Life as I find it

After all the DNS problems and what nots, my life is back on track again. My feedback form is working, I have pestered the daylights out of the support guys, they have finally allowed my clients to find their way into my inbox (not like they were stopping them in the first place…..), the sun shines in the sky, and I am in love with Mochahost again.

Really, these guys are the best for a self made webmaster. I mean, who else (not that I have experience with others) will keep figuring llife out for you? I only wish they didn’t keep changing my servers or doing something with the DNS. I just don’t have the skills to cope with those kinds of messes yet.

I do have a wish list pending from them though.

• I want that space upgrade they had once promised (Dec 06). My ticket is pending since December. I even updated for two more years after that (Feb 07). I mean, come on! Everyone who signed up after that got it, but I’m waiting. And we all know, patience is not what I’m famous for. I’m running out of space! I really need all that extra space (1GB to 5GB) to set up new ways to crash my site. Update: done
• I want power tools they promise. All I am supposed to do is ask for them. I asked. Let’s see what happens. Update I got them -within 2 hours from asking - not bad.
• What else……. oh yes! I want to be able to use squirrelmail directly (just for the heck of it - I don’t really use those emails). This is a wish list, isn’t it?
• That’s it.

Boy, am I in a good mood! A three item wish list from me is rare folks, you might want to bookmark it. I’m a want-it-all kind of person.

But seriously, Mochahost has accommodated my learning curve and its pangs pretty comfortably in its SoHo plan (the cheapest). So, if ya’ll are planning to fool around learning how to make your own site and all that, go ahead, while I’m recommending them. You never know when I’ll crash something and be pissed again.

Ok, so you have heard that the best way to gain loads of inbound links is to write articles and publish them to article directories, so that they link to your site and bring you traffic and quality inbound links. You want those. You are willing to scribble out a few articles for that (or pay someone else to scribble them for you). However, you want those submissions to be really good, not penalized for spam.

Another feverish google hunt, multiple windows open, frantic scanning through pages to get that elusive “magic key” that will sort life out for you. Some article submission software, some article writing service….. Wait my friend, you’re on the right page. Now take a deep breath, and actually read what you have found, rather than run your eyes through this page and forget everything in a minute.

Think clearly. Why do you think Original content is valued? Submitting one article to a hundred places does not make content links. Logically, the whole piece of blood and sweat is reduced to link text - not content links. So now, what do we do? We want to get links, links…….

We do things slower and better. One article at a time. Original content each time. This is how we do it:

1. Pick a subject you get enthusiastic and talk about for hours until someone shuts you up.
2. Now, instead of talking, write/type. Ramble. Write loads, change tracks, moods, forget the original point, come back to it, whatever. Never mind the length of it. No one is shutting you up. Write till you’re done on the subject.
3. Go out for a coffee or smoke or whatever. Give your fingers a break.
4. Come back and scan through what you’ve written. No need for detailed reading, just get a rough idea of the different moods, tracks, subjects, etc.
5. Create copies of your original work and rename them to one of the different elements you found - “angry” “moody” “funny” and/or “environment” “trees” “plastic” “recycling” “anecdote” etc.
6. What we will be doing is creating a whole variety of articles from that burst of eloquence your friends shut you up for.
7. Look at the name of the file and remember that this is an EDIT. Be fast and ruthless. No getting into poetry now. Get rid of everything that doesn’t fit that title and smoothen and fit together everything that does. Mostly, you’ll find one huge chunk written together, with bits and pieces to add from in other place.
8. This is also an excellent time to take a look at the spelling and grammar. Done.
9. Do the same with each different label and edit that massive piece down to humane lengths each time - it can be a good idea to have a target word count and ruthlessly fit the edit into it.
10. Don’t worry about some parts being repeated in some versions or stuff, unless there really is a huge chunk of text that gets repeated as it (which sounds like your original ramblings were not particularly varied or long enough).

Voila. Done right, this can give you 20 seemingly original articles in the effort it takes to write three from scratch. Of course it is more effort than you ever took to write one article, but remember this isn’t one article? In fact, I have used this technique to create an entire category of articles to keep together. Done right, they are all highly individual and have their own focus and tone.

Now for the submission. You could use software, but where is the point in using a special software to submit one article to each site. Its faster to do it like this:

1. Create some dummy email address and figure out a user name and password you can live with.
2. Do a google search for article directories in a tabbed browser - Firefox is excellent. Open the first 10-20-30-50 whatever number you are greedy enough for in tabs. I have never used more than the first 20 results, but feel free. Feel free to open another heavily tabbed window for the same purpose too. Go to Bookmarks and select bookmark all tabs. Label the folder something like “Article submission” (or the username and password :P)
3. Go through all the windows one by one and create accounts with the email user name and password you had thought of. You will find that most of their register pages are exactly the same and “autofill” can handle this easily.
4. Open that email account and activate all of those registrations.
5. Submit each of those articles to different sites. I guess you could repeat some of them if you run out of articles before you run out of sites, but I usually don’t do it. I just close the other windows and keep them for another day.

With this method, I find that my content links are nicely respected, even if those articles get picked up by other sites, since the number of duplicates is comparatively lower.

When I next want to submit articles, its a simple matter of going to bookmarks and opening all links from that folder in tabs. Of course, after so many registrations, I’m unlikely to have forgotten the ARTICLE SUBMISSION name, email and password.

Please note that even with article submission software, you would have to create accounts in the directories (promoted by the software rather than search engine) anyway.

I will be devoting posts to article submissions and other stuff, so this one is focussed on link exchanges.

1. Look at your site carefully. What is your impression of it? What are the sites you really wish are yours?
2. Add links to those desired sites anyway, and request for an exchange.
3. When you request for an exchange, be sure to offer something that appeals to the webmaster - for example: “I have an interesting article about a rare kind of widget you have mentioned on your site while the tables you speak of on your site will nicely complement another page I have on interior decoration” And you go ahead and link to those tables and hope and pray that he links to that rare widget.
4. Many well established sites have scores of link exchange offers everyday, so be prepared for a refusal. Let your link be there, and let the webmaster be aware of those referrals coming. Write a better article which helps the subject of their site and approach again. Regardless of whether they ever link to you, you have served your readers welll by pointing them to excellent information
5. For other sites (the non-worshipped ones) request link exchanges and see where they go. Try and find content you would happily send visitors off to (and they remember that you keep showing them nice places and keep returning) also find something on their site which will be enhanced with a link to yours.
6. Do the regular “will you exchange links with me” scene to some extent if you can’t resist, though you really shouldn’t be needing it after a while if you are persistent with working for your links.
7. Save time on quantity and spend it on quality and have fun too. Research the subjects related with your site and learn more, find information of interest to trigger ideas for content, and come across excellent sites and request them for links. The way I see it, if you come across one or two sites once in a while and link with them, it is better than spamming every site that turns up in a search with requests and adding links that will not only take away your visitors, but take them away to unremarkable sites.
8. Link exchanges are overrated. They don’t really add much to SEO unless they are in some way “different” However, well managed exchanges will help the flow of happy visitors and keep them coming back to find really relevant content and links.
9. As a rule of thumb, be a snob. Do you really admire a certain site? If not, it isn’t really worth spending a link on.
10. Of course, feel free to have a nice spammy links page for directories that will not list without a reciprocal. Even better, create a section for them, so that it becomes useful to people looking for such link exchanges on your subject.

Cheers!