EzSEO Newsletter # 143
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EzSEO Newsletter # 143
Andy Williams
“Creating Fat Affiliate Sites”
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This week:
1. allinwhat? Part II.
2. White hat means following all of the rules!
3. Using style sheets anyone?
4. Other Stuff.
Hi again.
I hope you have been busy working on your online business this last week. If you can think of several things you have done in the last 7 days that will have improved your business, well done. That should be the goal of every online marketer.
If you cannot think of anything you have done, or have not even started your online business, what are you waiting for? There is no boss breathing down your neck making sure you are completing tasks. YOU are the boss, so have a quiet word with yourself ;O)
As an ezSEO newsletter subscriber, you got my Affiliate Marketing Manual as a bonus. It’s the one called “Creating Fat Affiliate Sites”. Don’t be fooled by the price-tag. It is the most comprehensive manual for creating a long-term affiliate business available, at any price. If you lost the manual, I’ll show you how to quickly find it in this newsletter.
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1. allinwhat? Part II
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In the last newsletter we looked at some of the modifiers you can add to your Google searches to get to specific, and useful information. Today, I’d like to continue with this and show you a few more.
1. cache:
This is a very useful modifier, as it will show you the version of a web page that Google last saw when it indexed that page (not necessarily the page you see when you visit the site).
To use it, do not include a space between the “cache:” and the URL you want to check.
You can also include a keyword phrase in the query, and Google will highlight the words of the phrase in the cached document. This is very useful, as it can show you the on-page optimization of top ranking pages.
e.g. suppose you are building a web page on fly fishing in the UK.
Do a Google search for “fly fishing UK”.
Here is Spain, the top result in Google is: goflyfishinguk.com.
Now, you can click on the “cached” link directly in the Google search results. Google will them provide a keyword “map” of the words “fly”, “fishing” & “UK”, showing you where on the page these words are found.
You could see the same keyword map by entering this into Google:
cache:www.goflyfishinguk.com fly fishing UK
You can also include the search phrase in quotes, and Google will only highlight the complete phrases in the resulting document. Look at this one:
cache:www.goflyfishinguk.com “fly fishing UK”
See how it is different to the first one?
Note that some pages won’t have a cached page in Google, and so this modifier wont work. This is simply because those pages use a “no archive” meta tag. It looks like this:
meta name=”robots” content=”noarchive”
The second result in Google for fly fishing UK is an example of a page that uses this meta tag.
This is the site in question: fishandfly.co.uk and it redirects to fishandfly.com.
Try this:
cache:www.fishandfly.com fly fishing UK
See how there are no results? That’s because there is no cached page in Google.
2. define:
This modifier is great if you are looking for definitions of a word or phrase. Using it, tells Google to search for definitions of the word or phrase.
e.g. type this into Google:
define: white hat
Google will return two pages that contain definitions of the phrase.
This modifier is extremely useful when you are building your sites, especially if you are not an expert in the niche. You can quickly find meanings of words and phrases, and they are often in plain English.
3. filetype:
This modifier allows you to control which file formats are returned in your search results.
e.g. if you type in:
fat affiliate sites filetype:pdf
You can find PDF documents which refer to “fat”, “affiliate” & “sites”. However, possibly more useful is to place your search phrase in quotes:
e.g. “fat affiliate sites” filetype:pdf
This returns the only important PDF on this subject ;o)
Using this modifier allows you to quickly find PDFs that you know are online somewhere, but just cannot remember where you found it.
e.g. you have probably heard about a report called the Death of Adsense. You can find it quickly and easily by typing this into Google:
“death of adsense” filetype:pdf
We’ll look at few more of these in the next newsletter.
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2. White hat means following all of the rules!
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I see a lot of talk on forums about white hat, grey hat and black hat SEO techniques. In particular, a number of people are complaining that their white hat sites have been de-indexed from Google. These types of posts have escalated in recent months, leading to reports that “Adsense is dead”, or “affiliate marketing is dead”.
Let me tell you now that both are very much alive and kicking, and will be for the foreseeable future. The real problem is a lack of education.
