Category: Upkeep
Three Common Business Model Blunders
Posted by AC Editorial Team in Affiliate Classroom Events and Products, Affiliate Marketing, Best Business Practices, Upkeep Wednesday, 2 September 2009 23:30 14 Comments
A business model can make or break your site. So, it deserves your respect.
It doesn’t matter if you are a newbie or an experienced marketer. Basing your site on a strong business model will strengthen your site and set it on a road map for success.
Whichever business model you choose — which you will determine based on your individual goals and particular interests — you need to craft it in a way that helps you reach your goals efficiently.
How Often Should You Change the Anchor Text in Your Backlinks?
Posted by AC Editorial Team in Affiliate Marketing, SEO, Upkeep Monday, 12 January 2009 12:19 4 Comments
The short answer to that is: pretty often. The long answer? Well, it starts with a definition.
Whenever we talk about link-building, it seems necessary to mention organic SEO – where other websites link to your website “by themselves” (as opposed to an “artificial” link exchange) because they genuinely find it useful. Why is this important? Because once you understand what search engines are looking for in links, you’ll know how to dominate the rankings.
Relevant to the question, search engines try to measure the “originality” of the link – that is, the chances that this link was natural or “artificial”. Since most of the links (and almost all of the ones that you will get in the beginning) pointing to your website are artificial, you have to make them look organic to avoid any penalties from the search engines.
For example, suppose that you are setting up a website on copywriting. Assuming that you have the on-page optimization done and dusted, let’s talk about how you can regularly change your anchor text.
Your Anchor Link Strategy
First, we take your core list of keywords:
- Copywriting techniques
- Learn copywriting
- Copywriting seo
- Copywriting tips
- Copywriting course
- Copywriting services
And so on.
Now, take each keyword, work it in an attractive headline and write 1-2 lines describing your website – no hype, no keyword spamming – make it attractive and useful to the reader. Make sure that each description is different – it cannot be totally different, but it should change a bit.
If you do that for each keyword, you have 10 or more sets of link details – the headline makes the anchor text and the 2 lines will act as a description. Once you have this set, start from the first combination and switch to the next one after 25-30 links.
This way you can cycle through your list and maybe get to 300 to 400 backlinks before you get through your set of anchor text and description combinations. If you have fewer core keywords (a tiny niche), you can space out the changes – say every 50 links or so.
What to do when the list is up?
Alter the anchor text and descriptions for each keyword and do that for the whole list, then start all over. If you follow this formula not only will you be able to regularly alter your anchor text (and thus make the link-building process look natural), but by targeting so many keywords within the list you can also end up ranking highly for all of them.
5 Tips for a Site Design Makeover
Posted by AC Editorial Team in Affiliate Marketing, Design, Upkeep Wednesday, 19 November 2008 07:50 5 Comments
Q4 may be one of the best times to review the code, the colors, and the graphics on every one of your sites, and plan a “makeover” for any site that needs its look refreshed. Here’s are five ways to approach your site revamp efforts:
#1 – Check for obvious SEO-busters. Spiders like HTML best, so look for opportunities to keyword your navigation and add search engine friendly text links. Converting to tableless layouts with CSS can also improve your rankings. It’s a big job to redesign with CSS, especially if you’re used to old-fashioned HTML coding, so we suggest that you…
#2 – Update site design. Boxy layouts have given way to a more open, fluid Web 2.0 style with liberal use of white space. But creating a Web 2.0 look isn’t easy, and requires a strong working knowledge of CSS plus some skill with graphics. And not every web designer has mastered this look. So try a site like 99Designs to find a designer who can create an updated look that will appeal to your audience.
#3 – Add a logo. If you don’t want to do a complete design overhaul, try adding a logo or updating the current logo. Outsourcing logo design is very easy.
#4 – Add “credibility graphics.” Guarantee seals, branded company logos, security certificate logos, credit card logos, and other graphics that link the products you are promoting with trusted brands. Examples include “As Seen on CNN” graphics ad trusted security certificates. Be sure to check your affiliate agreement/terms and conditions to be sure you are allowed to use the company logo on your website.
#5 – Update “hero shots” or refresh product graphics. Visitors’ eyes tend to gravitate to photos of people, so if you use these “hero shots” on your site, try changing them to see if it increases your conversions. It’s also important to check for updated product graphics from your merchant.
Next… clean up your mailing lists!
