Oct. 30, 2007 – Small Improvements

We’ve been submitting links each day for www.WebCalcSolutions.com, mostly to directories. We also had a service submit the site to over 120 search engines. About a week later Google page rank climbed a notch and the Alexa rank drops almost every day.

It’s hard to tell cause and affect because we added some RSS articles and a few pages of original content a while back and the timing would have been about right to see some page rank changes from that too.

I’ll take any improvement and keep reading, learning, and plugging away at promoting each day.

Oct. 17, 2007 – Links to My Website (www.WebCalcSolutions.com)

Apparently it’s been a couple of busy months, because I can’t believe it’s been that long!

We’ve been busy adding some features to www.WebCalcSolutions.com and responding to users who have downloaded free calculators and assessments. It’s funny how you see a little bit of everything – some people don’t finish the signup, some people give bogus email addresses so they never get their links, some people don’t ever add the links to their page, some people need help adding the links to their page, some people try to take the links from the email and change them trying to get other calculators and assessments free.

And some people actually get the links added to their page and build a page around it. It’s cool when you see your stuff running on someone’s legitimate website. We see the counters coming from those that are on and that’s pretty neat too.

I’ve been submitting links, mainly to directories because they’re the easiest I think. My goal is to get 100 links to my site added. I’ve focused on the free links (with no reciprocal required) to directories with a page rank of 4 or higher. Some say it will take months to be reviewed but most haven’t taken that long. Most say they’ll review it quicker if you pay. There’s a huge difference in prices too. Some want $20, $30 or more every year just to be included but most that charge that much it’s for a featured link. Quite a few charge $3 to $10 one-time payment for a permanent (even featured) link. I will consider paying for some of them. They all have good page rank so I don’t know how else to determine why the expensive ones are worth more?

I’m glad I have started looking for free links though, because I’m learning a lot about how much to pay. One step at a time.

I’ve mostly submitted my home page, www.WebCalcSolutions.com but I’m planning to submit some to try to draw traffic directly to the groups:

• http://www.webcalcsolutions.com/Financial-Calculator-Groups.asp for mortgage, loan, auto, credit card, credit and debt businesses
• http://www.webcalcsolutions.com/Health-Calculator-Groups.asp for health, fitness, exercise, nutrition and weight sites
• http://www.webcalcsolutions.com/Health-Assessment-Groups.asp for evaluating diseases, disorders, conditions, signs/symptoms related to physical health, mental health, addictions, behaviors, and relationships
• http://www.webcalcsolutions.com/Parenting-Assessment-Groups.asp for sites wanting to offer help for parents of children from newborns through adult-aged children

I think some of these links will bring more targeted traffic for those subjects and people will find some interactive content tools they didn’t know was available to them.

August 16, 2007 – Blogging for Business?

Blogging for my website product was the furthest thing from my mind early on in my attempts to promote my site. What would be interesting to blog about? There was no doubt in my mind which blogs get attention – sensational, passionate, controversial. My product is useful to most people, but kind of boring to talk about. Now I’m not so sure that’s true…

I started another blog where I ramble on about whatever’s in the news, on the web, or just anything. I started this blog just to get my feet wet, see if I could write a little, and start to understand how the whole blogging world ticks.

I found myself all worked up one day about a story of a gang shooting and how the accused basically blamed his actions on the words spoken by someone else. I was cruising along, passionately spilling my outraged guts about this story. I just about had it wrapped up when it hit me… “I have an assessment or quiz to teach parents the warning signs that a teenager may be involved or interested in gangs (http://parentingteens.bizcalcs.com/Calculator.asp?Calc=Gang-Involvement&Group=Parenting-Teens-Assessments).

“I can write a passionate blog, a sensational blog, or a controversial blog and include  links to the tools I have created to actually help people with this.”

