Today a new advertising network, WidgetBucks has been announced. This looks as a good opportunity for publishers, as their ads look very clickable as they don’t look to what we are used to think of as an advertisement.

Why to use WidgetBucks ads

The best reason is that their ads have high CTR. Now according to their site you earn $3-6 CPM which is a great amount (if that is true of course ) They pay through cheque and the lower payment is $50 which is very reasonable.

The adverts are separated into 13 categories with each category having several sub categories, their is also the option for a pseudo contextual advertisements which they have called ‘MerchSense’ widgets themselves come in a range of sizes and colours which can be used to match a site or to make the widget stand out.

$25 bonus for signup

As an opening promotion they are offering $25 just for sign up, which makes the target of $50 much easier.

Last comment

I always look into testing new programs and this looks very promising. So I am going to test it and give you a full review later this month. In the meanwhile here is how their ads look like :

With a $25 promotion its worth signing up even if you later take it down as the offer is part of their initial opening and may not be around for ever to sign up to WidgetBucks takes just a second or two.

Its been a great few weeks since we last did a Link around so I thought we would cram a few more then normal in.

Geo-targetting Visitors

Kicking things of is Patrick from Blog storm with his post on Geo-targeting users also check out his 9 Link baiting tips for eccomerce.

Geotargetting is simply the art of showing different content to your visitors depending on which country they are from. For example if I have an affiliate offer that is only available to customers from the UK I know that it will be useless to US visitors.
http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/blog/geotargeting-with-php/

Patrick uses the pay for version of the Maxmind database but those on a budget and who don’t mind mislabelling all AOL users as Americans can use the free version and Nick ran up a quick script this morning on Webdigity for using the Free geo-targetting DB.

Using no-follow on your own pages?

SEO Fast Start has a great article on how and when to use no follow attribute on your own sites it follows on from a series of discussions by SEO on the merits of no follow.

The key question is whether you can improve your position with search engines by changing the internal linking structure of your web site. http://www.seofaststart.com/blog/internal-nofollow-help

You might also like to look at SEO Fast Starts SEO guide (say that 3 times quickly) which can be downloaded for free!

Staying the course

Melanie has made her 100 post on SEO Cog (technically 101 by the time you read this) in which she lists her top 10 posts from the previous 100, I strongly recommend you go and read them all but if I had to single one out then I would go with ‘Small touches with big results‘.

There is nothing more satisfying than a little something with a big yield. I love these things! Its like polishing the chrome on and old car….Instant gratification.
http://seocog.blogspot.com/2007/08/seo-small-touches-with-big-results.html

Congrats Melanie, I hope you celebrated with style and we look forward to the next 100 posts.

Other notable links

Some of the hundreds of posts that caught our eye these last few weeks.

• Developing a mailing list - Web Development blog
• Proof you can gain Links with Google News - 97 Floor
• 17 Wordpress Plugins for Adsense - Mashable

Both myself and Nick would also like to take the opportunity’s to thank Olaf from finalwebsites.com for his Guest post yesterday and like to remind you that we are always looking for guest bloggers.

Lies, damn lies and Google

I think now is appropriate time to wade in on the are paid links spam debate the big boys have been fighting it out to the point that blows were very nearly struck, to be honest both side have well thought out and constructive arguments. I won’t go to heavily into the debate but will include some great web links where you can get a good idea of what is going on. Instead I was to draw you to 2 issues I feel need to be raised that seemed to have been forgotten.

Google is a company

Google is not a state, country or a charity Google is a money making company being listed in Google is not your right and you have no legal control over making them list your site. Therefore we can debate till we are blue in the face but the Google Search engine is controlled by a company that ultimately has to make money to survive, one of its main revenue streams sits on the right hand side of your screen every time you do a Google search. Google bosses must have by now realised the problem, if people can pay SEO companies to buy good links and optimise sites to get to the number 1 spot in the search engines then it will provide a far better return on investment then short term Adword campaigns it is therefore in their interest to see this becoming harder and more expensive to do.
Google has a problem it cannot alienate customers or competitors to much and therefore has made or rather left concessions in its policies.

What is editorial control

Why is it ok to buy links from Yahoo directory but not my site? Because according to Google, Yahoo directory shows editorial control, they filter out inappropriate sites that don’t fit a criteria and therefore are not motivated by money. Lets look at that again…
Yahoo directory is:

• A human edited directory
• Who takes only paid submissions
• Pays its editors

Now I’m sure the Yahoo editors do a great job but what makes them have any less or more editorial control then myself. Lets take this blog for example, their is no way I’m going to allow a Viagra company advertise here or any company except those relevant to the site. I have full editorial control and are perfectly capable of saying no I also know what I think is the sort of sites our readers would be interested in. In our community friends slot at the minute is Wordtracker they are a great company and yes the link is an affiliate one but that doesn’t make them any less of a great company. If Google wants to delist a site they have every right to do so but to delist it because of paid links is like they are saying the site owner was incapable of making editorial control, now I’m not a lawyer but thats got to be close to slander?

I am not a terrorist

In the UK we have anti movie copying ads on all DVD’s they go something like this….

