Affiliate Marketing Blog

Some People Are Big In Their Own Bath Time

2010-03-02T08:11:00.008Z

... let's hope they don't drown.

Over recent years I've come to believe that 95% of what self-proclaimed "guru's" say is utter bullshit. They try obtain sycophants like Panini football stickers with the aim in having sufficient idolisers for adequately attended circle-jerks on request.

I couldn't care less how many 'friends' I have on Facebook, I don't need to write self-grandiose rubbish on my blog to please advertisers, I don't feel the need to brag about the material things in my life. Thankfully I'm more than happy with the size of my penis and don't feel the need to compensate in any way, shape or form.

I used to think that I was the only one that didn't bow down in front of these Pied Pipers. But Chris Brogan in his book Trust Agents wonderfully sums up what I've been noticing for a while (pg:98):

"There are individuals in various segments of the online world who have risen to fame in their relative niche, have parlayed that fame into something a little higher up the social ladder, and have subsequently turned their backs on the very same community where they gained notoriety as One of Us. The fall is almost fast."

And I'm not the only one. Just taking one of the points from Aaron Wall (one of the 5% to be trusted IMHO) he states in his post "Why Many Successful People Become Jerks" that "some people forget where they came from and become arrogant". But it's this bit that is the crux of what I'm saying and hopefully you'll consider when you decide who to listen to or idolise and that's the view of Clay Shirky (Aaron summarises) who describes popularity "as basically being an imbalance between the attention you garner and the attention you can give the market."

So if someone talks about themselves more than they talk about others, then find the "unfollow" and "defriend" buttons. Even seek out the "remove RSS feed" option, put to the back of your mind and seek out those people that add value, put the industry first and openly talk about their failures as much as their successes. And if they start trying to belittle their followers then roll your eyes and think "this isn't the guru I'm looking for" and move on.

[Update]
Doh! I should really put down a list of blogs that do add value:

Affiliate Stuff

One Little Duck

SEO Bullshit

SEO Scientist

SEOMoz

Blogussion

Seth Goding

Top Rank Blog

Blog Storm

Image © sneakerphotography

Google Highlighting US .com's in SERPS

2010-02-26T16:53:00.003Z

So when did Google start labelling US .com's with "United States" next to the URL?

I've just seen it on this search. (must work on my SEO evidently)

How will it effect the CTR for those .com's? Or those that target all international markets with a .com but are located in one particular country?

A Stumble Down Memory Lane ... The View Is Still The Same

2010-02-21T21:24:00.001Z

So for most of you this won't be the most relevant of posts I've ever made. But for some of you that occasionally look back at where you've come then it may be interesting.

Whilst on my way to check the location of a meeting I've got in the morning I realised that I'd beaten that path before. I used to walk that way to the Old Street Station when on my way home for providing Workthing.com with SEO consultancy.

It must have been about eight or nine years ago that I was last year - before the company went bump.

I started thinking about the strategies I was recommending. Then I realised they're pretty much no different than I recommend today.

Here's what I was suggesting to them:

1) Clear out the crap.
I suggested that they streamline the route from homepage to relevant content.

2) De-dupe
They used some microsites to target different recruitment niches, but they were too similar to each other. I tried to get them to create relevant content and use it on those sites (they already had great content on the main site)

3) Obtain more relevant links from industry authority sites to those microsites whilst trying to get more recruitment links to the main.

4) Focus more widely on relevant keywords and devise a format across sectors that will attract visitors that are more likely to convert.

5) Greater accountability of the data set and track goals more accurately.

6) Increase the likelihood that visitors would enthuse about the site and recommend it to others.

It's remarkable that these six objectives are still 100% relevant today. So has SEO changed in the last eight or nine years? My view is that it hasn't as much as people think.

To me SEO has always been about writing good content, content that focuses on your head terms, but extends into the tail. It's always been about getting good quality links. Even when I first started link building in late 1997 I always tried to get links from relevant sites. I never tried to get them from totally unrelated, but highly-valued (in general) sites. I've always tried to account for my SEO actions and gauge the success of everything I've done. So to me, the core principles of SEO have not changed during the past decade.

All that's changed is that you've got to work a hundred times harder because the competitive landscape is much tougher.

Here's to the next decade.

Playing Around With Easy Content Units & Wordpress To Mitigate Duplication

2010-02-16T12:34:00.007Z

So I'm going to do a bigger post on the process of moving from Blogger to Wordpress and all the bits and bobs, stresses and headaches that go with it. But here's just a quick one for those people that block out category, tag and search pages due to the fear of duplication.

Well there's no need to!

