EzSEO Newsletter # 95

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EzSEO Newsletter # 95

Andy Williams ez SEO

ez-search-engine-optimization.com

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This week:

1. Spam Complaints – A Must Read for Ezine Publishers

2. Building Affiliate Sites – Miniseries Part VII

3. Can you help me? It wont cost you anything

4. Other Stuff

Hi again.

Well, Luna’s first birthday came and went. Luna had a lot of fun, going crazy with the other kids. When everyone finally left, she fell asleep almost immediately, and slept for 12 hours straight.

You can see some photos of her party here if you are interested.

Today we continue with our miniseries, but also take a look at why I didn’t get worried when I received three spam complaints this week. Finally, I want to ask you if you can help me. Don’t worry though, it does not involve m.o.n.e.y., just a few moments of your time.

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1. Spam Complaints – A Must Read for Ezine Publishers
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This week I received notification from Aweber that three people had reported my newsletter to them as spam. All three complainers were with AOL. I believe that AOL has a button in the interface which allows AOL users to simply click a button if they think an email is spam. It comes as no surprise when I get one of these complaints, and see that most, if not all are from AOL users.

Three people decided that instead of clicking the unsubscribe link at the end of each and every newsletter, they would save two seconds and just report me for spam instead. That would equally stop them from getting any more issues. Maybe they are not aware (or maybe they are) of the trouble a spam report can cause a business.

If you think of Spam as unsolicited mail from people you don’t know, then you can see why I get a little hot under the collar when someone reports this newsletter as spam. I don’t worry about it (and I will explain why in a moment), but it does annoy me.

You see, this newsletter CANNOT be sent to anyone who has not asked for it, and then confirmed via email that they really do want it (this “double opt-in” prevents someone from entering someone elses email address and signing them up for the newsletter). It is just impossible for this newsletter to be classified as spam, in anybody’s interpretation of the word.

A single spam complaint could get you into a lot of trouble, especially with the new spamming laws in the US. Websites have, and are, regularly closed down for spamming.

So, if it is that serious, why don’t I get worried when I get a spam complaint?

The answer is simple. I use a company called Aweber to distribute this newsletter.

Aweber has been in the business a very long time, and know how to handle these spam complaints. They know that all spam complaints from users who have had to double opt-into an ezine, are false accusations.

However, this is serious. Several hosts have banned emails from the aweber domain (meaning ALL ezines sent by Aweber for their thousands of clients) because of spam complaints to them. If you are with one of those hosts, you won’t get this newsletter delivered to your inbox (which is why I now post all newsletters to my blog)

It is entirely possible AOL will ban all emails from the aweber domain in the future if complaints like this continue (not just complaints about my newsletter, but from the thousands of others ezines Aweber send on behalf of their customers). If you are at AOL, then you may stop receiving this and every other newsletter you subscribe to, just because of a bunch of people who don’t think, don’t care, or are just ignorant of the facts, decide to make false accusations.

Now, the fact that I don’t send this newsletter from my own domain (it is sent from ezseo-AT-aweber.com), is an extra bonus. It means I don’t put my own domain in the firing line, since my own ISP may not be as forgiving as Aweber, and could close down my hosting account if they received several spam complaints like Aweber received this week.

If you are publishing a newsletter, ezine, autoresponder course, or similar, do consider the implications of sending bulk mail from your own domain. Your host may close you down. My recommendation to anyone here is either don’t setup a newsletter, or if you do, use a third party company like Aweber.

If you cannot afford Aweber, there is a fr.ee alternative in “Your Mailing List Provider“.

A word of warning though. When I started this newsletter, I started the fr.ee route using the above service. Once the newsletter started to pay for itself, I switched to Aweber. Now, because I wanted to use double opt-in, I could not import my subscribers into Aweber (as they had to double opt-in themselves), I just had to ask everyone to sign up again. In doing so, I lost 50% of my subscribers who did not sign up again.

It may be that the 50% I lost were not reading the newsletter anyway, but who knows, maybe they were on holiday when I sent the sign up request?

