Lammo Affiliate Marketing Blog » SEO Link Building

What’s in a name?

Lammo — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:54:52 +0000

In real estate, the adage is “location, location and location”. On the Internet, the equivalent might well be “relevance, relevance and relevance”. The Internet is all about information. Internet users (or at least those that matter commercially) are looking for information. The vast majority of information is sourced via keyword searches and although there are many critical elements in achieving high rankings, the user browsing the SERPs results can hardly fail to be influenced by the domain name, site title and description or “snippet”. In essence, this defines the identity of the site and should help in establishing credibility in the mindset of this user, encouraging further examination — and those all important clicks.

Identity
Market positioning is one of the most important considerations. A combination of science, art and sheer luck are needed when selecting a domain name. While it may be desirable to have the name of the product or service being marketed as the main arbiter of choice, this can sometimes result in a generic name and it is a near certainty that competitors will have already have registered that version. The longer term view is also essential. Today, the business may sell only industrial engineering components, but next year may wish to expand into lawn mowers, washing machines or any number of different product areas. www.engineeredcomponents.com might be suitably generic and appropriate, but www.thermalcontrols.com might be more relevant to the desired search terms. A balancing act.

Search terms
Let us not forget that search terms should be one of the main drivers in the selection of a domain name: the search engines are still highly sensitive to the presence of keywords in domain names, with highly ranked sites of fairly questionable quality enjoying a level of exposure that must surely be largely as a result of a well chosen domain name. Acronyms are also tricky. Although they can often be more readily purchased, they can also be meaningless, unless they are widely recognised (and searched for) in the industry. FBI.co.uk may be memorable, but who would immediately recognise it as the identity of “Fred’s Boat Insurance”?

Top level domains (TLDs)
It may be possible to obtain an attractive domain by opting for a .biz. .net or similar variation, but there is inherent danger in creating confusion between two competitors. The major players will, in any case, have instigated a land grab for their primary domains by registering all of the common variants. Additionally, this trick is ethically questionable and may even see you answering a lawsuit for “passing off” or trademark infringement! In the UK, a simple free of charge check using the Companies House online system will allow you to search for companies of the same (or very close) name as your proposed domain. If they exist, choose another.

If you operating specifically within one region then choosing the top level domain relevant to the country in question is generally the best option. If selling to UK customers, for example, a.co.uk TLD would be beneficial and those targeting foreign markets should apply the same rule. The search engines are sensitive to this when it comes to ranking you in the relevant in-country results. It is also worth noting that they are sensitive to the geographical location of your IP address so you should always physically host the site in the country that matches your top level domain.

If your target market is not geography specific then a .com, .net, .biz or any of the ever-growing set of location-independent top level domains should suffice and can be hosted in the location of your choice.

The long and the short of it
There is a widespread preference for shorter and punchier domain names. They are easier to remember and are more likely to be directly entered into a browser address bar. However, when it comes to SEO and affiliate marketing, short may not always be best. Sometimes it’s advisable to go for the longer, more specific domain name in order to tap into the right kind of traffic – traffic that will result in commissions from conversion. For example, you could go for cheapholidays.biz and you may, with good SEO and a lot of work, get lots of traffic in time. However, if you are more specific with your domain name, opting instead for something along the lines of cheapgreekpackagetours.com, then the traffic should be that much more focused. Once again, it is worth emphasising that your choice of domain name should be driven by your keyword focus.

The second advantage to choosing longer, more specific domain names is that it will generally be far cheaper to buy them. However, memorability cannot be ignored. www.bustoursforseniors.com is a pretty good indicator as to what the website will do but who will remember www.bustoursforseniorsrus.com? In competitive sectors, look for a good combination of domain name and TLD and be prepared to use dashes.

Dash it!
We have also explored the use of dashes within domain names elsewhere here at lammo.net, with a general conclusion that dashes in domain names of sensible length such as cheap-greek-package-tours.com may be advantageous as it is easier for the search engines to break these down into their constituent keywords. Similarly they are easier for the user to read and to understand. Clearly the madly long domain names we see with umpteen words separated by dashes are seen by search engines and users alike as being rather spammy so some balance is required.

Finally, the relationship between the domain name, the keywords and the site content must be valid. Human searchers and the search engines alike will react badly to weak content, poorly organised information or simple lack of relevance of the domain name and keywords to the site content itself. Conversely, getting the combination right will pay dividends and should be well worth the considerable effort involved.

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

What’s in a name?

Should you link-build for “here”?

Lammo — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:11:36 +0000

We’re always being asked to click “here” or visit “this site” online whether we’re reading a blog, a forum post or indeed on sites of just about any type you care to think of. There is a widely held idea that constructing a sentence that instructs the viewer to click ‘here’ for more details and using the ‘here’ as the anchor text for a link to a partner’s site is the most natural way in which to build links. Rather than telling you straight away whether this is actually a good idea or not, let’s perform a simple test. Head over to Google and type in “click here”. Then hit search and see what pops up. We’ll wait a minute.

Done? It was Adobe’s homepage wasn’t it? Even if you just go for “here” Adobe pops up as number three. This is because there are so many thousands of sites linking to its homepage to allow their users to download one of the software products that have become indispensable in today’s online world. Almost every one of them links to Adobe by asking their users to “click here” or “here”.

The power of anchor text
This is a clear demonstration of the influence of anchor text in search engine rankings. In a sentence that is designed to get people to download an essential program this is fine. For other sites, not as useful. If all of your inbound links are for the text “here” or “click here” then there’s virtually no chance that you’ll ever get your site anywhere near the top of the search engine rankings – certainly not through your link building efforts alone. Though it may seem ‘natural’ to a person who spends much of their time reading things online, it doesn’t adhere to the way in which search engines work. The anchor text (the text displayed for the link itself) should therefore contain keywords which are relevant and which support your site’s keyword strategy. The same thing applies to your own internal linking endeavours. Links on your own site, whether on navigation menus, headers, footers and in-line in text should also contain relevant anchor text.

