I ran across Link Vault on Jossip; I’d wandered in to find out what happened to Bill Hemmer (pfft on the Fox News choice, Bill) and got intrigued by their ad serving software, since there is only so much gossip I can handle at any given time.
I’m always interested in obscure marketing tricks, so I’m giving it a test drive. If it works and doesn’t trash our Google popularity, I’ll expand it to other sites in our network. With blogrolls becoming more difficult to get into, having another resource to offer new bloggers would be nice.
Speaking of bloggers, I had a sneak preview of Maria’s early submissions for Queer: Four Decades After Stonewall today. There are some meaty entries – the entire file came to 300 pdf pages. There is still time to get her your work; the official deadline is 9/1/05.
Last but not least, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, we’re outgrowing our server rapidly. The tremendous growth in traffic in the last 30 days has tasked our poor old box, so we’re moving to new digs this weekend. Ideally there won’t be any downtime, but in the event that we vanish abruptly, no worries, we’ll be right back.
Back to links. As you look to build site traffic, you have to start paying attention to the search engines, most notably Google, MSN and Yahoo. One of the best benefits of having a blog is that your site is added to the search engines rapidly if you are using an RSS feed; one you are in the feedstream, you will begin to receive visitors who find your site in the search engine results for keyword terms. How high you are in the results is influenced by your relevancy to the subject, topic or theme. It’s also affected by the links into and out of your site. The more relevant you are to the keyword topic, and the more Google considers you an authority due to the number of incoming links to that page, the better you’ll fare.
The best way to build incoming links is the tried and true method; find other quality sites in your niche and ask them for a reciprocal link. Do it in a personalized email, don’t spam them and don’t expect them to have to wade through your membership process or they won’t bother. If you need a sample of an effective letter, leave me a comment.
