The Weakest Link -- No Links!:
Zeus - The answer to a webmaster's prayers

John Carter, eCommerce Entrepreneur

The number of relevant sites linking to yours is fundamental for achieving good search engine positioning. Read this article, and get a special offer available ONLY to SitesbySean clients!

Also, see How Much Does Your Site Weigh? from the SitesbySean Newsletter Archives.

Zeus - The answer to a webmaster's prayers

If you were going into any other kind of business, would you set up your store in a blind alley, with only the white pages listing in the phone book to direct people to your store? How long would you wait for the riches to come to you?

While people laugh, most web sites on the internet follow the above model for their business.

The typical web entrepreneur spends either a lot of money or a lot of time building their sites and dreaming of the wealth that will come pouring in. The sites are beautiful, colorful and people will love it!! Their friends that see it tell them so! (Of course they don't realize that they are building it in a blind alley). At last, it's finished and they dutifully submit their sites to all the search engines (the afore-mentioned white pages) and wait. And wait. And wait.

Reality sets in as they realize that most web searchers don't go to page 123 on the search engines to find them. They see there are 17,000 similar pages. They think that perhaps there is a guru out in the great beyond that will make them #1. They retrieve all the SPAM ads from the last month and contact the gurus who promise them wealth beyond their dreams. They buy ranking programs, consultation, books that reveal the secrets (whatever they are - none mention hard work) and anything else that provides the promise of success. Then, just as you get a high ranking, the search engines change their algorithm and your ranking drops. 

How do I know this? Been there - done that! This happened to me in October when 1stdecanters.com went from 1 and 2 on Google to page 3 because they changed their algorithm.

Three or four months ago, I was having lunch with a business owner who was interested in building a website. He was asking some very interesting questions about how to advertise on the internet. Although my web site www.barparts.com is doing well, I couldn't really tell him, beyond building feeder pages, how to make it grow. 

I read that Google and Altavista put a lot of weight on link popularity - links from other web sites to your website. I began to think about how to get links from sites when I began to have one coherent thought (It's nice to be coherent on occasion). If I could find sites that my potential customers liked and got a link from them, then I might raise my standings on the search engines AND pick up a customer or two. Like most brilliant ideas, it wasn't a new one. I found out that most people had been doing this for years! 

I did not have a links page at that time, nor had I ever had one. I didn't realize the potential benefits of one, and I thought it would take too much time and be too difficult to do.

Enter Zeus by cyber-robotics.com. Truly an answer to my prayers.

Zeus is a smart robot. How do you know he's smart? Because YOU train him on the types of web sites you are looking for. Don't worry though if you're not too smart at first. Zeus will patiently help you, through trial and error, find the keywords to look for that will give you the results you're after.

Once you've got him trained, take him off the leash. This bird dog can hunt!

Since I sell wine accessories and barware, I am looking for people who drink wine and beer. Clever, don't you think? I trained Zeus to find websites dealing with anything to do with wine and beer.

Every night, before going to bed, I let my bird dog, Zeus, free to roam the internet. Every morning he brings me 75-150 potential websites to look at. It captures everything you need for that website to make it a link - title, description and email addresses.

As of this moment, it has found 34,542 potential links, found 647 of them that met my strict criteria, and has 7,867 of the 34,542 left to search. Can you imagine doing that manually?

I click through them one at a time looking for sites with link pages (I want reciprocal links, remember?). When I find one that I like and it doesn't compete with me, I select a theme for it to go under and click a button to add it to that theme. I then click another button which sends an email to that site telling them that they've been added to my site and asking for a reciprocal link. I offer to move them to link partner status, giving them more exposure as an inducement for the reciprocal link.

Check out my links page at www.barparts.com/links/Our_Favorites.html 

When I click another button, Zeus builds my links pages automatically, and uploads everything to my website. When I do get a reciprocal link, I tell Zeus where it is, and Zeus then automatically makes the site a link partner.

I spend about 15 minutes every morning building my links page and getting reciprocal links.

Their support is incredible. Zeus, being one of a kind takes a little thinking to learn. It is easy once you grasp the concepts, but it does take a little time. Whenever I was unable to figure something out, an email to Peter got an answer and explanation within an hour.

So how much will this Internet wizard cost you, you ask? 

The basic version is FREE! You can't gripe about that price, and you can't afford not to try it.

There is also a PRO version which gives you greater flexibility on formatting to make it look like your website, an auditor feature that checks for dead links, directory manager so you can create a multi-tier directory and you can get rid of the Zeus Banner ads. Click the link to see all the differences between the PRO and FREE version. 
http://www.cyber-robotics.com/demo/index.htm  

Many web masters find the FREE version to be adequate and exactly what they need. But, if after using the FREE version of Zeus, you decide to upgrade to the PRO, I have made special arrangements with Cyber-robotics.com to get everyone on the Sitesbysean.com newsletter list a special $36 discount.

But first, before you buy, go to http://www.cyber-robotics.com  and download their free version. Use it and see how you can build your links pages with very little effort. 

You may decide that the free version is all you will ever need, but if it isn't, then get the $36 discount, ONLY available through the following link and only available to Sitesbysean.com newsletter subscribers:
http://cyber-robotics.com/BarpartsDiscount.htm 

In checking my stats - after only 3 months, 12% of my hits are coming from link partners. Hopefully, some day, I won't have to worry about search engine placement at all!

Happy linking!

John Carter
www.barparts.com

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