Can You Make Money from Affiliate Marketing? If so How?

Before I start, I would like to make one thing clear:

I do not believe in easy money and there are no magical tips in this article that will help you get rich overnight. So if you are after easy money then this article is not for you.

This article mainly covers the following topics:

• What affiliate marketing is and the different types of affiliate marketing
• The advantages of being an affiliate marketer
• Some tips and good practices to become a successful affiliate marketer

So, can you really make money from affiliate programs? Well yes and no; there is money in affiliate marketing but if YOU can make money from it or not depends on a lot of other factors such as your commitment, experience, site traffic etc.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

According to Wikipedia

“Affiliate marketing is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts”

Basically, you as a publisher will be rewarded when you help a business by promoting their products or services. So for example, if you sign up for any affiliate program and promote it’s products then you will get a commission when the visitor you send from your site makes a purchase.

Affiliate marketing is probably one of the quickest and cheapest (not the easiest) ways to start making money online as you don’t have to create any products yourself. You simply link up a buyer and a seller, and you take a commission on the sale that has been referred by you.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

When you join an Affiliate program and choose the products that you want to sell, sellers provide you with a unique affiliate code that you can use to refer traffic to the target site. Most affiliate programs will offer ready made text links, banners and other forms of creative copies whereby you only have to copy the code and place it on your website to start referring traffic. When interested visitors click on these links from your site they get redirected to the product site and if they purchase a product or subscribe to a service you as the referrer make a commission.

The sellers can track your performance through your affiliate ID and the affiliate softwares (eg. WP Affiliate Platform) that they use. You also have complete, real time access to all sales and commissions stats.

You don’t need to sell products all the time to make a commission. Different affiliate programs can use different payment terms such as:

• Pay per Sale: In this program a merchant pays you a percentage of the sale price when the purchase is completed.
• Pay per Click: In this program you get paid based on the number of visitors you redirect to the Merchant’s website from your affiliate site, whether or not a sale is made.
• Pay per Lead: You get paid once the referred visitors provide their contact information on the target site by filling out a simple contact form.

Why be an Affiliate Marketer?

Affiliate marketing is considered to be one of the world’s fastest growing and best internet marketing techniques to earn money online and I will explain why:

• Cost effective: Marketing on the internet is cheap and you don’t have to worry about the production cost as the product is already developed by the seller. You don’t need a physical business location or hire employees either.
• Global Market: Online marketing gives you the opportunity to reach people all over the world easily.
• No Fees: You don’t need to pay anything to join affiliate programs.
• No Storage No Shipping: You don’t need to worry about storage, packing or shipment of the product. They are all taken care of by the seller.
• No customer support: You don’t need to provide any customer support or deal with consumer complaints as the Seller does that for you.
• Passive income: A regular job can give you a fixed income as long as you continue to work. Depending on your marketing skill Affiliate marketing can create a steady flow of income even when you are not in front of your computer.
• Work from home: If you make enough money then you don’t have to worry about going to work at the same time every day or getting stuck in traffic. You can work in the comfort of your own home.

Tips on Becoming a Successful Affiliate Marketer

After reading all the benefits of affiliate marketing if you think you will be rich over night by selling affiliate products online then you are wrong. Affiliate marketing is definitely an excellent way to make money online but it’s highly competitive too. In order to be successful in Affiliate marketing you need to know the market needs, learn how to promote products, what works and what doesn’t. The following are a few tricks on becoming successful in affiliate marketing that I have learnt over time.

1. Only Choose a Handful of Good Products

The first mistake a lot of affiliate marketers make is that they register with too many different affiliate programs and try to promote everything. Pursuing affiliate marketing down this path can become very overwhelming and you won’t be able to promote any product properly. All you need in order to be successful is a handful of good products to promote. Try to understand the market needs and look for products that align correctly with the topic of your site.

2. Use Several Traffic Sources to Promote Products

Most affiliate marketers put up the ads only on their sites. There is nothing wrong with this approach but know that there are many other traffic sources that you can tap into and promote the products simultaneously. The more targeted traffic you can send to the sales page the more your chances are of making money.

Google Adwords can be used to drive targeted traffic to a sales page. You simply make an ad in your adwords account then use your affiliate link in the target page URL of the ad. Obviously, you will have to continuously measure the conversions and see if the campaign cost is less than the campaign profit in order to keep the campaign running but I am sure you get the idea.

3. Test, Measure and Track Your Affiliate Campaign

It is a very good idea to use different product promotion strategies so you can figure out what is working and what is not. Try to do split testing and measure the performance of each campaign then take actions accordingly. Changing a few things here and there can increase your profit dramatically. Make sure to place the banner ads on different areas of your site’s pages. Some positions will make the ads more noticeable than others.

Most affiliate programs will give you basic stats that you may need but there is nothing stopping you from using your own conversion tracking software too. There are many conversions tracking sofware out there that you can use to track your affiliate campaign.

4. Research the Demand of the Product

If you try to sell a product that is in low demand then chances are that you are not going to get many sales no matter how hard you try. So it is a good idea to spend a bit of time researching and finding out if a product that you are thinking of promoting is a product that your audience needs. If your site gets decent traffic then you can conduct an online survey and easily get input from your visitors.

5. Stay Current with New Methods and Techniques

Affiliate marketing is a very competitive field and people are always coming up with new techniques. Try to stay current with these new techniques and market trends otherwise you will fall behind.

