The Affiliate Review 1-12 02/16/08

February 16th, 2008 Len Thurmond Posted in The Affiliate Review Archives |

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IN THIS WEEK’S REVIEW

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• Just Something to Think About

• This Week’s Editorial

• Now That’s Funny!

• Food For Thought: How to Promote Your Site

• The Androgynous Stone: Chapter 4

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JUST SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

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Remember, a real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken new action. If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided.

Anthony Robbins
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THIS WEEK’S EDITORIAL

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Welcome to another edition of The Affiliate Review!

To wrap up this series on standing out as a Super Affiliate Marketer, here is tip #5:

BOOST THE RANKING OF YOUR AFFILIATE WEB SITE BY GETTING QUALITY LINKS BACK TO YOU

I’ve seen a very fun musical called “Wicked”. It’s the story of the witches (The Good Witch and the Wicked Witch) from The Wizard of Oz–before that pesky Dorothy and her little dog came along. In one scene the two witches are young girls in school and Glinda the Good is giving green-skinned Elphaba a lesson in how important it is to be viewed as popular by others. She gleefully sings:

Popular!
It’s all about popular!
It’s not about aptitude,
It’s the way you’re viewed!
So it’s very shrewd to be
Very very popular
Like me!

Now of course every affiliate website owner would LOVE to be “popular” with the search engines because that means traffic and sales! However, getting there is not always as easy as Glinda waving her magic wand. A search engine uses mathematical formulas called “algorithms” that rank page popularity according to a variety of factors. One of the most important factors is how many other web sites have a link back to you. In fact, this is probably the most important factor (next to your actual content) for how the search engines view your site.

In this case the “popular people” are sites that the search engines consider to be the authority on a subject or are ranked highly for some reason. If every link to your site is considered a “vote”, then a vote from these sites will carry more weight. For example, my former web site design firm had several clients that were city government sites. We were able to rank highly in the search engines even for the highly competitive term of “web design” because we the links back to us from official city government sites were considered “important” links. This in the search engine world is the equivalent of dating the prom queen or the captain of the football team–instant popularity!

Here are some ways to get some of that link popularity:

1. User Forums on Other Web Sites
This is where web site users post messages back and forth about certain topics. If you join some of these forums and write about topics related to the products you are promoting as an affiliate, you can include a link to your web site in your “signature” where you identify yourself as the poster. The key here is to make your posts relevant to the conversation and not post so much that you become obnoxious. It is best to “lurk” or hang around a forum that you are unfamiliar with to get a feel for the culture and what is acceptable there.

2. Trade Something of Value for a Link
If you have something that another web site owner wants, he or she might be willing to link to you in trade. For example, a person who designs web site templates might offer a customized template to a site owner if they will put a link back to the designer’s site. Could you give someone a free product, complementary membership or offer them a reduced price in exchange for a link? You could also offer to do a reciprocal link exchange (I’ll link to you if you link to me) but one-way links are much stronger than two-way links in a search engine popularity contest.

3. Submit your site to Free or Paid Link Directories
If your site is one that offers great information (and it definitely should!) you can submit your site as a resource on one of the many directories out there. Anything from community sites to sites about certain dog breeds or hobbies. If you can show the directory webmaster that your site will help his visitors be more informed on the topic at hand he will probably be more than happy to include your site. It might be well worth your while to have your site included in a paid directory especially if that site is already loved by the search engines (like on their first page!)

4. Write Articles
This is a great method for getting hundreds of links back to your affiliate site as well as helping to get your name out there as an authority on your particular topic. The basic strategy here is to write an article and include a paragraph at the end called a “resource box” that includes a short bio about yourself and a link back to your web site. Then other sites wanting free content can paste your article on their site, thus sending a link back to you as the author. I’ll be going a LOT more into this strategy in the next few issues of The Affiliate Review!

Now…BEWARE MY PRETTIES

The search engines are on to you and they will quickly figure out what you are doing if you are trying to get overly aggressive with getting links. Beware of “link farms” or “free for all” link sites that are indiscriminate about who they link to. These sites don’t have good ranking anyway so don’t even bother.

Also, forget about using software to post bogus comments to other people’s blogs simply for the purpose of getting a link back before the blog owner notices it and deletes it. Incidentally, I HATE it when people do that to me. I get all excited that there is a real comment on my blog and it is only a spammer. That totally bums me out.
If you use spamming techniques with the search engines, they will penalize you–and your little dog too! Then you may never achieve a top ranking in a search engine. If your site is good, it will naturally acquire back links just from word of mouth. Then you will know that you are really, truly popular.
Until the next ‘review,
Sandy Swain

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NOW THAT’S FUNNY!