What you can do is add content to these pages on a page by page basis. I want to show a unique head paragraph for specific category pages so that's what I've done on my Ganache and guest reviews category pages with the code within the archive.php template:

<?php if (is_category('guest-reviews')) { ?>
The reviews below are from Guest Reviewers. Having just one reviewer may give a slanted perception of chocolate, so offering the site up to others to add their thoughts should give a more balanced scope of reviews.Reviewers are chosen for their lack of bias or favouritism for a particular brand, but they may prefer certain types of chocolate so feel free to give them your feedback
<?php } elseif (is_category('Ganaches')) { ?>
Ganache is a smooth mixture of chocolate, cream, and butter. Generally, it is dipped in tempered chocolate and rolled in powdered cocoa, sweetener, or other coatings to create a truffle, though it is also frequently used as the centre of a bonbon. » Read more in the <a href="http://www.chocolatereviews.co.uk/chocolate-glossary/">Glossary</a>. «
<?php } else { ?>
Below you can see a list of reviews about <?php single_cat_title(); ?> - we hope you enjoy! 
<?php } ?>

It's not rocket science really. I'm crap at php but am learning the odd bit here and there. I've even started to put conditional EasyContentUnits in dependent in the category at the bottom - although I need to sort the formatting out. The code I used was similar:

<?php if (is_category('ganaches')) { ?>
[Your ECU php unit code]
<?php } else { ?>
That's all for: <?php single_cat_title(); ?> - we hope you enjoy! 
<?php } ?>

I also use the excerpt option when posting to add a little snippet to appear in the search results (I block this) and meta description:

<h3><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" rel="bookmark" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h3>

<?php echo htmlentities(the_excerpt()); ?>

Now I'm working on changing the sidebar navigation dependent on what category the individual posts are in. Everything is possible if you put your mind to it.

Lee, Please ...

2010-01-27T10:39:00.003Z

Just had this from someone who works for a client. I might just do a summary blog post on it. But the beauty with most things social, is that we all share ideas - and so they're not all mine. But after the first quarter of the year is over (my busiest) I'll be hitting the blog with more useful posts. I'm currently testing a few tactics so I'll loads of feedback to give.

Lee,

When will you be bringing out your book on internet marketing and the social media? The one all about 'how to....' that takes a complete novice through the hows and whys in a step by step format, such as:
How to set up a blog
How to write SEO relvant blog articles
Where to publish your blog
How to chose blog articles to write about
How to make Facebook work for you
How to make Twitter work for you
How to set up your first twitter account
How to choose the twitter topics to write about
How to choose the facebook topics to write about
All about google adwords
How to choose relevant adwords
How to organise your google adwords account to make it efficient and effective
Where to link your adwords to your website and why
What about other social media sites - what are they, are they useful

Then the advanced course - how to take all this info and turn it into a strategy for doing it for paid clients - how to find clients, what to charge, what to offer on a regular basis etc, how to write a proposal for the clients etc

If you could do it on a step by step basis, taking someone through from scratch how to sort it all out, with screen shots for each step, I think you'd be onto a winner.

You've probably got a lot of it written already, so you could get a £19.99 (or whatever) ebook going - back it up with a £199 course, and a £9.99 a month newsletter with the latest info and what you should be thinking of doing on a monthly basis.

Can I buy the first copy/newsletter subscription please?

PLEASE launch it asap, help me out and make yourself another great stream of income.

[Anon]

Answering Elaine's SEO Questions

2010-01-23T13:43:00.002Z

Elaine asked some questions earlier in the week. I'm not sure how many were rhetorical, but I thought I'd add my thoughts (anything to keep me away from the VAT).

Should I search the ethernet for PR4+ blog posts, which don’t implement the ‘no follow’ and then try and figure out how to, sneakily, get my link in, so it looks oh so natural?

- Sneakily? I've had some great success using the Majestic SEO tool and SEOMoz's Competitive Link Finder in finding other blogs to get links from - I don't' take too much interest in page rank.

- My biggest source of links is from retailers who place my reviews (testimonials) on their site and then link it.

- I'm also working on another strategy which crosses the biz dev / link building objective by using Twitter to engage and then acquire commentary / links. I'll expand on this later.

- A few years ago I saw that it'd be more difficult to acquire links without offering something better than the average site. So I started going further down the content route with more emphasis.

Should I be making fan pages on Facebook, My Space, Bebo, Squidoo and Wikipedia?

- I get some traffic from Facebook and Wikipedia. It doesn't help with SEO a great deal (well conventional wisdom says that - who wants to be conventional though?)

- Don't forget Flickr though - more on that some other day.
Should I be creating numerous twitter accounts to cater for the wide range of products I could twit to unsuspecting followers?

- Nope - one per site is good. Twitter is a massive element of my biz dev strategy. It's paramount that I engage and illicit the support of my followers to grow my sites.
Should I be writing numerous blog posts to my various alter-ego blogs and inter connecting them all?

- there's nothing wrong with inter-linking in a relevant fashion. I do it to some degree, but only when the link is valuable because the content I link to is of use to the user. I won't do those stupid links in footers on their own.
Should I be creating more niche websites on the WP platform?

- I use Blogger, everyone knows that. But after some recent client work with WP I'm going to move a couple of new ones over to it and see how they get on. There's some awesome plugins that would save me a massive amount of work, so they're worth testing.

- I often think its worthwhile extending your 2 or 3 main sites. You could use HitTail to extend your keyword range?
Should I be searching out different hosts so that I don’t host my sites on the same IP address?

- this strategy is only useful if you're over-reliant on using your own link juice and you find it difficult to attract links naturally.

- make your sites good enough and it won't be a problem.
Should I be signing up for the latest SEO/Affiliate conference, although they cost a fortune?