6. Choose the Right Merchant

When you promote a product you also promote the person or the company who is behind the product so try to choose wisely. You don’t want your visitors to go and buy a product following your advice then come back unhappy. Do you think that this visitor will come back to your site and take your advice again? Most likely no; this can hurt your credibility in the long run. Usually, websites/company that offer good customer service will have better customer satisfaction so try to stick with promoting their products.

7. Use Helpful Tools

If you are serious about affiliate marketing then try to find tools that will help you be more efficient. There are many helpful tools out there. If you are using a WordPress powered site then consider getting a plugin similar to the Affiliate Link Manager.

Don’t just hope and pray that visitors will buy; setup everything correctly and make it happen! If you think that visitors will click on your affiliate links and buy just because you placed dozens of affiliate links on your website then you are wrong! You need to have a structured plan in place. Affiliate marketing is a business so you will have a much better chance of succeeding if you treat it like one.

I am sure I haven’t covered everything so please feel free to share your tips in the comment area below.

Blogging with Intent – Tips on keeping readers coming back to your blog

Being in the website development business, I get to see a lot of blogs, and I really mean a lot of blogs. There are those that get read as a source of information about the industry, and Google+ is a great source for finding new and authoritative writers about the web. Then there are the blogs I read just to get a sense of what’s happening commercially in all sorts of industries.

It’s reading those business blogs that has prompted me to write this one. You’ll often find commentary about how important blog titles are, and that’s very true for attracting readers to your blog in the first place. But what if you start reading and realise that there’s no point to the post? That happens all the time I’m afraid. A business owner is told by his SEO provider that blogging is important for rankings (which it is) and then writes something that is simply a vehicle for keywords and provides nothing of value for the reader.

While that might not seem to be much of an issue, in reality it can be a significant problem. A blog can say a lot about any business, do they know their industry, can they add any value to the customer relationship, are they at all credible? If the answer is a no to all the above questions, there’s a good chance that the reader will simply move on.

One of the primary causes for articles that miss the mark is that the writer doesn’t have an objective for their blog.

For our blog, our objective is very simple. We are here to share our knowledge gained from over 15 years in the industry, it can be a resource for our customers or any business that is searching for website related information.

But objectives can be very wide ranging, for a retailer it might be more product focused, for a services company it might be to demonstrate depth of knowledge and experience, or it might be a vehicle to gain subscribers for EDM campaigns.

So how do you ensure your blog is relevant and effective?

1. Define first your overall business objectives for blogging.

2. Set goals for each blog.

Whatever the goal, you need to be clear about your objectives for every blog post you write. When you’re developing a list of blog topics, write down your goal for each topic. When you’ve written the first draft for a new blog, read it through and assess whether it meets the goal you set for that blog. Always keep the bigger picture in mind when you write individual blogs.

3. Engage your customers/readers.

If you’re writing a business blog, that’s usually not a great place to use as a soap box, effective business blogs will define a particular issue or known customer need and then offer advice, information and seek feedback in many cases.

4. Define your readership goals for your blog.

Set realistic and measurable goals for your blog, page views may be a good measure, or simply of a percentage of your overall site traffic might be a better way to measure your success.

5. Promote your blog posts.

Lastly, you need to actively promote your blog, on your website, on social media and in any other way that will ensure that readers know about your writing. For instance, we have a link to our blog in every e-mail we send, and document that we send to our customers.

These tips can help you to make your business blog an effective communication tool. Don’t make the mistake of not taking your blog seriously, if you don’t then you’re better off not blogging at all.

Some steps to improve website conversions

I’m a big fan of concise “how to” blogs and articles that provide good tips on how to achieve something without having to spend hours researching and reading. As the web gets ever more congested with competing sites, the need to stand out and be the site that converts to sales or inquiries is becoming evermore important. This blog is about how to achieve better conversions on your site.

While layout considerations are certainly important, and really a topic in itself, as I jotted down my notes about conversions, I realised that what is important for website conversions is just the same as what is considered to be best practice in web copywriting. With Google’s continuing focus on quality content as well, it’s hard to get away from the need to really focus on your website content to both rank well and to convert your site visitors to customers.

So, while we’ve covered these topics before in other ways, it’s important enough to bear repeating.

1. Write compelling copy and attention grabbing headlines

 How many sites do you visit where the home page heading is “Welcome to…..”??

Given you get so little time to grab a visitor’s attention, why waste time saying welcome when providing well written and relevant copy will make your visitors feel welcome anyway?

Your page headline is vital, it can either entice your visitors to read further or drive them away if it’s not relevant.

Once you’ve grabbed a visitor’s attention though, the next priority is to engage them with your page copy.

All the usual guidelines for writing good copy apply; write for your website visitors, keep your messages simple and focussed, make sure that you include the relevant keywords for the page  and provide clear steps and easy conversion paths.

Some of the key messages that you need to address on a landing page (depending on the outcomes you require from the page) are:

• Tell your visitors why they’re about to read the page
• Make it clear who the page is for (small businesses, consumer sales etc)
• Tell your visitors what’s in it for them, what are the benefits of your product or service.
• Tell your visitors what the steps are to get access to your products or benefits

One thing which is becoming more common is an increasing length of landing pages. While common wisdom is that website pages should be concise and not excessively long, the current trend is to have the content above the fold to be simple with clear call to action options, below the fold provides an opportunity to provide much more “in depth” copy. This doesn’t detract from the main message but for those who are interested in more information it’s an easy way to access that.

