The Affiliate Review 1-14 02/28/08
February 29th, 2008 Len Thurmond
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IN THIS WEEK’S REVIEW
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• Just Something to Think About
• This Week’s Editorial: Using Other People’s Content
• Now That’s Funny!
• Food For Thought: What makes a GOOD Article?
• The Androgynous Stone: Chapter 5
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JUST SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT
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The winner is the chef who takes the same ingredients as everyone else and produces the best results.
Edward de Bono
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THIS WEEK’S EDITORIAL
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Hi all,
Last week we talked about good content, the “good stuff” that we look for when surfing the web. Now mind you, that is GOOD stuff, not just a PILE OF stuff.
Sometimes it feels like I am wading through a sea of useless information, boring articles, and outright spam sites. Kind of like these photos I found on Flickr.com of a literal “Information Explosion” on the London Underground train or “Tube”.
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(Lest anyone think I have something against the London Tube, I actually rode it myself a few months ago from Hammersmith to the Tower of London and it was very clean.) 
We don’t want our readers to fall into the trap of just putting any old crappy content on their site just to fill it out. As you can see from the photos, too much information is just overwhelming and messy.
HOWEVER, that said, I know that strategically using content on your site and specifically highly topical articles can be a very successful method and can help a new affiliate site look established and credible a lot sooner. Don’t be afraid to use stuff that was written by others, but use it in the right way. For example, it is against the terms of service for most article directories to submit something that is not your own original work.
Len’s article this week touches on both finding content on the web, and original content you write yourself. Next week we will look deeper into the first steps to becoming a published author with articles. (Yes! You can do it!) But meanwhile, there is a lot of good stuff out there for the taking. For starters, here are some ideas of what you might do with “Other People’s Articles”.
-Create a handy library of articles on your affiliate web site about your topic.
-Position your site as a fountain of knowledge about a certain subject. Then, invite others to submit their articles to you.
-Make your web site “keyword rich” about your topic that will help the search engines rank your site for that keyword.
-Use them to help your site grow “organically” by slowly adding articles on a regular basis (rather than throwing them all up there at once). The search engines notice this because it is the way a real human would build a site rather than a computer.
-Put together a series of articles on an autoresponder that people can subscribe to. Now you have not just a set of articles but an “e-course” that seems a lot more valuable plus gives you something to offer in exchange for their name and email.
-Wrap the articles around blocks of Google Adsense ads. This not only helps Google Adsense (or other contextual advertising) to display the ads related to the articles, but it is a great place to put Adsense because it doesn’t compete with a more important action on a page (like opting in to a list or purchasing a product).
-Strategically place affiliate links to products you are promoting within the text of the articles. If the author mentions or alludes to a product, make that phrase into a link.
This is stuff that is already written and available for free on hundreds of article directories out there. Or you can have them neatly delivered to your desktop with Len’s new Article Innovator software. Soon to be released!
Wanna know how Len and I get articles? I certainly don’t waste a lot of time looking for them and analyzing them for keyword density. Watch how I do it in this eight minute video demo:
http://articleinnovator.com/AIVideos/AI_01_findingarticles/
Until the next ‘review,
Sandy Swain
Until the next ‘review,
Sandy Swain
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NOW THAT’S FUNNY!
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Random Words of Wisdom:
1. Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that
person to use the Internet and they won’t bother you for weeks.
2. Some people are like Slinkies… not really good for anything,
but you still can’t help but smile when you see one tumble down
the stairs.
3. I read recipes the same way I read science fiction. I get to the
end and I think, “Well, that’s not going to happen.”
4. Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals
dying of nothing.
5. The other night I ate at a real family restaurant. Every table had
an argument going.
6. Have you noticed since everyone has a camcorder these days
no one talks about seeing UFOs like they use to.
7. According to a recent survey, men say the first thing they notice
about a woman is their eyes, and women say the first thing they
notice about men is they’re a bunch of liars.
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FOOD FOR THOUGHT: WHAT MAKES A GOOD ARTICLE?
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By Len Thurmond
CONTENT MARKETING: What makes a GOOD Article?
As we discussed last time, one of the best ways to get traffic and customers to come to your site (AND to RETURN to your site), is by filling it with informative Original Content. Articles that they can use!
But what constitutes a “GOOD” article for our purposes?
In the old days, you just needed to stuff any ole’ article FULL of the keyword you wanted to rank for, and the Search Engines would send you all the traffic you could use.
Then you just had to redirect that traffic to where you wanted them to go, with prominently placed links and copy or graphics that caught their attention.
Since the content on your page was just keyword stuffing, and therefore not REALLY worth reading, your visitors quickly got tired of it and clicked on any relevant links there, looking for something worth while!
This technique was especially handy when your goal was to get them to click on adsense ads!
But as is always the case, you can only “FOOL” the Search Engines for a short time before they figure a way to ferret out the garbage, and kill the “Black Hat” techniques that never work for more than a little while.
