Are you a Nerd?

Finding out if you’re a nerd is more than just a simple test; it’s a lesson in using viral marketing and social networks to improve in-bound links to your website and build strong Page Rank (PR). I took the test and received my official results today. Not as nerdy as my brother, but nerdier than 59% of all people…

I was more interested in taking the test so I could proudly display the badge on my website than finding out how nerdy I was. And this is a great example of how you can generate some one-way inbound links to your site. NerdTests.com has a Google Page Rank of 6/10. That’s pretty good, seeing as I rarely see a Page Rank higher than 7 unless the website is a major player. So this could be a strategy you might want to employ to improve your PR…

How does it work? Well, following this example, you create (or have a web designer create) some kind of online test or quiz. At the end of the test or quiz, you offer the results, along with a box of code that can easily be copied and pasted into a blog post like this one. In this case, the code is:

<a href=”http://www.nerdtests.com/nq_ref.html”>
<img src=”http://www.nerdtests.com/images/badge/dfe39791e486fc55.gif” alt=”I am nerdier than 59% of all people. Are you a nerd? Click here to find out!” align=”left” hspace=”20″ /></a>

So the code pulls a badge image off their site, allowing me to proudly display my results, and generating a very nice link from my site to theirs. And I’m anxious to do it. What a great marketing strategy for them.

Of course, this strategy works well for them because nerds are generally going to be the ones that know how to implement the code that the NerdTests.com site provides them with. They’re also probably the highest percentage of people doing the blogging on the Internet. It’s perfect for the nerd community, and something viral like this little badge could really generate a lot of traffic to their site, and give them some link love to improve their PR, and thus their search engine ranking.

In addition, every person that goes to the site that in turn links back to the site creates a snow ball effect. Just imagine as more people see the website, more people take the test, and more people link to the website; in turn generating more and more people continuing the cycle. Once it reaches a critical mass, that site is going to have a steady stream of traffic to their site, simple from the shear numbers of people who have participated (as I have) in their simple test.

I can think of some interesting ways to duplicate this for a couple clients I’m working with. Can you think of a way to implement this type of link building campaign to increase the Page Rank and drive some traffic to your website? I’d love to hear about it.

WordPress Directory Plugin

If you are using WordPress and you are interested in creating a link directory, you might consider using a WordPress Directory Plugin. Not sure why you’d want a link directory? Well…

A link directory enables you to offer a very targeted set of categorized links on your site, preferably to content related to the theme of your site. For example, the directory on my site is for web development. So all the links in the directory should be related to web development in some meaningful way.

There’s another bonus to creating a link directory: It improves your Page Rank (PR). Page Rank is something Google uses and it’s related to the number of inbound links to your site. There’s a huge algorithm for calculating PR, but for the purposes of this article, you basically want to increase the number of people linking to your site, and a link directory helps you do this by requiring that anyone who lists themselves in your directory provide a link back to your site.

So here are two WordPress Directory Plugins worth checking out:

WordPress Links Directory
I like this directory plugin because it offers a nice, clean layout. I’m also partial to the AJAX aspects of the plugin. The install was not easy, and required some modifications to some of the files in order to get it to display correctly for the theme I’m using. It seems many people have had trouble integrating this plugin with their theme, so you may not want to use it for this reason. However, the author of the plugin has added some common theme support here. This plugin supports SE-friendly permalinks, subcategories, and reciprocal-link checking, which is a major bonus. One click on the backend sends out a little spider to see if the people who say they are linking to you are really linking to you. This is dynamite for when you have a lot of links, so you don’t have to waste your time manually checking them.

WP-Directory
I decided not to go with this plugin, but it’s still worth considering. It’s set up is more like DMOZ, so if you like that style, this may be the choice for you. It also supports pretty permalinks, screenshots, subcategories, and a cool little sidebar widget. The installation looks a lot simpler too. View a demo of WP-Directory here.

If you need help installing either of these plugins, please contact me.

How to drive traffic to your site using Google AdWords

Google AdWords makes it possible to deposit five bucks, write a couple of ads, and instantly get access to over 100 million people - in less than 10 minutes.

It’s hot.  In fact it may be the first and best thing you do to get traffic to your site.

But it’s not always as easy as I just made it sound -AdWords has some nuances, and most people have a
rough time at first.

Well, Perry Marshall has written a very helpful e-course called “5 days to success with Google AdWords” and there’s no charge for it.  You can find out about it here:

Perry Marshall’s Google Adwords e-course