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2. Building Affiliate Sites – Miniseries Part VII
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If you have been following this course so far, you will have:

a) identified your niche and checked for profitability
b) carried out your keyword research at Wordtracker.
c) sent yourself your keyword research from Wordtracker.
d) selected several phrases to use as main page keywords.
e) selected suitable phrases to be used for article pages.
f) learnt how to theme pages. You should use this information to begin collecting themed keywords for your planned pages.

If you missed any of these newsletters, you can read them online at my blog:

http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/blog/

This mini course begins in issue #89 and continues to the latest post in the blog.

This week we are look at the differences between main pages and article pages, and how those differences dictate how we should write those pages. Next week, we can then actually create some pages.

The differences have been mentioned before, but let’s look at them in a little more detail.

Main pages pre-sell “products”. They are often targeting more competitive phrases because of their nature.

Pre-selling is a term used to describe how you get your visitors into a buying mood, before they even reach the merchant’s site. Pre-selling increases your conversion rates, and turns more visitors into buyers – it is that important.

You could create main pages that pre-sell the actual product itself, or you could create main pages that pre-sell the merchants that sell the products.

e.g. Suppose you are building a website about dolls. You might decide that you want the following main pages:

Barbie Dolls
Cabbage Patch Dolls
G.I. Joe
Polly Pocket
Doll’s Houses

Let’s take the first phrase, “Barbie Dolls”. Your choice here is whether to pre-sell Barbie dolls to your visitors, or pre-sell the merchants that sell the Barbie Dolls.

Whichever variation you choose, you must pre-sell your visitor so that he/she wants to buy a Barbie Doll, and then give them the links to do so.

Simply put, if you choose to pre-sell the doll, your page is talking about the Barbie Doll. If you choose to pre-sell the merchants that sell Barbie Dolls, your page is talking about the merchants.

One of the easiest ways to pre-sell anything, is to review it. As long as you actually like the item you are selling on your site, this is not too difficult. We will look more at pre-selling next week, but let’s just quickly think how we could pre-sell the doll, or the merchants.

If you are pre-selling the doll, review the doll.
You could include things like:

* How sturdy the doll is.
* Target audience (age group) of the doll.
* Range of accessories that are available for the doll (an opportunity to send your visitors to a different main page pre-selling doll accessories).
* How fun the doll is to play with (often, heart-warming stories of the endless fun your own son or daughter has with this doll are great pre-sellers).

Try to connect on a personal level with your visitors. Make them beleive that you are a real person, and you know what you are talking about.

If you are pre-selling the merchant, why not review the merchant. Things like:

* How easy their website is to navigate
* How easy it is to order from them
* How good their customer support is
* Any guarantee they provide

and so on.

Crafting pages in this way, add value to the internet, meaning your site wont be labelled as “thin”.

The main pages are there for the sole purpose of making the sale.

OK, so how do article pages differ from the main pages?

Article pages provide useful information to your visitors. They help get the trust of your visitors by providing quality information on the topic they are interested in.

Though the articles usually target less competitive phrases, we theme the page so that it can capture traffic for a range of phrases. Once the visitor is on your site, it is up to you how you make money from them.

On the article pages, you are not directly trying to sell them anything, but you can try to “persuade” them to click on a link to a main page where they will be sold something..

Let’s look at an example.

If your article is titled “Best dolls for 3 year olds”, you could talk about the safety issues. If there are any hidden dangers, tell your visitor. This is a way to build trust so that THEY TRUST YOU. If they trust you, they are more likely to buy one of the toys you recommend on your site.

If you have read about a doll that has button eyes that come off too easily, warn your visitors that the doll could pose safety issues for those under a certain age. Make a recommendation for maybe a Barbie doll instead. It is perfectly acceptable to link to the Barbie Doll page from within the article itself. I would certainly include a section at the end of the article with links to recommended main pages.