I have to admit, that 4 or 5 years ago, I was as caught up in the “Fool the Search Engine Game” as everyone else. It was fun and challenging to try and stay one step ahead of them, while making money hand over fist.
But eventually, it got harder, and tiring having to start all over again, each time they figured out how to kill each “Black Hat technique of the day”.
It was a constant battle of wits, and in the end, I decided I didn’t want to play anymore!
So, Several Years ago, I started trying to figure out what it was that they WANTED from us, and then did everything in my power to just Give it to them!
And ya know what? it worked!
Sure, it took a bit longer to get a site listed, ranked, and getting the generic traffic we were all looking for. But it DID come in the end.
And the best part is that it KEPT coming day after day, month after month, year after year … WITHOUT ever having to reinvent the wheel and start all over again.
You hear a lot about the “Google Slap”, and how the search engines are CONSTANTLY changing their algorithms, forcing webmasters to constantly change their sites to conform to what the search engines were demanding from day to day.
But the truth was, is, and always WILL be that the changes are to ferret out the BAD stuff from the people who are still trying to FOOL the search engines, NOT to get rid of the valuable, informative, on target sources of information that exist on sites like the ones that have lasted for many years, without their having to change a thing.
See the only thing the Search Engines really care about in the end, is that THEIR customers get what they are looking for, so that the NEXT time they are looking for information, they’ll come back to THEIR search engine to search for it!
So if you make sure your pages are full of Useful, Information, targeted to the subjects they are designed to serve up information on, and nothing else, the search engines WILL eventually find your pages, and rank them accordingly!
The more informative and targeted the overall content of each page, the better they like it, and the better you will rank.
So a “GOOD” article is one that discusses the tightly targeted subject of the page it’s on, in a conversational manner. One that is easy for the reader to digest, and reads like you were talking to a friend.
The keyword content (or percentage of keyword density) is still very important to your ranking, as the search engine spiders measure that density to decide the level of relevance of your content.
But that definitely does NOT mean that you should “Stuff It” with your keyword. They got wise to that a LONG time ago, and that will end up having the exact opposite effect than what you want.
Search engines today use a set of algorithms called LSI, which stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. And what this incredibly ingenious set of scripts does, is read pages and interpret the meaning of the words and phrases as a whole … as a Language.
It can decipher and count synonyms and relevant phrases as keyword density, thereby knowing that if you talk about a Ford pickup, and a truck, and a F150 extended cab vehicle, you’re page is about Ford Trucks. And ALL those phrases count as Keyword Density towards the relevance of that page.
This is important because they realize that no one says …
“My Ford Truck is great. It is the best Ford Truck on the market. And as anyone who owns a Ford Truck Knows, My Ford Truck is the best of the fleet of Ford Trucks”
We just don’t talk that way, and the search engines realized a long time ago that if they ran across that on a page, the webmaster was just trying to raise the ranking of their page by Stuffing it with the keyword they wanted to rank for.
But you MIGHT say something like …
“My Ford Truck is great. It is the best Pickup on the market. And as anyone who owns an F150 like mine knows, my Truck is the best 4×4 in the Ford fleet”
And they would count the keyword density of that paragraph as very high! Being about Ford F150 Trucks
So when writing your article remember this lesson!
Always write as you speak! Talk about the subject at hand often, but in a natural way. And NEVER try to Stuff your articles with keywords in a way that sounds unnatural.
Put your Main key phrase in your title, and in the opening and closing lines of your article. But in between, just talk naturally. Stay on subject, but talk naturally!
If your article is informative, and explicitly about the subject you wish to rank for, the rest will take care of itself.
So stop trying to fool them and just give them what they want … Good, interesting, on target articles directly related to the pages subject, and they in turn will give YOU what you want …
Tons Of Targeted, “FREE” Traffic!
What you do with that traffic is up to you. But make NO mistake about it …
However you want to monetize your site … It ALL Starts With Traffic!
And Original Content is one of the best ways I know of to get it!
Till next week,
Here’s To YOUR Success,
Len
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THE ANDROGYNOUS STONE: CHAPTER FIVE
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WOW! A gentle giant and a rousing bar room brawl? Go here to read the fifth chapter of The Androgynous Stone, a novel written by Len Thurmond.
The Androgynous Stone
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A FINAL WORD
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A Few Last Notes…
The Affiliate Review presents opinions of many of the thousands of online programs available on the net today. We emphasize the word opinion for obvious legal reasons. And that is just what the content of The Affiliate Review is…Our Opinion. Nothing More…Nothing Less !
If you have comments or suggestions, Please feel free to post them here on our blog
Here’s To Your Success,
Len Thurmond, Founder of The Affiliate Review
Len@TheAffiliateReview.com
and
Sandy Swain, Editor of The Affiliate Review
Sandy@TheAffiliateReview.com
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