Often simple things really matter. And the use of keywords in linking text is one of those simple things that turn out to be hugely important. Linking text, sometimes called anchor text, is the clickable text that takes people to another page or resource. You need to choose that text carefully.
If I was refer people to this article I could use the linking text, ‘Latest article’: the text is meaningful, clear and wouldn’t need to change every time I published a new article. However, I’d be missing out on some important opportunities. Using the actual title of the article, ‘Keyword phrases in linking text’, is a much better option.
The importance of keyword-rich link text
It’s important to place keyword phrases into linking text for two reasons:
Keyword rich text is more attractive to humans. A casual reader may see ‘Latest article’ and say so what? By using the title ‘Keyword phrases in linking text’ I’ve told the visitor what the article is about and offered two hooks that they might be interested in - ‘keyword phrases’ and ‘linking text’. As a result the click through rate will be higher. The text that links to a particular page gives Google and other search engines clues as to what the page is about. ‘Latest article’ provides little information while the actual title of the newsletter contains at least two important keyword phrases.
In highly competitive situations the extra ‘points’ that Google gives can mean the difference from appearing on the first page of results and appearing nowhere.
To embark on an effective link building campaign you must be aware of your important keyword phrases and incorporate them into your titles and linking text. You also need to influence the words external webmasters use to link to you.
Title text
Including keywords in title text is attractive to human visitors as well as being a fundamental search engine marketing tactic. Your title also has the opportunity to influence the words that an external webmaster may use when linking to your site. Title text is the tooltip that appears when you mouse over a link - try it with this example: Link.
If your title is meaningful and useful, another webmaster is likely copy it, or at least edit it rather than go to the trouble of creating their own linking text.
Linking text
There are two types of linking text to consider - internal and external. As far as Google is concerned, internal and external linking text are both important.
The internal linking text that you use is completely within your control so you have opportunities to use keyword rich linking text. Yet many people overlook this and use lazy phrases such as ‘home’, ‘click here’ and ‘read more’. Avoid these phrases and use keyword rich linking text instead.
Introducing variety into linking text is also a good tactic. Good writing in English uses a variety of different ways to say the same thing and keep the reader interested. Likewise in linking text, use variety. This keeps readers interested and also provides additional information for search engines.
External linking text
This is the linking text that sits on external sites and links to your website. You may think that you’re at the mercy of other webmasters in how they link to your site, but there are many situations where you can control the external text that links to you:
Reciprocal links where you can ask for specific linking text to be used Directory listings where you have editorial control and can specify the exact linking text that points to your site Listing on subsidiary and partner sites In bylines to articles that you publish where you may be allowed to specify not only the linking text but the text that surrounds the link Links that you buy will always allow you to specify linking text and will nearly always allow you extra descriptive text
After that you do depend on how individual webmasters decide to link to your site. The best way to influence this is to write good titles and linking text in the first place. Then all the webmaster has to do is to cut and paste.
Even if the webmaster decides to write his own text, what you have written will influence how he does that and at least some of your keyword phrases are likely to be included.
Finding Keyword Phrases
To help determine your most effective keyword phrases, you can use the excellent Wordtracker service. Initially, this may seem like a lot of work but the benefits can be tremendous. If you plan methodically and practice, using keyword phrases in your linking text will become second nature - and a highly effective way of engaging your website visitors and boosting your search engine results.
This article was written by Ken McGaffin. Ken is author of The Linking Matters Report and provides training and consultancy in link building and online marketing.
The easiest business to start on the internet is an affiliate business. You don't need a product because you have thousands of products available to you. All you need is a website idea.
There are no products to stock, you don't have to do your own customer service. All you have to do is promote the product.
On the other hand, starting an affiliate business can be the hardest type of business to start. You are competing against hundreds, maybe even thousands of other affiliates. You need a competitive edge to help you make more sales and distinguish yourself from other affiliates.
Below are seven solutions for helping you develop the ultimate affiliate business and make more sales.
1. Link Cloaking There are advantages and disadvantages to cloaking your links.
The major advantage is that it protects your commissions. Visitors to your site won't know exactly where the link goes so they can't hijack your commissions.
The major disadvantage is that the search engines have a problem with redirects. They will reject any redirect that doesn't go where it is supposed to.
