Affiliate Forums, SEO Articles & Dangers For Noobs.

[Affi Liate]

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Bon Jovi

I love a4u, in fact, at times, I want to have the founder’s babies.

However, I am noticing something that I PERSONALLY find very alarming in the great scheme of things.

This is when quite often I read very MISLEADING or vague advice that could really confuse, or worse still, seriously hinder noobs progression.

I know noobs who were making nothing because they were spending hour after hour day after day constantly updating content on half baked sites because they had "read that's what you should do".

I now look at some of these guys and they are making a good living from AM because I showed them to think outside the box.

THE POINT OF THIS POST?

SEO IS NOT DIFFICULT. DON'T WASTE TIME

The thing with forums is quite often a noob may read a post/s that does NOTHING other than confuse them and at times give very bad information that can lead to, at worse, too much thinking on a noobs part.

Take SEO.

Over the weekend I read a post about SEO on a very large affiliate forum (this was NOT on a4u). This forum was recommended to me by a UK Affiliate Network senior manager (who is actually rather clued up).

This post listed some do's and don’ts about SEO by a so called "expert".

It was posted with conviction and certainty. So much so that any noob could probably follow the advice.

80% of it was a crock of sh*te. It was nothing short of DANGEROUS.

My point is to NOOBS, do NOT allow yourself to be AFRAID of what may seem like a MASSIVE and complex part of affiliate marketing: SEO.

SEO is so mind numbingly simple 90% of people don't ever get to find out because they spend all their time trying to understand so much cr*p that is posted "out there", rathet than JUST GETTING ON WITH IT.

SEO is as simple as the 11 POINT list below (at beginner’s level and at top flight - aside from link building - which I NEVER even waste my time with - disclaimer, it may not be a bad thing, but I find if you follow these steps you get good back links anyway...)

Read it, think about it, do it.

As I see it NOOBS have two options open to them.

[1] Spend hour upon hour, day upon day, reading stuff online about SEO.

[2] Read the list below and do it.

The list below is what I see as the pure basics. I apply them I make sh*t loads.

The stuff I do regarding SEO over and above the list is NOT worth writing about.

Recently on A4U I read, I think 7 words, on the SEO forum.

They were the smartest 7 words relating to SEO I have read in a long time.

The words?

Something like:

"let's not oversell something so simple"

(I can't be ars*d checking)

Daily I deal with affiliates at all levels from the "only ever lost money" ones, to the £50k per month PPC spenders (I talk monthly with one person who spends that in a few days). I also deal daily with MYSELF.

Many of these guys (the more successful ones) all have SEO techniques too, therefore, from speaking with them...

I KNOW that the way I use SEO is as effective as any other near best system I've ever heard of.

Here is the list (or if you prefer, spend hour upon hour reading all the cr*p out there that will ultimately in a few months or years lead you to this list):

Just before you self inflict Jackas* style pain to your nuts bare in mind that the CODE of your pages/sites should be at worst half decent. And, be aware that this SEO list applies to success with sites that are niche rather than generic.

NOOB: COPY AND PASTE THIS SECTION AND PIN IT TO YOUR B*****S

>>>>

[1] Register a domain name that relates to your keyword objective (not essential)

[2] Put as much text on this site as you can on either as many or as few pages as you want

[3] Ensure the content is about at least the top 4 keywords you wish to "promote"

[4] Ensure the header section of each page is at least slightly different to any other

[4a] Ensure your page names include your keyword/phrases

[5] Use each of your top 4 keywords/phrases in at least one H1 tag (CAN BE ON DIFFERENT PAGES)

[6] Use each of your top 4 keywords/phrases in at least one H2 tag (CAN BE ON DIFFERENT PAGES)

[7] Use each of your top 4 keywords/phrases in at least 1 page's header section

[8] Use each of your top 4 keywords/in the text as text a handful of times

[7] Use each of your top 4 keywords/in the text as bold text a handful of times

[8] Use each of your top 4 keywords/in the text as a text link a handful of times, to either another page on your site that includes the keyword in bold and as text or...

[9] Use each of your top 4 keywords/in the text as a text link a handful of times, to another SITE that includes the keyword in bold and/OR as text (preferably in the page name of the destination site too.

