I spent this weekend at my third Desiring God National Conference in Minneapolis. It was a great time. On top of the personal benefit of simply attending the sessions, I was also able to make a number of potentially beneficial connections with regard to Abort73 – one planned, one hoped for, and one that was totally unexpected. I'll let you know what develops from these providential meetings.

Web Store Development

In the meantime, I've been investing significant hours into the improvement of Abort73's search engine placement and the launch our new web store (still pending!). Building the new web store has proved much tougher than I anticipated, but progress is finally being made! You can get a sneak peak here.

The .edu link challenge

On the search engine front, Abort73 has climbed from entry #69 for the Google search term "abortion" up to #28. The goal is to reach the top-10. Our current focus is on bolstering the number of .edu websites that link to us. We're already way ahead in general page links, but apparently Google gives a lot more weight to .edu links than to links from .com or .org sites. To illustrate, the top-10 websites for "abortion" have a combined 37,686 backlinks from other websites (an average of 3,769 each). The Abort73 homepage has 64,200 backlinks all by itself, but only 16 of those come from .edu sites. Jeff has started contacting all the campus, pro-life clubs he can find to request a link. If you belong to such a club, or have access through your school to create or post to campus .edu pages, please consider linking to us.

Abort73 on Yahoo! Answers

If you're not a student, but want a way to help increase the number of quality links to Abort73, Yahoo! Answers may be a good outlet for you. I recently created an account myself and try to answer a couple abortion-related questions each day. Most of the time, I include an Abort73 link as my source reference. Once you build up 250 answer points (I'm up to 187), your links become active – and since Yahoo! has loads of search weight, Abort73 links on Yahoo! pages are extremely valuable – and the answers themselves can gave significant value for those questioning abortion.

New GUNS Shirts

On Monday, I'm placing an order for what will be our last batch of Would it Bother Us More if They Used Guns? shirts for 2009 (girls too). Because we're still in inventory reduction mode through the end of the year, we won't be ordering much beyond what is pre-sold, so if you've been waiting for the GUNS shirts to come back in stock, this is your chance to order as many shirts as you want, all the way up to XXL. Otherwise, you'll probably have to wait until next year.

Cupcakes and Silent Day Shirts

Finally, two nationwide campus-outreach events take place this October – Cupcakes for Life and the Pro-Life Day Silent Day of Solidarity. Abort73 has produced custom T-shirts for both events. If you haven't already, check out the details here. And continue to pray for our efforts to reach $200/10 by 2010. So far, 35 people have taken the plunge – which still leaves another 165 with 3 months to go.

PS – Don't forget that the best way to stay up to date with Abort73 is to follow us on Twitter or Facebook. Email updates arrive every couple weeks. Twitter and Facebook updates arrive almost every day (and sometimes more). Happy October!

Michael Spielman
Loxafamosity Ministries
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Educate Yourself.
Educate Your World.
http://Abort73.com