You can solve that with the right link cloaker. Free Link Cloaker - http://click-4-more.com/on/Free-Link-Cloaker.html - is a tool that you can set up on your site to cloak your links that your commissions don't get hijacked. It's very easy to use, and it will make it look like the page is on your site.
This cloaker is also very similar to many products you see on the internet selling for $59 or more.
2. Keyword Search Before developing your site, or planning any marketing campaigns, you need to make sure that you choose the right keywords. Choose the wrong keywords, and your marketing plan will fail.
Niche Keywords - http://www.easytoolbox.com/cgi-bin/keywords/nichekeywords.cgi - will help you find the right keywords for marketing your business, as well as optimizing your site for the search engines.
3. Affiliate Program Search Finding the right affiliate programs for your new business is crucial. You want to create multiple income streams, as well as different combinations of programs.
These programs include one time sales, as well as recurring commissions on products like memberships. You can also earn commissions for referring others to services.
Something to keep in mind when choosing your affiliate programs is that you want to look for programs that pay high commissions. You don't want to waste your efforts promoting a program where you only get a few dollars for a lot of hard work.
These two sites will help you find affiliate programs, as well as alert you to new programs as they become available.
4. Affiliate Program Management You will make a lot more money from your affiliate programs if you track and manage your programs, as well as track and manage your commissions.
This will help you see what programs work best for you, and what is selling the best. Then you can concentrate on promoting those programs.
Personal Affiliate Manager - http://www.georgecain.com/PersonalAffiliateManager.htm - is a free software that will not only keep track of all of your affiliate programs, it will help you find new ones.
You can also use it to track your commissions and keep records of the money that you have made. This software will also create affiliate reports for you, and it's free.
5. Landing Pages If you promote using any type of Adwords program, or you have a direct response site where you are building a list, then you need some type of software or online tool to help you build your landing pages. This is especially important if you don't know anything about HTML.
Landing Page Builder - http://www.landingpagebuilder.com - this is a donationware software. This means that if you like the software, you can make a donation to help the program owner.
The beauty of this software is that you can use it to help you build landing pages, and you can build as many as you want.
Google Publisher - http://www.googlepublisher.com/index.html - This online tool allows you to build pages that have Google Adsense already incorporated into the page. All you have to do is add your Google Adsense Publisher ID.
This is especially helpful if you have a MAC instead of a PC because you can build your pages online. Also, you don't need a website.
The free version allows you to build about 200 pages, but you don't get to add your Google Adsense ID. The paid version, which is insanely cheap, allows you to build as many landing pages as you like.
6. Website Building If you really want to succeed as an affiliate, you need to build a content rich, keyword rich website.
If you don't know HTML, this can really be a problem.
These two tools will help you with building your website, as well as finding content for your site.
Orwell - http://www.portalfeeder.com/blog/ - Orwell searches the article directories for you to help you find keyword rich articles on your topic. It will format the articles into HTML for you, and all you have to do is copy and paste the code. It will also tell you the keyword density of the article.
Easy Web Page Creator - http://www.easy-web-page-creator.com/ - is a piece of free software that you can use to build web pages for your site with only a few mouse clicks.
7. List Building List building is absolutely crucial for affiliates. By building a list, this will give you an opportunity to market to your potential customers repeatedly, allowing you to raise the conversion on sales.
The best tool for list building is an autoresponder. An autoresponder will handle all of the tedious tasks like managing your lists and handling subscribes and unsubscribes.
I would also recommend that you check out this site. Anthony Tomei offers an excellent tool for affiliates, and you can also get some great resources for your affiliate marketing on this site. They all free.
http://www.gurupal.com
Let me caution you here, the problem with a free service is that they put ads for other products in your headers and footers. You want to upgrade as soon as you possibly can.
Starting an affiliate business can be easy. Plan your website carefully, offer valuable content, and differentiate yourself from other affiliates. Implement these tools in your affiliate business and watch your commissions rise.
About the Author: Jinger Jarrett will show you how to set up your "Killer Marketing Arsenal" when you sign up for her list. http://www.killermarketingarsenal.com
Off page SEO: The importance of incoming links and search engine optimization
Off page seo an integral part of getting your web site indexed in search engines. All of your on page, or onsite, Search Engine Optimization will be wasted if you don't have a method for getting search engine robots to your web site in the first place.