Choosing the right text
For all but the most strongly ranked sites, it is essential that you avoid the overly competitive, generic keywords. “Here” is potentially the best example of such a keyword! The key to link building and to creating the kind of natural link structure that should assist in improved search engine ranking for your site is both specificity and diversity. Choose keywords or phrases that best represent the content of your site. Back them up with plenty of high quality content that is coherent, uniquely written and of absolute relevance to your site. Ensure that any links you have agreed with partners are “deep links” pointing to the page that has the greatest relevance to the anchor text in the link.

A little subtlety goes a long way
It is worth avoiding repeatedly using exactly the same keywords or phrases to land on the same page. Not only will this look questionable to the search engines (considerable effort is spent looking for excessive “patterns”) but it may also limit your chances of reaching the ever diverse internet audience, many of whom will come up with some very odd keyword choices when searching for precisely the kinds of things your affiliate site is promoting. Whilst relevance is critical, you should go for a range of relevant anchor text keywords for each page.

Some people talk about linking volume being important. Whilst much depends on the competitiveness of the category and your chosen keywords, it isn’t all about big numbers. Rather, the search engines are looking for the ongoing acquisition of a modest number of good, relevant links on an ongoing basis. This signals that your site is alive and well and that it is regarded as being of value by an ever-growing online community. Conversely, any site which instantly gets thousands of inbound links before it has really got on its feet will potentially be seen as search engines as attempting to gain unfair advantage in some way or other, with the assumption being that it may be guilty of link buying or other shady exploits. You run the risk of being blacklisted as a result.

At the end of the day, a sentence which instructs the user to actively click on something, whether it’s with a “click here” or a “this site” piece of anchor text, is a sentence which is clearly revealing the intentions behind its link. Not only will it look and feel like an exercise in link building and deter visitors from clicking on the link, but it will also ultimately compromise your potential search engine rankings when you consider that you could have presented your link in a far more organic, natural, keyword-driven way.

Lack of control
Now whilst you can request the keywords or phrases that you’d like for the anchor text for your link, without having direct control over the content on the other site there is of course no guarantee that the link will be placed exactly as you wish. If you are gaining the link as a result of trading content in return for the link as we have described elsewhere here at lammo.net, the best way around this is to provide the content with your link subtly pre-included, usually best within the body of the text, in context. That way you’ll be sure that your link will occur in the best possible way within a natural sentence structure and with the required anchor text. Many busy webmasters will be only too happy that you have already done the contextual work for them!

In conclusion, although there is a widespread tendency for clicking “here” online it doesn’t mean that in the affiliate world this is a useful way of building links that form the “natural” pattern seen as desirable by the search engines. Once again we come to the realisation that building links the ‘hard’ way is the only way in which to create tangible results and pave the way for future success for your affiliate site.

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

Should you link-build for “here”?

Your first five links

Lammo — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 06:19:04 +0000

Mini sites remain a popular approach among content and SEO affiliates. For those of you who have yet to play with them, a mini site generally consists, as the name suggests, of a relatively small number of pages focused on a specific theme and with a relevant domain name, strong on-page SEO and great content. Although less fashionable than perhaps three or four years ago, mini sites remain a useful tool for affiliates wishing to promote niche merchants, products and services. This approach can be particularly useful for affiliates whose main sites are perhaps cross-category directories or shopping portals for which it can be hard to achieve search engine rankings in some of the tougher categories.

Assuming that you are trying to drive natural search traffic as opposed to simply using the site as a set of PPC landing pages, the acquisition of good inbound links is going to be essential. There is an element of “chicken and egg” with linking: webmasters want to trade links with sites that are already ranked but it is hard to get ranked without links. The type, quality and location of the first five links therefore become critical in kick-starting a linking campaign.

Techniques
Since you cannot yet offer a ranked page as a “fair exchange of value” for linking, you will need to offer some form of content instead. One popular approach utilises social media sites such as Digg, Squidoo and other blogging and article publishing platforms. Articles that are of particular interest to the selected group and contain a naturally inserted link to your mini site should certainly help in initiating the linking process. Because many of these sites are strongly ranked by the search engines and are regarded as being independent rather than overtly commercial sites, such links can over time contribute significantly to ranking. They key here is to ensure that the sites you choose do not use the dreaded “nofollow” tag with links. Many social media sites have employed this: a technique originally introduced by Google to allow the webmasters of blogs and social media sites to “tell” the search engine spiders not to follow – or at least not to confer ranking as a result of – a given link. This was in response to excessive numbers of low value posts from webmasters seeking only the link and offering relatively little in the way of intellectual property or value in return.

Spotting the use of nofollow is generally fairly easy. Simply view the source of some of the posts and pages on the site in question and search for “nofollow”. If this is included in the links from posts or articles, remove the site from your set of targets and move one.

For those sites that appear to be relevant to your audience and in which there is no evidence of the nofollow tag, make sure that you produce material that is of genuine use to visitors. One ever popular technique is to search for relevant questions raised around subjects related to your own mini site. You then add a materially useful response to the social media site, perhaps covering the issues in some – but not complete – detail and include a link to a highly detailed and relevant piece on your own site which completes and adds value to your explanation. Simply adding an “I’ve answered it here” post isn’t sufficient as it doesn’t provide the site social media site owner with any content of value to be associated directly with their own domain.

This approach allows you to put most of the effort into the piece on your mini site (which will of course add to your own content score over time) and to re-use this effectively by creating multiple value-added posts pointing at it. If the quality of your material is at the right level and the relevance is good, you should find that many of the posts will be accepted and the link duly added.

Article sites and directories
Whilst these remain a popular form of promotion for both new and established sites, it is important to recognise that with the exception of DMOZ and the Yahoo directories (both of which will require that you have significant original material on the site and are pretty hard to enter sites with significant affiliate links present on them), the value of article sites and directories as link partners has diminished over the last two to three years. Although we are not huge fans of the dreaded green bar Google page rank indicator here at lammo.net (because it is so infrequently updated and is but one of many ranking factors), it IS a useful indicator as to whether the lower level pages in directories and article sites are actually being ranked. If you can find articles from an article site highly ranked in the search engines or you can see that the detail pages or an article site or directory have a page rank above zero, it may be worth the effort. If not, move on!

