Thanks for talking with us, Debra. For those readers who don’t know you, can you introduce yourself, and tell us about your background?

My pleasure Peter. In late 1998 I became a stay-at-home mom with a toddler and one on the way after having worked over 20 years in the marketing department of a Fortune 500 company and the Civil Service. I had little computer experience outside of email but was fascinated by the Internet and decided I wanted to create a directory for organic food and clothing. I had absolutely no money for advertising and even less knowledge about online business so I used my offline marketing skills and promoted the heck out of the directory. Everything I did revolved around bartering space for links on high profile websites.

Pretty soon my little directory was out ranking some well known businesses and people starting asking me if I could "SEO" their site as well. I had no idea what that meant so I researched and found what I needed on the now defunct Rank Write newsletter which was then owned by Heather Lloyd-Martin and Jill Whalen. Between the two of them I got a quick education in SEO and some practical experience when I worked for Jill. With that experience and additional research into the medium, Alliance-Link was launched.

As link building is now an integral part of internet marketing strategy, do you find it harder now to source links than it once was? Is there a perception that links are a valuable commodity; therefore webmasters are now more resistant to "giving" them away?

Securing quality links has always been a challenge but given the current link climate it’s become more so, especially in regards to Google. I’ve never engaged in large scale reciprocal linking or bought site-wide links, my methods are varied and revolve around content generation so I’m not as affected by the recent devaluation of certain links. But…

I am concerned about Google’s deputizing the general public and encouraging them to play spam cop in an effort to out paid links. One man’s paid link is another man’s promotion and with Google not providing a clear definition
of what’s considered paid - it’s all fair game.

So do I think it’s harder to source links? Yes. But it’s not harder just because people understand the value behind the link… it’s harder because people are afraid of the consequences of giving them away.

What could a webmaster do to mitigate this problem? Do you think it’s a case of building more effective relationships that perhaps was necessary in the past?

Yes of course, building relationships is a must but even more importantly, webmasters should focus on ways to capitalize on trust and develop alternative linking strategies.

Yeah I know the trust comment sounds kumbaya-like but it’s true. Building relationships is the first step but in order to get quality links, you need to earn the of the trust of your community.

You also need to think outside the box and look at alternative sources for links. Using directories, article writing, forums and such is fine but it’s a big world and given the emphasis on universal search and personalization, you can’t just link within the lines anymore and expect to continually get the links you need to rank well and build brand. Look for new venues, techniques and create new promotions both on and offline to support your linking strategies.

So in order to get links, webmasters should think more in terms of traditional marketing and advertising? What tactics would you recommend webmasters use?

Yes I think webmasters should look to traditional marketing as a source of ideas, it broadens their playing field and provides more opportunity for links. The Web’s gotten crowded and search engines more aggressive, it’s become necessary to look beyond basic link building and branch out to on and offline advertising sources as a way to generate links.

One of the things I’ve been advocating lately is the use of offline publications as a way to support online linking campaigns especially for popular terms/competitive industries. This strategy works on two levels:

First, people trust and remember what they read in magazines, newspapers, trade journals and the like. Studies have shown people are more apt to buy from an online retailer if they have seen the business featured in an offline publication. Makes sense especially for small businesses lacking brand recognition but playing in competitive markets.

Second, most offline publications have online counterparts which means your ads/content have another venue to be seen in, get links from and benefit from the all important keyword association patterns the search engines use.

Ultimately keyword association is critical in link building given the dependence the engines have on anchor text. Do what you can to associate your company with keyword filled content both online and off.

On the other hand, there are still many less competitive niches that can totally dominate a search result by doing traditional link-to-me-I’ll-link-to-you-directory-article submission type link building. The bond of commonality between all link building concepts is finding solid authority sites to host your keyword filled content. Doesn’t matter if you’re doing link bait, directory submissions, presell pages - whatever. You need clean, quality sites to host your keyword rich anchors and content in order to succeed whether you’re working with phrases like "payday loans" or "purple afghans".

You’ve been focused exclusively on link building for as long as I can remember. Still a great area to be involved in?

LOL… there are days I’d like to scream and there are days I dance around for joy. It’s never boring and just when I think I have seen or heard everything, something new comes along.

What I enjoy most is finding a way to use traditional marketing as a link magnet or stumbling upon an everyday situation that turns out to be a kick-ass tactic. My friends laugh at me because I look for the link opportunity in everything, it’s almost sick.

