Blog Blogger Blogging

Viral Linking to Increase Technorati Ranking and Google Page Rank

Free, Unique, Themed, 2 and 3 Column Blogger Templates

Blogging Mix - Performance Report 3 Months After It Was Launch

Fechr.com – Broken Promises and Failed Expectations!

Drive More Traffic – Increase Commissions

2007-09-16T03:58:00.001-07:00

Every affiliate marketing program depends on the volume of visitors diverted to the affiliate program site. The more clicks, the more the chances of sales and hence more commission. The key is to attract more customers to your affiliate site.

How to enhance traffic?

There are heavy duty books written on this subject but the answer lies in a fundamental truth. Customers will only visit your site if they think they’ll find what they’re looking for. Therefore the key is to make them believe that your site and product offers them what they want.

There are several ways to boost traffic to one’s site, such as:

Funny videos: Very often humor does the trick for an affiliate program. Use humor in videos to get a customer’s attention. Then lead them on to the affiliate program site. This method usually has a high success rate.

Flashy banner ads: Banner ads have always been great at getting a customer’s attention. No matter what the topic the customer is reading about – even if it’s molecular theory – banner ads will get a person’s attention.

Blogs: There’s a reason why even the billion dollar companies aren’t missing out on blogs. Blogs are free, they’re great for diverting traffic and best of all can do what even an advertisement can’t! Try putting interesting content in the blog. Follow this up with a ‘teaser’ in the resource box to lead the customer to the affiliate program site. You can use a creative promotional catch phrase in the ‘resource box’ that’s specially provided for this purpose.

SEO: Also known as Search Engine Optimization, this is a way to improve your search engine rankings. By using strategic keywords that are commonly searched for by customers, you improve your chances at being listed in the top 10 search results. This ensures more clicks by customers and hence more commission!

Classifieds: It literally pays to have well thought out classified advertisements on the product you’re trying to sell. Customers are sure to visit the affiliate site.

Cloaking links: Many affiliate marketing wizards will tell you this is one of the best ways to divert more traffic. Cloaking links basically means disguising the hyperlink to make it look like a URL to your own website. In actuality, it’s a link to the product you’re trying to sell. This ensures more clicks, which in turn means more commission.

Unbiased product reviews: You can also write neutral, unbiased product reviews to promote your product. By not being self promotional, you gain credibility and customers are more likely to visit the affiliate website.

Press releases: Press releases have been used to market a product since time immemorial. These serve to create a buzz around your product, always keep the interest factor alive and best of all, keep reminding customers about your product.

A little bit on SEO and keywords

A lot of research has been done on keyword usage. There are certain phrases or words that are more commonly searched for when compared to others. This is what determines a website’s popularity on search engine rankings. Having well-spaced, strategic keywords helps list your affiliate website within the top 10 search results. This means better visibility for your product, more clicks and more commission.

Nowadays there are several tools and resources to help you research on keywords. Try and go for moderately searched keywords. Using too many common keywords risks your website being lost in the crowd of competitors and using less popular keywords means your site may never be listed in the top 10 or 20 results.

Most organizations are spending top dollar to increase their SEO rankings. They’re even hiring agencies to help them in this effort. There are several third party agencies who help optimize a website for better search engine rankings. Especially in today’s fierce competition, being within the top 10 can really make a world of difference.

About The Author

Nye Morgan is a successful work at home entrepreneur who has made money from several internet businesses. His latest project is the Online Entrepreneurs Toolbar, a 'must have' free download for people wanting to make money online. Get your copy at http://download.OnlineEntrepreneursToolbar.com/r/003

SUGGESTED READINGS

Create Your Own Free Three or Two Column Blogger Template

Beware of Quechup. It's One Hell of a Spammer!

Submit Your Blog to Free Directories

Viral Linking to Increase Technorati Ranking and Google Page Rank

Free, Unique, Themed, 2 and 3 Column Blogger Templates

Blogging Mix - Performance Report 3 Months After It Was Launch

Create Your Free Three Column or Two Column Template

The "Unethical SEO" Myth

2007-09-13T20:14:00.000-07:00

"The use of black hat SEO techniques are completely unethical." Really? I completely disagree.

Is it unethical because these techniques are attempts to give a webmaster an advantage over their competition? If this is the case, stop participating in SEO forums, stop using WordTracker, stop studying or engaging in SEO at all, because any of those things are ways to help get you a leg up on your competition. In fact, if it is your argument that this is unethical because it gives one person an advantage over another, stop building websites because there are plenty of businesses out there that don't have a website. You may be taking advantage of a medium some people don't have access to.

Is it unethical because it violates Google's Webmaster Guidelines (http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html)? If this is the case, again, abstain from any SEO whatsoever, because those guidelines state 'Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"' If you are building sites for your users and disregarding search engines, things like "SEO", "keyword density", "SERPs", etc. hold no interest for you. By even considering what effect your actions have on your SERPs you are violating Google's guidelines.

Dictionary.com's primary definition for "unethical" is based on "approved standards". Who sets these standards? Google? Google is a company. Google's primary focus is on generating profits, as any company their size has to be. Do you have any doubt that they are willing to take advantage of nearly any legal opportunity to gain an advantage over Yahoo or any of their other competitors?