Buying links
Tempting as it may be in the early days of promoting an unranked site and despite the number of webmasters who will happily offer you a link for a fee, never go down this road. This is explicitly against the search engines’ terms of service. Through senior contacts in the industry we know that it IS reported and it IS penalised when discovered.

Self promotion
One historically popular solution has been for affiliates to use their own site(s) to link back to a new mini-site. Most affiliates have more than one site so it is arguably fairly simple to link to your mini site from several sources. If you have an established site that gets plenty of traffic and is steadily climbing the search rankings then linking to your new mini site could surely prove to be advantageous? The issue here is that the search engines dislike site networks. They are easy to detect: common IP addresses, WHOIS data, nameservers and so forth. Even if you keep all of these elements separate and distinct for each of your sites, excessive linking between a set of sites has been known to be penalised. Why? From a search engine perspective, this mirrors the behaviour of many low rent link building firms who constantly hit the same database of targets with link requests and over time accidentally create a “warm network” effect as a result. Similarly, many linking solutions use collectively owned (often by the link builders themselves) site networks, numbering thousands of separate domains, in order to appear to “trade” links for their clients. There is usually little value in these domains and the search engines are on a mission to weed them out from the SERPs results. Inversely, cross-links from multiple mini sites to one central domain are generally held to be akin to a “doorway” approach and are equally likely to incur the wrath of the search engines. By cross-linking between your own web properties you are mirroring questionable techniques and running the risk of a penalty – including the potential loss of those hard won rankings for your more established sites. Avoid!

Timings
Those first five links are essential. Natural, unique links to relevant and significant topics that are not reciprocated are the goal. Social networking sites are potentially powerful allies if you can get the technology to work in your favour, but there’s no guarantee of instant success. Whatever the initial set of sites you choose as link partners, it is important to recognise that it will take time – often many months – before you see any significant effect on search engine rankings as a result of your link building efforts. Until your site has a visible Google page rank and is appearing reasonably highly in the results for relevant search terms, it makes sense to continue to focus on offering value in the form of content in starting the long journey of building solid rankings.

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

Your first five links

Should you still use Meta Tags?

Lammo — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:04:39 +0000

As always with any on-page SEO factor, there has been considerable debate as to the merits and use of Meta Tags. Ask 20 experts and you’ll get 22 opinions! Some question whether or not they continue to serve any purpose and whether using them will really make any difference to the search engine ranking of your site. The current thinking is that although the use of Meta Tags by no means provides any level of guarantee as to search engine inclusion or placement, their effective use remains important.

The TITLE Tag
Since the Meta Tags are contained within the HEAD section of a page, before looking at them in detail it is worth mentioning the importance of the TITLE tag which is also contained within this section. Although not a Meta tag itself, proper use of the TITLE is widely held to be essential in any effective on-page SEO strategy. The TITLE tag determines the value displayed in the browser window or tab title and is argued to be one of the most important on-page SEO factors. It is essential that your TITLE contains the main keywords or phrases for which you want the page to rank. You should keep the length of the TITLE tag to within the W3C guidelines of no more than 64 characters. A good TITLE tag should describe the page sufficiently well for the reader to understand the type and scope of its content.

The Meta Description Tag
The Meta Description tag allows you to, as the name suggests, describe the page in greater detail than is possible within the length constraints of the TITLE tag. Indeed there are up to 250 characters available. Clearly the content of this tag should support the content of both the TITLE and the Meta Keywords tag (see below). Consistency between these elements and with the rest of the page content is important although making them identical could be seen as over-optimising and thus counter-productive. The search engines’ treatment of the Meta Description tag varies. Google is believed to use it for relevance and ranking but will create its own description for use in natural search results page (SERPs) listings. Other engines may use the contents of the Description tag either fully or in a truncated form depending on the length of the Description you provide and the available SERPs page space.

The Meta Keywords Tag
Originally designed to allow webmasters to provide the search engines with guidance as to the terms for which the page is relevant, the poor old Keywords tag has probably seen more abuse than almost any other HTML element, literally stuffed with endless and repetitive variants of search terms. As a result, the major search engines have for some time largely ignored the Keywords tag. Note the word “largely” here. Although use of the Keywords tag in isolation has very little bearing on ranking, effective use of it to REINFORCE the keywords on page MAY in some cases have a marginally positive effect on rankings. There is absolutely no doubt that it will only have any level of positive effect when used in conjunction with the main page content and to reinforce the contents of the TITLE and Description tags.

Some argue that excessive keyword stuffing here may have an adverse effect on rankings. It certainly doesn’t send the right message to the search engines and with the algorithms constantly being refined it makes sense to keep the keywords real and valuable. Many SEO advisors even suggest that those new to the field omit this tag and there is no real evidence that so doing will have a negative effect.

The Robots Tag
The Meta Robots tag should ONLY BE USED TO EXCLUDE THE PAGE. There is otherwise no need to specify this tag. Some have argued that specifying “follow, index” for this tag can be a positive factor but there is no evidence in support of these claims. By default, the search engine crawlers are designed to index unless otherwise asked. The Robots tag has various extensions, for example to prevent the indexing of multimedia content. Support for these is not, however, uniform across the search engines and most SEO experts recommend the use of the robots.txt file for exclusions.

Other Meta Tags
There are a range of other tags related to, for example, internal site indexing such as the “Dublin Core” Meta tags. There is no specific support for these tags believed to be present in the current search engine algorithms and their use is therefore highly site-specific and irrelevant to SEO.