I read about something the other day I plan on investigating, it was a suggestion to check out the local public access channels most County/City offices have. They look for relevant programming and may be open to accepting a general "how to" video as filler when they have open airtime. It’s a great idea, has potential for a much coveted dot gov link not to mention publicity and media links. Little opportunities like that present themselves all the time and are what makes me dance!

Many thanks, Debra. All the best for 2008!

Excellent interview with Matt Inman of SEOMoZ.

Matt talks about his link-baiting ideas, and outlines some great tips.

"It just goes to show that Google has all these signals it uses to rank pages – age is one of them, relevance – but of all those signals there is one you can control and one you can overpower every other signal with, and that’s links – the sheer volume of links. And so after accruing 80,000 links to the site, that’s how I was able to make that"

My advice to those thinking of issuing a press release to help build links:

Don’t bother.

I should qualify that statement. I’m not saying press releases are a bad idea (they’re not), and I’m not saying that they can’t drive attention and links (they can) but the trick is not to do it like I did it: half-arsed.

As part of the promotion plan for this site, I issued a press release. I used the PRWeb service. The process is easy enough - you pick the service level required - I chose the social media visibility package for $120 - write the release, hit the button, and hope it gets picked up by some news site somewhere, hopefully a major one.

The hard part, of course, is writing the release.

Now, the inherent problem with press releases is that 99.999% of them aren’t worth reading. Who really cares if "Gordon No-name has been promoted to Vice President in charge of the drain cleaning division at Noname Drains Inc"? Nobody. It’s certainly not going to be repeated in the New York Times. Dave Barry once joked that if you want something to remain a secret, issue a press release about it. You’re guaranteed to be ignored.

So the real challenge with a press release is to be interesting.

This is where I screwed up. I did write an interesting, inflammatory, attention-grabbing press release that contained all the buzzwords to ensure it would come up in news searches for my industry - "search engine!" "Google!" "Google!" (again) - however the press release got knocked back, because it was too "editorial". Perhaps that’s PR-speak for "interesting". Or "potentially libelous"…

Anyway, this knock-back occurred towards the end of the day, and being impatient, as many of us are at the end of a long work day, I just wanted to get something out. So I ended up modifying the release to this.

Which, I’m sure you’ll agree - is a piece of crap. Needless to say, it got me less traffic than a reciprocal link farm.

So, don’t make the same mistake I did. Press releases do work extremely well for some people, but there’s an art to it. Make sure you get your pitch right. Stay focused on exactly who the audience is, and why they would pick your story up, else you’ll end up $120 out of pocket, and out of the spotlight.

Here’s a few very good resources I really should have remembered to read first.

• A Barebones Guide To Writing Successful Press Releases
• Writing Search Engine Optimized Press Releases
• Submitting Press Releases To Help Search Engine Optimization
• How To Write A Press Release
• How To Write A Social Media Press Release

Next time…

SEOBook interviews Debra on links.

Some great advice in here.

On directories:

"Yeah, directory bashing by SEO’s seems to be the rage these days which is funny since so many of the newer ones have been developed by SEO’s.

The concept of “merit based inclusion” is what makes securing links in the better directories desirable. It’s reasoned that search engines bestow hub authority on these sites because human review is necessary before a site is included. And since human review is part of the co citation process search engines are programmed to reward, it stands to reason these types of sites would pass link popularity.

I use directories as a standard part of every link building service I offer and look at a number of things before I’ll submit"

Worked in this case….

HatTip: Aaron

I assume everyone reading this knows of Aaron Wall. Aaron is a very skilled marketer and author of the hugely popular SEOBook.com. I’ve known Aaron for a few years, and he’s always impressed me with his knowledge and insight, so I’m very pleased to have the opportunity to ask Aaron a few questions about links.

Thanks for talking with us, Aaron. The issues surrounding links are a hot topic at present. What is your take on Google’s recent comments regarding paid links?

As with any for profit business, I think Google’s views of paid links / marketing / the web in general are self serving in nature. It was an accident when one of their workers revealed on an official Google blog that health insurance companies and HMOs can use Google’s ad network to educate the public to defuse Michael Moore’s Sicko movie, but I think that accident says a lot of how Google views the web. If you buy or sell through Google you are deemed clean, even if you are pushing what appears to me to be ponzi schemes. Operate outside the bounds of Google and you are made to feel like a dirty, vile, unethical, immoral, filthy, slimy, classless, and an evil spammer.