2. Write your copy with the user experience in mind.

It can be a challenge to write copy that gets your message across clearly, provides the visitor with an effective online experience and provide you with a good return on investment.

• How do you meet those needs in your web page copy?
• Write clearly and focus on a single key message on each page.
• Make your call to action prominent, don’t make the visitor search for the way to buy or contact you.
• Keep you key message separate from the product or service detail; benefits should be the primary focus on any page
• Anytime you write copy, put yourself in the customer’s shoes and assume no prior knowledge of your products and services. Are you communicating clearly?
• Get somebody who doesn’t know your products to proofread your copy and see if their understanding of what you’ve written matches what you are trying to communicate.

25 Google search tips and tricks you need to know

  Use search operators

Google does a pretty good job of working out what you’re looking for, but the more specific you are the better your results will be.

Using operators does just that, so for example enclosing a phrase in quotation marks — “like this” — searches for that specific phrase, adding a minus sign excludes that word (salsa recipe — tomatoes) and using OR gives Google a choice, eg. World Cup location 2014 or 2022.

Search a single site

You can restrict your search to a single website by using the site: operator, so for example if you wanted to look for Android content on TechRadar you might type android site:techradar.com.

Get definitions

The define: operator, as you might expect, gives you definitions — so define:search gives you the dictionary definition of search and synonyms such as hunt, look, scout and dig.

Do sums and currency conversions

You probably already know that Google will carry out sums if you type them in the search box — 4*15 gives you 60, 2*2*3*4 gives you 48 and an on-screen calculator and so on — but it can also convert units and currencies. Convert 200 USD to rupee converts dollars to rupees, and you can also convert measurements such as distance, weight and temperature.

Get essential info, fast

Google Tips Need to chase your love interest to the airport? You can quickly check the details on Google Type weather and you’ll see the current conditions and a seven-day forecast; add the name of a town to get the weather report from a different location. 

Type flight BA1491 to see the status of a flight, time New York to see the local time in that location, sunrise London to see when the sun’s coming up or GOOG to see Google’s stock information.

Search by location

If you type a generic term such as “Italian restaurant”, Google will show you results in and around your current location along with a map showing where they are. If you’d rather be more specific, enter the postal code at the end of your query.

Filter your image search

Image filter Image search often throws up seemingly unrelated pictures, so filter your searches. Some terms produce all kinds of search results, so for example an image search for “heather” brings you plants, Heather Graham and Heather from EastEnders.

Google will offer to filter those results for you — so for example our search for heather gives us the options “plant”, “flower”, “eastenders”, “scottish” and so on.
You can use the Search Tools button to filter by size, colour, type — such as photos of people or illustrations, time and whether you can use the photos without payment. 

Remember your operators too: heather — graham produces a screen full of Heathers but no Heather Graham.

See sites that aren’t online

Google’s cache keeps copies of sites it’s looked at, so if they’re down you can still see them by using the cache: operator — so cache:techradar.com would display TechRadar if for some reason our server wasn’t working. The same operator can sometimes catch sneaky “ninja edits”, where sites correct appalling, offensive or hilarious mistakes: you’ll often find the uncorrected original in the cache.

See what’s on

Fancy a film? Movie times Delhi tells you what’s on in that particular city, and if you use a specific cinema name such as movie times PVR Saket you’ll see what’s on in that particular cinema.

Use your voice

If you’re using Chrome, Android or the Google iOS app, you can search by voice: press or click on the microphone icon and tell Google what you’re looking for.

Check spellings

Not sure how to spell something? Type it into the search box and unless you really mangle it, Google will show you the correct spelling, its definition, and synonyms you might find easier to spell.

Filter your web search

If you click on Search Tools you’ll see four filtering options: The country, so for example in India you can search anywhere or limit your results to Indian websites; the date and/or time of publication, ranging from the last hour to the last year; by reading level; and whether Google should use your current location.

Find out what links to what

It’s easy to discover who’s linking to your site, or to any other page you want to know about: Just use the link: operator, link:techradar.com tells you who’s linking to us.

Find similar sites

Here’s another handy operator: Related. This one helps you find pages that are similar to one you already know about, so for example related:techradar.com tells you about our sister sites and some of our rivals.

Get nutritional information

Bacon Tofu google tips What a surprise – bacon isn’t as healthy as tofu

Some food-related searches will display nutritional information, so looking for chocolate cake will display the calories, nutrients, vitamins and fat in a typical recipe. 

Where it gets clever is when you tell Google to compare things, such as compare apples and oranges or compare bacon and tofu.

Search between two numbers

You can restrict Google’s search to a specific number range by using two dots, such as 1914..1918 or $250..$350. Annoyingly the financial one doesn’t recognise UK pounds: if you type £100..£150 you’ll get results in the $100-$150 range instead.

Find specific files

The filetype: operator enables you to search for specific kinds of file, such as Word documents or PDFs. Google indexes most things, so it’s just a matter of dropping the dot from the file extension and searching for filetype:xml, filetype:svg or filetype:cs. It’s important to note that Google only searches for the file extension, so an XML document that isn’t saved with the .xml extension won’t show up in a filetype:xml search.

Find apps

You can bring Google’s search powers to the world of smartphone apps by clicking More > Apps at the top of the results page. That’s particularly handy for Android users, as Android can install apps you select from the Google Play website using your desktop browser.