Meta Tags and Wordpress
Since Wordpress is used by so many affiliates to add articles and content to their sites – indeed for many it is the primary technology by which they build sites – it is worth a mention. Although generally fairly well optimised, by default there is no option in Wordpress to include or edit a Meta description and include keywords for each post. A title is the only element that is included and is generated automatically when you publish. As a result in its basic form you have little control over the information that is conveyed via the Meta tags. If the titles of your posts don’t contain the keywords used elsewhere on your page then those keywords won’t appear in the browser bar or potentially in the search engine’s description of your page. There is a solution to this problem in the form of the ‘all in one SEO’ Wordpress plug-in, allowing you to customise these tags; add keywords and phrases that you’re using as part of the SEO for your site; and generally influence the Meta information about each page.

So Should I Use Meta Tags?
What all of this boils down to is that on-page management of keywords is fundamental to the performance of a web page, and that you should include them as effectively as you reasonably can. This includes adding keywords into the relevant Meta tags with each tag acting IN COMPLIMENT to the others and to the rest of the page content. This is advisable even if you’ve heard people saying that search engines don’t pay attention to them any more. Search engines do not stand still: they are constantly changing and evolving and the different engines treat on-page elements in very different ways to one another. As a result, sticking to the results of one example over another or the opinion of one source over another, no matter how demonstrable the effects or lack thereof of Meta tags has been, just isn’t a safe strategy. Some publishing tools may not offer Meta Tag support by default, but there are open source solutions to many of these problems as we’ve seen with Wordpress. The best option is thus to include valid Meta tags anyway, whether you believe that they will have an effect or not, and to make sure that you are careful about the keywords you place in them.

The Whole is Greater Than the Sum of the Parts
No matter how well you think you may have optimised your Meta tags and TITLE, your hard work will be of little value unless you also pay reasonable attention to other key on-page SEO factors including overall keyword density; use of header (H1, H2, H3) tags; use of ALT text for images; W3C compliance; use of anchor text in internal navigation and links; reduced code redundancy with the “meat” of the content being as close to the top of the page as possible (perhaps using CSS to control layout and sequence) . .and so forth.

Effective SEO in 2009 requires that you address ALL areas effectively. The good news is that there is plenty of public domain information as to how to go about this, both here at Lammo and elsewhere – and some of the experts even agree with each other . . well largely anyway!

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

Should you still use Meta Tags?

How dense are you?

Lammo — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:55:10 +0000

Whilst it is relatively easy to set up your own site these days, the degree of competition in almost any sector you care to name means that getting your site to stand out amongst the crowd is going to take a great deal of effort.

We have talked elsewhere on Lammo about the other factors involved in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) both on-page and off-page. One of the vital elements on your on-page strategy is that of keyword density.

The Right Keywords
Choosing the right keywords is vital in attracting traffic; for the most part this relies heavily on understanding your audience and targeting those key phrases they are most likely to use. Many affiliates already use tools such as the Google AdWords keyword tool and WordTracker in identifying keywords that will 1) actually attract traffic that will monetise and 2) represent a good balance between search volumes versus mad degrees of competition.

Whilst there are several different names for keyword combinations, in their simplest form they are referred to by the number of words that would be entered into a search engine. ‘Head’, “Core” or ‘Shorttail Phrases’ are for many site owners something of a Holy Grail. These are generally key phrases such as “Printer ink”. Naturally these will in general produce a mass of results but will have a lower conversion rate.

‘Longtail Phrases’ are those more specific terms which typically consist of 3 to 5 words (or more) that are searched for in lower volumes but with far greater buying intent, for example, “Canon ink cartridges PGI-5BK”. Using brand names or other relevant extensions to create longtail terms can help to target more specific users. The obvious drawback of longtail phrases is that they will drive far less traffic. However, since that traffic is far more likely to monetise and the degree of competition in both SEO and PPC terms is generally lower for these terms (although still intense in some sectors), a combination of longtail phrases will more often than not outperform the Holy Grail terms.

Sequence of Events
Most experts recommend that a new business identifies its initial choice of keywords before the site is even designed, this makes sense because once the keywords are properly understood, the website can be built around them in order to ensure that all pages have keyword rich relevant content. It is important to remember that multimedia content will not, for the main part, count towards keyword density so it is recommended that most pages of the site should have at least 300 words of keyword rich text content.

Striking the Right Balance
Littering the content with too many keywords can be distracting and downright irritating for visitors and can attract over optimisation penalties (OOP) from the search engines if you go too mad. Thus creating good content whilst reinforcing your target keywords is something of a balancing act. Calculating the keyword density theoretically follows a simple percentage formula:

(Occurrences * Phrase Length) / Content Length * 100

i.e. If your phrase is 2 words long and occurs 10 times in a content unit of 200 words:-

(10 x 2) / 200 * 100 = 10%

However, the count may vary depending on the search engine criteria. For example, some engines count keywords used elsewhere on the page such as the Meta tags, image tags, Title tags as well as the main on-page text content. Others may count from the body tag of the page onwards. In broad terms, when writing text content, a keyword density of some 2% to 4% is generally held to be acceptable and some difference between pages is desirable. Exactly 4% density on each page screams of over-optimisation!

If the density is too low, your page may be considered an irrelevant result for that keyword phrase, however, this doesn’t mean that a higher percentage will produce a more relevant or higher result. Search engines in general attempt to combat spam pages by penalising those pages where the keyword density is clearly too high.

Going Mad
It isn’t just the search engines that will struggle with overly keyword dense content. The following is an example of how content might read if the keyword density is too high. Let’s assume that a new business that sells umbrellas has gone into overdrive with its marketing content.the keywords identified are ‘umbrella/s’ and ‘rain’ :-

“.next time you reach for your umbrella when it rains, ensure that your umbrella is a super ‘anti-rain’ umbrella if you want to ensure that you not only stay dry in the rain, but that your umbrella makes you look good too. An anti-rain umbrella comes in a variety of colours and designs, and these umbrellas are resistant to high winds.”

From the above 60 word content, the word umbrella is used five times, giving it a density of around 8% and lets presume that the content continues to be littered in this manner. This illustrates how distracting keywords can be when used too frequently, resulting in unreadable content and in the user rapidly clicking the dreaded back button!