If you’re interested in that blog, it’s http://offthetopofmyhead.wordpress.com . Today I’ll create an entry about the preacher’s wife, Mary Winkler, who was just released from jail after serving about 60 days for shooting him in the back while he slept. Her defense was that he was abusive and the jury apparently agreed. I happen to have a few assessments or quizzes to help evaluate the warning signs of an abusive relationship (http://socialhealth.bizcalcs.com/), your own or someone you care about. I’ll mention it and include a link to it as well.

Now all I need is time to blog more and create all these great links.

August 11, 2007 – Reciprocal Links: the Scam?

Something is going on with reciprocal links that feels like a scam to me. Here’s the scenario…

I find a place that allows me to submit my link to their site. They often require a reciprocal link, which is fine and fair. But what about when they require me to add their link and give them the page reference before I can even submit my link to them? Even that may not be so bad, after all, somebody has to put theirs on first. But somewhere on their submission page there’s usually a reference to the fact that they get such a huge volume of submission requests that it may take weeks or even months to get around to evaluating your link. Now that starts to feel a little unfair! Their link will be on my site for those few weeks or months – just long enough to get soundly picked up by the search engines as a link to them – and I get nothing in return. I almost never hear from them again and eventually I remove their link, but perhaps the damage (or benefit to them) is done?

Do they really have such huge volume of requests? There was one I saw that actually showed how many requests were pending approval – a grand total of 50. Yet there’s that message about huge volume and weeks or months to get to mine. How slow are these people? And how dumb is that to put the number right on there?

That particular message has become a red flag for me and I usually move right along and don’t waste any more time on them. But I’m sure there are others doing the same thing, they just don’t bother to tip you off with a message.

What is supposed to be a win-win situation turns into a win for them and a waste of time for me.

If it looks like a scam, sounds like a scam, and smells like a scam, most likely it’s a scam.

August 9, 2007 – A Routine Week

Most of this last week was just working on the ongoing items… 

I’ve been creating gadgets from Digg.com widgets. While they are not related to calculators, they are easy and quick to create and it helps with author ranking. 

I’ve been continuing to submit links to sites and directories, learning to use the software and getting a feel for the whole process. It’s kind of discouraging because I haven’t heard back from a lot of the ones I have already done. It’s also hard to remember if you’ve submitted already to them. You would think it would be easy to search the site and find out, but it’s not always the case. (Makes you wonder how effective that directory is, huh?) I have heard that it takes many sites a couple of weeks to get your link added. I’ll just have to keep myself busy so the time will go by faster. I’m trying to remember that I only need about 100 backlinks and things will start to happen. That sounds overwhelming from where I’m at right now, but it’s really not so bad.

We have managed to do a couple of new things to the sites: 

www.WebCalcSolutions.com now has tabbed section on the home page for rss feeds for articles and blogs.

www.BizCalcs.com allows users to submit comments. It’s not live yet, but should be before the weekend is over. Check it out and leave your comments. We’d love to hear from you.

July 31, 2007 – Adding an RSS Feed for Articles and Blogs

I hear that offering something free is a good way to get traffic and links. So the last couple of days, we decided to add the ability to offer calculators free. We already had the ability to handle it in the data, but we have to decide which ones to offer for free, make sure the shopping cart and renewal system handles everything correctly, and feature on the site the idea that some are free and add an icon by the ones that are fee. I still need to test it a bit then it will be ready to move it live.  

If you would like some free financial calculators, health calculators, health assessments, or parenting assessments for your site, visit us at www.WebCalcSolutions.com in the next day or two and check it out.

I’m also trying to concentrate on the idea of changing content that gets scanned often by the search engines. We have added an article RSS feed of relevant topics to the home page. I have some articles I want there all the time, so I’ve got to figure out how to make them look seamless. I also want to add a blog feed to this blog and a couple of others that are on topic. Then I have to decide how they act and where they go when they are clicked on.

Of course, I continue to submit links every day. So far I have mostly focused on directory listings. That has become familiar and comfortable now, so I guess it’s time to branch out and find some relevant sites to request links from. I keep coming across this magic number of 100 backlinks or inbound links. 100 inbound links is now my goal and I’m assuming things will begin to happen once I reach that magic number.