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The Great Wizard of Oz

The last four ex-U.S. Presidents are caught in a tornado, and off they whirled to OZ. They finally make it to the Emerald City and came before the Great Wizard.

“WHAT BRINGS YOU BEFORE THE GREAT WIZARD OF OZ?”

Jimmy Carter stepped forward timidly:” I’ve come for some courage.”

“NO PROBLEM!” says the Wizard. “WHO IS NEXT?”

Ronald Reagan steps forward, “Well………, I…….I think I need a brain.”

“DONE” says the Wizard. “WHO COMES NEXT BEFORE THE GREAT AND POWERFUL OZ?”

Up stepped George Bush sadly, “I’m told by the American people that I need a heart.”

“I’VE HEARD IT’S TRUE!” says the Wizard. “CONSIDER IT DONE.”

There is a great silence in the hall. Bill Clinton is just standing there, looking around, but doesn’t say a word. Irritated, the Wizard finally asks, “WHAT DO YOU WANT?”

“Is Dorothy here?”

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FOOD FOR THOUGHT: HOW TO PROMOTE YOUR SITE

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By Len Thurmond

How To Promote Your Site…

The world of SEO is really not as complicated as people want to make it out
to be.

I suppose the SEO “Experts” want you to believe it’s incredibly complicated
so they can demand the “BIG BUCKS” they do.

I mean, let’s face it. If you found out that ANYONE could do it, they’d be
out of business…right?

But the truth is, although there are a lot of techniques and small things
that CAN make a small difference in your ranking, there are really only a
few major things that will make a significant difference in the end.

Such things as your title tag, placement of your main keyword phrases, and
Linking strategies.

Because in the end, the main concern of the search engines is that your page
is RELEVANT to the subject at hand, so that their customers will be happy
when they send them to your pages.

So as long as you make darn sure your page is optimized for what the page is
about, and let the search engines know it, you’ll get high rankings and
great generic traffic flow!

THAT, is SEO!

Letting the Search Engines KNOW what the page is about. And there are really
only a few things that you can do that make much of a difference…

1. make sure the keyword phrase that people are searching for to find
information about the subject of your page, is in the Title Tag of your
source code.

2. Make sure the same keyword phrase is in your keyword meta tag and your
description tag. And do NOT try to stuff every keyword you can think of that
might be relevant, in those tags. Keep it to the 1 or 2 main phrases that
you want to optimize each page for.

3. Put that same phrase at the TOP of your page copy in a headline or
sentence, and use a H2 tag to set it out for the search engines to see.

4. Use variations of the phrase as you would in natural conversation,
through out the copy of your page. But be sure to use language that makes
sense, as you would in conversation. Do NOT stuff the copy unnaturally with
the same main keyword phrase. but instead, use synonyms as you would if you
were talking. (The Search Engines have gotten real good at reading copy and
recognizing synonyms as reinforcement of the pages target subject)

5. Link to other pages within your site with Text Links that reflect the
main keywords of the pages they link to

If you make sure you keep these things in mind when you build your site,
your pages will list highly and you’ll get good traffic flow.

But lets talk a little bit about what you can do outside of your page
construction itself that can make the most difference.

The most important thing you can do outside your site construction, is to
have a good Linking strategy that can bring in inbound Links from relevant
sites. But unfortunately, this is not as easy as you might think it would
be.

The higher ranked the sites that link to you are, the more importance the
SEs will give those inbound links. But high ranked sites are usually picky
about who they link to. So it can be difficult to get them to do so.

One way is to contact such sites and offer something that benefits them, in
return for links on their sites with anchor text that reflects the keywords
you wish to target. (My partner has used our Auto Web Law product to offer
to make legal documents for these sites in exchange for the links, as many
if not MOST of them are not adequately protected with proper Legal
Documentation such as Terms of Use, Privacy Policies, and Income
Disclaimers.)

You need to be creative, but if you look over their sites and think about
it, you can probably see something you can offer them to get your links. And
the good news is that it doesn’t take many “GOOD” links to make a huge
difference.

But Probably the best way to get quality inbound links is through Article
Marketing.

We are going to spend he next few weeks talking about and going through the
How to use original Articles to very effectively promote your Websites.

So be sure to tune in next week … Same time … Same Channel, as we
continue our series on Article Marketing and “How To Make A Fortune With
Original Content, Whether You’re A Writer Or Not!

Till Next Week …

Here’s To Your Success,
Len

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THE ANDROGYNOUS STONE: CHAPTER FOUR

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Is it time at last for Sam to get some answers about this mysterious place and what it all has to do with her? Go here to read the fourth 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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