So, how do you go about getting these search engine robots to your web site? A simple way to do this is to get other web sites to link to yours. Getting a web site to link to your new site is not really that difficult, only it can take a bit of time. There are literally thousands of web sites out there that will give you a link to your web site simply for the asking. The internet is a beautiful thing!
I am going to focus on one group of web sites that will help you with your off page seo link building: online directories. These are collections of links to web sites grouped by related categories. The good thing about these directories is that with a little bit of effort you can find high ranking directories that will allow you to place your web site link in their directory without payment and without having to link back to them. Typically these directories can be found by doing a search for "Free non reciprocal directory" in your favorite search engine. The problem with this method is that it can be time consuming.
1) If you don't have a compiled list of these directories, it could literally take you an hour just to submit your web site to 5-10 directories.
2) If you by chance find a web site that has links to these types of directories but you don't have a good method of submitting your web site: It could take you up to 5 minutes or more just to submit 1 link!
Why would I even suggest this method if it is such a hassle? It's because there are web sites that will do the "dirty work" for you. Directory submission services can take the hassle and mind numbing effort out of your off page search engine optimization. Simply do a search for "Directory Submission Service" in your favorite search engine to find some of these time saving gems.
The reason you absolutely need incoming links is so that your web site can start to get crawled, then indexed, by search engines. As I stated above: It doesn't matter if you have the most search engine friendly web site in the world: If search engine robots cannot find your webster: you've wasted your time and money! Do not waste your time with "search engine submission" services: while these methods can work, they are very slow to get results. If you submit your web site to Google via their "Add Your Website" page, you can expect to wait 4-6 weeks or more for Google to even visit your web site! There's no guarantee they will return, either. With the directory submissions I've mentioned here your web site can be crawled and even indexed by search engines within 24 hours of getting your link placed on a high ranking web site.
The main point is this: in order to get your web site crawled and indexed by search engine robots quickly, you need to build incoming links to your web site. Do them yourself, or hire someone else to do them for you, it doesn't matter. Otherwise, your pretty new web site might never have a visitor other than yourself.
About the Author:
Rob Ferrall has a SE Friendly Directory Submission Service that offers website submissions at an affordable rat. Visit http://www.directorysitesubmit.com for more details.
Building effective links is one of the most time consuming and challenging aspects of web site design. Ultimately, link building can spell the difference between a high search engine ranking web page and one that disappears in a sea of similar web sites, so it is best to take the time to do it right.
There are certainly newer search engine algorithms being developed for the web but effective linking continues to be the most decisive factor in search engine optimization and will likely be for several years more.
Links as the name implies, are the most basic connectors to all the pages on the Interent and is the easiest way for a given application to gauge the relevance and integrity of a web page.
People love lists; find a way to integrate a list into your site. This can be anything from a list of tips or things to avoid or a list suggested reading, for example. Lists give the impression of being a definitive source of information and many people will want to link to them.
Often people will link to a site if they feel that it is an authority on a given subject; they will then feel confident about recommending that site to other people. That is what link building is all about after all, a sort of digital referral or stamp of approval.
Every web site should strive to have reliable and well-researched content. Try to keep your content informative but simple; if no one can understand what your web site says they probably won’t want to link to it! Check your text for spelling or grammatical errors; a web site riddled with poor spelling and bad sentence construction doesn’t seem very professional or authoritative.
Online news sites are a good way to establish links. Some of the things you can do are: submit an article for online publication or syndicate an article with a news site. Reputable sites usually enjoy a high search engine rank for their articles and receive plenty of traffic. You may also send press releases or trade articles with other sites…or even write an article about another site and ask then to link back to your site; most will be happy to repay the favor.
Establish contacts with the Better Business Bureau or the Chamber of Commerce in your area or the relevant city and state government offices. You may even look around closer to home by submitting your link to the local library or exchanging links with local businesses in your area; even non-competing businesses in the same field.
Consider starting an affiliate program; it may not lead directly to high SEO value but it can still prove useful in providing additional links.
Submit your site to directories that allow free submissions such as DMOZ (http://dmoz.org) or even paid directories. You can even take this a step further by creating your own directory of similar web sites. You can obviously link to your own site here and even include other important pages in addition to the home page. Quality listings are important here so if it is a useful directory to the most number of people, it will easily attract links.
