EzSEO Newsletter # 129
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EzSEO Newsletter # 129
Andy Williams
“Creating Fat Affiliate Sites”
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This week:
1. Google Toolbar PR Update Upsets Webmasters.
2. Inbound links too fast? How fast is too fat?
3. At Last! Something new and original.
4. Reader’s question.
5. A couple of fr-ee resources worth looking at.
Hi again.
Firstly, thanks for all the emails of concern. Yes, I am alright. There was no newsletter last week simply because I was tired and needed a break. I did get up to write the newsletter at 07:30 as usual, but 2 hours later I was still answering emails. Unfortunately when that was finished, I just didn’t feel inspired to write.
Let’s get on with this issue.
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1. Google Toolbar PR Update Upsets Webmasters.
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In the last few days, Google has updated the Page Rank (PR) on the toolbar. Go check your sites!
Did you go up? Or down?
Whatever happened to your PR on the toolbar, do not expect this “sudden” change to affect your rankings at all. The PR you now see on the Google toolbar may be a new PR to you, but its the same one Google has been using to rank your pages before the toolbar update.
Google factors backlinks into your site’s PR value as they find them, and stores the real PR on their computers. They always use an up-to-date PR when ranking your site.
The Google toolbar PR is only updated about once every 3 months, so from now until around October time, the PR you see on the toolbar for any site you visit, will not be accurate.
As usual, some webmasters are unhappy with the PR update. Apparently 100% white hat sites have lost PR big time, and there are a number of conspiracy theories going around as to why. All I can say is welcome to the world of SEO. Being a white hat site does not stop your PR going down. One thing, and one thing alone is responsible for the PR on your site - LINKS.
If your PR has dropped, Google is factoring in fewer, or lower quality links to your site than it did on the last update.
If your PR has gone up, Google is factoring in more, or higher quality links than it did last time.
Now, before some of you email me saying that I am wrong because the number of links to your site has increased, yet PR has gone done, read the above again. Number, and QUALITY.
Google has made it quite clear that they don’t appreciate PR manipulation. Reciprocal links, paid links (including paid directories that guarantee inclusion), link farms, etc etc are on their “PR cull list”. They want PR to be built because of a sites reputation, not because of how good the webmaster is at procuring inbound links from other sites.
If you have the same number of links, or more links pointing to your site than last time, and your PR has gone down, my bet would be that Google is no longer counting some of those links in its PR equation.
I have looked at my own sites. My older sites were all built with reciprocal linking, and they have all seen a drop in PR (albeit a minor drop).
My newer sites do ZERO reciprocal linking, and rely on article submissions and submitting the site to quality directories. In every case the PR of those have increased (or stayed the same).
I have a new site that I started in the last 3 months that was submitted (and accepted) into Yahoo and a few other directories. I have only submitted 2 articles for that site, and only to ezinearticles.com.
That site has a PR 4 now, with one page a PR 5. Incidentally, the PR 5 page only differs from the other pages in that it has one incoming link from a social bookmarking site. Two other pages both have incoming links from ezinearticles.com, yet they are PR 4 as well (these ezinearticle pages have a higher PR than the social bookmarking site, so this could be an indicator that Google is not valuing links from article directories as much as they use to, but the data sample here is tiny, and I do need to do more extensive tests before I can be sure).
If you want to improve your sites rankings, you need to improve the quality of your incoming links. That means getting high quality, one-way links into your site.
High Quality = Related “authority” site and low number of links on the page.
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2. Inbound links too fast? How fast is too fat?
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If you get too many links to fast, Google may apply a penalty to your site, which may or may not get lifted over time. That is the general consensus amongst the SEO community. However, a lot of you have written to me asking how many is too many? Is 1 a day OK? Is 10 a day OK? Is 100 a day OK?
Well the answer to the last three questions is maybe.
From my own testing, I have found that the important thing is not how many links you get in a given period of time, but how sustainable that link gathering is.
Getting 100 links in one day, then nothing for 6 months is likely to trigger problems.
However, getting 100 links a day, every day for six months, probably wont.
I believe that the filters that catch quick link building probably look more at spikes than quantity in any given day.
If you are submitting articles for backlinks to your site, my advise is to submit at a rate you can sustain for at least 6 months.
If you have 100 articles you want to submit, submit 4 a week for 6 months. If you have 1000 articles you want to submit, submit 40 a week six months. If you have 10,000 articles to submit, submit 400 a week for six months.
If you follow this “sustainable” rule, you should find your site is fine.
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3. At Last! Something new and original.
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I get a lot of people offering me review copies of eBooks and software, yet I wont review or promote most of them. Why? It’s not always because I don’t like them, or agree with the contents, it’s more because they don’t shout “COOL”, or “WOW”, or “VALUE” to me. Too often, the eBooks I am sent offer the same old information packaged differently, and while it is good information, it’s not new. Too often, the software I am sent just does not look useful to me.