[9a] If you link in this way to external sites, stuff like the BBC, Google news etc and other highly "respected" sites is probably smarter than linking to debie does dallas .com

[10] Get relevant links to your index page without too much adoo (if you can be bothered) ********Create YOUR OWN QUALITY LINKS with a blog or whatever********

[11] Get irrelevant links to your index page without too much ado if you like ([10] is better).

Ok (something else I just thought of) you should also make sure that each page of your site is accessible from a text link from at least 2 other pages (it's not too difficult to link to each page from EVERY page).

Strong SEO is easier to achieve if your target keywords/phrases have less results listed in the SERPS (sure, "no brainer").

But be sure to consider if your efforts will prove at least as fruitful as the cost of the time you spend on it.

Once you start to make money doing this you will soon better get a grasp of the sentance immediately above this one.

<<<<<

I think that COVERS seo 99% IN 11.2 **expletive removed** NUMPTY PROOF STEPS. The other 1% would be about exactly HOW you create your inward links and some stuff about telling the bots to do this or that (which I never even think about EVER).

Ok, there are one or two more bits to this. If you would like to read a longer version and don't mind lots of **expletive not removed**'s drop me a PM or mail and I'll send you my free article on exactly this SEO subject with the easiest way to get quality links you can ever imagine.

This post is intended as an alternative to spending hours/weeks/months THINKING and wasting your time doing TOO MUCH reading about SEO.

NOOB! SEO IS THAT EASY. JUST DO IT.

Affi.

[Stellar]

Thanks for the info Affi. Very very useful and refreshingly straight forward.

[tbp]

Great post Affi!

One thing I was add, is to experiment. Buy a throw away domain, purely to test out SEO theories on. You won't get results overnight, but over the space of 6 months or so, by trying different things you can learn what Google likes and what it doesn't. As it's a throw away domain, you can afford to go over the top, if you do get banned it doesn't matter - just buy a new domain and start again!

It's only by doing this that you learn that Affi is right, and a lot of "expert" advice is wrong! To be fair, one of the biggest problems is that the net is a collection of everything, with masses of old and new sites. A lot of the SEO info that you read was correct once, but with Google changing their algo's constantly, most are now out of date. So you may come across and article by an expert on a well respected site, but it doesn't mean that the info still applies.

Theres even a chance with your experiments that you find something that other people haven't discovered yet!

[gallito89]

Great thread, I once saw somebody show me a beautiful website that had 300+ pages of content but the entire site had 27 backlinks. They were wondering why they weren't getting any visitors...

[inzimam]

I was just wondering...what is the Header section of a site? Is it just the section at the top, or is it anything you have given the H1 tag?

[Stavros]

Great post

Great thread, I once saw somebody show me a beautiful website that had 300+ pages of content but the entire site had 27 backlinks. They were wondering why they weren't getting any visitors...

I'd say it's backlink quality rather than quantity which is key to your site generating traffic. I run a site that has a similar number of backlinks and generates around 300 uniques a day. It has about 20 pages max and rarely receives an update yet still ranks well ...which only goes to support was Affi is saying.

what is the Header section of a site?

First paragraph straight after the header tags.

[kingoftherodeo]

I did exactly what TBP is suggesting with a domain and bought hp530. Im a complete Noob so this info is really helpful to me!! Im practicing stuff on this site. Its not advanced in the slightest. I was on page one for a while and then slipped down a bit. Since reading this im going to experiment a bit more on it. Hopefully with some joy!

[tbp]

I did exactly what TBP is suggesting with a domain and bought hp530

OK, its not instantly guaranteed that you get straight to number 1 It does rely on SEO as well, but the domain gives you a good lead over other sites.

Had a quick look at the site, and heres some things that I recommend doing:

1) Strip all the Javascript and CSS out of the top of the page, and put in external files which you then call in. This cuts down the amount of texts that the search engine bots see, and stops it from "diluting" your keyword density. It also has the advantage that the files are cached by browsers, so there is less code for browsers to download giving you a speed advantage and slightly lowering the amount of bandwidth the site uses.

2) Straight after the opening body tag, add a H1 tag containing your keyword, so the bots know its the most important thing about your page eg h1 HP530 - Reviews of and best prices for this great laptop. Don't use this exact text, just giving you an idea. The most important part is getting the keyword in there.

