SEO It Is Easy

Onsite SEO, was once seen as a real black art.
But the simple truth is that a the few guidelines that make good onsite search engine optimisation have not changed since spiders first infested the web.

The first key point is USE QUALITY CONTENT. This rule has never changed and if it is not obvious why textual quality content is important read on.

The textual content is the most important thing in SEO. Getting the words on the page. It is the words that spiders pick up on and build the search engine’s database with. Write content. Make it appealing to the reader, make it relevant. Yes SEO gurus will say about constructing the text with keyword density at a level of 2% - 4%, sneeking in word variaitions etc. This is all well and good, but if you produce a quality article, there should be that mix of ‘long tail‘ keywords and other key phrases any way. Plus if it is interesting and doesn’t look like it has been written by a robot it will attract interest and links in.

Yes use H1 tags to convey your key subject / article title. and use H2 tags to outline other sections, important to the visitor.

Use an interesting and relevant meta title. Again use keywords, but also make it snappy and draw the user in.

Meta descriptions and keywords are still used, but are a very small part of what needs doing.

Key messages in BOLD, again this helps readability, you only have 1/2 a second to draw the reader in. Also Search Engines have been known to pick up these words and weight them more for the article.

Use ALT tags on images, search engines still cannot read images (though I bet google is working on this)

Add new stuff to your site, new articles, more textual content. Keep the Search Engines interested as well as the visitors. 2 articles a week should be minimum for a blog.

Linking structure on your website is key. Every page should have consistent navigation linking to the home page and other major sectios of your site. Blogging Software and Content Management Systems are fantastic for this.

So will you take advice from this site? Not one for rules, this is a blog site, free flow of thought. Maybe you are better off buying a Search Engine Optimisation book, with their rules, formulas, systems and black magic (hmmm chocolate).

March 11th, 2010 Posted by admin | SEO | no comments

Is ClickBank Irrelevant for UK affiliates?

First - what is ClickBank?

Clickbank is a marketplace for virtual goods. The ebooks and software are marketed by high commissions (usually over 50% affiliate commission) but has attracted alot of rubbish. Recycled PLRs, resell right ebooks, affiliate systems, getrich systems and so on.

Infact there is a high proportion of self serving affiliate programs on clickbank - things like the CB Affiliate Formula that tells you how the author mad $52,000 dollars in Clickbank commissions in 4 weeks. Most of these have the long sales letter that seems to actually work (in the USA, 10 years ago?) and have screen shots of fantastic clickbank earnings.

There is actually some good stuff on the ‘network’ but it takes a long time to plough through the dross.

My motives for this post is to actually get an idea if it has ever actually really worked for anyone, especially in sales to the UK within the last year.

Yes I have an account  and yes I have tried to push some products, but have actually found better results selling ‘real’ products through affiliate networks like Affiliate Future, Affiliate Window, Online Media Group, Paid On Results et al.

March 3rd, 2010 Posted by admin | affiliate | no comments

Affiliate Window and Buy.at

London-based Digital Window creates UK’s largest affiliate marketing network.

Digital Window today acquired Newcastle-based Perfiliate Ltd., which operates one of the leading affiliate marketing networks under the brand name Buy.at. Together Digital Window and Buy.at form Britain’s largest performance-based marketing group, serving customers in the UK, USA and Scandinavia. Buy.at was previously part of AOL Inc.

Kevin Brown, CEO of Digital Window: “This transaction is a milestone not only for Digital Window, but also for the performance marketing industry as a whole. Both companies already excel in the areas of service, ethics and technology. Joining forces enables us to harness the passion and creativity of both businesses to the benefit of all our partners.

Read the full Affiliate Window press release here

What implications does this have to the UKs affiliate networks?

Well time will tell, but I am hoping this is a good thing. It would be brilliant if buy.at would run as a seperate network to Affiliate window but I expect one of two things will happen:

Bye, bye Buy.at. Possible. Both systems merge and the best of buy.at is ported onto the affiliatewindow back bone. But this would mean alot of work and I expect such a merging of systems would mean loss of jobs on one side or the other.

Or both networks proceed as complimentary networks, maybe they both take on select individual marketing verticles.

Both are possible, but my opinion is not worth much on these, waiting for comment from Lee McCoy, and already seen some very positive views from Here.org.uk. There will probably be a large selection of other ideas on what might happen to these affiliate marketing networks. Might be exciting times, though sometimes diversity is the best way forward.

Keep diversity. If you are members of both of these networks and no others join the likes of Affiliate Future, Paid On Results and  Profitistic. Remember, that 20% rule!

March 1st, 2010 Posted by admin | affiliate marketing, buy.at, affiliatewindow | no comments

The 20% Rule and Affiliate Marketing

Hands up who else hates rules?

When writing business books, ebooks or blog posts alot of ‘rules’ seem to appear.  Rules about how to run your business and when.

There is a 20% ‘rule’ in business that is applicable to affiliate marketing. As I have said I don’t believe in hard and fast rules applying to a very diverse business such as the affiliate empires that many of you have built. But it is a good guide line or just a concept you should bare in mind.

The basics of this ‘rule’ are that:

No more than 20% of your business should come from one source

and

No more that 20% of your supplies should come from one source

Well for the first point you may think. “I have thousands of visitors and hundreds of them carry out transactions each month”. But you should be thinking “oh, 80% of my thousands of unique visitors come from google”.

Short term this may not be a problem. The amount of traffic an affiliate can gleen from google can line the pockets of many. But one day things may change so enjoy it while you can. I had a site generating £300 (nearly $500) a day then google did one of its shifts (google dance if you like the term) and for the next 2 weeks generated about £1.50 ($2).  It took months to get the site back to a stage where it was turning a reasonable monthly profit.

If you are getting a huge amount of traffic from google and nice fat affiliate commission cheques on tha back of it use this as a grace period and start investing time (and maybe money) into other traffic sources (PR, PPC, Social Networking, Other search engines and directories).

On a similar matter do not rely on one revenue source! Amazon is great, eBay is fantastic also. But a change of terms, move of links can have a huge detrimental impact on the best of affiliate sites. Spread the load, use different merchants, different affiliate networks. See here for a list of Key Affiliate Networks.

Just a little food for thought there.

More coming soon.

February 26th, 2010 Posted by admin | affiliate marketing, google | one comment

Tracking Affiliate Sales and Tracking Them Right

Quick warning to any new affiliates out there, something I as an ageing affiliate wish I had drummed into me while I was young. USE SUB TRACKING IDS.

This includes any sub accounts, extra keyword tracking, campaigns, tracking IDs or whatever the affiliatenetwork or affiliate program you are getting commissions from call it. Don’t think ill do it later, if you are linking to a website using an affiliate tracking url/code set up the site/page specific tracking perameter there and then.

I built a number of niche focused affiliate sites using a piece of software using PHP, that mashes together amazon aws affiliate web service feeds with ebay results, presenting a broad range of specific products to the user at great prices. (yes it is a bit like this script but no nice interface, and alot less of the customisation power)

Now I have dozens of these niche sites, generated in place of any standard domain parking, as they give content to the website and generate a bit more revenue than a standard ppc domain name parking.

But in my haste I duplicated the standard tracking ID and didn’t give each site its own. Now I am finding that one or more are making some money, and I cannot tell which. Part of the joy of using the system was to test which domains and designs converted, but now I cannot. I have money in the bank but still feel some time has been wasted.

Now I have to go back and change the link urls (just one config file for each site, but it is still work) and then wait another 6 months to regain the data I should have been sitting on.

Oh well, such is life.

February 24th, 2010 Posted by admin | affiliate marketing | no comments