Outsourcing -More money, Less Work

I have recently been trying my hand at outsourcing some web projects to India, via the Get a Freelancer website and i have to say it is the way forward. I think like anything its important to start small and work upwards, which is why my project was for one of my newer websites but i have to say the quality of the work was excellent. I basicially got some t10 Google rankings of the back of the project and for a cost of $110 it was pretty much a bargain. #

The good thing about GAF is that there is a rating system so you can check up on a prospective outsourcers previous work and also performance. This mean you are more likley to find a reliable and honest person. The other good thing is payment, you pay the money for the project into Escrow via GAF. But you retain contol of the money until the project finished to your satisfaction, so in otherwards if they dont finish then you dont lose any money because you can cancell the payment.

I have to say with the work load that i have outsourcing will become more prominent in my business model, eventually i envisage a cocktail, a beach and a load of other people doing all the work for me…

Business.com

I have just noticed that business.com have put there prices up by a whopping 33% and they also dont seem to charge less for renewals now either. I got a listing with them in March and the fee previosuley was $199 per year and $149 for renewals, it is now $299 per year! That puts it on par with Yahoo Directory for fees and now really makes it a questionable investment.

The choice really comes down to weather you think a single PR5 link for a quality site is worth more than a dozen lower pr links which you get from Yahoo. For a smaller company however it is fair to say that perhaps neither is the answer, as the fees really do seem to be spiraling out of control.

Content Writing

Well its been a while since i posted but it has just been a crazy busy time as i am admist the process of Link Building for all of my affiliate websites, mostly Rooms in Scotland and Rooms in Edinburgh. The main focus has been on content writing and atricle submissions which i feel are the two most effective ways of obtaining backlinks.

I have writtent several travek related articles and submitted them to five article websites such as Go Articles and Article Factory. The idea is that people will read them and then use them on their website and since i have a link in my author section i would get a link back to my website for every atricle used. Now its not just about links, it also about getting relevant links as since the articles are travel related then it would stand to reason that travel related website would probably use them. This is a fantastic way for getting one way relevant links back to your site.

I have also been doing some content writing, basically increasing the amount of useful information on my websites. After all we all know that Google loves unique and useful content, so the more you have the better quality your site will be. I created some pages about castles (like stirling castle) and walks (speyside way) in scotland and then submitted them to wikipedia as to get a link back from a quality source. Even although these links dont pass link juice(they a nofollow links) they still pass as a quality link so they are still useful.

Well any way its time to get back to work, more articles to write and content to create, it is a busy life!

Will Social Bookmarking boost your SERPS?

I am currently doing some link building on all four of my websites, Rooms in Scotland, Rooms in Edinburgh, Rooms in Inverness and Rooms in York.  As many know this is a seemingly endless task and extremely time consuming, i have exploited every relevant link i could find and submitted to countless directories in the attempt to boost my SERPS. 

 So far the results have been mixed with only 1 top 10 ranking achieved along with a few page 2 and 3 rankings for keywords on Google.  My next step has been to see how effective social bookmarking is in regards to effecting SERPs, so i have submitted my sites to no less than 40 social bookmarking sites and i am to gauge both reffrer traffic and any potential SERP boost.  I will give it a month and let you all know what my findings are and if anyone wants a quick and easy way to submit to social bookmarking sites try http://www.socialmarker.com/