Thalasar Ventures

I have to admit I am lousy at on page SEO. I am not sure why this is – I suspect that because for a few years on page factors weren’t that important relative to off page links (That’s changed a bit, again). As a result I am really good at building Page Rank. Thalasar is Page Rank 7. Here’s one way I get relevant links.

When building Page Rank one of the things that I like to do is kill two birds with one stone. Matt Coddington covers how build links by doing a Stylesheet. While that certainly is an interesting idea for designers, for those of us less design gifted it makes sense to find other avenues for building incoming links.
Having founded and open source software company, I always like supporting open source projects. Most open source projects tend to be Page Rank rich and resource poor. They have a high page rank since many people are using their product and typically they get a lot of organic links coming into them. So many open source projects have a donors page or at least a developers blog. Since they are open source projects, typically they are projects where the developer has itch that needs scratching.
I started off my link building compaign with a set of donations to perl.org. First I donated a set 250GB high speed SATA drives for their raid system which got me several mentions in their blog. See here and here. (Both of those links are PR6). I then donated a 8 blade computer system. This final donation was large enough to finally get me a spot on their sponsors page. For higher profile projects like Perl.org, you are going to have to donate something pretty substantial. That unit cost roughly $18,000 and it was the last generation RLX blade computer produced before they made the switch to being a provider of software for managing blade installations. I always wanted to do something with it (Each blade has 2 GB of Ram and P3 CPU plus varying HD sizes (20GB + 40GB) but never got around to it. It packs quite a bit computing power in a 4 RU case. Man it is one sweet piece of equipment.
I never got around to using it and I had moved to New Mexico and the computer was in Las Angeles. The Perl guys were in Las Angeles so a donation made a lot of sense. I am glad the Perl guys can use since all of the Xao software is based on Perl. In fact it’s probably time to see if they have any additional needs. Having built a whole software suite on Perl, I felt it important to support Perl.org and the resources it provides.
There are lots of small open source projects that can really use a small donation and will happily provide links. I have also donated to support AWStats and others. Sometimes they have donations page and sometimes they don’t, but it’s always helpful if you start with a project or product you actually use. That way you can touch base with the developer and perhaps get a mention in the developer’s blog. That way you are supporting open source software and getting a link at the same time. Some developers may not want to give you a link. That’s fine really though since undoubtedly the good will more than pay itself off in the long run.