Web Marketing Strategy Update

Just a quickie…

Minutes ago I came across Linktator2, which is a low-cost backlink service, and as part of my new, “just post what you’re doing” initiative brought about by my long hiatus, I thought I’d briefly tell you about it.

I’m not sure if you know or not, but there are quite a few backlink networks about now. These services provide one-way links to members, by ensuring websites in the network never display links to the sites that link to them. Sites are categorized so that the backlinks can be somewhat targeted, and of course they use the target site’s preferred keywords in the anchor text.

Generally speaking these systems work very well. Google doesn’t discover the networks (of course there’s always the possibility that may change in the future. Anything is possible) and the sites climb in the rankings.

They are all costly though. Ranging in price from expensive, all the way up to more than your mortgage. Except this one that is — and thus the post. It’s cheap. By far the cheapest I’ve seen for this kind of service.

You get a hundred backlinks per site you add to the network, up to a maximum of 50 sites, with the option of an additional 3 deep links per site. You can create three different anchor texts, and the backlinks are added gradually on a daily basis to keep it looking natural and avoid courting the wrong kind of attention.

Of course, being new, it’s something of an unknown quantity. But as other Linktator scripts from Dave Wooding have been good, I’m cautiously hopeful that this will be too. Cautious only insomuch as I wouldn’t put my best sites in there right from the get-go, just the affiliate niche sites, blogs, etc. Take a look at Lintator2 yourself

Few days late posting the bit below on dropping Squidoo lense rankings, but it’s still worth your attention anyway.

Personally I’m having greater success at Hubpages than Squidoo. Not only is it easier and faster to use, but I get more visitors — I assume because of fewer pages and therefore less competition.

Of course if Squidoo has been targeted by Google, the same thing will happen to Hubpages in due course. You’ve probably time to make a good few bob before that though.

The lab has been investigating the recent drop in ranking for Squidoo lenses in Google’s search engine results. It appears that as of the 7th of July nearly all Squidoo lenses have dropped in ranking in the Google search engines. There is a lot of speculation in various forums at present (including Squidoo’s own SquidU forum) but the reasons are uncertain.

At this stage, the lab feels there are 3 potential causes.

1. Recent Squidoo changes have resulted in Google indexing Squidoo lenses in a different way that is resulting in lower ranking scores compared to before.

2. Google are applying a virtual penalty on the Squidoo domain for reasons known only to them.

3. Google is undergoing a re-indexing process that is resulting in unusual SERP rankings which will re-assert themselves after the re-indexing has completed.

The lab currently favours the penalty cause because websites now ranking above previously high ranking Squidoo lenses have much fewer backlinks and lower page rank than the Squidoo lenses they have replaced.