1. Familiarity over New Technology. I admit, I’m lazy when it comes to learning new technology. The same reason why I’ve never owned a mobile phone that is NOT Nokia. (Sony Ericson and Motorola phones make me lost.) As I’ve used Windows my whole life, getting myself used to a new OS is something I seriously have to think about.

2. Software compatibility. They say softwares compatible to Mac are hard to find, and a bit more expensive too. I’m a software rat. I try all sorts of programs, even when I don’t need them, anyway, I can always uninstall. I can’t imagine not being able to do this with my laptop.

3. Control Functions. Right now, I don’t use a mouse with my laptop. I’m a shortcut person. I overuse shortcuts and control functions (i.e. CTRL-V, CTRL-C, CTRL-X), especially when photoshop-ing. Truth be told, the first time I played around with a friend’s macbook, I freaked out when I couldn’t use the control functions. Macbook has a special key for this purpose. In connection, the macbook’s keyboard is far from the regular ones I use since gradeschool. (No backspace too, just delete, I hear?)

4. No Right Click. I’m a right-click person too. Heh. I right-click icons all the time. I righ-click words and images. I right-click everything. With Mac’s touchpad, there’s only one button, and you have to press another key with it if you want the right-click function. Hate it.

5. I don’t have a car. LOL. I just find it risky to ride jeepneys carrying a macbook (and say, my Nikon D40) around. But okay. Not like this really matters.

My reasons are shallow, I know. I guess that means, me buying a Macbook is negotiable and still possible. Let me tell you more about that later. :)

I cannot match the Great Aaron Wall’s unconventional link building checklist, but here’s a few more suggestions. After all, you can never tell which ones will work. I once said that women have what it takes to RULE the SEO industry, and here are a few link building tactics we can do that men can’t. Ha! :)

1. Offer free dates on your site. Get your male visitors involved in a contest of sorts, require them to blog about why they think they deserve a date with you, and require them to blog about your date right after. Sounds familiar, you say? Of course, Lauren did it. Ask her yourself, or, head over to her blog and see for yourself how well it worked. Heh.
2. Attend those blogger events and get drunk. Make sure you’re around bloggers (the likes of Mike Villar, TJ Cafuir, and well, The Man Blog, I suppose) so that when you puke at them, you know you’re guaranteed a link, plus maybe an entire paragraph documenting how you made a mess of yourself. (Or how cute you are when you’re drunk. Hah.)
3. Attend those blogger events, be a social butterfly, smile and say hi to everyone as if it’s your birthday. Make sure you have a bunch of business cards ready to give away
4. Post pictures of yourself wearing skimpy outfits. Fine, this might not get you links, but at least you get traffic.
5. Walk around the office wearing a plastic tiara, and wave your hand ala-Binibining Pilipinas. This really works if you’re working in an internet marketing company where most of your officemates have blogs or twitter accounts.
6. Twit the whole day, even when mobile. Announce to everyone you’re in love, or you’re depressed, and other emo stuff. You see, Emo kids are IN these days.
7. Wear matching pink outfit all the time. The kind that will make people think of care bears, or alice in wonderland, or strawberries. (Uhm, wala lang. Papansin lang.)
8. Be annoyingly sweet online and offline. Especially with guys whose sites have high pageranks. (Hi, Mikey. LOL.)
9. Keep linking to Aaron Wall until he notices you. Or, Yugatech. (Hi, Aaron. Hi, Abe. Hi.)
10. Marry an SEO guru. Exhibit A: Aaron Wall’s marrying a Filipina. Exhbit B: Sharmskee’s got a permanent sidebar link from Macalua.com. Get the picture? ♥

Okay, don’t listen to me. Just taking a break from all these link building stuff. Back to work now. Heh.

One of the things I realized as I prepare for my talk on Advanced Link Building Techniques at the much-awaited SEMCON 2007 is that, the “advanced” part of it is pretty basic. True enough, the more you dig into what you thought was a complicated topic, the more you realize how simple it is. Apparently, this idea applies to link building too.

Link building is not like a complicated chemical solution that would explode if you didn’t follow a certain step-by-step procedure. Yes, some techniques may be detrimental to your search engine rankings, and could either pull your sites up or down drastically. But that doesn’t mean you can’t try and test ways to build your link network and see which ones will work for you.

Also, the one thing I like about it is, you can put your personality into your link building strategy, couple it with some standard techniques, and the right combinations could easily make your project flourish before your eyes. And while there are gazillion ways of doing link building, in the long run, it all boils down to the basics.

Let me tell you more about that on October 9. SEMCON Philippines 2007.

And let me just add that there is such a thing as Pink SEO. Yup. ;)

More at SEMCON 2007. Be there.

P.S. Trust me, don’t believe everything she says. You see, she’s a very good friend of mine. LOL.