My nagging theme these last few issues have been links. The reason I have been harping on this subject is because I have been proving to myself that they are the key to rankings.

As you know (if you have kept up with these issues) I have been posting on the free for all links, then immediately submitting these post to the search engines. What I have found is the search engines are showing more and more links to my URL. Personally I prefer Free Links Finder to do posting on FFA's:

http://www.data-village.com/freelinkhelp.htm

I have been wondering about how I might post to classified ads with such speed. I looked at Classified 98, The Classified Connection and others. They cost some bucks when you don't have them to spend.

So in the mean time, I have been working on my own program to submit to classified ads. The program I'm working on has a few bugs in it that I need to work out before I start letting the public use it.

In the course of using this program, I have inadvertently posted to guestbooks, classified, and FFA pages. In the case of the guestbooks, I have been accused of spamming.

Well, as you can see, I can't let the program out till I fix this problem. But what if I were to post my URL to guestbooks in a way that does not look like spamming?

What would happen is that my post would stay on that page for a long time, unless it looks like an advertisement. Then you get a nasty note, taken off their guestbook, and banned from their web site if not worse.

I started changing the text in my posting. This is what I found has worked best, but play with it if you wish, and decide to post on guestbooks.

1. Always use your name. If you use a company name, they thinks its spam and you get the nasty notes.

2. If you use a well known autoresponder for a return email address, you will be accused of spamming. I used my own autoresponder.

What happens is if spammers get my email from the guestbook page I don't get the spam. My domain name address is seen on this autoresponder email, so it doesn't look like spam..

3. If you use your own autoresponder, don't make it look like advertisement. You'll be accused of being a spammer. I used this message:

'If you found my email from a list or an email harvester, be assured that I will get your message. I will answer legitimate messages.

If you are interested in tools and information for your small business, send an email to: sbt2@sendfree.com '

What I've done is made the message look like I am avoiding spammers and I get my advertising in if someone wants to look at it.

4. Personalize your message to the guestbook owner. This takes some work. You have to look at the owners pages to write a credible message to the owner. If you do this, you will more than likely get a message back from the owner thanking you for visiting.

All of the messages I received came in the way of a feedback form, so I know they personally visited my site. I can now keep a personal rapport with them because I have their email address. Who knows? Maybe someday they may need my services or sign up for my newsletter.

5. Don't use the message to advertise your site, product, or service. You will be accused of spamming. Keep the message about what you think about the owners site.

6. Put the address your message is on in a database to send to search engines later. After you have enough to put on a page, submit the page.

This causes the links to be spidered and you have more links on the popularity engines. Because your link will stay on the page for a long time. You don't have to be as hurried as you would doing the same for FFA links.

I recommend these tools to speed up filling out guestbooks or any other form.

Gator http://www.gator.com/ads.html

AdWizard http://www.wavget.com/adwizard.html

Though this might seem to be a slow process, the benefits are good. Your links stays up for a long time, you can gain a relationship with the guestbook owner, s/he will be glad to have you post again months later.

About the author: Dale Sexton owns and operates 'PageCrafters.net' and publishes 'Small Business Tools magazine'. Both are focused on tools and tips to run your small business or start a business. You can reach him at pagecrafters@pagecrafters.net and sign up for 'SBT magazine' at http://pagecrafters.net/newsletter.html