Other posts in this series:
Q4 Affiliate Marketing Checklist
6 Ways to Put Dormant Domains to Use
5 Ways to Update “Aging” Sites
Posted by AC Editorial Team in Affiliate Marketing, Upkeep Friday, 14 November 2008 08:13 5 Comments
It’s no news that the major search engines will often give sites with constantly refreshed content an edge — hence the popularily of blogs for marketing. In a very real sense, “relevance” has a lot to do with timeliness. A recently updated site certainly appears more up-to-date than a page built at the turn of the millenium.
But refreshed content isn’t just for the search engines. Visitors like it, too. Updates provide surfers with a reason to bookmark your site. That encourages repeat visits and more click throughs.
So during Q4, why not make a plan for adding or changing a few things to any sites that you haven’t updated for a while? Here are some ideas that are relatively quick and easy:
1 – Add an RSS feed. Blogs automatically include an RSS feed, but you can add RSS to any site by adding some simple code. A service like RSSPECT makes it simple. Be sure to encourage visitors to sign up for your feed.
2 – Add more content. Simply write 10-20 good articles, or outsource them to a freelancer. Do some SEO duty at the same time by researching keywords to use in your articles. The Google Keyword Tool is a great place to do this research (be sure to check the “Synonyms” box to get ideas for long tail keywords.
3 – Modify colors or layouts. You don’t need to do a complete website overhaul. Just changing the page or table backgrounds, adding a few well-placed graphics, or modifying the color of headline fonts can give your website a fresh look. It’s easy to experiment with color or font changes if your site uses an external stylesheet. If you’re not familiar with stylesheets, this CSS tutorial can help.
4 – Add or update products. If you have some mini-sites that run more or less on autopilot, consider using them to test some new product offerings. If these sites promore physical products, consider adding some complementary information products from ClickBank.
5 – Add an opt-in box and build a list. Even sites that target very small niches can increase profitabliity with an opt-in list. In fact, small lists can actually be extremely responsive. If you have a blog, Aweber allows you to email your list automatically when you add posts, as well as build lists on conventional websites.
Next… Try a new niche!
Other posts in this series:
Q4 Affiliate Marketing Checklist
6 Ways to Put Dormant Domains to Use
6 Ways to Put Dormant Domains to Use
Posted by AC Editorial Team in Affiliate Marketing, Upkeep Tuesday, 4 November 2008 10:05 8 Comments
Are you a domain collector? Somebody who owns dozens, even hundreds of domain names that you just can’t seem to get around to using? Well, Q4 is a good time to go through those domains and put them to some kind of use — and here’s six ways you can do just that.
1 – Sell them through a brokerage site. If you’ve got domains you simply don’t want, put them up for sale at an easy-to-use domain afternarket site like SnapNames.com or Sedo.com.
2 – Redirect them. Simply redirect the domains you want to keep to one of your existing sites, or even to an affiliate link. Just be sure that the domains are relevant to the site you’re linking to.
3 – Use a revenue share domain parking service. If you think your domains would make good landing pages, try a domain monetization service like DomainSponsor, where you can park your domains, and get content and ads placed on it for free.
Services like this will create and optimize custom landing pages for each of your domains, and include relevant ads and targeted content. You make a percentage of the earnings generated through your domains. Be sure that your domains are a good fit for this type of service, since short, niche-themed domains will probably perform better than longer, keyword-based domains.
4 – Park and monetize the domain yourself. If your web host allows you to add multiple domain names within a single account, you can put a simple page up for each domain. Then you can monetize with a service like Text-Link-Ads.com. Again, the domain name needs to be appropriate for this type of service — this is probably the best choice for longer, keyword-based domains.
5 – Put a blog on the domain and update it automatically. This idea is applicable to both domains you plan to develop later on, or domains you plan to sell. Ideally you should have a plan to keep these blogs updated.
One of the simplest methods is to use a plugin like FeedWordpress, which updates your blog with RSS news feeds. (Note: We do NOT advocate creating spam blogs with this plugin — it’s simply a way to do something constructive with an unused domain, or add news updates to an existing blog). You can also outsource the writing of blog posts to a freelancer on Elance.com or Guru.com.
Once you’ve got 40-50 posts on the site, you can think about adding AdSense or affiliate links. Keep updating both manually and through RSS for a year or more, and you can try selling the site, which leads us to our final tip…
6 – Put a “lightly developed” domain up for sale. Many sites and forums offer website sales services — BuySellWebsite, NamePros.com and the SitePoint Marketplace are some of the most popular. You can also try searching WhoIs records to contact webmasters in your niche to let them know the domain and website are available. Be sure to keep the inquiry brief and to the point.
Next in this series… how to review the products and merchants you’re promoting.