Customise your search settings

Google enables you to customise your search results in several ways. You can use SafeSearch to filter explicit results (and lock it so the kids can’t go in to your search settings and switch it off again), turn Google’s instant results off, increase the number of results you get per page and make selected search results open in a new window when you click on them.

Personalise your search settings

If you let it, Google can record your search history and provide access to it on any device. There are several benefits to doing so: You will get more relevant results because Google knows more about you, you’ll get better search predictions, and you can search your history for stuff you’ve looked for previously. 

Google even organises it into categories such as shopping, news, images and travel. The downside, of course, is that it also records anything dodgy or embarrassing you might have looked for.

Translate from one language to another

Translate – Google tips Now you can quickly offer flowery insults in any language. Need to translate something in a hurry? Just type translate language A language B (where language A is the language you’re translating from and language B the language you’re translating to) and you’ll see a big friendly translator at the top of the page.

See what others are searching for

Google Trends shows you what others in your country are searching for, with occasionally puzzling results: at the time of writing the UK is interested in Boris Johnson, FIFA 15 and Vitamin D. Google even provides a screensaver that shows you real-time searches – presumably with filtering to screen out the scary stuff.

See Google’s best doodles

If you click I’m Feeling Lucky without entering any search criteria Google will take you to its collection of doodles, the customised logos it uses to mark important dates

Uncover Easter eggs

Monster – Google tips Travel in style, or at least pretend to with Google Maps. If you search for google in 1998 you’ll see Google as it was when it first launched. It’s not the only Google Easter egg: searching do the harlem shake in YouTube makes the screen dance while do a barrel roll will spin the screen around. In maps, getting directions from Fort Augustus to Urquhart Castle in Scotland enables you to travel by Loch Ness Monster.

Do everything in a single screen

Google’s Advanced Search page enables you to use many of its most useful features without having to remember the operators that make them work – so you can enter number ranges, specify the exact words to look for, filter by language, date, reading level, file type or usage rights, restrict your search to a particular site or domain… you get the idea.

Some Common Website Content Mistakes

For most businesses now a website is a vital part of sales, marketing and branding efforts.

Visitors go to your website for a particular reason, and in most cases that’s not to see the latest trends in web design, but to find out about your products or services. So you need to ensure that you answer their questions easily and quickly and use your website to sell your product or service.

The following are a few very common problems that are found on websites large and small, but that are easily rectified with a little effort.

1. Out-of-date content.

It never fails to amaze me that so often the place where many customers will first look at a business has tired out of date information. The expectation when customers visit a website is that it will have the latest information about a company’s products and services. It doesn’t matter if it is a fabulous award winning website design, when a website doesn’t have “up to date” and relevant  information, visitors to the site are likely to assume that the business is simply not interested or can’t provide better service than the competition. They might even assume that the business is no longer trading.

So for your website, make sure that your content both addresses the needs of your customers and is updated on a regular basis. If you have a blog, make sure you update it frequently, it will show your customers you are engaged and will and help with your search engine rankings.

2. No clear call to action.

Call to action techniques are really a whole topic and more on their own, but we’ll cover some of the basics here.

What do you want visitors to do when they visit your website? Frequently, websites are so intent on telling the story about a company’s products or services that the next step; to buy a product, or contact the company etc, is completely forgotten.

A call to action should be plainly visible on every page of a website.

Set the scene

This involves identifying a need or problem that customer might have and present a product that solves that problem. You can talk about the benefits of the product and also communicate the benefits of responding or following the call to action.

Use action oriented words

You need to be clear about what a customer needs to do to take the next step to buy or inquire about your products and services. Words such as the following are clear, direct and leave no doubt about what the customer needs to do next.

•    Call
•    Buy
•    Register
•    Subscribe
•    Donate

Place your call to action on every page

If you’ve written good engaging web copy, it’s likely that your site visitor will visit a number of pages in your site before taking the decision to follow your call to action. In that case, it’s vital that you call to action is visible across as much of the site as you can. Often that might be in the page header, but call to action placement is a complex topic and it may well be appropriate to have you call to action in different positions on various pages.

3. Confusing Content

It’s entirely natural for anyone who has a passion about their company, or product, to want to tell everyone all about it. The difficulty arises when that passion results in masses of information on a page but with no clear message for the customer without detailed reading of every part of the page.

It can take a lot of work to refine web copy so that it covers all the key points about a company or product but still retain real clarity in the message. Site visitors don’t want to spend a lot of time sifting through masses of text, so the key messages need to be highlighted early in the copy (as little as 25% of text is read on any page) and to be unambiguous.

Is there an easier softer way to approach SEO?

A client asked me this week if there was an easier, softer way of optimising their online store without having to go through the time and expense of a “full blown”SEO campaign. The answer depends on who you speak to, I guess. But if you step outside the comprehensive umbrella that encapsulates SEO, there may well be an “easier, softer way” to approach website optimisation.

Pondering this further, I must admit that I’ve spent the best part of 3 months trying to devise alternatives that are better suited to clients who don’t have a realistic budget for SEO, or who have enough on their plates without having to sit up until the wee hours trying to get their head around keyword research and copywriting for SEO.

So before I get an entire industry’s nose out of joint, I’ll draw a quick line in the sand! Search Engine Optimisation, almost by definition, requires specific steps in order to achieve a goal. But if we cheat that definition, perhaps we can slide in there somewhere, a different approach that’s geared more towards those small business people who are flat out managing their business and who are happy to settle for an “easier, softer” approach – for now.