Keywords and Meta tags
As we have written elsewhere here at Lammo, the judicious use of Meta tags requires that their content SUPPORTS the main on-page content. Remember that some search engines will count overall density including tags as well as the main body content. This is why designing a keyword strategy from the top and ensuring that ALL elements of your on-page SEO support the agreed terms.

Here’s hoping this page doesn’t get penalised for excessive use of the word “umbrella” !!

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

How dense are you?

Sorry seems to be the hardest word

Lammo — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:48:47 +0000

We’ve all received those rather irritating cold calls from various banks, mobile phone networks and even double glazing salespeople, and cold calling has become something of a hot topic of things to complain about with us Brits, so is it really any surprise that people have started to have the same extreme reactions when it comes to emailing?

The truth is, that whilst cold calling has perhaps proved successful in some ventures, the dangers of internet ’spam’ seem to flag up a warning to all of us these days and the risk of viruses or fraud seem all too frightening so most e-mails are deleted without ever having been opened. In some instances, emailing can have the opposite effect to the one initially intended, that is, that potential customers or partners complain vigorously about the “unauthorised” use of their e-mail addresses.

So Why Do It?
The realities of many online endeavours these days require some form of initial email approach. Link building is a classic example. Short of buying a very large megaphone and yelling from the top of the office, there are no viable alternatives in approaching a potential link partner than an email. Whilst most people accept that such emails are “common currency” on the internet and will either respond favourably or simply delete the email, a few will react very strongly indeed.

Handling Complaints
Handling complaints about email in a professional and courteous manner can make a big difference; not least because so few internet marketing campaigns ever respond to user complaints at all. If the recipient does reply with a request to be removed from any emailing list then this should be immediately honoured. In fact, there are regulations managed by the Information Commissioners Office stating that electronic mail marketing messages should not be sent to private individuals without their permission unless the following criteria are met:-

1) That the marketer has obtained the recipient’s details through a sale or negotiations for a sale.

2) That messages are about similar products or services offered by the sender.

3) That the recipient was given an opportunity to refuse further marketing communications when their details were collected, and are likewise given a simple way to opt out in every future communication.

However, the above regulations do NOT cover electronic mail marketing sent to businesses; this in part is because a business is more likely to have a website that openly publishes contact email addresses and accepts the need for emails relating to business opportunities of one form or another. Most businesses will be used to receiving daily cold emails and accept that it is perhaps just easier to delete them or to put a block on the sender. However, in those instances where a complaint is made, then marketers should readily and rapidly apologise for any inconvenience or annoyance caused in the first instance, regardless of the tone of the complaint.

Aggression
Cold emailing may well bring out the more aggressive side of people who are generally frustrated with the high volume of ’spam’ they receive but even those with “more to say” should be handled with great care. ALWAYS REMEMBER THAT AS THE MARKETER, YOU STARTED THE DIALOGUE!! Keep any replies to aggressive responses both friendly and courteous at all times, regardless of provocation. Remember at all times that your own business’s reputation may well be called into question – the threat of negative blog postings is a very real one and can result, if nothing else, in considerable management time to defuse the situation.

As with any ‘complaint handling strategies’, the aim should be to defuse any anger or irritation caused as soon as possible. This can only ever be achieved effectively with a simple apology and whilst some marketers may well feel that an opportunity for a conversation has been opened, continuing to overtly ’sell’ is generally a bad idea and may well cause further damage. That said, a friendly and professional response may well, in its own right, distinguish you from the herd and result in a profitable relationship.

Threatening behaviour from recipients isn’t unheard of either, and whilst some people are naturally able to dismiss this as ‘unprofessional’ and ‘unkind’, others may find dealing with severe complaints rather stressful. It is therefore important to ensure that any staff likely to be handling these complaints are well versed in handling such responses, and that they are also given the opportunity to express their own concerns and stresses about aggressive calls – internally rather than in “right back at you” style at the complainant!

Getting it Right
We would all hope that there is a general understanding that many businesses rely on cold emailing, particularly newer businesses that need to get their voices heard and products seen. This can make it all the more frustrating when complaints are lodged because it would be simpler for everyone if people just politely declined to open the email. However, getting the targeting right in the first place will make a huge difference. Cold emails are one thing but irrelevant cold emails are seen as being far worse and are far more likely to provoke aggressive responses. Try to ensure that any targeting exercise is as accurate as possible and that the communication clearly explains why the recipient was contacted.

Always remember that whilst it is sometimes SO tempting to reply to a complaint in the same aggressive manner in which the complaint was made, remaining professional at all times is a must. Even if a recipient continues to respond in a negative manner, the marketer must accept that it is they who have initiated contact in the first instance and that the recipient is entirely within their rights to reply as they see fit.

Finally, opt-out clauses on any mailings sent should be easily accessible and simple to use. In fact, it is when choosing to opt out that people are more likely to open up the email and so first impressions should be better than good if you only have a few short seconds in which to grab the attention of someone who is otherwise intending to delete your email and any further communications for good.

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

Sorry seems to be the hardest word

Link Building is still bloody hard work

Lammo — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:40:13 +0000

With this new year already speeding by (why must this always be the case?) and the peoples of the world seeming to be in a paradoxical state of both despair and hope (depending on the time of day you tune into a 24 hour news channel) it’s time to visit the world of linking and see if the winds of change have been kicking up dust. We have talked before about linking being all about an exchange of value and an essential part of the online affiliate currency, and that partnership is integral to success. However, as many people will have experienced first hand, the realities of linking aren’t as clear cut and as simple as we would perhaps like them to be.

Any form of sales exercise is a numbers game and linking is no different: you still have to “sell” the partner as to the merits of a link relationship. The degree of competition between online players and indeed the activities of off-shore link building firms means that the numbers continue to change — and not favourably. In the last 3 years it has become almost twice as hard to attract a given number of link partners. In some sectors this now renders traditional link building all but impossible. Whilst travel and many of the major retail sectors remain highly “do-able” from a linking perspective, those with electronics, finance, cash back, vouchers, mobile phone, broadband and gambling related sites will find link building incredibly hard going. The reassurance here, however, is that everyone else in the sector is finding it tough too!!

