[Gary]

I was searching for Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family (my favorite superheros from my childhood)  and I found this site.
And may I say, I am delighted at what I found.

[narfstar]

Very welcome to stay Gary.

[paw broon]

Hello Gary and welcome to CB+.  Thank you for the kind words.  Enjoy the comics.

[bjjohns]

I was looking for a CBR/CBZ reader for my nook, and someone mentioned this place (under the old domain). A little googling, and Viola!

[The Evil Twin]

Hi, I just wanted to say hello and to say a huge THANK YOU to all the generous people who have posted all these great comics. You've done a tremendous service for all of us by preserving these books for the next generation. I am eternally grateful!

[paw broon]

bjjohns, The Evil Twin, welcome, both of you to CB+.  Hope you will consider contributing to the forum.  Enjoy the comics.
(Viola? Isn't that a big fiddle?)

[donovan5]

Hello I've been considering getting a Kindle Fire HD predominantly for reading comics and after a lot of googling one of the right ups mentioned this place.
Wow I was stunned by the amount of top quality books you have here.Thanks to everyone you've done an amazing job.

[narfstar]

Thanks donovan5. The comics are all free so download and enjoy.

[MarkWarner]

And tell your friends! We really want to get the word out on the streets

[mr_goldenage]

Speaking of getting the word out on the "streets" I hit an average of probably 30 to 40 sites a week  or more for comics info around the world in places like India, Malaysia, South Africa, you get the idea. I also probably hit/visit 50 or 60 blogs or more per week as well. Now I bookmark all these places. Would you like me to drop a line add this site as  there is a link there to typically leave to add a ULR or "Like" on Face Book or such. If you'd be interested, please let me know your proper method,way, or preferred message if you like, or if you are not interested, then not an issue at all is it? In either event it was just a thought.

Richard

[MarkWarner]

Richard,

That is a VERY VERY good question !!

On a very basic level, links to sites do not just generate visitors. They also let the search engines know that people are interested in the site being linked to. The more links, the better Google thinks you are. I put a LOT of caveats on that.

That is why we are locked in mortal combat with spammers.  I believe their main aim is to get a boost in rankings for their site. People clicking is secondary.

Now say I put a links to our site on Organic Carrot Growing, Early Baby Development, Redesign Your Garage etc ... all legit sites ... but not really relevant and not helpful for those sites. Then SPAM ALERT bleep bleep and Google boots you.

Now even worse. Say the links are on sites that have been up to naughty stuff themselves. They have been spamming and swapping links. And now we have put one on there to our site. Doesn't look good does it... lol

So in an ideal world people will link to CB+ organically. There is summat good they found and they then link to it. GREAT. And if they mention us in Early Baby Development, then that is what happened and providing there are not a lot of other non-related sites that is cool.

But back to your question. Sure PLEASE LINK AWAY. Make sure they are clickable (where possible) and also legit sites. And also that there is a good reason for the link.

Regards,

Mark
PS: I have noticed that we are getting more non US/UK visitors. Which is really pleasing.

[mr_goldenage]

Hello Mark

I will do my best and I will only try and do what is appropriate. Thanks for the concepts. I have sort of started that with my Comics from around the World thing in Comic Talks. I got permission from the sites to use their stuff and to link to their sites, So now I will go back and do likewise if permitted. Thanks!

Kindly

Richard

[MarkWarner]

Cool Richard!

I am well off topic now, but it's a subject that I find REALLY interesting. Nerd that I am! The question is how to get more visitors and retain them? Now I guess you have seen/heard people offer to get sites to the top of Google search pages.

Now if you think about it. If they can do that, then that would mean that any site (no matter how bad) would, providing they were paid and did "the magic" appear at the top. Then users would click on the link .. find that it was rubbish and be dissatisfied. A few more like that and they'd leave to find a better search engine. Also, if they can do that why are they selling their services for a few hundred bucks. If I knew how to game the system I'd keep very quiet and make billions by creating my own sites

Did you know that Google puts in changes virtually very day. Tweaks and then real big changes a few times a year. Also .... they claimed (I think it is more now) that over 300 signals are used to decide on which pages to return in search results. (Bing claims 1,000+). That is for each page! And do they tell you what they are? NO!

But apart from the obvious (search words are there) .. they are things like how quickly does the page load, and low bounce rate. (That is people hitting a page and then immediately clicking the back button). 

The message that they keep trying to drum into people is, spend your time creating unique, high quality content. Spend your time and effort on that rather than try to find ways to game the system. Anyway, that is what we are trying to do here and one of the main reasons why I got involved here. A site with great content and a community is a very good starting place to build on.

BTW for anyway one who has a website/blog then these are two first rate articles. You pretty much don't need anything else

http://cyrusshepard.com/1-rule-of-successful-seo-build-spaceships/
The guy says NASA is a really disorganized site they pay no attention to trying to lure visitors in BUT the site is highly successful because they have spaceships! In other words interesting content. Well we have our spaceship in the form of our comics!