DVD Piracy is wrong, its a crime, by making, selling or buying a pirated DVD you are helping terrorism

That was a bit of a leap, I copy a DVD for a friend I’m helping terrorism? Google uses the same techniques as that ad it has managed to blur the lines between what it doesn’t want you to do and the Law. Interestingly I hear a lot of people referring to Blackhat techniques as illegal and while many probably are being a black hat SEO doesn’t mean you break the law merely that you break Google webmaster guidelines.

Is it safe to buy links

2 things have become obvious through out this, one Google can’t detect paid links easily and with many Webmasters wising up to simple things like using the word sponsors it will become harder, hence they are trying to get people to rat out such links, two Google is a huge PR machine and ultimately it plans to eliminate paid links not algorithmically but through propaganda. Ultimately my advice remains the same, never buy for PR always buy for targeted traffic in your subject area with good anchor text alternatively look for button ads like the one to the right of this post, great links carry weight almost impossible to detect as paid for these might not be as useful as anchored text links but they have the potential to get your brand to 1000s of visitors.

Light reading

• SEOMoz - Matt Cutt on paid links
• WPW Video with Rand and Graywolf over paid links
• Graywolf presentation at SES
• SEOMoz coverage of Paid links session at SES
• Two quick ones from Andy Beard Slippery slope for Google | Paid Links vital for relevancy
• Last but not least Mr Cutts own words on how to report a paid link

One last thing

We still looking for community friends if your site, company or product would be of interest to our readers let us know we would love to welcome new friends to the site, though Pharmaceutical companies need not apply

Are you a directory owner and are you ready for the day that Google stops telling users PR from the toolbar. Most directories make their money based on the PR value while we in the SEO world scoff at the childish mentality for directory owners it’s a 1 way ticket to profit, higher PR means you can charge more for your links. Other then people submitting links most directories receive little to none genuine traffic this makes having a high PR even more vital as its one of the few matrices that is known to many webmasters out there.

So when you see comments like this from Googlers

Given that many of you aren’t so fond of PR info in the toolbar, I’d love to know what feature you would like to see. Mandatory criteria:
- Would have to provide actionable info for webmasters
- Would need to be useful and interesting for the ~99.9% of users who aren’t webmasters

Source - SEO Round table

Its time to be thinking about how you and your directories will cope in the no PR era.

The options

The way I see it their are 3 options when it comes to looking at the future, do nothing, sell or evolve. The first I don’t really see as an option the other 2 are worth considering.

Selling your site

Now would be the perfect time to sell your site, except of course the next PR update is due soon could this be the last? If you sell now you might not get the same price you would have got if the sites PR has risen, but leave it till after the PR update and you will be competing with an array of sites that have just had a good push and the owners want to offload.
Site selling fluctuates just like any other market knowing when to sell can make the difference between a fair price and a good price.

A quick look at sitepoint and Digital Point forums today showed that a PR 4 Directory would go for around $800 a PR 5 in excess of $2000 while a PR 3 would barely make it past the $150 mark.

Therefore we can see that the difference between a PR 4 and PR 5 is quite significant (but so is the work)

A good rule of thumb is to look at the sites monthly revenue and multiply by 12-16 to get an estimate but not all sites reach their estimates.

Evolving

Still with us, then perhaps selling was not the answer then its time to evolve ultimately to stay in the market you will need to add services and value to your site.

Without PR you will need a new benchmark people will be looking to your directory less as a means to direct money earning but to traffic so what can you do?

• Set up a blog, and advertise featured sites on blog post
• Create link or link adsvertising services
• Go social and embrace web2.0
• Something else?

Setting up a blog
The idea is simple create and maintain a blog attached to your directory, instead of the usual google adsense pull featured listings from your directory. Now this only works if you maintain the blog, but a successful blog will encourage users to submit link (it also works for building up those inbound links)

Become a link broker
You have a vast quantity of links and people looking to be advertised why not get into the link brokerage game, offering to match links within the directory assisting in 3 way link building. This can be done on many levels but the simplest is to allow users to opt in to the link broker scheme and then provide them with a list and a controlled way to contact each other. Of course these schemes can get very complicated but just look at Text Link ads.

Going social the web 2.0
Have a look at mybloglog, blog catalog, digg, reddit what do you notice, they are all directories! At their heart the same ideas of directories are their sure the focus has changed but they are still offering links back to the users site. The difference is they do so under the flag of being a community they provide a sense of belonging even if you don’t want to go as far as installing pling or similar think of the ways you can bring the community feel to your site.

Something completely different
Hey its not all about my ideas their are loads of ways to turn your directory into something more, how about a CSS gallery site? what about site profiles and allowing user feedback?
Tell us what your going to do when the end of the world comes (at least for directories)

Wise Camel writes about 10 Sales and Marketing Tips he learned from Strippers

Lee Odden publishes the results of a poll about the best keyword research tool.

Eric Enge gives some very valuable information regarding paid links which you should consider in your next paid link campaign

Andy Beard give us a lot of valuable information regarding SEO and wordpress. A must read article.