The “easier, softer” approach I want to put forward, is optimising key web pages and making sure that their main SEO check-boxes are ticked. Is it possible to “dress up” a website so it appears relatively attractive to search engines? Just enough to get the website out of Google’s “bad books” and onto the “playing field”?

My soft approach is along the following lines:

1. Write down 3 realistic long-tail keyword search phrases that potential customers would use to find your products or services. Don’t include your business name!

2. Write a nicely flowing introduction sentence that incorporates the main keywords that best describe your products or services. Place your small selection of chosen keywords at the start of the sentence, but make sure that the sentence reads well and makes sense. This “sentence” will become your Home page heading. Place this text at the top of your Home page and give the heading a “tag” of “Heading 1” using your CMS Page Editor style tools.

3. Write 1 or 2 short paragraphs that, broadly speaking, further explain what you do. Few web users take time to read, so keep it short and precise. Now write 3-5 bullet points that summarize everything, and again keep these short. As with your Home page heading, place the most important keywords and phrases towards the start of the first paragraph. Think of a newspaper and how the most important articles are at the top of the page. These paragraphs and bullet points should now sit directly beneath your Home page heading. “Tag” them with a “p” (paragraph) tag from within your CMS Page Editor.

4. Within your website CMS, place your small selection of keywords within the ‘META Keywords’ field for your Home page, separating each with a comma.

Now place your first paragraph within the ‘META Description’ field, and if the paragraph is more than ~160 characters in length, edit it until it fits. Search engines typically serve this text within search results so make it meaningful and consider slipping in a “call to action” if you can.

Finally, take the first sentence from that first paragraph and place it within the ‘Page Title’ field, ensuring that it doesn’t exceed ~60 characters in length. Again, search engines serve the ‘Page Title’ to their users, and this becomes the main text link you see on the Search Engine Results Page/s (SERPs).

5. Now go back to your Home page Page Editor and bold type important words or phrases for the benefit of skim readers (i.e. most of your website visitors who scan your text to identify that you have what they’re searching for). Don’t go crazy with the bold-type selections, try and keep them to a minimum.

What you should have now is a reasonably well-optimised Home page that search engines should favour. You’ve ticked most of the boxes for your first “test”, but search engines don’t stop at your Home page of course, they troll through your entire site looking for original content that’s adhering to the above points.

To continue the process, you repeat this for every web page on your site but instead of using the same keywords or phrases across every page within your page Heading and following paragraphs, you introduce keywords that are relevant to the content on that page, and that page only. So if you sell fruit, your Home page will make mention of apples, bananas, pears and oranges (because your Home page serves as a broad introduction about what you offer). But the separate web page that talks about ‘apples’, will not necessarily mention the other fruits as well. This means that your keywords for the ‘apples’ page will focus almost exclusively on ‘apples’ and any other directly related “service” or “product” associated with apples.

Search engines want to serve to their users, quality and original content relevant to the user’s search term. The more relevant the ‘Page Title’, ‘Heading 1..’, ‘Paragraph’ and ‘META’ tags to the actual content on the page, the more likely it is that the search engines will serve your web page to their users. But if your web page text bears little relevance to what you’ve placed in your ‘Page Title’ or META tags, the more likely it is that the search engines will view your web page with a degree of suspicion. Same applies to scraped or duplicate page content – write original page text for everything on your web site, without exception. If you have product data, “specifications” or other measurements, try to be as creative as you can when writing this onto pages. At least when it comes to Google, “copy and paste” is your worst enemy!

What I’ve proposed here is by no means comprehensive SEO. But if you get into the habit of writing quality page text and tags of relevance to the content on the page (as opposed to the web site as a whole), then you’re at least getting your web site off the beaten track and out onto the highway where it can be seen. Could this be a viable, easier, softer approach to SEO? You be the judge!

Write Web Content For Customers, Not Search Engines

To a webmaster in 2014, a website’s management checklist is a heavy beast. New product copy, ongoing blogs, user comment moderating, social channel updates and interaction (which are often hourly) – the list goes on and is seemingly never ending.

Webmasters with a keen eye will also massage their strongest keywords and phrases, and keep a constant vigil on their site’s position in search engines. Add this SEO component alone to an already bursting list of tasks and suddenly this becomes a full time job; busy online stores often have a small web team to cover all bases but smaller businesses rely on one person to maintain all these things.

So if you needed to choose one job group, which would it be? Would you invest all your time in ongoing SEO campaigns, and somewhat neglect your web content and social channel responsibilities? Or would you shift your attention to content marketing instead?

I firmly believe that by concentrating on writing quality product and web page content, and publishing regular blogs – and all the while sticking to some simple writing conventions – that your so-called SEO will take care of itself.

A webmaster’s time should be spent writing emotive, quality content rather than pouring over SEO charts and keyword research spreadsheets. Forget Google, and begin pleasing the people that really matter – your customers! I don’t see the point in attracting clicks if those you attract arrive to a page that doesn’t speak to them in a language that they understand or connect with. Seriously, what’s the point of that?

So long as you follow the basic on-page copywriting principles for SEO (i.e. keyword/phrase weighting), and write quality and emotive copy that speaks to your customers rather than Google itself, your rankings will grow naturally and your conversions will follow.

Stop writing for search engines and start writing for the audience that really matters  – your customers!