3) For your page title, you just need to put the keyphrase in their once, the spaces don't make a terrible amount of difference, and it may look like a spamming attempt. Also you have affordable spelt wrong. So just use something like:

HP530 - Reviews and best prices for this great HP Laptop

or similar.

4) The meta description is good, but a little long. I would remove the final sentence starting with "Check out" etc.

5) You are missing meta keywords. I know there is a lot of debate about this and Google doesn't use, but I still think it's worthwhile putting them in. Not essential, but it takes a minute and I still think it's worth doing. When you take your page as a whole, it still gives another chance to put the keyword in.

6) Again, not essential but would help. I would use CSS to design the layout of the page, and only use a table for the bottom section with the supplier details in. It does cut down the HTML a lot and makes things a lot cleaner and easier to read by the search engine bots. Well worth doing.

The above would be things I would do to help with SEO. Don't worry that your site has gone in and fallen, give it a s week or two and I think it will come back up, especially if you do the above.

Minor thing, theres a spelling mistake on the MD entry with "varie" should be "vary"

As you are selling an expensive item, I think that you need to be doing more selling on the page. A couple of paragraphs of text would not persuade me to hand over a couple of hundred of quid for the laptop

The most successfull affiliate sites do the pre selling on their page. They don't just redirect a browser to the merchant, and then hope the merchant can persuade them to buy. They sell the visitor on the affiliate site side, so that the browser goes to the merchant with the specific intention to buy. Do that, and you will get much better conversions.

One of the biggest things for me when I buy computer equipment online is whether the merchant is any good. A lot of computer equipment doesn't work as it should, even brand new. If you buy it from a shop you can go back and rant and rave and prove it doesn't work properly. On the internet you don't have this luxury, so you need to be certain that the support from the merchant is rock solid.

When I bought my PC this year, I found what I thought was a good supplier, with good prices. I spec'd out my PC, and chose all the bits from their range. Just before I was going to place the order, I did a final check to make sure the merchant was ok. However, I came across a number of bad reviews and that was enough to make me change my mind and buy from Dabs instead, even though they have higher prices, but I know their service is ok.

What i`m trying to say in all this waffle lol, is that I think the biggest factor for IT sales on the net is after sales service, and you would do much better having detailed info about the merchants, their postage charges, return policies etc etc, and maybe a couple of reviews, to persuade people that they are decent people to buy from. This is giving extra value to the customer, and they are more than likely to reward you for that by buying from your site.

[kingoftherodeo]

Hey TBP

Thanks very much - i wasnt expecting that sort of advice!! I've implemented those changes.

How do you reference an external file for the javascript and css?

I'll re-do the design as well. Need to learn a bit more about this. I know its not Overly complicated but i need to make sure im getting it right.

Hopefully those changes will make a good difference

Thanks again!

[Stavros]

Regarding referencing external css, copy and paste your css into a separate file, save it with extension ".css", and then link to it from your html file using

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="your-style-sheet.css"> 

More info here on external style sheets here: <a href="http://www.ibdjohn.com/">http://www.ibdjohn.com/</a>


Referencing external javascripts is very similar. Copy and paste the javascript into a separate file with extension ".js", and then link to it from your html file using:

<script type="text/javascript" src="your-java-script.js"></script> 

Full tutorial here if you need it: <a href="http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/javascript/article.php/3470901">http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/javascript/article.php/3470901</a>

hope that helps

[tbp]

Thanks very much - i wasnt expecting that sort of advice!!

No problem, always glad to help where I can. Including external CSS or Javascript files is very easy.

For Javascript you use:

<script language="javascript" src="/assets/site_javascript/slideshow.js"></script> 

And for CSS you use:

<link href="/assets/css/main_styles.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> 

Both of these normally go in the HEAD section of your HTML page, and the style of the path above is the location in reference to the website root directory (ie where your websites front page is).

In each file, there is no HTML, just purely the Javascript or CSS.

[kingoftherodeo]

Excellent thanks Stavros/TBP - think i need to call it a night now but will be sure to implement that tomorrow

[kingoftherodeo]

Hey All

I addeded the external JS line and the CSS stuff which i thought was working fine and then realised my jumpmenu wasnt working...

Do i need to change this part now that the .js file is external?

onChange="MM_jumpMenu('window.open()',this,0)"

I used this style in the head of my HTML...

<script language="javascript" src="/assets/site_javascript/slideshow.js"></script>