Affiliation Cash - The affiliate frontline

GadZooks! The Fauklands are being invaded AGAIN!?

When it comes to ranking in the SERPs that count, there’s no such thing as enough back links (well, unless they come from bad neighbourhood sites… but that’s a post for another time). But how do you get good quality back links for free? Especially when sites with a decent PR are usually out right refusing, or want some hard cash?

Press releases…

Not only do these things often rank well for given terms, you’re also basically guaranteed a spot for a few minutes in the “real time” search on Google & Bing, and you’ll stick around for a little while in Google News if you’ve submitted to a quality site.

Of course the problem is finding quality sites that you can submit to, without it actually costing you anything. And I know you guys have better ways of spending your time than researching that stuff, so I’ve done it for you.

Here’s 18 free press release distribution sites for you, and I’ve thrown in their basic Google PR as well because I know some of you love to sculpt that stuff like it’s Play-Doh.

The real benefit of a press release is that, under Google’s current algorithm, as they age, they gain importance by virtue of being a press release and are more likely to show up in informational searches. It’s not like article marketing on EZA where they basically get tossed aside after a while because of the disposable nature of the site.

However you do need to keep in mind that you can’t just spam a press release site, and your article does need to be 1) professional in tone; and 2) actually seem newsworthy in some way.

Many of them actively actively approve or prune articles, and will ban spammy accounts.

Happy Hunting - Harvey

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I don’t know about you, but when I’m searching for quality information, my first thought is that I always want the absolutely most recent thing. Especially if it comes from a source that isn’t well edited, most likely unverified, and has massive potentials for misuse or gross inaccuracy.

And because Wikipedia simply isn’t fast enough to do all that in realtime for me, I’m so amazingly glad that Google has decided to basically get live, streaming feed direct from Twitter.

Sarcasm aside, this has actually let a few glaringly obvious holes (at least temporarily) that can be exploited in Google’s insistence that newer = better, particularly if you combine it with their new “hey, we already know what everyone wants” attitude. And these glarignly obvious holes can be exploited to your benefit quite nicely for promoting your Affiliation Cash programs.

So let’s say you’re running aff links to one of our offerings that has a search parameter that you can embed into your affiliate link*. This little loophole is great because you can now tweet / status update that you’ve just watched / listened to a great movie / album that you got for free from this awesome website. You then insert the link with the correct address, and Bit.Ly hides your affiliate link nicely (even more so because most people don’t have the Bit.Ly extension for FireFox that allows them to see where the links go).

Ok, so you’ve done this once, and if you’re being fairly current, you might get 5-15 clicks out of Google before it drops out. Possibly more, possibly less, if the term is really popular. Certainly not enough to get a conversion every time… Sounds kinda like wasted effort, actually.

And if it does, then you’ve learnt absolutely nothing from me over the past year where I keep talking about things you nee to look into for yourself, like automation!

There are heaps of automation tools out there for Twitter and Facebook alike. Look around for some, and make sure that they have the ability to spin content. This is insanely important, because it will save you ludicrous amounts of time. You simply setup a line that’s readily spinnable to make it seem like you just listen to music or watch movies and TV shows non-stop, with enough current artists or movies, and let it go about once an hour on autopost, where it can spin the new content for you each time. Then, if the software supports conditions, attach the name to the correct search query on the site… Or don’t. Let the lazy slobs on Google search for that stuff once they get to the site in question.

Keep it going over a few different accounts, and the number of followers is entirely irrelevant, because you’re getting traffic from Google, not Twitter. Any followers gullible enough to fall for your army of automated, spinning bots.

Anyway, I’m sure Google’s bound to pick up on this soon. They’re not idiots over there, so you better take advantage of this one while you can.

Happy Hunting - Harvey

*If you have NFI what I’m talking about there, you’re welcome to email or MSN me, and I’ll explain in greater detail.

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"Awesome! Everyone one of these results is about hair styling products!"

Google has once again changed the playing field for those attempting to make money online. This time around it has been decided that they are going to basically ensure that everyone gets “personalized” search results.

The gist is that, even without being logged into any Google services, every computer (the computer, not the user, because Google seems to be running on the assumption that they are one in the same here - See pic below for humorous consequence) will have its searched preferences logged in cookie form so that subsequent searches on the G will yield results that are more in tune with what the person that predominantly uses that computer is after.

It should be stated that this is entirely an opt-out system, meaning that people that aren’t aware of it which is probably 85% of users (to pull a realistic but totally made up number out of my nethers) will get these results, and a further 10% of people simply don’t care enough to bother, or actively prefer the personalized results.

The typical reaction of an SEO based affiliate upon hearing about any change at Google

Naturally this (like every other change) has much of the SEO community up in arms as there seems to be the belief that people will never again be exposed to websites that they haven’t ever been to before. The logic of that seems to fail on the basis that people tend to bookmark pages that they intend to revisit, or at least remember enough about the name of the page or product (sometimes even the URL) and search for that, instead of the generic terms.