Why do people in this industry choose to set their "moral compasses" by a company's guidelines? Google sets these guidelines because it makes it easier for them to produce search results superior to their competitors'; they don't want to have to expend resources on excluding sites that game their algo. I like Google, they have a fantastic product and they are one of those companies that I find easy to admire, but I certainly don't believe they created those guidelines in an attempt to create this utopian internet where everything is "fair"; they didn't and never claimed to.

Most of the world's economies are based on capitalism and free trade. Google has a cash cow and her name is AdSense/AdWords. Webmasters compete against each other with their cold hard cash to see who can be #1. Is it unethical to squash your competition by outbidding them? Even if it was an unemployed guy with two ex-wives, three kids, a mortgage, $5 to his name, and a mammoth drug habit? Nearly everyone in this industry would say, "No it's business."

If you are an SEO professional and you are optimizing sites, is it unethical to use "black hat" techniques on clients' sites? I certainly don't think so, as long as you make very clear to the client what risks are involved beforehand. Now if you don't tell them they will get banned if caught; I would certainly call that unethical. Ammon Johns, known as Black_Knight at his site, the Cre8asite forums at www.cre8asiteforums.com who, in a post, said "To my philosophy, the SEO who refuses to properly inform their clients of all available techniques and the costs risks and benefits is not ethical. Whether that is failure to tell them of risks, or failure to tell them of strengths. It is the clients role to make the choice, and a truly ethical SEO will enable the client to make a fully informed choice, not just one that meets what the search engines say is okay for all."

So is cloaking, creating doorway pages, search engine spamming, or other similar "black hat" techniques illegal? I know of no law that forbids this stuff as long as you aren't violating someone's copyrights by duplicating their text, stealing their bandwidth, etc. I would be the first to label such techniques "unethical", frustrating, illegal, deplorable, name your word.

The remaining unanswered question is, "Who decides what is 'unethical', who sets 'the standard'?" You and I as internet professionals do. Some people choose to draw the "unethical" line just beyond what they do to improve their own SERPs; anything past that is "unethical". In relation to this subject, I draw this line pretty close to what the American government calls "illegal". I would call almost anything done with a primary intent to damage another website/company "unethical"; and most anything done under those circumstances is also illegal.

Having said all that, to my knowledge, I'm not doing anything on any of my (or my clients') sites that any major SE would consider banning me for; I'm certainly aggressive with the "white hat" stuff. I have dabbled with some of the more risky techniques in the past, but I have put way too much work into my sites (the ones that are worth trying to achieve high rankings for, anyway) that I'm just not willing to risk getting them banned; the risk isn't worth it to me. So while I don't participate in any "black hat" (or what I prefer to call "risky") activities, I just don't like the idea of those who do being labeled "unethical".

This is certainly an issue where people who have an opinion are passionate about it, but I invite you to examine your own motives for calling aggressive search engine optimization techniques "unethical".

About The Author

Damian owns a small website development business dedicated to providing affordable websites to small businesses. You can visit his website at www.divergentlines.com or contact him at dsmith@divergentlines.com

PREVIOUS POSTS

Beware of Quechup. It's One Hell of a Spammer!

Submit Your Blog to Free Directories

Viral Linking to Increase Technorati Ranking and Google Page Rank

Free, Unique, Themed, 2 and 3 Column Blogger Templates

Blogging Mix - Performance Report 3 Months After It Was Launch

DOFOLLOW Blogs With Good Page Ranking

Dramatically Increase Your Technorati Ranking and Google PR

Alternative to Search Engines - Ways to Attract Traffic

How to Remove the 'NOFOLLOW' Attribute on Your Comment?

Search Engines And Directories - Understanding The Difference

2007-09-10T09:22:00.001-07:00

One thing that is so basic that it often still needs to clarified is the concept that a search engine and a search directory (article directory) are not the same thing. The traditional search engines add Web site pages to their databases automatically and then rank them in popularity in their search engine rankings based on user submissions. However, these search engines also periodically send their automatic robots or "spiders" out to "crawl" for new and updated information on websites that can also be indexed and added to the search engine rankings. Complex algorithms (that are comparable to the mysterious complex FICO Scores that are used to calculate your credit rating) calculate your web page’s popularity on a number of different factor. The most famous example of a pure search engine like this is Google

Directories also qualify as a search site but they are not the same as a search engine. To get listed on a directory, you must actually submit your front page URL on the directory's submission form. Also instead of being evaluated by an algorithm, these pages are directly assessed by a human being. This means that your site is ranked according to the information that you submitted on your application. This is very different from a typical search engine that assesses your web ranking according to what is actually on the home page of your web site. The Open Directory, Yahoo and LookSmart are the main Internet directories that are managed in this way.

To make things even more difficult the search sites and the search engines work in cahoots together to boost each other’s rankings. Almost all of the major search engines also work in tandem with a directory which is why, for instance, a listing in DMOZ almost automatically guarantees you a place on Google.

About The Author

Chris Angus is a website promoter and SEO - He helps promote the following pages: http://www.148directory.com/rss.php?c=122&s=P&p=1
http://mylinkhub.com/Business/?p=9
http://www.iwebzen.com/18/Business_Economy/3/

PREVIOUS POSTS

Free Directories - Submit Your Blog Now!

Viral Linking to Increase Technorati Ranking and Google Page Rank

Free, Unique, Themed, 2 and 3 Column Blogger Templates

Blogging Mix - Performance Report 3 Months After It Was Launch