Craigslist a lost cause?

Now time for some black hat information.

Now, if someone you don’t know Craigslist.org is a site much like ebay only free to list and browse where people in there local community can list items and services or just someone to talk to. And with some many users flooding the site it’s no wonder some many are making a lot of money by spamming and driving a lot of traffic to there site with this tool.

Now, there are a lot of good and bad things about doing this. First the good.

• Increase back links – honestly Craigs list can provide a great way to increase back links with search engines crawling on craigs list so much, hey why not?
• Increase profits – if your an affiliate marketer that has spammed my space before or anywhere really this can be huge for you since you can get a lot of leads from websites like this.

And now the bad,

• IP Banning – This is true now more than ever with craigslist coming down hard on spammers and just blocking there ip’s
• Fines – Much like my space craigslist is starting to crack down and bring spammers to court for spamming and even facing jail time.
• Affiliate Account Closed – More and more affiliate companies are cracking down and taking spammers off there services and banning them all together which can result in a lot of lost profit if your using say azoogle.

Now it is really up to you to decide if it’s worth it, there are a lot of good things and more even more bad things that can happen and ultimately will happen.

A Deep Dive into Link building

Well Link Building is something we all must do to sort of build a reputation with the search engine. Almost like saying ‘Hey, this is my site look how many others like it!!’ and by that I mean how many other’s are linking back to your site. The more link’s the more the search engines find your site to be more popular when crawling.

Now link building can be a real pain in the ass, and by that I mean you have to keep submitting, trading, and adding more and more links to your own site in order increase popularity. It’s almost like ‘pimping’ SEO style. Nothing more than that. The best way I find is to trade with websites similar to your’s. This always increases relevance in traffic as well as listing. Now there are a few ways to build your SERP’s.

1. Exchanging Links
2. Submitting to Directories
3. Social Networking Site’s (Digg, Netscape etc.)
4. Adding links to Wiki (Great way to boost traffic and a great back link)
5. Blog entries and comments
6. Topsites

Now, I didn’t cover everything you can do seeing how there is black hat methods including spamming sites, forums, myspace but some people don’t like that side and well I don’t like to share secrets so if your interested google it. Now for the break down.

1. Exchanging Links
Now, this can be the easiest way to do things, You can check out forums like Digital Point or Talk freelance and really any web mastering forum for an exchange. Basically this means you add each other’s links to your site and there you go. There are ways to sell or buy links like ‘Text Link Ads’ and you can buy higher PR, and Alexa to increase the ‘popularity’ of your site.

2. Submitting to Directories
Now you can do this yourself which is really a chore. I find it best to buy a service from someone on a forum and they can submit it to about 100 directories and you can pay like $10. Pretty easy. This is really good depending on the Page Rank and can really increase your SERP’s on any search engine.

3. Social Networking Site’s (Digg, Netscape etc.)
Some argue this is a lame way to get a link back, and usually is only a small surge of traffic and then sees slow downs in traffic and usually steady out or slightly increases the site’s popularity depending on your story or article. Now, it is not a great idea to submit every single story to Digg or any other social networking site. It is better to submit a really good quality article instead of submitting some crappy shit.

4. Adding links to Wiki (Great way to boost traffic and a great back link)
I would say this is one of the best way’s to increase popularity for a niche site or anything that has something to do with an article. So people spam Wiki hoping to get on good link back and usually turns out they get banned so it’s best not to do so. On Wicked fire so people are saying that Wiki link’s are dead and no longer are as strong as they use to be. And so are really questioning if Wikipedia is worth it for adding backlinks.

5. Blog entries and comments
Making a blog entry about a website or a project is a great way to increase traffic or spark up interest in your site. Some people pay others to make reviews on there blog in order to get a real diverse SERP’s. Comments are also a great way to increase link backs since blogs on blogger or ones using wordpress get listed in search engines fairly quickly this can be a great method to do so as well.

6. Topsites
Adding your site to a top site listing is also a great way to get some link backs depending on how many you submit your site too. I find submitting site’s like proxies and myspace top sites can really give you a surge of traffic since most people on top site’s are looking for a specific thing which can really work in your favor.

And that’s it for now, enjoy.

Is MBL worth it?

If you are an avid blogger you might of heard about the surge of people and even myself using My Blog Log. And I have to say I am impressed.

Now, most people are upset with the service for the minor security bugs that happen (Eric and the team always take care of them) and how the tool isn’t useful at all. I beg to differ. Before installing my blog log I was getting 5-15 uniques a day on my fairly new blog here, and the first day of installing the plug I received 59 uniques in a few hours doing nothing but adding the code which I have to say is pretty good.

I have also been able to met a lot of cool people and get in touch with people looking at my blog and reading it which is pretty cool. I like the fact that you can view statistics and see how many readers are interested and really see the people reading and not always commenting on your latest article and it really puts a face to your readers which is great way to start a community with your blog.

Now there are some bad things as well, One is why they hell even go to the site? All you can really do is look at other peoples blogs the own maybe comment and add them as a contact. Which in actuality is all you can really do with this tool. I do enjoy the plug in for your actual blog but other than that the tool is a bit worthless.

A blog can survive with out this new tool, it just honestly opens up a way to see your users and how they like your site really. Nothing more nothing less and the service does just what you would expect Log your blogs.