What makes their policies particularly sleazy are not that they suggest that corporations should manipulate public opinion with the Google ad network, but that they prevent individuals from buying ads critical of corporations. Add a bit of uneven "anti-spam" hand editing, while allowing select advertisers to dominate the organic search results and it is clear to me that Google doesn’t think much of independent webmasters, small businesses, or end consumers.

If all that didn’t sound dirty enough, consider that Google removed the ads by Google label from many of their ads, many of Google’s pay per action text link ads are virtually unmarked until you scroll over them, and Google filed a patent for paying people to recommend ad links in their email and instant message clients. Why is it that they recommend publishers blend ads in content and use minimal disclosure (sometimes none) on their ads, while asking everyone else to clearly mark their ads as being advertisements? Probably because that hypocrisy increases Google’s profit margins.

The reason Google is trying to manipulate public perception about the effectiveness of paid links as an SEO strategy is because paid links are so effective. They can’t stop them with algorithms, so now they have to try to dominate the discussion and manipulate public perception. Unsurprising given their ad centric perspective of the web.

I think that’s a great couple of points. One, Google has a competing product. And two, paid links must work, else why would they be giving this issue so much airtime?

Exactly. If you saw me posting every day that seo forums, blogs, and conferences are garbage and my book was the only way to learn SEO then I don’t think you would trust me much. I don’t see why people trust Google on this issue. IMHO, in my experience, Google has proven untrustworthy.

Given this scenario, do you have some tips for our readers in regards to paid links? How should they go about acquiring paid links? Will the practice simply disappear beneath radar?

I don’t see link sales as disappearing altogether. I see more of the deals being done between independent webmasters instead of running through central networks. Also, the central link selling networks are getting more aggressive at protecting their partners and ensuring they deliver value. Text Link Ads has a post level links program that puts links inside of content, and many of the paid blogging services such as ReviewMe and Blogsvertise allow you to buy in content reviews or links.

The other thing I think people will get better at is buying links indirectly, using a wide array of techniques including social interaction, industry gathering sponsorships, awards and contests, buying established sites, hiring people who already have a following in the field, various types of ad buys, etc.

Right. So webmasters need to think strategically. You’ve hinted that contextual is one good option. What is the value of contextual links compared other types of links?

When you buy ads away from content they are easier to algorithmically detect and people generally ignore them. Ads have to be in in the content to work long-term. It is what Google tells publishers to do with AdSense ads and text link ads. To quote Google, here is how they say their PPA text link ads should be used

"Publishers can place them in line with other text to better blend the ad and promote your product. For example, you might see the following text link embedded in a publisher’s recommendatory text: "Widgets are fun! I encourage all my friends to Buy a high-quality widget today." (Mousing over the link will display "Ads by Google" to identify these as pay-per-action ads)."

and here is what they say about regular AdSense ads and regular text link ads as well….

"Ads placed near rich content and navigational aids usually do well because users are focused on those areas of a page."

Even with organic links you can overdo it. A friend has a site that gained links so quickly that in spite of the links being organic they don’t count because the growth rate was so fast it looked spammy. In spite of hundreds of references to that article, it does not rank for it’s own official title, but it still does not matter because sites rerferencing his site do rank, and send traffic to his site.

Getting exposure inside content is not just about getting better at fooling engines, but it is also about capturing attention, driving direct traffic, and secondary citations. The latent traffic mentioned in the above paragraph, and the direct traffic that comes right after a well known blogger talks about you are both traffic streams of great value. That was what made the idea of paid blog reviews so appealing to me, you get the focused attention of a target demographic cheaper than you can with just about any other form of advertising. Unless, of course, you sell beer and have a porn star run nude across the field with your URL on their body at the SuperBowl.

We’ll keep a close look out for the next SEOBook.com Superbowl promotion How do you think Google evaluates the text surrounding the link?

Generally I try to mix up nearby text if I can to make it seem as natural as possible. I know that if your anchor text is too well aligned your site can be precluded from ranking for those terms. I have not tested nearby text as much as some people have, but have noticed a couple sites in unique situations that yielded some interesting tidbits.

A friend has one site which has most of its link equity coming from a document placed on many other sites and he still ranks well. That leads me to believe those links still count, but going forward I think it is a good idea to get keywords in the content near your links as well, and try to mix that up if you can too. Algorithms such as Hilltop (which may not be in use) mentioned using headings near links to help score and categorize the link.

I was sued by Traffic Power a few years back, and for a while Microsoft ranked them in the top 10 for my name. Nobody linked at them with my name in the anchor text and they did not mention me on their site. They ranked for my name due to proximity and co-cition data associated with their brand and my name.