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html
A top Google guy who's message is would your visitors trust your site with their credit card details or to buy on line meds. Have you the right signals, lots of little things that add up (eg: spelling,contact details etc). Do you look professional and trustworthy?

As a final interesting fact, CB+ has a VERY low bounce rate. Meaning that the vast majority of visitors are really happy when they land on one of our pages and don't click the back button. Now in one way this is actually too good! It means that we are just too targeted. As a group our visitors are too happy! (lots of too's there) So ideally we want to increase the numbers, open up the demographics a bit. So we'll have more visitors and a few more percentage wise who are not happy. So saying it's a very nice problem to have. I just mention this as an example of why it is all rather intriguing to me.

Regards (and sorry for straying so far away from topic),

Mark

[paw broon]

As with Richard, I visit a number of sites regularly and we've benefited by being able to get permission to host material from some of them but it hadn't occurred to ask if we could post a link to CB+ on them. While I've been a bit unimaginative there, I do get to a number of marts and always manage to introduce CB+ to the conversation when I'm chatting to other punters and the occasional comics creator and some of it must stick. I hope.  I can ask a couple of sites if they would be willing to put up a link to CB+, if that is o.k.  My only slight worry is having links to us on sites which host well known copyright material - would it reflect badly on us?  There are a lot of KFS scans out there, never mind the major publishers.
The other thing is, if we ask for links we should reciprocate and our "Blogs and Site Links" section isn't the best place for a quick link and we might need a simple list of links, such as are on many blogs and sites.
Don't know if any of the above makes sense but that's my tuppence worth.

[MarkWarner]

Well, we don't want to go around swapping links, with all and sundry. That is not a very good idea, as it purely us trying to gain ranking advantage. You sort of have to get into the Google et al mindset. Google employees are top players. As a developer if they pick up the phone you come running! So you will never beat them at their own game.

It is good to link. It is the way the web works. Now I have been quite liberal with links to GCD and DCM. They are both a major resources and it is helpful to let people know about them, if they don't already. Also the recent Self-Promotion section. In a way it is not a good idea ... but it is offering a service to members to give a shout for their site/product and hopefully other members may get something out of it.

Now the interesting question is can links to your site cause you damage. It is hotly debated. If so then I could go around very dodgy spammy sites and put links in to my major competitor. That would then cause him to be "associated" with spammy sites and his rankings crash. So on one level no. BUT if you are have a lot of links on your site heading back to these sites ... well then who knows. You look guilty to me!

It is VERY complex maths the search engines are doing.

Also there are some sites like wikipedia that have the linking set up so that they do not pass any of their "love" to you. So the link does nothing to help your rankings. Many forums are set up like this. We pass our love on though! It is actually a BIG bone of contention. Do a search and Wikipedia is nearly always at the top. Cos we are all linking to it and helping its rankings but it does not pass it back. This is they claim to dissuade spammers. But a lot of us are not very happy about it. I love using Wikipedia, but this makes me grumpy.

As a final little touch people try to do this hiding their link swapping. So you put one link out and get one back but from a site far down the chain.

site a -> site b -> site c  -> site d  -> site a

BOY when they bust you on that one (which inevitably happens) it is a LONG road to recovery.

[CLANAD]

Just wondering how everyone came to find Golden Age Comic download website or support forum?

Tell us how you found us, give us your story...

Thanks, Serj

I Was browsing for another site I used to use to read golden age comics online, and came across your site...It is a pleasure...Thanks

[paw broon]

Welcome to CB+, CLANAD.  Enjoy the comics and please consider posting any thoughts and questions on the forum.

[narfstar]

Good to have you with us enjoy yourself

[thunderbay63]

How did I find you guys?

I'm a participant on the Marvel Masterworks Collected Editions Discussion Forum, and someone linked to your site during a discussion of the original Captain Marvel.

After perusing some of the contents of this site, I must say, thanks for existing.

[narfstar]

thank you for acknowledging our existence. Come by often

[paw broon]

 thunderbay63, I'm glad you took the time to check out the site.  Enjoy the comics and feel free to post your thoughts and comments on the forum.

[guggy]

Hi. I found your site whilst browsing a page about golden age comics (can't remember which one, I'm not a prolific book marker). I have to say It looks fantastic, kudos to you people. I look forward to losing many an hour here in my hobby of comics history. Thanks.

[paw broon]

Welcome to CB+ guggy and thank you for those kind words. You will lose many an hour here - we all do.  Feel free to post your comments on the forum.

[narfstar]

good to have with us enjoy

[RickDeckard525]

I woke up one morning and I decided that when publishers don't renew their copyrights, they go into the public domain and then I started thinking about comic books (I think about comic books a lot), when I realized that there must be comic books in the public domain. Then I typed "public domain comic books" into google and got the DCM, but I like your reader better.