- I was just thinking this. There's so many good resources (like SEO Scientist) etc that I feel that often its not worth it for the education alone. But there is the value of networking.
If I sign up for the latest SEO/Affiliate conference will I make myself ill worrying about networking?

- Elaine worry about anything? Nah. You're an expert!

Should I be writing dozens of articles for article sites

- only do what you're interested in. For sites that I have less passion for I use TextBroker - they're awesome!
Should I be writing concise articles, inserting just the one link to my site, for other complimentary sites?

- have a look at Glen's views on the most tweeted blog posts. Long posts work. Only link when its relevant. Do some content because people will find it useful.
Should I be spending most of my time finding those ‘impossible’ PR8 one way links which will lift my site up to Nirvana Link Heaven?

- Have a read of the World Wide Rave or Crush It! - there's some great ideas there to attract great links as a by-product of self marketing.
Should I just concentrate on good content and bugger the SEO side of stuff?

- Nope - they're two sides of the same coin. Make SEO a "given", always have it in your mind, but put the content first.

Should I forget about good content and concentrate on the on-page stuff?

- as above.
Should I use ‘no follow’ to sculpt my site into the silo effect? (no I haven’t got a clue, either!)

- lol! Read this post from SEOMoz.

Should I start using pivot tables to analyse my data from Google Analytics?

- I gave up on this post too. For some it'd be useful, but for me it was over-kill.
Should I start actually analysing my data from Google Analytics?

- hell yeh. As well as Hittail there's some great keywords in there for content expansion as well as source URLs that you can go back to and try and expand your exposure on.
Should I be concentrating on the long tail keywords and not the short tail ones?

- With different sites I'll do different things. But generally I concentrate on mid-range keywords and when the site has got some traction, I move further into the head.
Should I be using Linkscape or Majestic - or both?

- Both.
Should I start buying links? (that’s a rhetorical question Matt, I’m a Yorkshire lass!)

- It depends what you mean "buy". But in the traditional sense, now. But some directories are worth it.

Should I start selling links? (another one of those rhetorical jobbies!)

- One of my competitors does. Now do I report them? cough

Should I start interlinking my pages with the relevant anchor text (don’t forget to alter it, though) from within the content on similar pages?

- Yes, where relevant.

Should I ‘no follow’ all my affiliate links?

- you should be robots.txt'ing them. I've not really bothered with nofollow. Perhaps I should.

Should I ‘no follow’ all my outbound links?

- I don't do it. If I link to people its because they deserve it. Ok, so I've done it once or twice when I've thought they've not.
Should I bother with reciprocal links?

- Value is obviously less than one-way links with relevant anchor text in relevant content. But also think about the traffic they give. I get some useful traffic from reciprocal blog roll links.
Should I bother with backlinks from sites with PR1 or less?

- Today's ugly duckling is tomorrow's "bit of alright". If the site is relevant its worth asking. A site might also have a penalty and if it is removed then the link-juice could be of use.

Should I submit to directory sites?

- There some useful ones, but they're mainly topic related.

Should my main content be moved to the top of the page with the help of CSS?

- Er no. Concentrate on what's within the content - that's infinitely more important.

Should I start following all the Twitterartis mentioned on the latest top 500 worldwide SEOists?

- I've really reined in who I follow. There's some good information streaming through. But be selective.

Should I stop salivating each morning at the thought of the little pearls of wisdom which might have appeared in my Twitter timeline overnight from SEOists with strange names?

- I'm going to be controversial. SEO doesn't change as fast as people think. Only people's perceptions of it.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below :-)

Img © walkn

How To Get More ReTweets

2010-01-21T18:53:00.002Z

An awesome presentation, you may have to join the dots, but take a look at this analysis of retweets:

The Science Of ReTweets

View more presentations from Dan Zarrella.

Thanks MDS Battery For My Porno Bunnies

2010-01-14T13:23:00.003Z

Just a quick one to say thanks to Mike from MDS Battery for my Duracell Bunnies. When I saw the automated null invoice come through with "Porno Bunnies" as the item name I was a bit worried. Thankfully they weren't engaging in any sordid activity, but simply naked! I've still censored their bits though.

p.s. there's a free bunny with every Durecall order!

Kids Today Don't Know They're Born

2010-01-12T15:05:00.003Z

I must be getting old as I'm moaning out about how lucky kids are today compared to when I was in short trousers! They get everything on a plate and even their exams are bloody easy, they can't go to school with a bit of snow or a grazed knee, they get school psychologists and all sorts of pampering.

All this takes me back to that fantastic Monty Python sketch:

Four well-dressed men sitting together at a vacation resort. "Farewell to Thee" being played in the background on Hawaiian guitar.

Michael Palin: Ahh.. Very passable, this, very passable.

Graham Chapman: Nothing like a good glass of Chateau de Chassilier wine, ay Gessiah?

Terry Gilliam: You're right there Obediah.

Eric Idle: Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Chateau de Chassilier wine?

MP: Aye. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.

GC: A cup ' COLD tea.

EI: Without milk or sugar.

TG: OR tea!

MP: In a filthy, cracked cup.

EI: We never used to have a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.

GC: The best WE could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.

TG: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.

