Have you ever seen that “moment of clarity” or “awakening” in someones eyes? So often when trying to tell people what they need to do they just don’t get it, they don’t get that moment of clarity. We know that links are on Google’s hit list don’t we. Just the sheer amount of Googlers that were asking me in San Jose, if I had seen a down turn, had me thinking that if their attention and focus is linking buying, where are they becoming weak, so I and had quick peak and

I still see spam, good old BH spam leeching off authority sites,

I still see cross linked networks working,

I still see article and directories propping up sites working,

…. so where are Google winning, well in fairness LINK BUYING, but at a cost. I remember ages ago that Matt Cutts answered a Question about link buying to your competitors, He pretty much said why would you take the risk of lifting your competitors. I always thought that if the competitor was above me already what difference would it make anyway .. lol

Well it’s seems like some people have had an awakening, it seem that they are offering good money for people to build a sites about an industry and they will give you a link budget (£5 - 10k a month) and they will also supply link lists you have TO try and buy from. When I ran this though my tools and datasets, the findings were a “moment of clarity” the two things that I thought were

A) Building authority, my guess later to be used as lead generation or IBl’s

B) Totally poisoned the competitor back links, if they had 10, 50 or 100 of these sites I’m pretty sure that the link profiles could bring down all these sites and competitors, in fact they would be worth reporting their own sites just to bring the network to light lol.

DaveN

Site maintenance may well be made easier by using relative URLS and indeed transferring the domain is easier than if you absolute URLS too. Whilst the absolute URL method may take more time in terms of updating links on each page the reasons for its usage are strong.

Google for one may well miss some relative links, but from an seo point of view and security absolute URLs win hands down. Absolute URLS are much more secure when implementing a CMS change  and less succeptable to hijacking.

Stick with the complete address, giving an entire path  to the file is the way to go when possible.

Sorry, I forgot to Blog this the other day. Our Dutch geek Wordpress collegue Joost once again pushes the realms of Wordpress possibilities with the improved Wordpress Breadcrumbs Plugin. As usual Joost responds directly to feedback from previous versions with improvements to the plugin allowing breadcrumbs to be added to the theme.

<?php if ( function_exists('yoast_breadcrumb') ) {
	yoast_breadcrumb('<p id="breadcrumbs">','</p>');
} ?>

DaveN is based in Ripon, North Yorkshire. While London is not that far away by train it’s not always an option to return home the same day. Sometimes too you do get fed up of the large Hotels and need a place to stay that’s more like home, being executive style, unique and offering luxury. Dave has been thinking for quite a while about finding such a place for himself and indeed clients or those needing corporate lets. Well fortunately there is such a place that offers self catering in Birmingham where Dave also has clients.

Caversham Place offers five star accommodation in Sutton Coldfield and is an ideal retreat for those looking for an escape from the busy conference environments. With plenty of venues nearby and great transport links via air, train and bus why not give it a try ?

If you missed it unlucky, if you want more insight into that day .. Jen Slegg wrote pretty much up to the minute before the session, SEO mfg, joeduck both covered the session, Lisa Barone did the best write up I have found by far  and Kevin Ryan did a follow up, so all in all a good days work I guess:)

For all the Kevin Ryan haters out there, personally I don’t think Kevin did a great job but I have seen worse lol , but remember he got landed the panel 5 minutes before the session started so I actually think he came out the other side ok.. for the DaveN haters .. BOOOO.. what do you want me to say, yer here is all my Data take it, and to questions like “why don’t we get any BH hat tips!” because if I mention anything like BH on my blog or speak about it openly it’s get closed down quickly ! then I get BH haters on my case and not wannabe BH Haters :)

DaveN … oh btw Haters :P