You may want to post a link to your site in classifieds sites such as Craigslist or if you belong to user groups like Yahoo and Google groups it is often acceptable to post links to your site if you are asking or answering a question. Just make sure it is in the context of the discussion, as most people do not take kindly to being spammed.
Reviews are another great way to get people to link to your site. If you have a reputable looking site and carry informative, well-written reviews, there’s a good chance that your articles will receive high search engine rankings. Try to keep your reviews on-topic, informative and thorough, and be specific whenever possible.
Blogging has become an integral part of the Internet and is one of the most effective means of linking; you can either drop a few words of comment on someone’s blog or link to them from your own blog. Most blogs will be happy to link back to you. Try to update your blog regularly and post interesting content so people will want to link to you.
If your budget permits, explore the possibility of hiring a professional web-linking publicist (yes they do exist!) or consultant for your web site. If you choose carefully this will free you up to take care of other areas of your web site and leave the details of link building to the experts.
Those are a few things to do to create good links, what about things you should avoid? These methods will actually hurt your visibility on the web as it may cause search engines to ban your site or ignore it altogether!
Do not spam forums! Nobody likes a spammer and can usually tell if someone joins a discussion forum for the sole purpose of self-promotion. A sure way to annoy people is to post a non-relevant reply to a question and then include a link…or worse not even answer the question at all!
Choose carefully when submitting your site to directory services; a poor one won’t help increase your traffic at all and may carry out-of-date or off topic links.
When asking someone to link to your site, make sure that there is a good reason why he should; maybe your site is similar to his own in subject matter or your site showcases him, his products or his web site in a favorable light.
Take the time to compose a polite, well written personal request for linking. It doesn’t have to be long but the important thing is to make it seem like a genuine request as opposed to an impersonal, automated email. Do not pester a Webmaster with several, persistent emails; it is annoying and will not likely help your cause any. If you don’t get a reply, move on.
About The Author:
Mikhail Tuknov, http://www.infatex.com/ is founder of Infatex (Search Engine Marketing Company). With an extensive background in Internet marketing, Mikhail Tuknov offers SEO, PPC, SEM services.
It's no secret that getting other websites to link to yours (reciprocal linking) is an important part of your website development and Search Engine Optimization. Steady, strategic link building can help you, not only maintaining your website traffic, but also increase it significantly as well.
However, when adding backlinks to your website be aware of a few things. It's about quality, not just quantity. Having thousands of random websites pointing a link to you might not always be a good thing. If your link comes from a page with hundreds of links on it, the search engines may deem it a link farm and it will not help you at all, and may even harm you in some cases.
Search engines prefer a link to your website from a website where the page content is relevant to yours. For instance, if you have a website that mainly promotes Health and Beauty Products, you do not want to have a link from a website about Cultivating Orchids in the Amazon. Your link will not likely be seen as relevant to the visitor of the Orchid Society and search engines will also view this linking as non-relevant. Non-relevant links may not hurt you in any way, but they will also not be an effective use of 'real estate', in that they will not be considered as important as relevant links.
On the dark side, if you are linked to sites that send spam, are scams, or use black hat techniques, the search engines may 'paint you with the same brush', and/or realize you must not know who exactly you are linked with. It is best therefore, to check who your link partners are by visiting the sites to be sure they are what they say they are. Of course it would be difficult to know everything about them, but just try to see the obvious. If you are not doing indiscriminate (massive) linking, it may be a benefit to actually look them up by "Googling" them and just see if there are any negative comments. At the very least, just make sure if it says 'BabyToys.com' that it isn't actually redirected to SeedyTimes.com.
You can get backlinks to your website using a number of different methods: Writing product reviews that allow you to post your URL; Writing articles and submitting them with your website link in your resource box; Submitting your website to directories; Submitting your website to classified ad sites; Posting in forums with your website URL in your signature; Responding to blog postings in niche forums; Ask for a link exchange with other relevant websites personally (ideal).
Building steady and strategic backlinks to your website can benefit you in a number of ways, in particular: Get your website indexed and crawled by search engines; Increase your overall search engine position for keywords or phrases due to higher PR; Increase your visitors from strategic placement of your website link; Possibly also increase brand awareness for your name or business name.
If done properly, building backlinks can greatly increase your website traffic . Just do a little at a time and you may be surprised with the results over a short period of time. There are even companies and software programs out there that will help you build your backlinks if you have the luxury of an operating budget for your business. Start getting backlinks to your website today!