MP: Aye. BECAUSE we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness."

EI: 'E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN'. We used to live in this tiiiny old house, with greaaaaat big holes in the roof.

GC: House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING!

TG: You were lucky to have a ROOM! *We* used to have to live in a corridor!

MP: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin' in a corridor! Woulda' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph.

EI: Well when I say "house" it was only a hole in the ground covered by a piece of tarpaulin, but it was a house to US.

GC: We were evicted from *our* hole in the ground; we had to go and live in a lake!

TG: You were lucky to have a LAKE! There were a hundred and sixty of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road.

MP: Cardboard box?

TG: Aye.

MP: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!

GC: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY!

TG: Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.

EI: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah."

MP: But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.

ALL: Nope, nope..

Are Malformed Links Any Good?

2010-01-08T10:23:00.002Z

When I got interviewed last year by the Telegraph for this piece featuring my Easter eggs site I was over-the-moon. Who wouldn't be? Then I was gutted to find out that they cocked up my link. After contacted them several times they still haven't changed it. But I was still happy that I got the exposure.

But looking back, almost a year later, what have I got from it? Well I'd not really put two and two together until this morning.

Even with Easter a distant memory whilst people tried to enjoy the summer, get ready to go back to school, think about Christmas then actually enjoy it, I kept getting a good number of direct visitors.

Larger Image

Before the article I was getting about 10 direct visits a day out of season, and after it was about 120. Very strange.

I looked a the nature of the traffic and they were from a diverse array of cities - obviously with a London bias and there wasn't anyone pinging the bugger out of the site looking at the network locations too.

Wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that people would click on the link, see they've encoded the link wrong and then rectify - just as I did? Seeing as I've done no email marketing for the domain since last Easter I think that's fairly reasonable.

The only nagging thing in my mind was the large growth in direct traffic before the date, but looking at the previous month, it happened there too.

But what about link juice? Does Google et al follow mall-formed links? I'd probably say that they do when they're caused by just adding non-alphanumeric characters to the domain extension when their can be no other domain extension it could be.

Another thought was that if MajesticSEO can find them, then so can Google - they did, found it, however because the domain was the anchor text too. I'm positive Google would pass on some weight from it.

Also I did have a nice growth in links after that date too. I did no link-building/acquisition after Easter last year so did I get links from people that read the article - it'd be difficult to tell. But this chart is nice:

Larger Image

So, from experience. Here's some advice. Work hard to get links from quality sources, if they do screw them up then try and get them changed (obviously), but if you can't then take any benefit from them you can. There's always the traffic - and that's the main thing right ;-)

Tracking Link Profiles Over Time

2010-01-01T15:23:00.003Z

Bigger Image

Well it looks like Myspace is not only loosing the traffic stakes against sites such as as Facebook and Twitter, but also in terms of inbound links too - as can be seen by the chart above from Majestic SEO.

It's a bloody nifty tool and one I've been looking for for a while. It lets you compare a the number of inbound links (and their domains) found for given sites over time. This will allow you to gauge your efforts against your competitors.

One of my major tasks in the coming months is to improve the link profile of my and my clients' sites, and this will be a great tool to provide KPI data.

Hopefully you guys will have a good play with it.

Why I've Been Quiet. And A Very Merry ....

2009-12-23T13:49:00.003Z

I've posted chuff on here lately and there's been a reason. Like many other affiliates, at this time of year we all the feel the pressure to maximise our earnings during the "silly season" and that's what I've been doing. But not only that I've been working on a couple of brands with one of them focused on next Christmas.

I've made a nice wedge from affiliate "hot desking" i.e. jumping from one product to another during their peak selling periods. But now I'm focusing my efforts on building longer term, brand sites which Jason commented on earlier this year (can't find the post now).

I've also been finishing off some client work and have, during the year, whittled down my client base to focus more on my affiliate sites, whilst keeping some really interesting clients.

It's all great stuff and I'm looking towards 2010 which I hope will be a prosperous year for you all!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Photo: © Muffet

Quick Way To Find Forums For Links & Exposure

2009-12-15T08:41:00.001Z

Google has a new way to search internet forums using their clever new search system with almost immediate results.

Check this search for .co.uk gifts forums.

p.s. I've delayed this post so I can exploit it first ;-)

An Open Letter To Gordon Ballantyne, Sales & Service Director T-Mobile (UK) Ltd

2009-12-07T20:04:00.002Z

Gordon Ballantyne
Sales & Service Director
T-Mobile (UK) Ltd
Hatfield Business Park
Hatfield
Hertfordshire
AL10 9BW

Cancellation of Contract [withheld]

Dear Mr Ballantyne
Firstly I’d like to apologise for being rude to your customer services guy at around 19:45 on 7th December. My anger was dedicated at the systems you have in place.

Traditionally when I’ve cancelled a mobile phone contract in the past, my letter of cancellation would be sufficient. Not in this instance. Having worked in marketing for more years than I care to remember I knew that your letter in return asking me to call was just another opportunity to try and keep me as a customer. That’s fair enough. But if you do that, please give clear information regarding the number and options. Don’t let me go “around the houses” trying to get the relevant department. And then try and insure that your systems aren’t down. If they give people a realistic time frame when to call back. Twice today, when I should be working I’ve had to waste my time calling you. Companies such as BT or Virgin Media will call you back when their systems are down so they keep their customer happy. I was not given this option.

