can only be so many characters in length. This can be difficult if you try to count each character. To make it easy use this formula. Estimate each word at approximately 8 characters. For example, if they have a limit of 250 characters. You would be safe to post your ad of 30 words.


For those who are very new to computers and online marketing, use the "Alt" + "Tab" keys on your keyboard to switch back and forth between your word processor and browser. This is much faster than clicking on the program icons on the taskbar at the bottom of your screen.


Also, for even faster posting, use the keyboard commands for "Copy" and "Paste" rather than the "Copy" and "Paste" functions under "Edit" on your toolbar. This is not difficult and you will find it much easier and a real time-saver.


To Copy, highlight the text with your mouse and press "Control" and the "C" key.


To Paste, click on the screen where you want to insert the text and press "Control" and the "V" key.


Now you have learned how to place ads quickly. But, you can even do it much more quickly than this. Check back tomorrow for that tip and more.