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WG’92 cohort news

As it will appear in the Fall 2009 issue of the Wharton Alumni Magazine.

Oh, I’m glad you’re reading this. That means you’re still here. Meltdowns, bailouts, financial losses, and we’re all still here. That’s a celebration in itself, methinks.

Are you on Facebook yet? A few dozen of us belong to a WG’92 group. Reconnect with us at http://budurl.com/WG92.

The biggest news came in the littlest package. Keith Alexander’s first child, James Robert Alexander was born March 18 at 9 pounds, 2 ounces. Mother, father, and child all doing well.

Melissa Scott (formerly Schlakman) got in touch. She wakes every morning with Mitch Scott (formerly Vaccarino) at her side. S’been that way for 17 years now. When she’s not raising eight-year-old Dylan (His current fascination is derivatives of the word “butt.”) and five-year-old Talli (Her best friend is “God,” really!), Melissa works for Booz Allen Hamilton.

Fellow Cohort J’er Paolo Mallorino lives in Reggio nell’Emilia, Italy. He’s the CFO of Lombardini, a division of the Kohler Company. The avid skier has great fun taking his young son and daughter on the slopes.

I don’t think I’d connected with Vito Quaglia for years. Through the magic of Facebook, Vito gave me an update. He’s a divisional CFO for Honeywell. He lives happily in Minneapolis with his wife and 14- and 11-year-old daughters.

Father of triplets Steven Hill connected with me on Twitter. You can find him at http://twitter.com/Hill10003 (his ZIP code). Pressure him to change his disturbing avatar.

Gautam Chand

Gautam Chand

Gautam Chand lives in Mumbia, India. It’s been ten years now since he founded Instanex Group, an investment management, index products, and insurance brokerage. Check out his impressive Web site at http://instanex.com. Importantly, he shaved his mustache. He replied, “Got a few white hairs and had to shave it off. Now, I cannot imagine why I didn’t do that earlier.”

Anyone know where I can phind Phaethon Blackburn? I think he’s phunny.

Drop me a line at joe@joehageonline.com to be included in the next update!

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Building inbound links to your site

Trolling around for something for work, I tripped across http://www.mycontentbuilder.com/

It’s one of many resources for entire articles you can recopy and post on your site. I can see how contributing to a site like this helps you gain inbound links to your own site.

I’m just not sure how much value it adds to your readership to copy someone else’s content on your own site.

I’m interested in your thoughts on the subject (please leave a comment), especially if you keep a blog or consider yourself somewhat SEO savvy.

Here’s an article I picked up I picked up and copied wholesale from the site. The HTML was already in place.

Reciprocal Linking Isn’t The Only Game In Town by Jeff Alderson

Incoming links to a website are like the gold of the Internet. These can help sites generate traffic, PageRank, search ranking and even revenue. The unfortunate reality is that not all publishers understand how to go about getting these incoming links established effectively.

The reality is there are a variety of good methods that can be used to generate incoming links. Some methods work a little better than other options, but they can all help increase traffic in their own way.

One method many publishers use involves reciprocal linking. This is nothing more than putting another person’s site link up on your pages and handing them off yours to post, as well. This is achieved either through mutual agreement via e-mail conversations or with the help of services designed to help sites gain links.

Services that specialize in reciprocal links offer all types of options. Some services offer a fully automated plan that puts your links up on other sites and puts others on yours. Other services hook up publishers to arrange for link swaps and there are even companies that continue to track links after they’ve been placed to ensure they remain active. Which one of the linking services is the best really hinges on what a publisher is looking for and how much effort they want to put into the process of generating reciprocal links.

Link swapping services can be helpful, but they don’t always cover all the bases. The thing they miss checking into is where on another site that link happens to be and how visitors can actually find the links. There are horror stories about many who have used these services. Many find that other sites simply bury their links on pages that are not accessible from their home pages. This can be avoided by checking links if a service is used and even if it’s not. If another site makes its reciprocal links impossible to find, e-mail the webmaster and ask why. Should action not be taken, it’s a good idea to remove the link to that site from yours.

Reciprocal linking can have its perks, but its not the only way to go. Publishers have a number of other tools at their disposal for creating solid incoming links. One of the best methods, perhaps, is simply by doing what publishers do best. It all falls on content creation. The better, more interesting, more useful a site’s content happens to be, the more likely that site is to gain incoming links in a more organic, or natural way. The reality is other sites like to link to those in the field that do their jobs well.

When generating content, it’s a good idea to make sure it’s of high quality. Whether it’s a rant, a rave, a news article, an in-depth review or a humor piece, if visitors take something away from viewing the content, natural links are likely to come. Make sure content is at least search engine optimized in the title and in a few spots, but beyond that don’t let quality get sacrificed for keywords.

There are a number of other ways to boost incoming links. Some of the best ways include writing posts in forums with URL signatures included, retaining others to write blog posts about your content, running awards programs and contests and so on. The key with these ideas is to be creative and have a little fun.

When it comes to generating incoming links, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Exchange programs can help, but they shouldn’t be the only tool used.

About the author: Jeff Alderson develops search engine optimization software. Now you can easily boost your link popularity for free. Be sure to use Ad Word Analyzer to find top keywords for your anchor text.

This article is available as a unique content article with free reprint rights.

Article Source: MyContentBuilder Directory | Submit Articles | Search Find Free Content | Author Submission

Photo credit: selva

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