A second point you may like to bear in mind is that if you want me to call you to give you the opportunity to try and keep me as a customer do not make me waste 25 minutes of my time on hold to you.

A third point you may like to take on board is that when someone says “I’ve wasted too much of my time on hold to you, I do not want to be sold to” - take it as read that no amount of arguing or clever manipulation will work. I called up in the morning to cancel, I called up in the afternoon to cancel and keeping me on hold, when I’ve got plenty of better things to do in the evening whilst trying to cancel - I want to cancel.

In summary, if you get your procedures in place first, then you would have saved your employee from an ear bashing, and you may have regained me as a customer in the future. That now is an extremely unlikely occurrence.

T-Mobile, I’m sorry to leave you like this, but with an apology and a bit of tenderness we might have got back together again someday.

Kind regards,

Lee McCoy
p.s. Is my contract cancelled? Please provide written confirmation that it has been.

Google Altered SERPS For EVERYONE Now

2009-12-07T01:02:00.003Z

Previously you only had altered search results if you were logged in, but now everyone will get it. I'd love to know at what level they'll be implementing this, i.e. what at what level will your results be changed, will it be only if ever search session incorporated a visit to a particular site, one in two, one in four ....

It's going to make life very interesting for SEOs as their rankings will push up client pages and you won't be able to do anything about it, apart from keep clearing out your cookies - or use SEOMoz's Rank Tracker.

Find out more at the official post: Official Google Blog: Personalized Search for everyone

Google Analytics illegal?

2009-12-01T11:31:00.000Z

From the latest DPD Email via my wife:

Data protection officials in Germany are investigating whether Google's web traffic management system Google Analytics breaches data protection law. Around 13% of German websites use the free service to assist them in the creation of their sites and the management of advertising, according to one research agency. Concerns are centred on the use of the system without web users' consent. A spokesperson from Google has said that Google is completely confident of its compliance on the basis that it requires all websites to update their privacy policies so that the use of Analytics is fully disclosed. A determination is awaited. The German officials are considering imposing fines of up to €50,000 for sites' use of the service.

Quick SEO Tips: Taking Remedial SEO Action Using GWT

2009-10-26T14:02:00.003Z

If you've got a page that's not ranking and you want to use your own internal link juice rather than spend considerably more time getting external links, then pop over Google Webmaster Tools and check "Links To Your Site" (found under "Your site on the web") and see which of your pages have the most links in and then establish if you could legitimately link to the page you want to bump up a bit - obviously not forgetting the relevant anchor text.

Then also check the "Internal Links" report and see which are the strongest pages internally and then leverage those pages too.

Obviously you'll often find your homepage has the strongest link juice, but you can have some surprisingly strong internal pages which could be leveraged.

If you want to enhance this "strategy" you could use the mozBar and their Strongest Pages tool too.

But wait, there's more ....

If you run a blog as part of a main site then you've got the weapons for mass destruction at your finger-tips. Have two browsers open. With your list of target keywphrases at the ready in the one search Google (and the other engines afterwards) for:

site:www.mydomain.com "target keyphrase"

in the other do:

site:www.mydomain.com/blog "target keyphrase"
[if that's the location of your blog]

this will give you a list of your strongest pages on your site for that keyphrase and the strongest in your blog. If your objective is to rank higher for the main site then use those linking opportunities in your blog to increase page rank and relevance (via anchor text) to that page.

Simples. I'm currently testing it with a Top Christmas Presents 2009 post.

Google Gauges Site Authority By Visits

2009-10-14T14:02:00.002+01:00

I've just finished listening to the Google UK Chief Matt Brittin on Jeremy Vine's Radio 2 Show today. Apart from Jeremy being obsessed with user privacy, a notable statement was from the Brittin where he stated that they gauge site authority by visits. Now I hope I didn't misshear it as it'd make me look a plonker. But I'm absolutely sure that's what he said. You can double check on the BBC iPlayer later on today.

Let's hope he got it wrong, or I'll start buying the cheapest, nastiest traffic going ;-)

Make Yourself Generally Followable on Twitter: Mark Shaw

2009-10-05T11:58:00.002+01:00

Here's some basic tips about how to productively use Twitter from Mark Shaw.

The Social Media Guru - Social Media Distilled

2009-10-02T09:31:00.002+01:00

I fooking love this video!! And its so apt! There's so many people out there that pretend to be experts in Social Media. But to me social media is so frigging simple. It's reputation management online mixed with a bit of buzz and a dash of autopilot link-building and you're away - right?

An Interview With Someone You Should Know: Jim Kinloch

2009-09-21T11:10:00.004+01:00

It’s always nice to be sought out to offer a merchant more promotion on one of your most important sites and that’s what Jim Kinloch from Signature Gifts did. From that introduction we met up and had a good chat at the Manchester A4U Roadshow, done some client linking stuff and started the process of adding some content to my Christmas gifts site with a Personalised Manchester United Book. But I wanted to find out more about Jim and the range of sites that Signature Gifts are involved in.