Top 10 SEO Tips

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is becoming crucial to ensure that your website is easily found, so today we’ve provided our Top 10 SEO Tips to help you get the best search results for your website.

When you are operating a business website, especially one with an online store, it is crucial that your site can be easily found. Just as bricks and mortar retail stores always try to get the best position with the highest pedestrian count, websites need to rank well in search engines to be successful.

This is where SEO (search engine optimisation) comes into the picture. Why is it so important? Well, SEO is one of the keys to the success of your online business.

What is SEO? Wikipedia defines it as:

“Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results”

Website ranking is determined by many factors, the relevance of the keyword or search terms to what the searcher is seeking, the popularity of the search term amongst the people who actually search, as well as technical elements such use of keywords/phrases in page titles, use of all keywrods and phrases within the body text etc. By understanding search terms and developing appropriate SEO strategies, your website can gradually improve its search engine rankings. 

The following Top 10 SEO tips are simple techniques that you can use to start improving the search engine ranking of your website.

Top 10 SEO Tips

1. Encourage respected, industry-related websites to link to your web pages

This is the most important factor in optimising your site. Inbound links from other websites and blogs help the search engines find you and understand what your web pages are about. A website is like a destination in a sprawling city, and links are the roads leading to it. The search engines also treat these links pointing to your web pages as ‘votes’, and the more ‘votes’ you have from good quality and relevant websites, the better.

2. Satisfy the search engines’ appetite for informative text

Customers are looking for information to help them choose a product or service. The search engines help them by finding web pages that provide useful and helpful information about that product or service. Search engines can’t ‘read’ images and animations, so they need informative text. Give the search engines plenty of reading material. This is their food.

The other benefit of providing lots of helpful information on your site is that website owners are more likely to link to your pages and the search engines will reward you for these inbound links.

3. Do some keyword research

Who is your target market? What words or phrases (keywords) would they use to search for your products and services on the Web? Do some research; you may be surprised by the results.

To be found on the Web and communicate with your customers, you need to speak their language and address their particular needs. It’s much easier to optimise web pages for keywords relating to a niche market’s needs (e.g., Indian women looking for shoes size 10 and over, as opposed to people across the globe looking for general footwear).

4. Make sure each web page has a unique title and unique content

Each of your web pages should have unique content and the keywords and title you choose for each page should reflect this. Think of each page as having a different emphasis. It’s important to have a different title for every web page. Need help with page titles and how to edit them?

Search engines rank web pages, not websites, so each page can only be optimised for a handful of keywords and you can’t optimise every page for the same set of keywords. If you try to fill a single page with all of the keywords related to your business, no single keyword will stand out to the search engines and they will not consider the page to be a good match for any specific search query.

5. Use your keywords in your web pages

Incorporate your keywords — in context and in moderation — into the text, headings, links, image titles and descriptions, description meta tags and keyword meta tags of your web pages.

6. Speak your target market’s language

Help your customers find your website by clearly explaining what products and services you offer and the regions you service. Speak your customers’ language and you will also help the search engines understand what you offer. Search engines are not good at ‘reading between the lines’ and you can help them by being specific in your choice of words.

Imagine that an Indian is searching the web for science fiction and fantasy books to buy. He types ‘science fiction books’ into Google. He also tries ‘sci fi books’ and ‘new sci fi’. Google looks for Indian web pages that best match his queries.

Google will choose Example 1 (which clearly offers ‘science fiction books’,  ‘sci fi’, ‘new in science fiction’ in ‘Australia’) over Example 2 (which offers ‘stock’, ‘titles’ and ‘new releases’). To a search engine, ‘titles’ could refer to DVDs, magazines or books — it’s not absolutely clear that Planet 9 sells books and more specifically, science fiction and fantasy books. Although a customer might infer that ‘Planet 9’ probably has something to do with sci fi, a search engine won’t necessarily make the connection.

Example 1

Science Fiction and Fantasy Books at Great Prices
Select from our wide range of sci fi and fantasy books. Our affordable shipping rates mean you can take advantage of our competitive prices, wherever you are in Australia.

New in Science Fiction
This week …

Example 2

Lots of Stock; Great Prices at Planet 9
Planet 9 has a wide range of titles at competitive prices. No matter where you are, you can get a great deal, thanks to our low shipping fees.

New ReleasesJust out! The latest …

7. Update the text content of your website

The search engines are trying to deliver the best, most up-to-date information to people searching the Web, so they favour sites that are updated often with good quality text content.

8. Study your site’s statistics

Use your website statistics to learn which sites are driving traffic to yours and which pages within your website are the most popular.

Have you paid to have your site listed in a particular directory? Check your website statistics to confirm if that directory is driving traffic to your site.

9. Add interactive features to your website

Give your customers the opportunity to contribute comments, ask questions, submit product reviews, vote in a poll, or forward links and images to friends. These features encourage visitors to return and tell others about your site. Increasing traffic to your site can in turn attract the attention of the search engines. Interactive features such as forums and blogs have the added bonus of encouraging visitors to generate more text content for your website — the very thing search engines are looking for.

10. Look at your competitors’ site content

Which web page appears first in the search result for your chosen keywords? Watch the search results over several weeks to see which pages perform well consistently. How are your competitors using those keywords on their web pages? How is their text information structured? How much information do they offer? Do you offer a product or service that your competitors don’t, or do you service an area they don’t cover? Make sure the distinction is clear to your customers and the search engines.