Where this becomes useful the end user is simply that Google search will finally be able to contextualize searches like they’ve been promising since 2001. No longer will I be offered coffee or holidays when I look up “Java”.

Grandpa just wasn't the same after attempting to look up information on Google using Little Jimmy's computer, due to Little Jimmy's search history & preferences

If you’re looking up “red socks”, and you’re not in the US, you’ll most likely get information that is more about something to go between your shoes and feet than it is about baseball teams.

So why am I writing all this when it clearly has little to do with Affiliation Cash?

Simple. I’m reminding people that the sky isn’t falling, and that SEO still has it’s place.

Most people are generally searching for something they don’t actually know about already, which means personalized search is useless for anything other than providing context around it. If your site is SEOd to the hilt for download based terms, and someone decides they want to “download free programnamehere”, there’s a good chance that your site will still have the same SERP as it would have without these changes. The differences lie pretty much only in areas where language becomes ambiguous, such as “bowling”. Someone might be looking for a lane of 10 pin, lawn bowls, or the equivalent of pitching in cricket.

So just chill out, and keep trying to get your sites decently optimised.

Happy Hunting - Harvey

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About a week ago I had someone ask me how it was they were managing to show up so well in Google for certain keywords, but they couldn’t even find themselves in Bing.

Whilst I’m fairly certain that this was a rhetorical question, I attempted to answer it anyway from my own observations, and that of a few other friends in the marketing world that I chew the fat with on a particular forum.

In so far as we could gather, Bing liked sites that:

• had a commercial motive behind them i.e. had a shopping cart or payment gateway in them, and were there to sell products or services;
• were well linked by other sites that were well linked;
• had some decent domain age to them.

For the most part, it seemed like a more commerce oriented version of the previous MSNLive search engine.

However, in an attempt to get people on the right foot with them, MS has released a general guide on how to optimise for Bing properly. You can read it all here, or the cliff notes below.

What you should do:

Honestly, I like this Bing better...

Basically all the same stuff that Google loves, because it’ll be a globally warm day in Al Gore’s world before MS innovates something entirely on their own steam.

• RSS feeds
• Bloggers linking to you in their posts
• Social media links
• User generated content like Wikis*, forums and MU blogs.
• Article marketing
• etc

*It should be pointed out that Wikis are good for pretty much any SE that relies on links for establishing authority, as they basically generate a lot of internal links for very little effort, as well as creating fresh content on a semi-regular basis.

Of course, the problem with using wikis is that they are applicable to very few sites that work with Affiliation Cash programs. I’ll go into more detail about how you can exploit wikis on your site in another post when I feel like writing a bit of a diatribe.

What you shouldn’t do:

• Go on massive link building campaigns. At least, not in a short period of time. Unlike Google, they’re watching for the number of links in comparison to how many you would normally get. Google, in so far as I’ve gathered, expects sites to go “viral” and get a few links, then a flood, which slowly scales down. Bing on the other hand don’t want that. They want sites to have staying power, so if your link building suddenly goes up by an order of magnitude, they’re going to think something’s pretty suss.
• Blog comments on non-relevant blogs. Comment spam is great because most blog owners have accidentally left out the rel=nofollow part of their site as they’re not SEO savvy. Bing is basically attempting to stamp that one out though, and if they don’t deem the blog you’re commenting on to be related to the comment: penalty! Likewise, one can assume that track back spam probably won’t work anymore, although it also means that you won’t be able to negative SEO competitors by linking them from known to be bad blogs anymore either.
• Linking out to known spam sites. Ok, this one’s a bit easier for most people to deal with. Just don’t do it… But what if you’re running a link wheel? What if one of those sites gets flagged a spam site? Game over! Because a lot, if not all, of your link wheel sites are going to be pointing back to the now known spam site becausey ou were trying to game Google.

Whether MS realises it or not, they may have actually helped Google along in the market place with some of their own optimization rules, simply because if people want to optimise for traffic from both, then they’re playing against rules that normally would have allowed them to slip on a black hat and go on their merry way.

Still, the black hatters that make their own tools, as opposed to just buying those out there, will surely find ways around this themselves and will shortly come up with some nice exploits that I will be sure to tell you about as I find out about them myself.

Happy Hunting - Harvey

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Google Caffeine should, at this point:

1. not be a surprise to anyone reading this;
2. not be noticeable to anyone outside of SEO and online marketing;
3. offer a better end-user experience;
4. screw your hard earned spot in the SERP; or
5. all of the above.

If you pay attention to Google’s poster boy, Matt Cutts, you will have noticed that he has told people that G’s “Caffeine” is going to be going venti-noir-espresso double shot after the Xmas shopping season. The reasons for this are moot.

