This is a pretty cool concept. You can cue up a series of short videos with the Mogulus service and they will play as a continuous loop - like a TV channel. Then you can ad a bit of script to your web page, and voila, you've got the "channel" running on your page.

This seemed like an ideal fit for our Quick Web Video service, so we're planning to incorporate it into the service. As we produce short videos for clients they will be added to the channel, and then clients can put the video loop on their sites.

So instead of just choosing one video to highlight on your site, or adding a string of them in separate Youtube windows, you can put a continuously looping channel right there on your web page.

For more information on how we are implementing this service see Linknet channel.

It's up right now, and hopefully will stay up. But that's what we thought 12 hours ago. So we're beginning the process involved in switching to a new host, just in case it is necessary.

The Linknet contact information is here, just in case it goes down again:

telephone: 888-876-1712

contact form: http://www.sbo-linknet.com/contact.shtml

email: rick@linknetforum.com

Both of these factors should make it worth the effort to try to get your content on high PR sites. But the question is "How"?

One very useful approach is to leave comments or feedbak on interactive sites such as blogs or social networking sites. These links will usually be in the form of comments left in response to posts, stories, videos, etc.

Unless you are happy just leaving meaningless spam comments, leaving legitimate (or even semi-legitimate) comments on blogs takes time and effort. You have to actually go to the blog, read the posts, do a little bit of thinking, and then write a comment.

I don't know what the average time would be for doing this, but I'm pretty sure if you were to try to create an efficient "system" for commenting, it would be difficult to get the process down to less than 5 minutes per comment.

Yes, I know there is software that will find blogs, isolate posts according to keywords, and then let you create comments right from within the software shell. I've looked at this sort of thing and have not been convinced it would make the actual commenting time shorter.

The three most important criteria (from the "link value" perspective) for taking the time to create comments (either manually or semi-automatically) are:

1. The "authority" of the blog (measured in Page Rank)
2. The "relevance" of the blog to your own niche, and
3. The "do follow" or "no follow" status of comment links

I have already briefly commented on the "authority" question. I know that PR is not the be all and end all when it comes to ranking in the SERPs (results pages), but it does indicate potential link value, at least in my experience.

From the perspective of link value "relevance" is probably not as important as most people think. See my previous link relevancy post for more on this. But from the "I-actually-know-what-I'm-talking-about" point of view it makes quite a bit of difference. If you're taking the time to read the posts you're commenting on, you might as well read something you're interested in and are likely to learn something from. You will also be able to create comments more quickly because you'll have something intelligent to say.

On the "do follow" question, you have to know a bit of history to understand the significance of this. A couple years ago Google tried to clamp down on comment spam by encouraging bloggers to add the "no follow" tag to links embedded in comments. The "no follow" tag tells the Google bot not to follow these links - making them much less desirable from the link juice point of view.

Many bloggers obediently fell into line because they were intimidated by Google threats. But some resisted either silently or openly and left their comment links intact. These are usually referred to as "Do Follow" blogs.

If you can find a "Do Follow" blog that still has Page Rank, leaving comments on sites like that is generally considered worth the effort.

If you'd like to take a stab at building links this way, check out "How to Get a Free PR10 link". This will take you to a free report from Angela Edwards. Angela also has a subscription service where she sends you 30 new high PR blogs every month where you can get "do follow" links.

This is not BS. It's free, so definitely worth the little bit of effort. Angela will send you other sources of high PR links too.

Go to FREE PR10 LINK

A shared online repository for content seems like the answer, so over the last few days I've been looking at Google Docs to see if it fits the bill. So far so good. One person creates a document and then shares it with others. The originator of the doc can work on it and then have a collaborator make additional edits to exactly the same document.

Take a video script for example. The script writer can write a script and store it in a Google Docs folder. Then give access to that script to the person doing the voice track and the other person doing the actual video production. If changes are made further up the production chain - say by the voice track person - these changes can be made right to the master version stored in Google Docs. So everybody is working from the same script.

One potential problem I've seen so far is that you cannot share folders - only individual docs. That means Person A may want to organize the same files in completely different folders from Person B. That sounds like it could be a good thing in some cases, but in others not so good.

I can also see this system being good for client communication and reporting. You create a report, say by using the online Spreadsheet utility, then share it with the client so he/she can see what is going on. Other users could even make notations and add stuff like you can with a wiki.

I must admit though, that I haven't quite figured out the Google "account" thing yet. If you've got accounts for adwords, adsense, docs, video, analytics, etc. and you signed up for them at different times, there's no telling whether or not they are synchronized. I'm sure there's a way, but I haven't figured it out yet.

In my own experience, what determines the "relevance" of an incoming link is

(a) the anchor text - if the anchor text implies that a source is about "dog training", then who is Google to question that? and
(b) the simple fact that the link is comgin from a legitimate site. If it is a "trusted" source, why would Google question the "relevance" of such a link?

Anybody else notice this?

The answer is always the same too. ..

You have to get out there with your message. You have to build your web presence.

And the best and least expensive way is by spreading information about your products or services around the web. If the people you want to reach are not already coming to your website, you have to go where they are and try to draw them in.

Advertising on high traffic websites is one way - Google Adwords for example - but it is too expensive for many web entrepreneurs.

The best alternative is to offer free information that people are interested in reading or listening to or viewing. This is what we call "compelling content" - stuff that people are interested in and that addresses the needs, desires or interests of your target audience.

But the biggest problem with creating and distributing compelling content is that it takes time and resources you may not have.

Linknet AutoBlog addresses this problem by giving you a way to use other people's content in a systematic and highly effective way.