Given the importance of ensuring your website is easily found in Google and other search engines, we’ll continue to provide updates to our Top 10 SEO Tips and other SEO advice, as well as occasional guest blogs by SEO professionals. But whether you follow our top 10 SEO tips or not, you simply can’t ignore your website’s ranking, your business might depend on it.

Is the Search Partners Network Hurting Your CTR?

The Google search partners network is made up of sites that partner with Google to show Google ads to their visitors. On search partner sites your search ads can appear on search results pages, on site directory pages or on other pages related to a users search. You have less control over where and how these ads appear and for this reason being opted into the search partners network can hurt your ad’s performance.

You can determine how search partners is performing by segmenting by network (search partners).

Ampersands in search term reports…?

One way to find out if the search network is hurting your ad’s performance is to look in your search terms reports for repeated or unusual search terms. For more on how to find your search term reports click here.

I recently noticed some strange terms appearing in a new client’s search term reports that were really hurting click through rates. There were thousands of impressions and dozens of clicks for terms ending with ‘vans & utes automotive’. There were also similar search terms ending with ‘parts & accessories automotive’. I found it hard to believe that 15000 people would enter a search term like this one.

I started with a few Google searches and couldn’t find much on the topic. Especially on the official Adwords Community where Google’s accepted answer was very robotic. “Everything in the Search Query Report is the exact Match terms that a user typed into a single search request that triggered your ads to show. So someone typed in “clothes shoes & accessories men’s clothing jumpers & cardigans new”.”

To me this wasn’t an acceptable answer so I kept digging. A colleague of mine mentioned search partners and how sites like Gumtree (an Australian classified ad site) often display Google ads at the bottom of their search results pages. This made sense and after looking at Gumtree I realised that the strange search terms in the account matched some of the automotive categories. It appears that Google was pulling the term the user had searched and adding the category name.

The Solution

Unfortunately there is no way to disable specific search partner sites but it is possible to disable the search partners network (see below). Before you go ahead and do this make sure to check performance as search partner network CPC’s tend to be cheaper and this can result in lower cost per conversion.

 To disable search partners when creating a new campaign make sure to deselect it under networks.

182 Top Dofollow High PR Blog List for Blog Comment

Do-Follow High PR Blog Comment list is being shared today as an SEO factor. Creating Backlinks is an essential task for every blogger. This is the reason we have decided to dedicate useful stuff about building backlinks. Blog commenting is one of the most important ways of making backlinks. This is not an easy task. You need to stay with the process for long. Leaving good comments can give you many advantages. Off-Page SEO Includes Blog Commenting as an important factor. 

What are the Advantages of Blog Commenting?

Blog commenting has been important for long. This is one of the most important ways of creating faster backlinks. Whenever you leave a comment, you gain three major advantages.

First you gain a backlink which will be indexed by search engine. The more you create backlinks, the more will be the value of your site. You site grows in this way.

Second you can attract traffic. The more you do comments, the more you attract traffic. Other people also comments and they can visit your links as well. Such visitors are important for a site’s worth.

Third advantage is popularity which you can gain by leaving good comments on daily basis. Thus, people would know you and your site could become popular. Thus, you will become one of the well-known members of blogging community.

Easy Way of Blog Commenting on High PR Do-follow Blogs

Whenever you visit a High PR Do-follow Blog, must save the address of that blog. Thus you will gain a good list of such blogs. Make a file i.e. an Excel sheet so you can easily memorize and visit the exact blog. This way, you will easily find your targeted blogs. You can save enough time in this way.

Latest Do-Follow Blogs Comment List

This list is being shared today June 30, 2014. Page Rank and do-follow attribute of a site may differ any time. We hope that you will find the below list useful.

