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You will love these guaranteed proven free easy 100 quality links

Posted by admin on February 22, 2007 in SEO Theory

Digital Ghost recently asked what’s the most effective word you can use in a headline?. That took me back a few years. In fact, many people have studied the phenomenon of words that compel interest.

If you’re in American politics, today’s most compelling words are “we made a huge mistake (but please don’t ask if I voted for it)” and “there are no weapons of mass destruction (except for the ones that were found)”.

If you’re involved in the insurance industry, today’s most compelling words are some variation on “proven results”.

If you’re in search engine optimization, today’s most compelling words are some variation on “free quality links”.

In writing my effectively compelling title, I did my best to incorporate as many words from the traditional list (you save results health love proven money new easy safety discovery guaranteed) and the SEO list (quality links).

Years ago, when I was studying the art of Web banner exploitation, I played around with the “12 most powerful words in the English language”. I found they were less effective than simply including the words “A Xenite.Org Web site” (or some variation thereof) beneath a more descriptive title such as “Xena Online Resources: 1500+ Hercules and Xena links” or “Lord of the Rings movie news”.

One of my best-peforming banners of all time is still running on the Xenite network now. It has two pictures of the actress Grace Park (from Battlestar Galactica) framing the expression: “They put me on Xenite! They put me on Xenite!” Grace looks happy and excited in those pictures.

Our Grace Park section is presently one of the most popular sections on Xenite (it doesn’t do badly in the search engines, either).

Based on the empirical evidence, I have to conclude that “xenite.org” is the most compelling word in the English language. For me it offers free, easy, guaranted, proven results that save me money. This discovery has ensured the safety of my health because I just love how you people click on my Web pages all day long. These kinds of quality links are nothing new to me.

But let’s step back a bit. Is advertising copy all there really is to a Web site? Well, I suppose if you ask someone like Ken Evoy, he’ll be glad to tell you about all his experimentation and how his latest Make Your Site Sell gizmo has improved turn-through and the secret to your success will be to buy as many of his services as you can afford. Reading a Ken Evoy post in any serious discussion is like surviving an 18-minute-long commercial break on a radio station. You keep asking, “Doesn’t this station play any music?”

Web copy is not advertising copy and, in my opinion, should not be treated as such. Now, it’s true that people occasionally go looking for what you could call “manufacturer’s specification copy”. I do it, myself. I hear about a product and I want to know what its features are, what its requirements are, how much it costs, and how I can get my hands on it.

I tend to buy from people who give me that information up front and let me ignore the testimonials. All testimonials are propaganda, which means they are all rigged. Every time someone asks me for a reference I sort of roll my eyes. “Here, let me send you to the people I failed to make happy” is a reply I’ve occasionally been tempted to give.

The best references are the ones you don’t get from the sales people. Of course, I think most people ask for references just to find out if the sales people have happy customers. A little bit of life experience teaches you that you cannot please everyone but if you can please a few people you’re usually okay. Hence, if I ask the sales guy for references and he provides them, he must be okay.

Web copy needs to be compelling and informative. It should also be interesting and entertaining, even on a business site. I’ve actually spent an hour or two browsing interesting business sites that provided historical narratives, humor, customer stories, and more compelling evidence that those companies wanted people to view them as something more than just providers of goods and services.

Blog copy, on the other hand, seems to be all about the titles. Bloggers are obsessed with being DUGG and getting into the back-slapping inner circles of gurudom. If you don’t write a great title for your blog article, you’re dead. You won’t get DUGG. No one will social bookmark you. Other blogs will ignore you.

When I was writing for SEOmoz, the one complaint I heard most often was “Michael’s posts are too long” (oddly enough, I did not write the longest posts). Clearly, if a post seems too long it’s sending the wrong message. The most popular posts I wrote tended to be less theoretical and more mechanical. They were Jerry Maguirish “show me the linking methods!” posts.

And linking methods are good, especially when they are discriminating, but they get boring. I could have called this blog “Linking Theory”. I know more about linking theory than today’s current link gurus anyway. At least, they sound so repetitive and ad-copyish, it’s easy for me to reach that conclusion. I can link faster and better than most. I had to learn how to build links back before I understood that search engines would be any help at all.

But linking theory bores me. At the end of the day, I’d rather give a link than get a link. Being the resource makes me The Man. Being useful makes my sites the destination. Being interesting gets me those references and testimonials that money cannot buy.

So what if my second most popular Web site is about cheese dip? I love white cheese dip. I’m passionate about it. I enjoyed writing feature articles about it. It’s a little tedious to keep updating the site with new information about restaurants where people can get the cheese dip, but thousands of other people love it, too. They keep visiting my site. They link to it.

So, clearly, the two most compelling topics you can put on a Web site today are Grace Park (of Battlestar Galactica) and White Cheese Dip.

I can say that because I have proven results from those topics. That makes me a link guru with the best SEO advice around.

And, yes, there is a deeper message in this article. It will only appear to the chosen few.