Archive for May, 2006

This is a simple question post.

Where in the world are you from?

I love history….until a few months ago I didn’t have The History Channel at home, and so often on my business trips I’d get back to the hotel room (late), and turn on the history channel and stay up even later learning something about history.

One of the places I’ve always wanted to visit is Stonehenge….and it looks like in a few days I’ll be there. I was spurred on by Danny’s post called Tour Stonehenge The Right Way — Private Access (Danny lives about 5 miles from Stonehenge).

Danny said that with the Private Access:

You’re in the stones, basically. You walk around them, can sit on them, touch them, commune with them, if that’s your style. 

Cool - That’s my style!

So I did some some searches and came up with this tour which includes the private viewing of Stonehenge as well as a trip to Bath.

Spectacularly situated on the steep sides of the valley of the River Avon, Bath is a museum to the Roman and Georgian periods of England’s history. We drive through this elegant city to admire the 18th century architecture, Bath Abbey and Pulteney Bridge. Then we visit the Roman Baths Museum, where the baths are still filled by the thermal spring waters that gush from the earth below.

On a related/side note…I also purchased a few domains… variations of "Atikythera mechanism" after seeing a bit on the history channel about it this weekend (and finding I have a fasination for gears as well….maybe because I relate it search algorthyms??).

I keep thinking of this quote from George Santayana:

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

And I think of how much information and history has been lost over the ages….and I think about "backups" of my own information….I think I’m clever having my information stored on CD’s, on computers, on different Hosts….but maybe I should get a big ole stone and start carving stuff….after all…what will really last in 2000 years?

Yippy - I’m going to London!  

I got permission from my wonderful wife, and my work team at work is doing so good that I should have no worries while I’m away!

I’ll be arriving in London on Wednesday at 6:40am and leave Saturday at noon. Anyone know of other gatherings during that time? (I’ll be sure to hit at least this gathering).

I Wonder if SES needs another speaker?….otherwise I’ll just be "networking" during the day and hanging out where ever there’s "networking" going on at night.

Any of you going to SES London? If ya are, feel free to email me for my cell # so we can connect.

Most SEO’s that are on the hunt for more backlinks are working towards their goals by dealing in "discounted" link pages or they may be paying monthly fees for often "substandard ad placement" that may or may not count for much.

I’m really digging doing something a bit different….I’m out here cherry picking other kind of links.

I won’t even give you examples of the techniques we’re using to identify sites/pages that are related and powerful (I did that here and here).

I won’t even get into what our text ads look like (I did that at the last WebmasterWorld Pubcon).

I’ll just show you 1 "random" email that was sent out today (this also just happened to go live a few hours later).

Hi,
I have a client (www.myclient.com) who will give you $30 for a banner ad above the bottom navigation bar on this page:
http://www.yoursite.com/XXX/your-page.htm

Here is a sample banner http://www.oursample.com/banner.html
The size and shape is flexible and I will customize it to blend with the page a bit more.

If this works for you can you let me know if you prefer paypal or a check?

Thanks,
Jim Boykin

Now believe it or not, this is not a template…every email I pull up is a bit different…but there’s some common things about many of them (study that email if you want)….I also look at this as a possible "stage 1" for bigger future advertising options.

This site was found on a "research search" which yealded one of these pages in the top Google 100.
This site is all natural in it’s backlinks (no SEO muck-up). (these sites are not hard to find!)
The site just happens to have over 500 backlinks, including 6 .edu’s. This page is Extremely relevant to my client who’s getting his ad there.

There really is so many resources, and so many pages…virgin land…..it’s really the best links from the best places at the best prices….if you know how to look, and how to choose the best pages to get your ads on, and how to do the right ads for the most "bang", and how to deal, and have the time to do things by hand while Thinking about each aspect.

Do you think I’m smoking crack, or believe what I’m saying?

How do you spend your time getting links?

OK……I’m not a lawyer….but I was just reviewing the "fine print" of my contracts and was wondering what you guys thought about it. Anything you think I should add or subtract?

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