You made a cool post a little while back entitled "How to Buy Links Without Being Called a Spammer" in which you outline think-outside-the-box link tactics. A common theme in your writing seems to be that public-relations style integration is something webmasters need to get a handle on? The approach to link building and SEO in 2007 is a lot more holistic than it ever has been in the past?

My partner, Scott Smith, has said I was an instinctive marketer at birth. I am not sure if I buy that, but many of my current marketing techniques tend to be more about sending stories and ideas mainstream…spreading them far and wide. In some cases people working at the search companies end up blogging about my sites without knowing I have any input in them, and I have also seen friend’s sites on major industry sites without the people writing about them knowing who was behind the site.

You don’t need to be a PR expert to be near the top of the heap if you are really passionate about your topic, early to a growing market, or in a market that is uncompetitive. In almost every other scenario public relations is a key to sustainable SEO. It is important in two phases of SEO

• building enough criteria to rank and get a following
• not having an engineer hand edit your site because you rank better than he likes you to

I had a site with over 95% of its inbound links clean and hand built by my team, in an industry where some banks own a half dozen sites selling the exact same product with the exact same name to the exact same audience. A couple years ago when I bought my site it had a few hundred links from the prior owner. It helped starting out with a couple hundred links, but years later and after about $100,000 worth of public relations a Google relevancy engineer hand edited out all of our link equity because our site had a few links when I bought it years ago, and I am known as an SEO. Is that fair or equitable?

To call the site that was edited out of the search results spam would require ignoring the 10,000+ organic links it got over the last couple years, including some recent ones from the US Coast Guard and a US Embassy.

And if you look at what Google does after they buy websites - what appears to be a rewrite of the algorithm to feature Youtube more aggressively - it isn’t clear exactly why they should burn down a site just because an SEO owns it or it was purchased from another person. Maybe someone was having a bad day at Google or hates SEOs. Who knows, but I do know that they pay an AdSense spammer who has stolen all my content, and ranked his site where mine was.

If my site had a stronger brand and a larger following then I might have been able to shame Google into fixing the issue similar to what Robin Good recently did. Robin blogging about the issue created a meme that Google did not want to spread so they fixed it almost immediately.

While that hand editing of smaller websites is common knowledge, it doesn’t apply to corporations or those with significant influence. In some cases, a large corporation can have ten first page listings, and Google appears fine with that. Why do they get away with it? Because their thin / spammy / duplicate / hollow / mirror / doorway / spam sites are also owned by a large AdWords advertiser and strong market leading brands.

If you are spamming the media directly with public relations Google has no problem with that. After all, most independant webmasters do not have the budget needed to do that, and the Google brand is built and maintained by public relations more than anything else. Google has proven they don’t mind spam if it is on a mainstream media site.

Thanks Aaron!

If you want to read more from Aaron, head on over to his regular blog on SeoBook.com. More link marketing interviews coming soon…

Looking for a spam-free directory listing? Be sure to check out our directory, Rubberstamped.org. Our aim is to build a quality DMOZ-style directory, without the wait.

Unless you’ve been under a rock for the past few months, then you’ll no doubt be aware of the furor surrounding paid links. This furor pretty started when Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Web Spam team, made this post "How To Report Paid Links". Many webmasters beg to differ on Google’s link policy.

So, what is a webmaster to do?

There’s no doubt that if you want to stay within Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, then it is clear that you should not buy or sell links, unless they are clearly marked as advertising. Google states:

"Buying links in order to improve a site’s ranking is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results."

However, Google does make a few distinctions on what constitutes a paid link. For example, Google advocates submitting your site to directories, such as Yahoo!, which requires an annual fee. It would appear that Google does not regard this as a paid link, rather - a paid review.

Says Matt: "If there is a fee, what’s the purpose of the fee? For a high-quality directory, the fee is primarily for the time/effort for someone to do a genuine evaluation of a url or site"

Having said that, there is a danger in letting Google define your practices. Google are, after all, a business, and their business involves selling links, albeit a slightly different flavor.

In this respect, Google competes with other links sellers for advertisers budgets. It could also be argued that any money being spent improving algorithmic placement for a site is not being spent on Google’s PPC offerings, so Google’s advice and policy could be seen as self serving. What is good for Google may not be good for you.

Webmasters who do go against the guidelines need to evaluate the level of risk they are happy with.