I found some neat tools yesterday. And best of all, they appear to be free. Future entries may report on how effective they really are, how free they really are, how hard they are to implement or use, etc. (Find all relevant entries by selecting ‘Webmaster tools’ from the Categories section in the sidebar.)

• http://www.master.com/texis/master/app/apps.html - Free tools like an RSS Aggregator, Feedback Manager, Message Board, Search, Poll Maker, Form Maker, and more
• http://www.iwebtool.com/tools/ - Free webmaster tools like Backlink Checker, PageRank Prediction, Link Popularity, Search Engine Position, Link Price Calculator, Broken Link Checker, Reciprocal Link Checker

July 26, 2007 – There’s a Lot to Learn & Even More to Do

Today I checked out a demo version of some software that’s supposed to help you submit your link to directories. The real software has about 2000 directories to choose from (with more added all the time – according to the marketing people anyway), but the demo version has only 100. That is overwhelming enough, but you can filter it to list only ‘free’ links, ‘paid only’, ‘real estate’, or ‘reciprocal link required’. (I believe there are more filter options in the full version.)

I focused on the free ones. It will show you each directory’s PR (if you believe it’s accurate) and let you sort by that. I focused on a couple of PR1 directories so as not to waste some good listings if the software (or me) got really mixed up.

You set up a profile for each URL you want to submit. I set up 5 URLs, one for my main site (www.WebCalcSolutions.com) and one each for my 4 industry groups (finance, health calculators, health assessments, and parenting).

For each profile, I was asked for the

• URL of course
• preferred categories and subcategories (I had no idea how this would work since directories have such different categories.)
• link titles (You can create multiple titles – I don’t know the max - so that you’re not using the exact same text in all the directories. Pretty clever I thought. And it even rotates through them as you go through submitting!)
• site description (Same as titles, you create different descriptions so they’re not the same all over the web!)
• keywords (Again multiple lists.)
• reciprocal URL for when it’s required (I didn’t give it one since I only want free, one-way links right now.) You then choose if you want to add the reciprocal link manually or upload a script and have the software do it for you. Kinda nice!)
• name
• email (hopefully they’ll let me know when my links are accepted)
• username & password (This will become your user name and password within the directory you submitted your URL to.)
• and address info (I did not fill this in since only a few directories require it. I’ll deal with it if I bump into one that requires it.)

I then selected a profile and a directory to submit my link to, and up pops the submission page for that directory with the free radio button selected (since I only requested free ones) and the title, URL, description, etc. all filled in. I was wondering about the categories – the software took its best shot to pick one based on the categories and subcategories I had guessed at, but since you’re on the directory site’s webpage, you just select the category that’s really best for your link. You can tweak your title and description on the fly here too.

All in all, it looks like it could save me a lot of time. I have submitted my links to quite a few directories before now and often I didn’t hear back. How discouraging is that when you’ve spent quite a bit of time even finding them and screening them for relevancy and making sure they’re still active (which can be a real trick and time waster)?

I got some links on my own but it was painful duplicating the title, description, and keywords each time. Not to mention the time setting up accounts on those that require it. (I was already setting up text files with all this information in it so I could just copy it each time I found a place to submit.) I don’t know, but I’m hopeful they have screened the directories they include somewhat and don’t have a bunch that are dead so you never hear back.

For $97 this software could take the sting out of taking the time to submit your site and never hearing back! I think I just talked myself into buying it (especially with its 30 day money back guarantee). Thanks for helping me decide.

I keep hearing that “Content is Queen and Links are King!” when it comes to page rank and search engine result position. I believe in my content and now I won’t have to avoid trying to get links any more. After all, I’ve got a whole list of things to do still that don’t seem as futile as that little job!

In the long run, we’ll see if this yields positive results, but for now anyway, a pretty productive day for me!