In tougher sectors, there are two primary reasons for the challenges. Firstly, the sheer degree of competition and “link fatigue” caused by so many similar competing sites approaching largely the same set of potential link partners. Secondly, in many of these sectors, there are a diminishing number of potential link partners: more and more webmasters have either become affiliates or are demanding money with menaces in order to establish a link relationship. As we have said many times before NEVER EVER PAY FOR A LINK. Not only is this expressly against Google Terms of Service (TOS) but through personal search industry contacts we know for a fact that paid links are reported and are penalised. All of this is resulting in fewer and fewer genuine link potential partners within these sectors.

Assuming that you operate in a remotely “do-able” sector, you still face the challenge of actually getting your message in front of someone who will actually act upon it. The numbers game means that some form of cold emailing will in almost all cases be required — after all you are after real link partners, not some kind of co-operative network that the search engines can spot a mile off so forget the databases and co-operation sites. No-one likes cold emails and even if you manage to 1) get a working email address, 2) get through ever stronger anti-spam defences and 3) get the mail read, there is still a very high percentage chance that it will still be simply binned along with the adverts for dodgy pills and phoney foreign lottery wins.

So we are now down to a small percentage of those sites with whom you have attempted to make contact. You have made the effort to structure and personalise your emails as best you can and have a number of potentially positive responses as a result. Each of these will now need managing to fruition. As we have seen in other posts here at Lammo, you will then need to arrange a fair exchange of value – there are a number of ways in which to do this. Since payment isn’t and never should be an option, other forms of exchange of value are needed – often hard for new sites and market entrants. And link partners are becoming ever more demanding . .” I won’t link with you until you’re Page Rank 5″ . . .”I want 30 pieces of content for one link . . ”

So now that you have a handle as to the major challenges in finding link partners in the first place, it’s essential to think about what makes a good link partner. Here we come again to the problem of identifying the difference between a link partner who will be complimentary to your own website, and a competitor’s site that the search engines will simply regard as an “artificial” link and will in all likelihood ignore. However, trying to explain this to potential partner is quite a challenge: one person’s complimentary partner is another person’s off-theme link request!

Yet relevance is one of the keys to winning the numbers game in linking. It is well worth investing the time in looking at your competitors and their link equity and in thoroughly considering the question “what types of sites would be useful for our visitors but wouldn’t collide head on with our products or services?”

The easiest way to show the difference between complimentary versus competitive camps is to give a couple of hypothetical examples. If you’ve got a site that is about hats, don’t be afraid of looking for partners who also have sites about hats. Provided that you cover different areas of the market, for example if you deal in woolly hats and the partner in Trilbies and boutique varieties, then they will make a complimentary partner. Equally, partners selling other fashion items will be useful for your visitors and for the search engines, being within a “fashion” or “apparel” classification.

When you understand this area properly you will be able to properly communicate it to potential partners and your conversion rates should improve as a result.

A significant element of SEO strategy still focuses on linking. Despite changing times and toughening response levels, the quality and relevance of your inbound links is paramount. These days it is rather less so about the quantity, reflecting the ever increasing difficulty of attracting link partners. To paraphrase Mark Twain, it is also fair to say that the death of reciprocal linking has been greatly exaggerated. Provided that reciprocal links are on-theme, they remain a valuable part of a site’s link equity and contribute to the all important natural link structure the search engines want to see.

If all of this sounds rather like hard work, it is! Thankfully there are firms who can shoulder the burden for you, using best practice techniques combining some automation and economy of scale with expert team members to deliver effective linking solutions.

Perhaps in an ideal world, all links would be attracted by the sheer brilliance of your site.

Until then. . . .

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

Link Building is still bloody hard work

Choosing keywords for SEO and PPC

Lammo — Mon, 18 May 2009 19:13:14 +0000

One of the key challenges with the keyword market is that it is a fickle mistress whether you are a lowly start up or a high flier. With keywords being such an integral part of both PPC and SEO campaigns, the right choices can make or break a business. As with most aspects of affiliate marketing, the main strategy should be about you finding a balance, in this case between the core, competitive terms and the longtail keywords. However, this is of course easier said than done. Understanding the merits of both core and longtail keywords as well as realising that the two are not mutually exclusive is a good place to start.

Why do you need to find a balance between the core, popular keywords and their more obscure longtail cousins? The primary reason is that it’s a lot easier to build yourself up in the organic search rankings and produce a stable base from which to operate if you combine the two rather diverting all energies to the core terms. This is because in an ever increasing number of categories, using core terms simply corners you into an extremely competitive market wherein all of your best linking and content creation efforts may have limited impact. When using core, competitive keywords most search engines will focus on the authority and history of your domain and the number of relevant “in-community” links above all else, relegating on page optimisation (where the barrier to entry is perceived as low) to a tiny proportion of the myriad of factors that go to make up your ranking. When you’ve got a partially established brand which is in competition with a mad number of other sites, this means that you can quite quickly slip down the rankings and your hard work will be potentially wasted.

We are not for a minute suggesting that there is no point in focusing on some core terms on your site. As with so many elements of both PPC and SEO, they are an integral part of a long term game plan. However, the focus and balance between core and longtail should primarily be determined by the age and current stature of your site. The more established you are, the more core terms it may make sense to include in your activities. Conversely, new market entrants will need to gain as much leverage as possible with longtail terms before placing much weight on the more competitive terms. Ultimately it is about building a reputation slowly rather than going for the all or nothing keyword war where you’ve got more to lose.

So what do we mean by finding a balance? Essentially it comes down to using core terms and longtail terms in unison, and through this partnership the strengths of each will compliment and augment the weaknesses of the other, creating a workable strategy. This has been proven effective because essentially the organic search value of a set of well chosen longtail terms can be more than equal to that of a single competitive core term — if the longtail terms are comprised of a string of core terms using a “longtail contains” approach. This will create a more specific and targeted set of longtail phrases, generating traffic that will actually find the content of your site relevant.

