Everyone talks about building links in the SEO Chat forums, so when I saw someone asking about Qassia and its link building potential, I knew I had to take a look. The self-described intelligence engine is in closed beta at the time of writing, but invitations seem easy to obtain. What is Qassia all about? And is it worth your while? In this first part of a two-part article, we'll explore these and other questions.
Qassia describes itself as “a credit-driven intelligence engine coupled to a cascading tag-based directory.” You sign up with Qassia and add knowledge, what the site refers to as “intel.” Kimsolutions, the SEO Chat user who first brought Qassia to my attention, explained that the intel can be your own or something you are legally distributing. I want to emphasize the word “legally,” by the way; the company is pretty strict in their terms of service about that.
They're also very strict in their ToS about each user having only one account, ever, in their lifetime. If you ever make more than one account you will be barred from their site. And if you don't understand their terms of service, they tell you not to use Qassia. I can understand the strictness; this is intellectual property we're dealing with after all.
Anyway, for every piece of intel you add to Qassia, you get a link back to your site. These are dofollow links, not nofollow links – so you can see how this might help you in the link juice department. Every time you create an intel, read and rate an intel, and/or invite a new user you gain Qassia dollars. This is “funny money” that can't be turned into any other currency – but “The more Qassia dollars you have, the better your websites will rank,” according to Qassia's FAQ. You never have to spend real money to use Qassia; the company plans to keep that totally free, and make its money from advertising (Google ads pop up in lots of places throughout the site, and of course next to many pieces of intel).
“Eventually we will introduce auctions for front-page advertising, site-wide links, and other novel ways for you to burn through your hard-earned Qassia dollars,” the company notes. And there are ways to earn real dollars with Qassia, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's see what it takes to set up an account, and what it's like to use Qassia.
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