A lot of people have bought into “white hat” solutions - both software & eBooks, that are really not white hat. However, being newbies, they really trust those who sell these solutions, and when the sales page say they are 100% white hat, people believe them.
When their sites don’t perform, or they get delisted, they post on forums that their white hat sites have been delisted.
OK, before we go further, let’s look at a definition of “white hat”. Using the modifier we saw earlier:
define:white hat
This is one of the two results returned - Wikipedia
To quote part of that page:
“In recent years the terms Whitehat and Blackhat have been applied to the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) industry. Black hat SEO tactics, also called spamdexing, attempt to unfairly redirect search results to particular target pages, whereas white hat methods are generally approved by the search engines”.
So, white hat SEO means SEO approved by the search engines.
This year has seen a growth in website builders that take all of the effort out of site building. They’ll even “create” the content for you and build the site without you having to do more than click a few buttons.
Let me ask you this. Does Google approve of software that churns out web sites using nothing more than articles already found on other sites?
I know some will say yes, but I say no. It does not matter how good the content is, its not original.
What is the purpose of a site like this?
Is it to help people find the information they need?
Well in this case the information is already present on other sites - you (or your site builder) just copied the information to your own site. The purpose of this site is usually as a vehicle to make money through Adsense. Because they are so easy to create using the “software”, one person can churn out 5 or 10 of these sites a day. To me, that is not white hat (no matter what the sales page says), as search engines probably don’t approve of building sites with rehashed information.
Now, before I go on, I know some of you will disagree with me. That is fine. We are all entitled to our opinions. Feel free to email Google a list of your sites, and how you built them ;o)
The real problem with deciding if something is white hat or not, is really just understanding what the search engines are looking for. Simply put, the search engines want pages that offer great value to visitors.
Most software for building websites could be used to build white hat sites, or black hat sites. How can software like this be sold as pure white hat software? Well, it can’t. You see, the thing that makes the difference here is not the software, it is the operator.
Going back to the site generators that use only articles from article directories to build the sites. What if that software allowed you to use your own, unique content instead of fr..eely available articles from directories? Would that be a white hat site then?
I would say that the content is then “white hat”, but what about the site in general? Is that “white hat”? Well, it could be.
What if you linked all of your other sites to this one site? Well, in this case, you have done something the search engines don’t approve of, and have just made that site black hat.
See the problem? White hat is not just about the site. It is about every aspect of the site. You have to stay within ALL of the guidelines to create a true white hat site.
In many cases, it is not the software, but the operator that controls how white hat, or black hat a site is.
To create true white hat sites, search Google for:
Google Webmaster Guidelines
or
Yahoo Webmaster Guidelines
If you follow the rules, your site shouldn’t be deindexed. If you decide to ignore these rules, it probably will. Sooner or later you’ll wake up to find your traffic has gone, and so has your inc0me.
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3. Using style sheets anyone?
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One of the things that changed my business was when I learned the benefits of using cascading style sheets (CSS) in my site design. It suddenly meant that I could control the look and feel of my site from within a single file. Heading fonts and sizes could be altered across the whole site in seconds. The fonts used on the site could be changed with a single edit to my css file.
As my understanding of CSS grew, I found that I could actually create web pages that did not rely on tables for positioning menus, graphics and adverts etc. Have a look at my ezseonews.com site. The layout of that site is done using a style sheet, not HTML tables.
Depending on the feedback I receive, I intend to write a f.re.e mini-course in this newsletter showing you how you can use style sheets on your sites. Is that something you would like to see in this newsletter? Let me know…
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4. Other Stuff.
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As many of you know, I create something called Niche Blueprints every month. These are complete packages showing you how to build a site in that particular niche, with all of the keyword research, affiliate program research etc done for you. I even show you which phrases to use on which type of page. The manual is detailed and complete, with step by step instructions to help you create your site. In fact, the only thing you need to supply for the site is the content, since I don’t provide it for you.
Now, some of the older blueprints have not sold out (I only ever sell 100 of each blueprint), so I am going to remove them this week from the sales page. If you want any of these, please get them now. There will also be a new blueprint out next week, so look out for that one, and get on the notification list if it is something you want to be notified about.
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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