If Google isn’t important to you, then you have no risk. If Google is important to you, and most webmasters would feel this way, then one must obviously tread carefully. On-topic and in context links are least likely to raise flags. The further off-topic you stray, the easier it will be for Google to detect and discount the links.

For those who are overly worried about this issue, I’ve yet to see an example of an outright ban attributed to link buying or selling, so it would appear Google is simply discounting the value of certain links, rather than removing sites althogether.

So, do you need to worry? I’m guessing you already know the answer. If you can’t sleep at night worrying about links, then the Guidelines are your friend. If you can’t sleep at night worrying about your competitors beating you in the rankings, then don’t bring a knife to a gun-fight.

Rand Fishkin made a good point the other day (I can’t locate the link at the moment - if you know it, please chime it in the comments) - say if only 10% of webmasters are even aware that link buying is an issue, and if you’re in that 10% and don’t emulate the tactics of the other 90%, you’re essentially handing your competitors the high positions.

Food for thought.

As an aside, I had a comment on a post I made yesterday:

"Alive Directory Blog - WTF ? Please remove that or Chris paid you for this"

This highlights one of the problems with paid links. What is a paid link? How could anyone tell if a link is paid or not? The truth is that no, Chris did not pay me for the link. The link is one of the best kinds - editorial

Scouts honour, m’lord

Ok, not so big. Yet.

Here’s a list of the blogs and resources dedicated mainly to link building, baiting and link marketing strategy.

I’ll keep this list updated as new link-focused resources spring up.

• Link Building Blog - Patrick Gavin’s blog on text links
• Search Engine Land Link Week - a regular roundup of link building news
• Debra Mastaler’s Link Spiel - Debra talks about link building tactics, tips and trends.
• Linking Matters - a blog about link building and online public relations
• Andy Hagan’s Link Building Articles - Andy is a great read and provides sound advice
• Eric Ward’s Link Moses - Eric has been preaching the value of links longer than most
• Link Building Wiki - a central repository for all information related to link building
• Jim Boykin’s Blog - Jim posts often on links. Scroll down to the bottom to see favorite posts.
• Links Manager Blog - Blog about linking
• Link Bait - A Wikipedia explanation
• Alive Directory Blog - Directory and link building news.
• Justilien.com - Link building strategy.

I’ll also be adding selected article links to our directory, which should make them easier to find for future reference.

I thought I’d share some of the stats of this site to show how valuable link marketing can be. We’ve been live for a couple of weeks, so needless to say we are getting virtually no traffic from search engines.

The biggest day so far was Friday, with nearly 1000 visits. Not too bad for a brand new, niche site. Most of our visitors are coming from leading industry sites, like Sphinn and SeoBook, which is great, because the users of those sites - pro webmasters, marketing professionals and seos - are our intended audience, too.

We’re getting almost no love at all from the search engines (red), but hey, who needs search engines when you’ve got links? (blue - referring sites)

This is part two of a two part advanced linking interview with with Ralph Tegtmeier, aka Fantomaster. Part one can be found here.

You recently conducted a study on link networks. What did that study involve, and what were your findings?

We signed up for several link networks, which obviously comes at quite a price. But then again, so do paid links in general and all things considered they’re very good value for money.

They are generally promoted by pitching the number of "high PR" domains they include, harping on the widely adopted assumption that a high PR inlink will help your site achieve to a high PR value itself and, by inference, to improved search engine rankings.

This assumption itself bears some very critical scrutiny because things just aren’t that simple, I’m afraid. Sure, PR will help your pages (not your site - a very important distinction!) get indexed in a fairly sticky manner. And yes, they do seem to contribute to your pages’ rankings, but that isolated effect, if at all discernible, is so minimal it’s practically negligible. I don’t think we can go into that at greater depth here because it would really merit an entire interview of its own. So let’s keep it at that for the time being.

I think I might have to conduct such an interview in the near future, Ralph. Please continue….

All the networks we tested worked with blogs: You get to sign up for the individual blogs and are allowed to post your stuff provided it meets their posting guidelines. Depending on the network you’re in, these will either be topically tightly focused blogs, e.g. featuring financial or education or travel related posts. Others are of a general nature but will typically have a slew of different categories you have to assign your postings to in an appropriate manner.

Posting rules are generally pretty sensible, there’s both a minimum and a maximum of words per post, with only a single outgoing link permitted. Just as importantly, your posts must be readable which rules out most autogen stuff, no Markov chained spam, etc.