For example, if you’re aiming at the sporting footwear market then you might consider using “trainers” as a core term to promote your site. However, the problem with that is that not only is the term “trainer” associated with many other off-theme sites (personal trainers, training and education in an endless set of subjects . . .) but it is far too general to necessarily convert well. In this case you’d be far better combining core terms and even brand names, for example “mens running trainers”, “mens Adidas trainers” and so forth. Note that the longtails here contain not only “trainers” but “Adidas trainers”, “mens Adidas” etc.

To throw another hypothetical example out there, if you were targeting the travel market, having “cheap online Sharm el Sheikh package tours” would potentially endow you with the attention of a specific audience. When combining keywords it is important not only that they are relevant and searched for in reasonable volumes, but that they can be easily injected into the content of your site, whether it is in link anchor text or liberally dispersed in your on-site content at sensible densities.

So much for the how and the why, but ultimately you’re in this for the money rather than to experiment with search engine ranking systems and the shifting trends of the average internet user, so why is the balance of core and longtail terms so important from a financial point of view? Essentially it’s down to getting the right kind of traffic to your site, and whether you’re going for PPC or SEO or both, if you combine core keywords into a longtail thread then you stand a far better chance of attracting a more targeted group of visitors who are actually looking for a site just like yours.

And who will thus monetise more effectively.

Although using longtail keywords in unison with core terms can sometimes feel as if you’ve opened a tap half way, that trickle of traffic can more readily be converted into a torrent once you’ve established your site (with traffic data such as bounce rate, CTR and so forth being ever more vital in achieving and sustaining rankings), and the quality of the flow in the longer term will make up for the small number in the early days. One recent statistic suggests that around 20% of searches made each day haven’t been entered for the last 90 days, if at all. This means that both the longtail and the core keyword have an important – indeed vital – place in PPC and SEO of all types, and that putting all of your energies into a core keyword only strategy, whilst rewarding in some cases, is by no means the only road to success. In some cases quite the contrary.

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

Choosing keywords for SEO and PPC

Link Building: Strategies for a fair exchange of value

Lammo — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:32:13 +0000

There’s just no getting around it, if you want to improve your search engine page ranking then link building is a key element of the way forward. Google and the like place considerable emphasis on well-placed, relevant links to and from the pages of your site and many web editors will only get so far with their site with regards to SEO, without building these links.

A quality link is one that comes from a page which is relevant to your own and has already been indexed or, if a new page, is positioned in such as way as to ensure that it will be indexed within a reasonable time frame.

One Way Links
There are a number of different linking strategies and techniques that have varying degrees of success. One-way backlinks are the most highly prized. These are links that are from external sites to pages within your own site. These links are powerful because, in short, they tell the search engines that your website is interesting, valuable or useful to users of the site linking to you. They are also great for garnering direct traffic to your site as a result. As you can imagine, attracting one-way links is harder than some of the other strategies covered below and yet should be an element of any decent linking strategy.

Farewell Article Sites
In the good old days (up until some time during 2006), article sites and directories were a great way of creating these one way links. For article sites, you created (or outsourced the creation of) some content, provided it to the article site and saw it published with an ‘author bio’ at the bottom containing your desired link. These days, however, all but a few of the article sites have been penalised for allowing the publishing of low rent off-shore content and – worse – duplicate content which as we all know is a search engine no-no. Of those remaining, many now charge a review fee in order to fund staff hand checking content before publishing it. This may be a useful addition for some harder-to-link sites but for most will seem like a lot of effort and expense for what may be an ever decreasing return.

Bon Voyage Directories
Similarly, directories were a time-honoured way of achieving one-way inbound links. They too have suffered over the last couple of years with the search engines recognising that the barrier to entry to achieving a directory link is minimal and thus its value must, by definition, be fairly low. A few remain, notably some sector-specific directories that may still convey a reasonable degree of “link juice” but these are the exception rather than the rule.

Motivation Through Exchange of Value
So, short of asking 10,000 people to link to you with nothing in return save the addition of a relevant link on their site (actually helpful to the search engines but not enough to motivate anyone), to get one-way links you need to examine more creative means by which to motivate other webmasters. Since any form of linking should be a fair exchange of value, there are a couple of effective methods of reeling other sites in. You could offer to create content for a their site, for example. This is great for your reputation too because the other site can promote you as an expert, or authority, on a certain subject as well as becoming a link partner. And if you do have a certain area of expertise you could offer e-books and advice services to consumers and promote these on relevant external sites. This mechanism is proving to be effective although time consuming for a good many linking campaigns.

As an alternative, you could even offer some level of commission for each click-through or sale made as a result of the link. This tends to be easier for merchants than for affiliates and requires the ability to track and commission traffic via NATURAL links rather than the mainstream affiliate tracking URLs most of us know and love (!). There is no point in providing content with your affiliate URL in it – the other party will probably happily publish it but you will gain no SEO benefit from the presence of an affiliate tracking URL on their site.

There are no doubt other creative alternatives including content exchange – both parties write for the other and include a link; providing your partners with access to some form of useful tool or widget not available in the public domain; offering the partner’s membership some kind of discount (again requires accurate tracking); the provision of some kind of service or favour in return. In short anything other than paying hard cash for links which is an ABSOLUTE NO-NO. There are many firms out there who actively report anyone found doing this to Matt Cutts et. al at Google and in many cases sites participating in such paid linking schemes suffer. Rapidly and permanently.

Reciprocal Linking
Moving onto other forms of link exchange, reciprocal links are simply a case of trading links with another site. This has historically been the most prevalent form of link exchange. Unlike one-way links, reciprocal links are normally more “staged” and set-up. One site will simply contact another and ask to have reciprocal links. This is why many argue that Google no longer rewards these with the same authority ranking as the direct one-way links which have been set up purely on the merit of the linked-to site. That’s not to say that reciprocal links aren’t successful or useful PROVIDED THAT they are on-theme and that links are only traded with partners of similar / reasonable quality. Anyone running a reciprocal campaign needs to remember that exchange of value also applies here. Partners tend to want to trade with sites and pages that have similar visible ranking (including the dreaded Google Page Rank . . don’t get me on that one!) and reasonable visibility in the search engine results. Great for established sites. Chicken and egg for newcomers. That said, if your site is content-rich and of good quality, many more savvy webmasters will recognise that you should achieve reasonable rankings over time and are therefore worth partnering with.