What you need to be aware of, dear affiliate, are that there are going to be changes in the algorithm to include a lot of “real time” search elements. Suddenly, those bit.ly backlinks may actually become worthwhile. Another change that we can safely assume is coming is anything something involving an obvious sub-ID in the URL. Google already hates direct-linking, and punishes you for it when you try to do it with AdWords, so I really won’t be surprised if it comes through on the dofollow links as well.

Perhaps the most interesting is that Cutt’s has actually said that page loading times will be factored in in future. This basically forces people to optimise code in a way that removes most cross site script loading, javascript and (oddly enough) Flash based sites because those things take forever to load (and often really just aren’t worth it).

So if you’re making your own sites, I give a hearty recommendation to going through the code when you can and optimizing it… and then thinking about finding out where there’s some hosting from an ISP that’s playing host to a Google Datacenter, and buying some space in a rack there.

Happy Hunting - Harvey

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Recently, I received a question from one of our affiliates about a particular black hat method of boosting their Search Engine Ranking Placement (SERP).

Particularly, it was about a method they’d read about on a forum: Link Farming.

I’ll admit that I’m not an expert at this. I’m more of a jack-of-all-trades kind of guy when it comes to making money online. I know a lot of theory, but I simply have not had the time (or incentive) to try every method out there. This is one I’ve dabbled in briefly, so whilst I’m not ignorant of it, I’m no expert

Caveat Perfectus.

The three major search engines, Google, Yahoo!, and  MS Live, all use algorithms that have a couple of functions in common. One of them is relevance by back links. That is, the more links you have, the more relevant they believe your site to be. Google takes it a step further and adds extra weight to sites that have a whole heap of links from other sites that have a whole heap of links, etc etc. 
(Don’t both trying to understand Google’s ranking algorithm, it’ll hurt your brain)

So what better way to get ranked well then to automatically generate a whole heap of sites, and have them all link to your main site, or buy thousands of back links, right? 

Well, wrong, actually…

Google and MS Live have something about “natural link building”. In the real world, sites don’t suddenly have a thousand links. They get a few links, then a few dozen, then maybe 50-60, then a couple hundred, etc. Natural link growth grows like that before reaching a plateua for a few days and then levelling off and dropping back down. Virally if you will.

The black hat part of this comes from automated blogging. The process of that is a post for another time. However, if you are using blog CMS such as Wordpress, it’s possible to get plugins that will automatically look for keywords in your posts, and link them appropriately for you. Combined that with the automated posts that are relevant to your main site, and you’ll occasionally get a link from each of these blogs back to your main site. Enough of these automated blogs (honestly, about 20 ought to do it), and you’ll should be getting a few links every day from “different sites”.

If you are going to purchase your links, make sure there is an agreement to have no more than a few dozen links added daily until you’ve used up all of your links. If you are buying links you’re also going to be aware that Google penalises sites that it knows has purchased links. There are links from some sites that will also hurt your SERP. “Bad neighbourhoods” online of people basically selling links from sites that are nothing but poorly made directories. Enough links from sites like these will damage your placement.

Be sure to stay tuned for more posts on increasing your SERP, and mistakes to avoid.

Happy Hunting - Harvey

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Hi again folks.

Another SEO question. I’m beginning to feel like I should be getting some sort of logo and start shaving my head… or photographing every meal I eat and telling you about it instead of talking about how I actually make my money.

This week’s question was about submitting to directories.

This is some really old school stuff here, so a bit of internet history first guys.

I don’t know how many of you were online before Google, but this stuff reaches back that far. YES, there was a on the internet before Google existed! Shocking, I know. Anyway, before Google hit the scene, most of the search engines out there, like Lycos, Yahoo, Alta Vita, etc., were pretty amazingly crap… And that’s putting it nicely.

The whole reason keyword stuffing exists at all? Because most of those search engines worked on keyword indexation, but they all did it slightly differently, so you had to configure your site a dozen different ways to get it to rank well universally. There was an ok engine called Dog Pile that ranked you according to how all the other larger SEs of the time ranked you. But I digress…

Before these engines, and even during their hey-day, the only way to really navigate the net and find what you wanted was a site that was basically a large list of other sites in a particular niche, with a bit of a description on each: Link Directories. 

They often worked by you linking to them on your site, and they’d link back to you in exchange so you were a part of it. The more advanced ones had some randomization script and became Web Rings.

Back in the present day, the major SEs algorithms work on a number of things, including number of inbound links and age of the site & domain.

Think about it a second. You’ve got some sites over a decade old, with hundreds if not thousands of links back to them, often from sites equally old. It makes for some good PR value for the original Link Directories like DMOZ or Jayde.

So, to the original question, is there value in linking your site from Link Directories?

Yes and no.

Yes if you’ve managed to get a link in the older ones.
No if you’re linking from the newer ones that are usually flagged for what they are… crap, worthless link spam. If you’re thinking about buying links to increase your SERP, think again about buying them from a place offering you hundreds or thousands of directory listings. It’ll usually be poison.

Happy Hunting - Harvey

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