Hi Jim, could you give a brief rundown of who you are and what you do at Signature Gifts?

I’m the Online Marketing Manager for Signature gifts. Our best known sites are Historic Newspapers and Gonedigging for personalised gifts. I run our affiliate programme, opt-in email, social networking, content creation, and conversion programme. There are two other members of the team who I work with, Paul Sheridan who manages our PPC and Sam Georgeson responsible for all things SEO.

How do you find the role of being an Online Marketing Manager with having to swap hats from PPC, SEO, Content writing, analytics, email marketing, competitor analysis ..... ?

I enjoy the mixture of disciplines needed to create the elusive ideal online marketing mix. I’m helped by the fact that we have a large team in house including a PPC specialist, and a SEO person. We also have an IT team and in-house developers for our main sites. We do all our online and offline design in-house. We also retain a digital marketing agency, Receptional [ed: never heard of 'em ;-)], for digital marketing consultancy. Most of my time is dedicated to our affiliate programme, I spend a set amount of time each week creating copy for our personalised gift blog, www.notmoresocks.com and supporting PPC, SEO, and our designers. There is a lot on the go at any one time which makes for fun and games and a lot of activities in the air at one time. This week has been a mix of writing, liaising with a major PPC affiliate, attending the Google Retail Summit, working with Webgains on our FREE caricature for affiliate’s activity at the A4U Expo, and launching a US site, www.simplypersonalized.com also with Webgains.

I see you’ve had a vast level of experience in the online industry having moved from being a software engineer to offline marketing and then onto online. But if you had to choose one role, which do you prefer the most and why?

I enjoyed doing technical support as solving problems is always satisfying and when I worked for Apple Computer (at their database company, FileMaker) I enjoyed the mix of organising events and meeting customers, supporting a developer network, and putting PR campaigns in place. But I can put my hand on my heart and say this role is the most fun-satisfying-sometimesfrustrating-involving-fun-learning-work-experience I’ve ever had.

Signature Gifts Ltd is involved in a number of websites, what are they and do they target different particular gift niches?

We specialise in personalised gifts and bringing the best and most original ideas to market. Our premium site is www.gonedigging.co.uk which carries all of our gift ranges including our best sellers like original newspapers (we have 7 million in warehouses on the west coast of Scotland), Personalised Football Books for all the major teams in the UK, and recently we’ve brought out a range of personalised calendars, spoof newspapers, and personalised wine and spirits. We also have Historic Newspapers and www.backissuenewspapers.co.uk, and recently we’ve launched www.simplypersonalized.com in the US which carries a similar mix to GoneDigging.

Do you ever think of the £1m of stock you’ve got to shift when creating your marketing plans, or you do you just look at how to make incremental sales?

Our newspapers sell very well all the year round and yes we have a huge amount but we don’t have to worry about them not selling as customers love them especially for anniversaries and birthdays. All the gifts that we have created ourselves are made to order. Occasionally a big order with a major retailer may fall through and we’ll market that excess with a promotion like a 2 for 1. So we are a lean organisation in terms of inventory. We’re always looking to build incremental sales with new PPC campaigns and our affiliates being our prime focus.

As an affiliate I often find it difficult to manage a number of different sites, but how do you cope looking after your sites and getting the most out of each?

I was shocked when I was first introduced to the affiliate world and the amount of sites some are running! I deal in the main with 5 sites (we white label for a substantial number of newspaper sites) and I focus on just those five. Yes it can be a headache so I use a combination of a big notebook, post-it notes and a database (built in FileMaker) project management system. Despite that I do end up with the occasional fire-fight as several projects collide. It can be like a scene from Armageddon around here with me acting like Steve Buscemi (only with his hair burnt off).

I see you’ve been at Signature Gifts since March 2007, but how has the company and affiliate industry changed in that time?

I still think of myself as a newbie in the affiliate world but even in two and a bit years I’ve seen a few changes, the rise of the all dominant voucher code site, more integration of data feeds, and the rise of the content unit. Affiliates remind me of our developer programme at FileMaker both groups are characterised by being independent thinkers who live in bedrooms getting through buckets of work but affiliates are defiantly more entrepreneurial and have a lot more social skills (wink).

It’s nice to see that other affiliates rate your work highly with Ray nominating you for “Publisher’s Choice Of Affiliate Manager 2009”, although you didn’t win (there was some very stiff competition), what do you think makes a good affiliate manager?

I think an affiliate should be asked that question. I’m always looking for tips to support our affiliates and chatting to other affiliate managers, using the forum and Linkedin has helped a lot. I’ve tried to give our affiliates what they need before they ask for it, support their activities and help increase our coverage with increased commission and other incentives . I’ve also worked on our image as the leader in personalised gifts with fun ideas (supported by Sheema Luca at Webgains) like personalised photographs at the A4U Awards and having a Caricaturist at the upcoming A4U Expo. Recently I came up with the idea of an Affiliate Support Pack. This is a matrix (a big word for a list in a table) of what we can offer our affiliates in return for activity. Email me at firstname.surname@signature-gifts.co.uk
if you’re an affiliate and you’d like to know more.

