Basic SEO for Newbies – Tags

Thursday, May 13th, 2010 at 6:03 PM  
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SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the work that has to be done in order to see a website or blog appear in search results of search engines for chosen keywords or phrases. A website without proper SEO is like a beautiful brochure in a close drawer.

All pages of a site have to contain three important tags that only search engines can see to index websites, which are a “Title”, a “Description” and a “Keywords” tag. This information is available between the <head> and </head> tags, the part of a website visitors can’t see.

Search Engines Optimization for a WordPress blog is easy as there are plug-ins available that automatically select a title, description and keywords based on the post. That is not the same story for a regular HTML website where everything has to be done manually page by page, and this can be really painful when you have a hundred pages.

A good title must contain the name of your website and a short descriptive title of the page with two or three main keywords for a maximum of 100 characters. The description has to describe the content of the page with the main keywords or phrases you want to target. A good description is  less than 160 characters, but it will work for 200 or 250 characters in some search engines.  And finally, the keywords tag has to contain a selection of words present in the page and separated by commas. It is important to make a fair selection and not include too many keywords that would not do any good.

Some webmasters use the power of Dreamweaver and web templates to easily add an identical description and identical keywords for the whole site, but it is not really the best option. Each page has different content, so it is logical that the 3 tags reflect this and be different so each page appears different when indexed. Some web designers make very beautiful sites but unfortunately, they are not SEO friendly.

I suggest that you check in Google for the main keywords of your vertical and see how concurrent websites have their title and description indexed. More SEO posts will follow later.

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    Seven Creatives to Promote Affiliate Programs

    Sunday, May 9th, 2010 at 11:11 AM  
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    There are many creatives available in an affiliate program interface for you to choose from. Banners and text links are the most used, but what are the other creatives available?

    I can think of 7 creatives, which are: banners, text links, content links, forms, data-feeds, widgets and coupons.

    Depending on the site you have, you may use one or more creatives listed below:

    1) Banners: Static, animated or flash banners can be used effectively if placed in the first fold of the website. While they provide a good branding opportunity to merchants, conversion in sales is low for the affiliates as visitors immediately identify them as advertisement.

    2) Text links: Short or long text links with key words or phrases are very effective when placed in a page relevant to the product promoted. Conversion is much higher than banners as visitors are more keen to click on them.

    3) Content links: They can be simple or elaborated HTML creatives containing affiliate links that can be quickly  placed in a page just in copying a piece of code. They can be articles with content , photos and links, or a big ad like in a magazine.

    4) Forms: A simple search box, multi fields search box, lead form, or enquiry form can be placed in an affiliate site and provide very good results as the visitor get a result for what he is looking for. They can be easily used in copying a piece of code on your site.

    5) Data feeds: A data feed is a merchant’s catalogue of products that can contain from 10 to 50,000 products. The data feed is a CSV file, usually comma or pipe delimited, that you can open in Excel or Open Office Calc. Full affiliate sites are built with data feeds but implementation is more challenging for beginners.

    6) Widgets: They use a selection of products from the data feed and can be of any size with 4 or 5 tabs. They are made by the affiliate manager and you should be able to get a custom one with the products you want and that matches your site’s design. Only a short piece of code has to be copied and they will auto-update automatically on your site.

    7) Coupons: They are very effective promotional tools and look like “Xmas10″ or “Mom45″. A lot of Internet shoppers are chasing discount coupons for their next purchase, and placing an affiliate link with the coupon code in your site is a good idea. There are Coupon sites that use coupon data feeds to populate their sites that are very popular.

    I hope that you will find in this list a few new ideas on how to promote your affiliate programs.

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    What Affiliate Programs should you promote?

    Sunday, April 25th, 2010 at 8:12 AM  
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    What affiliate program?There are affiliate programs for almost everything on the Internet. Flowers, shoes, jewelry, car parts, books, astrology and the list goes on. Promoting all these affiliate programs in one website is not the solution even if the site has traffic. How to choose then the affiliate programs to promote?

