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Weekly Blogistan Round-Up no. 01/2009

bewerbungHow you're doing? I hope you had a great start into the new year, and believe me: 2k9 is gonna be a wicked year for web 2.0 folks, and I mean “wicked” in the good, old-school jungle way. I do have the impression that the European commercial community is just waking up, and I'm seriously looking forward to bigger budgets being spent on web 2.0 advertising as this will boost the whole scene. My personal 1st of January had a very nice surprise in stall for me: datadirt received a Pagerank update and is now proudly sporting a 5.

My German blog datenschmutz is now a member of the quite exclusive PR6 blogs club – this did not come totally unexpected though, yet I'm still really happy about it. Now I know that good ole PR neither reflects a real-time value nor is it the most relevant SEO factor: but I like to think like some kind of nice, expensive watch: no added value, but it looks nice and gives a great first impression :mrgreen:

So, what's a super-affiliate again?

Super Affiliate is a stupid buzzword used in the affiliate marketing blogging community by bloggers who want to make you think they make more money or are somehow better than you. When I had my first $1000 week at one of the very well known affiliate networks, they said I was now a “Super Affiliate,” which showed me that it means absolutely nothing. Anyone using the term “Super Affiliate” in a non-joking manner, especially when referring to themselves, has no credibility, and is an idiot.

Says NickyCakes of Reformed Blackhat on Jeremy's Blog That's a short yet very concise way to put it – I have nothing to add :mrgreen:

Look back (in no anger)

Jeremy took the time to do a proper all-year review which is also a very smart idea in terms of internal pagerank distribution by the way.

TechCrunch und Twitter

TechCrunch publishes an article on a mash-up that forwards tweets to e-mail adresses. Asks Babou:

I really enjoy your blog for your insights and the posts of your team of writers but there is one thing: you really speak a lot about twitter.
Now I understand Twitter has become an important medium of communication but does it really deserve so much attention?

Well… that depends: I guess that twitter deserves all the attention that fits into 140 characters – a couple of times per day.

Video of the week

You don't want to get that job? By all means, watch and learn from this brilliant job interview video by Ben Schwartz:

So much for the first weekly blogosphere review of the new year – as always, comments and feedback are highly appreciated. See you next week!

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My German blog ranks #44 in Twingly’s charts

Twingly ChartsThis week, Swedish Start-up Company Twingly launched its very own top-blog lists in twelve different languages. Their blog search is delivering really good results, so it seems that the near future might look rather bleak for Technorati – and the best part is that my main blog datenschmutz ranks #44 in the German-language list!

The overall winner of the new rating is – what a surprise – Technorati. And this is what Michael, or in this case Robin, thinks about the new charts:

Twingly, the social blog search engine that prides itself in being completely spam-free, has launched BlogRank as a way to identify the 100 most important blogs in 12 different languages based on a proprietary ranking system. It

Fast Blogfinder: Easiest link building ever

easy link buildingBuilding backlinks to leverage your online presence can be a very tedious task – but it doesn't have to be: thanks to the social web, there are literally thousands of blogs that allow follow-links in their comments. No matter which niche you're working on, there's always a couple of matching blogs where one gets strong, free backlinks simply for leaving a comment. But the challenge lies in finding strong deeplinks with nofollow turned off, and that's where Fast Blog Finder comes in: this brilliant piece of software does automated keyword searches for blogs or other sites which allow comments. The results are grouped into follow- and nofollow-Blogs, all the important parameters like Google Pagerank and the number of outgoing links are presented in a very useful way.

DownloadFast Blog Finder Demo-Version:
Download
*.exe file, 125kB
OS: Windows XP, Vista

Fast Blog Finder is not spamming tool as there is no automated commenting feature. But the program saves every webmaster tons of time, as researching the right backlink-blogs is one of the most time-consuming tasks in online marketing. FBL automates the process up to the point when the actual comment is posted: webmasters need to do this manually anyways (after all, substantial comments have a much higher chance of not getting deleted), but they don't have to spend any time on backlinks research.

Glock sells the software for about $50,- which is basically gift considering the countless hours you are going to save. I've been working with Fast Blog Finder for a couple of weeks now and I'm completely satisfied. To me, this software simply is the best tool for quick and efficient link building: at this low price, even hobby-webmasters interested in driving more visitors to their site might consider buying FBL, but for every professional SEO it's a must. The manufacturer even offers a free trial version which is limited in its search capabilities, but it gives you a good impression of the software's immense value.

Fast Blog Finder trial version
Buy Blog Finder

The main screen

The main windows is separated into three sub-windows: the left column lists all your searches, the top middle windows lists the results which are freely sortable and in the bottom windows, an instance of Internet Explorer shows the current sites and enables the user, to leave his comment directly from within the program:

Link building in no time
Fast Blog Finder's main screen with keyword lists (left pane), active list (top windows) and built-in browser (bottom window).

Every search and user action is stored and there's an export/import function for result lists which makes customer reporting very easy. All of the feature are self-explanatory, take a look at the trial version and you will find that there's no quicker and cheaper way to build a large amount of high-quality backlinks.

Advantages of comment link

There's couple of advantages that qualify Fast Blog Finder for a large range of projects:

  1. FBL is the only link-building software I know which supports different languages. Of course if works perfectly in English, but the user can also switch to French, Italian, German and other indexes: I'm running a couple of sites in the German language, so this a killer feature for me.
  2. Almost any other link building program requires a registration and a monthly fee, which is usually higher than the price of FBL – which is a one-time flat fee and even qualifies you to receive updates of the program. (You're allowed to install the software on two computers with the standard license.)
  3. The internet offers a couple of free dofollow-Blog lists. But those are static, rarely updated and most importantly, the backlinks are not keyword-related, whereas FBL finds sites, which rank well in Google for an exact keyword (combination).

Still not sure? Try the trial version. I recommended this software to a lot of my colleagues, and I haven't heard anyone complain. Because after all, time is the most precious resource – and Fast Blog Finder helps you save tons of it.

Fast Blog Finder trial version
Buy Blog Finder

Xsara, SEO dog #7: The day after the pagerank update

Yup, there was a pagerank update this weekend which showed a couple of very interesting tendencies: Google is putting even more focus on the update cycles of a given page, gets stricter with domain pagerank but gives away a lot more juice for deeplinks. Incoming links are of course still the most important factor, but sadly Xsara has been relying too much on good reputation…

Xsara, diaries of a SEO dog #7

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