I’ve always wondered how merchants choose which network to offer their programme on. For me it would be a balance of trust, technical competency, promotional tools, ability to offer relevant affiliates and their availability to sort out any given issue quickly and correctly. But how and why did you choose Webgains?

I’ve worked a lot with agencies (networks) in the past and the above points are all valid. What I look for is a good fit. All the networks we’ve had dealings with have had a lot of the above on offer. Webgains has become our main network because of it’s a much leaner organisation compared to the big boy networks and therefore you don’t feel lost and we also value their well trained account management team, their reporting is also excellent, technical support is first class, and they are also willing to adapt and promote new ideas very quickly.

If there is any one thing you would like to change about the affiliate industry, what would it be and why?

I wouldn’t change anything in the industry. What I would like to do though is give everyone in the industry a ‘secret hour.’ This would be an hour each day that you can have to yourself and cannot be disturbed. Think of all the ideas you could put into action with just one hour a day.

I know you’re a bit of comedy writer. Share one of your favourite skits with us :-)

I love comedy. What made me want to write were two sketches; ‘Constable Savage’ from Not the Nine O’Clock News and this one from Amnesty International’s Secret Policeman’s Ball, the great Peter Cook. If you want to read one of mine have a look here (this one made it onto ITV1 a few years back, very, very late at night).

Other than putting pen to paper to induce giggles, is there anything else you like to do with your spare time?

I love a good movie so I have a vast DVD collection, I like to just hang around with mates talking nonsense and generally trying to rid the world of evil, cook lots of different types of food, go to the gym, watch International Rugby, listening to all music except Jazz, and I may get back into Tai Chi time willing.

And as a parting note ... I’m looking to buy a new work machine. PC or Mac?

Lee: Mac? [Ed: Too late, I've bought another Dell machine :-(

10 Quick Link Building Factors

2009-09-03T10:13:00.001+01:00

In my post: Top 10 Tools To Improve Affiliate Productivity I mentioned that I use SEO Spyglass to find useful links for my clients and to establish the link landscape for their competitors (you can dig up some hilarious stuff!). But, I usually take things a bit further and get the TrustRank from SEOMoz to build a more holistic view.

I must admit there's just so much garbage spoken about link-building, its unreal. Some people like to say they're experts when they've on ever read a handful of blog posts and hardly researched the impact of any campaign they've implemented. For me the impact of any link-building should be assessed after a week, month, six months and beyond - not just a report saying we've got "x number of links for you this month".

So cut through the bollocks I thought I'd give my list of factors to look out for. Then its upto you to say which you agree with, which you'd like to look at in more detail and those where your own empirical evidence suggests otherwise.

First off, here's a quick screen grab of the sort of information available fro SEO Spyglass:

There's a whole load to cogitate on in there. But when ever you use information such as that, keep these value factors in mind:

1) Leave "Page Rank" at your office door - it induces laziness and is the currency of the ill-informed.

2) Authority/Trust of the page - consider the number and nature of the links to that individual 3rd party page by viewing its link profile both internally and externally.

Look at how many links the site gives to it internally.

3) Anchor text - Think about the contents of the anchor text and try and make it relevant to your target keywords.

Don't make the link text standardised across all of your link-building efforts.

On the domain buying front this concept adds weight here.

4) Other Links Out - look at how many other links there are pointing out on that page and build that into your calculation of the value you'll get out of them.

5) Other Off-Page Links - look at the number of links out of the page to other pages on the site.

6) Link Location - I've said this for years. Links in footers, separated by pipes are big give away and, I believe, are devalued to a significant amount. Links in blogrolls, I believe, I reduced a touch.

7) Contextual Nature of Links - I'm lumping a few factors here, but I believe the distance other keywords on the page are to the link has a relative impact on the relevance of the link.

8) Relevance of the Page - This is related to 7) but looks a bit more holistically. I can't put my finger on it, but I'm roughly putting this at 8) but could well be lower.

9) Reciprocal Linking - My views on this have changed over time. Just like the other factors, I've come to view this a case of degree and context. If you over do it (say 80% of your links are reciprocated) then you may have a problem. But then this is further factors by what is the "norm" in your niche. If everyone is doing it, and the search engines don't view your industry as being one of the highly competitive ones, then it may well prove not to be an issue.

10) Anchor Text Age
If you're looking at a potential site to get a link from because your competitor does, consider that that link may be imparting more weight because its been around longer. If you get a link you may get a quick boost for it, but that benefit may decay in the short/medium term.

Consider this when you look at the benefits you could from your link-building campaign - do you need a short term boost, or a long term benefit?

There are many other factors with decreasing levels of importance. But its crucial to understand that each of these factors not only depends on the competitive nature of your industry, but how you apply them will further depend on what you actually need to increase your link profile by a given %. What you need to implement may differ greatly from a site which you THINK has a very similar link profile to yours.