The bottom line is that if I won’t use the software in my business, or if I cannot learn new stuff in the eBooks, then I wont promote them.
This last week I have been playing with some new software that is completely ingenious, totally original, and something I will use on most of my niche sites.
We all hate pop-ups, right? Well, besides the fact that they can work very well, I do also find then annoying. Well, imagine a pop-up that doesn’t so much pop-up, but pop-in.
As your visitor is reading down your page, the page suddenly “parts” to reveal some special offer in amongst the section of the page they are reading. Difficult to visualize?
Well, I’ll give you a URL to look at in a minute. When you get there, scroll slowly down the page as if reading. You’ll see a bunch of testimonials for my newsletter. As you reach the end of the testimonial boxes, continue slowly down the page, and watch what happens.
Cool, isn’t it? Imagine being able to offer affiliate products, or newsletter sign ups using these pop-ins. I have even tried to block them with Ad-blockers, but they still show up.
The pop-in appears at the moment the visitor reaches that part of the page, so they cant miss it. And you can put whatever you want into the popup.
So, is it difficult to implement?
No. You get some software that runs on your computer. You define the pop-in using the software, create the pop-in code, and insert it into your page. This is a 4 step process.
Step 1 - Define your pop-in.
Step 2 - Save some “pop-in” files to the folder where your page is found.
Step 3 - Copy some code to the
section of your webpage.Step 4 - Copy some code to the place on your page you want the poplin to appear.
Upload your page, and the files saved in step 1 to your server, and you’re sorted.
I can see a lot of uses for this script on my niche sites.
I’ll probably use it to offer fr.ee reports in exchange for signing up to my newsletter. Maybe I’ll use them to promote the forum on my site. I’ll certainly use them to offer affiliate products, and special offers to my visitors.
How will you use it?
This software gets my top recommendation. You can get the software here.
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4. Reader’s question.
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Here is a question I was sent. I know a lot of beginners will be wondering the same thing:
“I faithfully read all of your newsletters which are absolutely the best, but I do have a question. You have stressed the importance of finding a good affiliate program before you build a website and suggest going to commission junction to check out various affiliate programs.
I am just starting out and do not currently have a website, and I have found that commission junction and other affiliate networks want you to have a site up before you can sign up with them. They also say that they will not look at sites that are hosted for free, so I can’t just build a simple site on my ISP’s free space. So what do I do?
I hate to put a lot of time, effort, and money into building a site when I don’t know if there are any good affiliate programs that would relate to it. Should I just start building a site based on my KRA-WT results and hope that a good affiliate program exists? Any advice you could give me would be greatly appreciated. I am ready to start, but I feel like I’m stuck on step one!”
ANSWER: This situation is not really a problem. While most affiliate programs do require a site URL when you join, you can evaluate a niche without actually joining programs.
Here is what I would recommend.
1. Go to Google and search for affiliate programs in your niche. Simply search for
mykeyword + affiliate
Many of the affiliate programs listed at the big networks (like CJ) will be found this way. However, you can also find independent affiliate programs (run in-house). Look to see how many affiliate programs are available, and the types of products offered. The more affiliate programs available, the better.
2. Go to Amazon.com and see if they have products you can promote. While Amazon don’t offer a big commission, you could use them as a last resort.
3. Check out Clickbank.com. Are there any niche books you can promote? If yes, then that is a huge plus.
4. Check whether there are any Adsense ads for your niche. How? Simply type in some searches into Google and count the ads down the right hand side. If they go over several pages, then that’s a great sign. If you want to check out the Cost Per Click of the Adwords phrases, you could use a tool like this one.
The more ticks you can put against your niche, the better the potential. Find a niche that gives you lots of options, and build a quality site without advertising.
Once it is built, you can apply to CJ and the other networks, and once in, you can look for quality merchants and decide who and what you want to promote. You can then also apply to Google for an Adsense account, and get started with that.
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5. A couple of fr-ee resources worth looking at.
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Just to finish today, I thought I’d give you a couple of useful URLs:
This first one is a way of testing whether there are any good Adsense ads for your niche. You do need to upload a page of content to use it, but that’s easy. Write a paragraph containing your main keywords, upload it, and check with this tool for Adsense:
http://google.blogspace.com/archives/000984
This second URL is something I like to use to check how well themed my pages are. Once I create a new page, I sometimes run it through here to see whether Google see my page the way I want them too. Does Google see the theme of the page the same as you do? Once you get there, click on the “Site Related Keywords” tab, and enter the URL of your page.
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Well, that’s it for another issue. If you want to read the recent issues of this newsletter, you can read them online at my blog:
http://ezseonews.com/blog/index.php
For older newsletters, you will need to visit the old archives at:
http://ezseonews.com/archives
Have a great week!
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