Quality enforcement is another matter and a pretty laborious task, requiring human editors: You’ll always find some mediocre to downright trashy posts slip through occasionally, but generally monitoring is pretty strict and efficient, at least as far as the marketing leaders are concerned, which is just as well. Because it’s dreadfully easy to burn a blog by dumb abuse, so they have to guard their investment. In the end, everyone will profit from this policy, so I have no contention with that.

However, don’t hold your breath when reading all that "high PR" hoopla. I’ve brought you two fresh graphics summarizing the two market leaders’ stats in terms of PR. Here they are:

I’m not going to name these networks for various reasons.

For one, I have no beef with them, on the contrary - as I said before they’re very good value for money. Second, there’s no point in "exposing" them in any way - that’s not my intention at all. It would, however, be advisable not to burden them with hyped expectations. And finally, it’s not in our interest to make the search engines wisen up to them, especially not Google in view of their hypocritical policy regarding "paid links" and "linking schemes".

So let’s call them Network #1 and #2.

Network #1 is pretty big, as you can see: Featuring over 500 functional blogs is no mean feat. However, in terms of "high PR" it’s a bit of a putdown if that’s all you’re looking for. (Which you shouldn’t, but I’ll come to that in a bit.) So what’s a "high PR" in the first place? General consensus has it that it should be PR5 or higher. (Note that this is the Google toolbar PR which is metricized from 1 through 10 - there’s many experienced SEOs out there, and I agree with them, who rate toolbar PR as a mere fairy tale.)

Be that as it may, as you can see, the vast majority of these blogs holds PR4 and lower, with PR5+ sites amounting to a mere 2.5%. Yes, there’s a PR7 in the arsenal as well, but that’s reserved for clients who signed up very early in the game and wrote some nice testimonials. You’re also restricted to one single post per day on that one. (In any case, this particular network is a closed shop now so don’t ask me where to sign up.)

Network #2 is comparably small, offering merely 105 blogs as per today, but at least the PR5 sites constitute some 4.5% of the available blogs. On the other hand their number of PR0 sites is almost double that of Network #1.

Another issue to consider is the PR value you’ll actually be getting here. Because all these PR stats relate to the blogs’ index pages only. Now if they feature, say, 25 posts per index page and if you have a lot of people participating, many of them posting multiple times a day, guess how much PR bleed that will give you? Hardly anything - because the post pages themselves, which is what will actually stick in the search engine indices, being absolutely fresh, will have a PR of 0 at least until the next PR update.

Thus, a lot of this PageRank marketing baloney is really nothing but hot air, once you happen to take a long hard look at it. It’s certainly not the reason why we recommend such networks anyway. Because in link building, you will want to get as much legitimate coverage as you can - and from an algorithmic point of view, these blog posts ARE quite legitimate. If Google wants to trash them, claiming that they are capable of judging peoples’ "intentions" when linking to whomever, that’s not an algorithmic thing, it’s an FUD policy of sheer despair on their part. They’ve neatly manouevered themselves into a trap by focusing so much on links right from the start and it seems that they’re having a jolly hard time coming to terms with it. Well, serves them right… (laughs) I mean, it’s not as if they didn’t have the cash to actually do something about it rather than screaming bloody murder at reciprocal linking or implementing that peculiar brand of Web apartheid of theirs termed the "Supplemental Index" no longer so named…

So do we recommend these link networks at all? Most certainly - though there’s still plenty of scope for improvement.

To give you an example. As you know, we’ll be rolling out our own commercial link network soon. It’s dubbed "20 Links A Day" and will offer subscribers exactly that - 20 legitimate (which we equate with "quality") inlinks per day, spread intelligently across our entire set of sites, lots of different IPs and C classes, etc.

However, not only will we restrict the number of participants to a mere 50 in order not to strain the network’s capacity, we’ll also make sure the index pages won’t feature tons of rotating posts that get pushed off into the archive even before a single search engine spider has dropped by to say hello. There’s more which I’d rather not talk about yet, but it will be a pretty powerful and very intelligently structured setup guaranteeing optimal results. And yes, there will be some nice PR sites included as well, of course, but that’s certainly not our main focus. As every practising black hat knows, PR has been vastly overrated for years, and that’s nothing we’ll hoodwink our paying customers with.

So rather than go for the fast buck by shoving hundreds of subscribers into our network, we prefer to build them at a plausible and consistent rate, adopting a long term approach. We’ll only roll out additional accounts to sign up for when we’ve expanded our capacities, and that’s flat.

Thanks a lot, Ralph. I sense a few myths are about to be rethought. And good luck with your network, too

More advanced linking interviews coming soon….

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