Blogging, SEO, Monetization: Link Exchanges, and Seperation

You may have noticed that I’ve - essentially - been missing over the weekend. On Saturday and Sunday, I took the time to seperate my political posts into a new blog, MindFyre Politics. With a completely new design, and scope, MindFyre Politics will be a challenge for me. I already have traffic coming in to this website, but the new one is - essentially - starting from scratch.

As such, I’ve decided to take on a bit of an SEO challenge, and attempt link exchanging. I’m going about if through a new web forum set up by the editor of The Blog Herald (Duncan Riley). The forum is called Web Log Empire, and it is dedicated to blog link exchanges.

A lot of you are about to say “WAIT! Didn’t you speak ill of link exchanges, before?” Yes. Yes, I did. However, I spoke ill of only a certain type of link exchanges. Those being the “pay for play” exchanges - where you pay to have your site listed (usually in hidden text) on many other sites. I also spoke a bit negatively of the automated link exchange systems. The reason being is that both of these systems can actually hurt your performance within the SEO spectrum. Search Engines looks very negatively on the pay-for-play exchanges - especially when they utilize massive amounts of hidden links. The automated exchanges, usually aren’t what they’re cracked up to be, and thus far I’ve yet to find one that is as good as offered.

Therefore, I’m going the “old fashioned” route, of seeking out individual blogs with which to exchange. How will I be exchanging links? All exchanged links will be set up in categories using WordPress’s links system. Then, they will be listed on my sidebar. Additionally, when I find a blog that I really like (or one that will do the same for me), I’ll make a post about it.

These exchanges are the simple, old-fashioned way of doing things, and they provide the most quality control. Every. Single. Blog. I exchange with will first be explored by me. If I don’t care for the blog, or the writing, I won’t offer (or accept an offer) to exchange.

For those of you who are wondering, “what about when you said no, before,” let me put it this way: That was before. This is now. Formerly, I didn’t want to do link exchanges, primarily because I thought they were too much work, and not enough reward. I’m doing this now, as an experiment. If it works, WONDERFUL! If it doesn’t, no harm done. If it crashes and burns, and Google throws me back in the sand box, then - well - I’ll have learned a very valuable lesson.

I will give you one tip, though. Be, at least, pretty sure that the blogs you’re exchanging with aren’t splogs (spam blogs), and don’t engage in underhanded SEO tactics. Sometimes you can’t be certain, but trust me - look over things, carefully.

Oh, yes, monetization report. I’ve done some re-arranging of ad units, etc… on the blog, as per the case study. Well, to be honest, I’m not sure I’m happy with things, as they are right now. I think the site looks a lot more “ad heavy” than it did. Primarily because of the 160×600 skyscraper in the right side bar. I’m not sure if I’ll keep that as a full skyscraper, or if I’ll shorten it to a verticle banner. Once I get to the traffic level I truly want, I might even remove it, entirely, and go with Adbrite, or Bidvertiser. No, no, I’m not trashing Google, I’m just saying that when you combine aesthetics and bang-for-the-buck, it’s not adding up to brilliant, in my mind. I do have to say, though, that I’m already seeing an increase in my Adsense CTR, with these changes. It’s not overwhelming, but it’s increased, and even a slight increase is a good increase!

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