Outbound Linking
Most people ignore outbound links when planning a linking campaign, with the exception of those links reciprocated with partners. In fact Google and other search engines value outbound links when determining the theme and relevance of your site and links to “authority” sites in your space are actually a good thing, even though they are unlikely ever to be returned.

Three Way Linking
Three-way partner links are usually used by a site which sits in a group of sites or has complimentary themed siblings. So, for example if your main site has a relevant sister site, the sister site will link to a partner site and this partner site will then link back to the main site. Some partners can also link this way even if you have only one site, with you linking to their site A and them returning a link from their site B. Although many regard three way linking with some suspicion and, as usual, there is a lot of mythology on the forums about its viability, it can be a useful element of a linking campaign in creating a one-way link which doesn’t appear exactly like a reciprocal one.

With three way linking it is particularly important to pay attention to your incoming links as a result of the transaction – they must still be of good quality. Search engines are keenly aware that some sites use spam and other methods to boost their inbound links and these can damage your sites ranking and reputation. Owners of networks of sites are without doubt more prone to use questionable and potentially dangerous tactics. In all cases, incoming links should be relevant to your site, use appropriate keywords in the anchor tags and ideally already have good presence in search engine indexes. We’ll cover some of the trickery employed by unscrupulous webmasters in another article very soon.

Natural Link Structure
Finally, the search engines look for a “natural” link structure. They want to see a mixture of outbound-only, inbound-only and reciprocal links to and from your site. This is the kind of structure that occurs naturally over time and any attempt you make to accelerate that, whilst perfectly acceptable provided that you follow the rules, should emulate a natural structure.

Good and ultimately successful link-building takes time and a great deal of effort but the rewards you can get from Google and other search engines will be worth it in the long run. Just remember to focus on the value that you are able to offer to partners and utilise to the full.

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

Link Building: Strategies for a fair exchange of value

Linking – an exchange of value

Lammo — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 09:14:58 +0000

Business over the internet is all about building relationships with like minded individuals and organisations that are mutually beneficial, and though the rewards are ultimately financial, the currency of this world is not always hard cash. This is all particularly relevant to Link partners, and with Link partners increasingly hard to find and once found even harder to maintain, it’s all about the incentive and the ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ mentality that can keep a good linking relationship afloat. It’s odd that sailing metaphors creep into these kinds of conversations so much, but it is quite appropriate here when talking about the cut-throat world of the internet.

Offer Incentives
Acquiring a link partner is more than just asking someone to link to your page and relying on their altruistic nature, you need to give them an incentive to link to you, and that incentive can take many forms. The way in which you ‘pay’ for the work of a Link partner is often decided by what you can realistically offer in return, and most Link partners have developed their own system to account for the services each provides.

Reciprocal and 3-Way Linking
The first and most obvious thing you can offer a link partner is a link on your own site to their site in exchange for their linking to you. This doesn’t cost anything and is a matter of etiquette for some. 3 way linking is another option and involves parties agreeing to link in such a way that no site is linking to a site that links back to it. However, reciprocal linking and 3 way linking are only effective if the links originate in unique, well written content and provide relevant links to partner sites and vice versa, and therefore has to be managed correctly to be a worthwhile bargaining chip to attract Link partners. You have to present yourselves to partners who won’t feel like you are competition or who think you are trying to siphon off some of their traffic.

Affiliate Commissions and CPC Revenue
The easiest way to attract a Link partner is to offer them a cut of your profits, since they are essentially contributing towards this by linking to your site and funnelling more traffic your way, which over time can convert itself into significant financial gain for you. Starting out your relationship with a Link partner by offering set commissions or a share of your CPC revenue shows that you are serious about the partnership, and of course the exchange should operate on a sliding scale, and both of you will only benefit if the linking draws traffic your way. Potentially difficult to track and manage but in many ways one of the strongest forms of exchange of value, particularly if you are an affiliate site vying for space in the results pages alongside so many of your competitors.

Content
The article site boom and bust of a couple of years ago once more highlighted the fact that good content is essential to the success of a site, and also that finding good content is extremely hard: especially well written articles in coherent English that are unique and relevant. That’s why often the most valuable thing you can offer a Link partner in exchange for linking to your site is good content. Whilst it’s not an instant fix solution, as it may take some time for your content to be published on your partners site, this is still one of the best way to attract Link partners. It’s also great because there is incentive for the Link partner to publish your content in a prominent area on their website, which will also give your link a good position, rather than just sticking it in a links page which no one will visit. The exchange of content in return for a link is beneficial to both parties as you get your link on a relevant web page and your partner is given unique content, so on both sides there is an opportunity to increase traffic and improve search engine rankings.

This approach can be further expanded into content exchange whereby both parties provide the other with content and links within that content.

Clearly the production of content or indeed the management of the whole process is something you may wish to outsource. There are a number of reputable firms that have multi-disciplinary linking and writing teams and can handle this approach on your behalf.

Widgets
If you don’t have the time or the resources to continually create original content for Link partner sites in order to keep generating inbound links then offering free widget attachments which your partners can embed in their pages and from which they can generate their own revenue is another solution in the link exchange business. If you have the right software and the right affiliate relationships elsewhere then a widget can be another good incentive that requires some work at its inception but will pretty much look after itself once it’s been implemented. We’re not just talking about content or affiliate product style widgets here but anything of potential value and use: perhaps some form of online calculation tool or some other gadget relevant to your sector and therefore useful to your link partners.

The possibilities are limited only by your imagination (and pockets!). Whatever you do, in attracting link partners, make sure you have a clear view as to the value you are able and willing to exchange before you start approaching anyone.

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

Linking – an exchange of value