    If you have a website or a blog about Travel, affiliate programs in the same “Vertical” or topic have to be selected as visitors of the site are people looking for information about the topic. They may want information on a country, but also book an hotel or buy travel insurance, and it is what you have to promote. It is unlikely that they will be interested by an astrology ad.

    Google does just that with its “Ads by Google” you see on websites. They match the ads with the content of the website so the visitors see and click an ad related to the information they are searching. Knowing what kind of affiliate programs to promote is already a good step. Now, what Hotel booking or travel affiliate program to choose?

    You will have to consider your options. Is the company you want to partner with a trusted company? How do they pay? Is their tracking software in-house or do they work with a Network? Many questions need to be answered before investing time and money in promoting their products. A higher commission being not always the best in a program.

    An important element of the affiliate program is the affiliate manager. This person’s job is to assist affiliates in giving advices, make links and creative, answer to questions and help affiliates when necessary. This person is your interlocutor and you have to make sure that the partner programs you selected have a responsive affiliate manager.

    As a conclusion, you have to do your homework to select an affiliate program that will be a good fit to your site and convert well.

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    Trusted Commission Junction Network Penalizes Small Affiliates

    Sunday, April 18th, 2010 at 3:06 PM  
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    When starting affiliate marketing choosing a good Network is important. Commission Junction is one of the most trusted Network by merchants and affiliates alike. In CJ, affiliates have access to a huge directory of products, and when promoting several merchants, the earned commission from each of them is added and paid together.

    The network is trusted by affiliates as commissions are paid by the merchants to the network and then paid back to the affiliates.

    Unfortunately, Commission Junction penalizes small affiliates who produce impressions and clicks but no sales. One of my friend affiliate recently saw her hard earned commissions, that were paid by the merchants to the Network and credited to her CJ account, vanish. After writing to them, this is what she received:

    “Thank you for your inquiry. The $10 fee you see in your account is a dormancy fee, due to not having generated any commissions in six consecutive months. After six months without having made a sale, your account will be deducted $10 per month until the balance is $0– then the account will be deactivated. All this is stated in the Publisher Service Agreement, “PSA”, which you agreed to upon signing up for an account with Commission Junction.

    Once an account is deactivated the relationships you had with advertisers prior to deactivation have been terminated and your links are no longer valid until you restore your advertiser relationships. You will need to reapply to advertisers and, in some cases, create new links.”

    This dormancy $10/month fee is really unfair for small affiliates who may not have been making sales but still advertise the merchants as impressions and clicks are still recorded. The bottom line of this is that CJ is great for experienced affiliates who know they will constantly make sales but it is advised for newer affiliates to start working with networks that won’t penalize them with fees.

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    Dropbox as an Ideal File Sync, Sharing and Backup Solution

    Tuesday, April 13th, 2010 at 10:27 AM  
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    I have been using Dropbox for more than a year as a sharing service, and the recent failure of my iBook G4 made me understand that it is also a great backup solution. Now, my Dropbox is basically the “My Documents” folder where I place all my files accessible from multiple computers.

    After signing-up for a Dropbox account using your email address, you have the possibility to use 2 GB of free storage right away. In the web interface folders can be created, files uploaded or downloaded.

    Folders can be shared with friends or co-workers in just clicking a “Share this folder” button. An invitation is then sent by email to the person you want to share with, and after they have created an account the folder is shared.

    A software is downloadable for Mac, Linux Ubuntu & Fedora, and Windows, in order to have a Dropbox folder accessible directly on your machine. Whatever is placed inside this Dropbox folder is synchronized with the online storage service and then to any other linked computer, but also iPhone, iPod and Blackberry. You may have folders you share and folders you keep private as a back-up facility.

    Drop Box as also a paid service for those who need more than 2GB per month.
    Sign-up or read more info on DropBox

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