This is a way of funnelling your visitors from the articles, to the main pages that sell the products. Once the visitor clicks the link to the Barbie doll page, they are pre-sold on the Barbie doll itself, and trusting your judgement because of the quality article they just read, buy through your link.

Done properly, funnelling like this can greatly increase your chances of making an affiliate sale, even if your main page does not rank well itself for the term Barbie Doll.

All articles should be closely related to products you sell on your website. If they are not, then it will be very difficult to get your visitor to buy anything from your site. This is the difference between targeted traffic, and non-targeted traffic. The former can results in sales, the later wont.

One possible work-around for this, is to include Adsense ads on the less targeted article pages.

Google Adsense is all the rage at the moment, because you can make money without actually selling anything. All you need is for a visitor to click on one of the Adsense ads, and you are paid a per-click value into your Google Adsense account.

Because it is so easy to make money with Adsense, many webmasters use spamming tools to flood the search engines with low quality pages created with these spam generators.

They put Adsense ads on these pages, and make very small amount of money from some of these page. They create 3 or 4 sites a day, each with 1000+ pages (yes this is very possible with some of the spam generator on the market).

For these webmaters it is a numbers game. If you have 100,000 of these spammy pages on the internet, then you can make some income just with Adsense. Of course, the search engines hate these sites, and webmasters using these techniques run the risk of having their sites banned, at best. At worst, they run the risk of having their Adsense account closed.

We will look more at this later on, but a word of warning here.

Adsense provides a way for the visitor to leave your site without buying anything. If you have a high quality site, I recommend you limit Adsense to those pages that really cannot pre-sell a product. It takes a little bit of trial and error, but which would you prefer:

a) Sending 100 visitors a day to a merchant where you make $15 commission per sale,
or
b) getting 100 clicks on an Adsense ad where you only make 5 cents per click.

If you pre-sell your visitors properly, the former option will be far more profitable.

The truth is that Adsense ads on your site will dramatically reduce the number of product sales you make (even down to zero sales). Try building your site with Adsense ads, and then remove them. Test both options for a month, and see which generates more income.

Articles are a fabulous tool for making money. You can use them to:

* funnel visitors to main pages which sell products
* capture the email address for your newsletter, autoresponder course etc.
* Make Adsense income.
* sell your eBook or software
* give your visitors a fr.e.e report, which uses some form of incoming generating technique inside, so that you can make income from that visitor even if they never visit your site again. I will be talking more about this later in the series, but those who subscribe to Nicheology (or similar site), have one leg firmly up the ladder.

Hopefully I have given you a small insight into how main pages and article pages differ. They have very distinct roles on your website, but used properly, they compliment each other, and make your site more p.r.o.f.t.a.b.l.e.

Next week, we will look in more detail at the art of pre-selling. I’ll give you the exact steps I go through when writing pre-sell. Equiped with that knowledge, you will then be ready to create the main pages of your website.

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3. Can you help me? It wont cost you anything
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If you are benefiting from this newsletter, I am sure you know of other people who might too? Think of friends or family who might also be interested in receiving this newsletter. Perhaps you know someone who would love to start an affiliate business but does not know where to start? The current mini-series on building an affiliate site is something that any aspiring affiliate marketer would benefit from receiving.

If you know of anyone who might benefit, send them an email and tell them about this newsletter. Just one person, that’s all I ask – you can tell more though if you wish ;o)

You can send them here:

http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/ezseo

Don’t forget to tell them about all the quality reports they get for signing up. This time next year, they will thank you for it!

Well, that’s it for another issue. If you want to read the recent issues of this newsletter, you can read them online here my blog:

http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/blog/index.php

For older newsletters, you will need to visit the old archives at:

http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/archives

Have a great week!

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If you enjoyed this newsletter, please recommend it to your friends. Also if you have any tips of your own, questions or comments, please send then to me at webmaster@ez-search-engine-optimization.com. Any tips or questions & answers I print in this newsletter will also be put up on the web version of the newsletter with a link to your site
if you want it. That’s extra free traffic for your site as well as an incoming link to your site.

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