Very Quick 25 Factors For A Successful Affiliate SEO

2009-08-24T15:03:00.004+01:00

Just following up on the SEO Search Ranking Factors (before I spend the next few hours going through some hotjiggedy research) here's my very quick 25 factors for a successful affiliate SEO):

Apologies for "SEO speak", and they're somewhat in order of importants

relevant links from valued and diverse external sites.
Keywords at the front of the page title
organised architecture of site design parent / child relationships in the inter-category sense
external anchor text matching target keywords
get geo-targetting right
as much unique, useful content as possible and make sure that its not copied (or if it is, make sure its referenced)
useful, to a degree, to have kwd, domains i.e. product domains
use other H tags wisely
Variable KW phrases in h1's
target KW in internal crawlable anchortext
ensure that you have suitable linkability of your domain/page
try and increase the number of internal links to the most important pages
use of error-free sitemaps in GWT
get KW phrases within variable text at the top 50-100 words on the page
make the title/snippet more attractive to increase CTR from SERPS with the resultant secondary effects
check regularly for server issues
reduce template similarity between sections and avoid nasty boilerplates
server response time / page load time
grow inbound links organically (or make it look like they are)
get away from long, complicated url structures
take note of searchwiki and try and influence it
adding fresh content / feed content from other sources
appropriate alt text
site neighbourhood (linking and hosting)
largely different meta kw and desc
and a free one: try and link out to other relevant sites

The above is just meant to be a starters whilst I update my own (more comprehensive) list of influencing facors (or golden rules as I call them to clients).

And sorry for not blogging recently, I've been a tad busy. But the upshot is I should be blogging soon about my multi-industry review of link-building strategies which looks at a few affiliate sites and tries to accurately determine which factors do actually improve rankings.

Lesson In Life: Remove The Weakest Links

2009-08-05T10:30:00.004+01:00

I'm a lazy git. I'll do what ever's easiest when it comes to my affiliate stuff as I'm just so busy with client work. As part of that laziness I'd use the ShopWindow from Affiliate Window to find products and deep link. I wasn't that lazy as I worked out a way to include tracking codes into it to give the product details etc. After spending some time doing this I "reverted to type" and started to irregularly check my affiliate emails - preferring instead to use them to find product info etc.

Big mistake! I've missed all of these "Less than 10% of Shop Window quota remaining for account" emails and now the tool that I use for a good proportion of my deep-linking is down, kapput, with no sign of life.

soap_error Object ( [sCode] => ns1:Client.LIMIT_1 [sString] => Insufficient Quota [sDetails] => getMerchant: You have used all your operations quota )
1
soap_error Object ( [sCode] => ns1:Client.LIMIT_1 [sString] => Insufficient Quota [sDetails] => getMerchant: You have used all your operations quota )
1

I'm glad I started using Short URL to track deep links and merchant category pages, but its still going to be a pain in the arse waiting for the Shop Window quota to reset.

So a quick tip: When you're in Affiliate mode, ensure that you try and cut out as many weak links, or opportunity for failure as possible. Get yourself a decent deeplinking / link-cloaking tool and try and find a productive way of sifting the important emails from the unimportant ones.

p.s. my fecking hosting company won't even let me upload a robots.txt to prevent the bots from crawling the shopwindow site - fecking great!

Wednesday morning affiliate FAIL!

Update: George has refreshed it. I need to get my arse in gear big time on it!

Google Now Monitising Google Products With Adwords Space Inclusion

2009-07-21T08:29:00.005+01:00

I may have missed this as I've been "offline" pretty much the last few days. But has anyone else seen the inclusion of the "Show products from this advertiser" in the Adwords space?

I don't hang around Google Base much these days so haven't seen anything asking me to integrate with client Adwords campaigns. Nor can I see anything in the Adwords interface or even their Adwords Blog.

I take it this is just a test?

But it looks like either a particular affiliate is lucky enough to be a guinea pig or they've got some pretty good leverage. Also to my mind, Google are monetising those Google Base products too - about time I think ;-)

http://www.google.co.uk/aclk?sa=l&ai=CyJJJ1m1lSuuiIs6AjAeMlIDPDt20i3jhkYu5DO622g4QCCD
HmPgFKAhQ54qCBWC7vq6D0AqQAQKgAY275_4DyAEBqgQeT9AvsKdjyJQWt
VUVj0Dks1jNgq3tTmiiyHBoD0bF&num=16&q=
http://www.allposters.co.uk/-sp/I%2520Love%2520Vinyl_i4969
967_.htm%3FAID%3D1023776824%26GCID%3DC15100x057%26lang%3D1
%26dom%3D1%26SEM_GBASE_ID%3D1&docid=5314898454986533757
&sig=AGiWqtxwEqJz04OEhDuDQy5GeV4fz6r4fQ

http://www.google.co.uk/aclk?sa=l&ai=CyJJJ1m1lSuuiIs6AjAeMlIDPDt20i3jhkYu5DO622g4QCCDHmPgFK
AhQ54qCBWC7vq6D0AqQAQKgAY275_4DyAEBqgQeT9AvsKdjyJQWtVUVj0Dks1j
Ngq3tTmiiyHBoD0bF&num=16&sig=AGiWqtwfqyTaALWheFWYMCXRS
zdGzXYPTQ&q=http://affiliates.allposters.com
/link/redirect.asp%3Flang%3D100%26c%3Dc%26search%3D44031%26AID%
3D1629062913%26keyword%3DT-shirt

Interesting - now I've got another bloody thing to add to my "to do" list :-(