askjasonbusiness.blogspot.com/
b-spirit.com/blog/
baheyeldin.com/
bakkouz.net/
baklaako.com/
barbarawklaser.mysterynovelist.com/
barcampmilwaukee.com/
beconfused.com/
http://www.benspark.com/
bill2me.com/
billcammack.com/
bintoo.sourceforge.net/drpl/
birdhouse.org/blog/
blackhatbootcamp.com/blog/
blk1.edublogs.org/
blog.3deurope.com/
blog.achille.name/
blog.blogsthatfollow.com/
blog.bradgrier.com/
blog.bull3t.me.uk/archives/wordpress/
blog.crankingwidgets.com/
blog.footbagshop.com/
blog.greens.org.nz/
blog.iliumsoft.com/
blog.indecision2008.com/
blog.jayare.eu/
blog.linkworth.com/
blog.maddozza.com/
blog.misto.ch/
blog.ninedays.org/
blog.preshweb.co.uk/
blog.sellsiusrealestate.com/
blog.simplyuniquebabygifts.com/
blog.techiezone.in/
blog.vimagic.de/
blog.vinceliu.com/
blog.voce.ro/
blogaboutmoneyonline.blogspot.com/
blogelephant.com/
bloggersjourney.com/
bloggingfornoobs.com/
bloggingstartup.com/
blograters.com/
blogs.effinfunny.com/
blogs.speech-writers.com/
blogsthatmakemoney.net/
blogthatoutside.com/
blondemomblog.com/
boldlygoing.com/
bostonbrat.net/
bothmadandgenius.blogspot.com/
bowerbirdbeads.blogspot.com/
brad.globeproductions.com.au/wordpress/
bradtheblogboy.com/
buzzqueen.blogspot.com/
bytecoders.homelinux.com/
calebgroom.com/
carlspies.com/
cbauer.edublogs.org/
celebrity.rightpundits.com/
chakkys.com/your_soul_is_mine
charleshamel.com/
chatbugkaren.com/windingthreads/
chillimovies.blogspot.com/
chillimusic.blogspot.com/
chrishoyt.com/
chrisjdavis.org/
colinwalker.me.uk/
comedyplus.blogspot.com/
completerunning.com/
compsci.ca/blog/
conservablogs.com/EricOdom/
cooladzine.blogspot.com/
craftblog.stitchingthenightaway.com/
crafts4dummies.blogspot.com/
crayonwriter.com/
cwgordon.com/
d21-gaming.com/blog/
dadventure.ca/
dag.wieers.com/blog/
dailypundit.com/
danklass.com/wordpress/
davedragon.rilysi.com/
dereksemmler.com/
devbee.com/
digitalhub-tips.com/
digitallostboys.com/
dillydesigns.com/
diodati.omniscientx.com/
distressedderma.com/
diwatangbyaning.com/
diydollars.com/
dns.hayami-kishimoto.net/~fadenb/blog/wordpress/
doctorvee.co.uk/
dogsrus.tv/
dojoblog.info/
dorischua.com/
drupal.mattwkelly.com/
drupalchina.org/
e-caremanagement.com/
ecompeak.com/blog/
edenprairieweblogs.org/
edibletv.net/
elephantwords.co.uk/
emoneymarketing.com/
endangeredspaces.blogspot.com/
engineering.curiouscatblog.net/
entrepreneur.com.sg/wordpress/
ericinseattle.net/
ericsocia.net/
eriksvend.com/
ernursejournal.com/
es.weblogtoolscollection.com/
evielitwok.com/blog/
expressmarketingmemo.com/
ezyas123.com/
faq.wordpress.net/
farhadi.ir/posts/
faststream-tech.info/
fatladysingz.com/
fecundstench.com/
feraga.com/node/
feverishthoughts.com/
feverishthoughts.com/do-follow-bloggers/
feverishthoughts.com/oddplanet/
feverishthoughts.com/webdesign/
filthyrichnews.com/author/roblong/
financial-independence.net/
fishwrecked.com/
five4all.com/
flat-water.blogspot.com/
foafr.com/
followlist.com/blog/
food.22web.net/
food.sidkhullar.com/
foodiesacrossborders.com/foodies/
foolab.org/
foolswisdom.com/
frankgilroy.com/
freeadblogger.blogspot.com/
freshblogger.com/
frogstylebiscuit.com/
frugalhacks.com/
fruityoaty.com/
fuery.com/
funkaam.com/forums/hobby-and-others/rosys-cookbook
g-funk.eu/
gasa05.blogspot.com/
gasa12.blogspot.com/
generalhealthdirectory.com/
genuinechris.com/
getarticlesfree.com/
getmyblogon.com/
getyourgrillon.net/
gooddogfood.org/
grafphoto.com/wordpress/
gramo.ro/
greasyguide.com/
greattravelandculture.blogspot.com/
greencolibri.com/
groups.drupal.org/
growersandgrocers.net/
gylling-software.dk/
halfamonk.net/blog/
harry.sufehmi.com/
health.hundreddayheadstart.com/
healthy-lifestyle.most-effective-solution.com/
heiseidemocracy.com/
heissufficient.net/
hellosam.net/lang/en/
helpmepaymyloans.com/
helpsavesarah.com/helpsavesarah/
hitmenforhire.com/
hornroller.com/french-horn/
howtosplitanatom.com/
hrstc.org/or/
hterry.com/
hubpolitics.com/
hyperstruct.net/
ideasandthoughts.org/
idothings.info/

Best Way to Comment on Do-follow Blogs

Your comments represent your personality. Only good comments can give you advantages. If you need to criticize any post then you must have reason. Criticism should be creative. Do not discourage other bloggers. Give suggestions, ask questions and appreciate their good work. 

Negative comments should never be posted. If something is incorrect in a post just give suggestions for improvement or just leave the blog. Do not attack bloggers with immoral language.

Pass related comments. Leave related link so people could easily be convinced to visit your site. Unrelated and low quality contents must not be linked. You may disappoint your readers in this way. Therefore, link the most Successful Blog Post.

Some Disappointments about Blog Commenting

There are a lot of blogs on the web where you can comment. Your purpose is a do-follow backlink. Some time you will see a blog that was working as a do-follow blog but now it has been changed as a no-follow blog. It hurts really if such a blog becomes no-follow where you have left hundreds of comments as backlinks.

Don’t get hurt because of this. Find alternative and do not depend on a single blog. 

How awful to see a blog removed where you had many do-follow backlinks. It hurts!!!!!

How awful when you see a list showing do-follow blogs but they are not do-follow. It seems cheating but what to be done when a blogger changes do-follow into no-follow in a few minutes. 

Remember, you have to stay happy whatever happens in the above cases. Try to comment on blogs as many as you can. Think that these comments will at least bring traffic for you.

TIP: What about No-Follow Blog Comments?

No-follow blog comments should also be done. See some blogs which are related to your topic and keep yourself live there. Learn what they are telling the world. Comment there for traffic purpose. What a joy if such blogs become do-follow after you have many comments there!