About The Author:
Patricia Brucoli Residual Income Opportunities Online http://www.the3rdpartynetx.com/
"Is this guy nuts? As far as I know, I'm NOT losing 40% of my affiliate commissions!"
Wait. Are you sure? Are you might be losing money. You might be losing up to 40% (or even more) of your affiliate commissions. And most affiliates A in this "danger zone". It's hard to imagine how much money all those affiliates lose every day. And it drives me mad. Because I know that it can be easily avoided - with less than 15 minutes of work!
Please don't make the same mistake that almost everyone makes. Most of my serious affiliates already know how & why they must avoid it. But I'm sick of seeing the majority of "regular" affiliates ignore my advice. Looks like they just want to lose their money. Oh well. But you should be serious about your affiliate business. Heck, i'm sure you already are.
Stop losing your hard-earned commissions - cloak your affiliate links!
The whole idea of cloaking has much to do with people's thoughts, reactions and nature. In fact - it's all about psychology. I'm not a psychologist (some guys wanted me to, but no thanks - I really enjoy affiliate marketing ) But at this moment I can predict your reaction with 100% accuracy.
There seem to be numerous methods that affiliate marketers use to earn their commissions these days. Adding affiliate links to websites, emails, instant messengers, articles, e-books, pay-per-click ads, banners, and any other form of media are all popular affiliate marketing strategies. Success comes to them when people click those links, get tracked by a cookie uploaded to their computer and then make a purchase from the affiliate program’s website. Then the affiliate gets a check in the mail for all the commissions earned.
Recently though, there have been some new affiliate marketing tactics that are creating a bit of a stir in the affiliate marketing communities. It seems that an elite group of marketers are using some questionable methods to increase their commissions that have been labeled as “black hat” affiliate marketing tactics. So who are these elite, and what are their black hat tactics?
The elite group of black hatters is headed by a sly programmer named John Reel. He’s created a program that cloaks affiliate links like no other link cloaker you’ve ever seen before. That’s right; this one does a few things differently.
- One of the black hat features is that it will create framed links. This means that the link you see in the address bar will not be for the actual website you land on by clicking it. Also, the title bar in your browser will say whatever message the black hatter affiliate wants you to see.
- Another one of the more powerful features of this black hat affiliate tool is the ability to embed affiliate cookies into your links. This allows the affiliate marketer to load their affiliate cookie onto your computer before you even land on the destination URL, and therefore there is no need to use the affiliate code tagged onto the end of the URL. It will appear as though the link is not an affiliate link at all, and yet the black hatter will still secretly earn the commission.
- Taken a step further, this cookie embedding process can also allow the black hat affiliate to embed multiple affiliate cookies into their link for the affiliate program that they’re promoting as well as any competitors cookies. This way, if the customer doesn’t buy from the site you send them to and then later ends up on a competitors’ site, the black hat affiliate still earns the commission.
- Now taking this feature another step further, this black hat affiliate tool can secretly hide rotating affiliate cookies embedded within a webpage. This sneaky tactic allows for cookie after cookie to be added for numerous affiliate programs that are all tracked to the black hat affiliate.
- Going even further upon this feature is the ability to embed any link with multiple rotating affiliate cookies. Again this can load your computer with affiliate cookies for any and all affiliate programs that the black hat affiliate desires to earn commissions from. What’s more, is that this sneaky black hat affiliate link will innocently look like any other link, and can be published anywhere without anyone knowing what it’s capable of when clicked!
Sounds like the invention of a mad scientist trying to take over the affiliate marketing world through the exploitation of ingenious black hat programming loopholes.
So are these black hat affiliate tactics legal? Yes, if the affiliate program doesn’t specify otherwise within their terms of service.
Are these black hat affiliate tactics ethical? That all depends on your personal code of ethics, and whether you would use the tools ethically, or whether you would use them in every way possible to earn as many commissions as you can with no respect for your customers.
Do you want this black hat toolkit? Forget it! There are only 1,500 available, and by the time you read this they’ll probably already be gone. After that, John Reel will be parading as an angel, selling his white hat tools, but don’t be fooled by this wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Jambhala Rinpo is a viral affiliate marketer and joint venture broker. Black Hat White - Black hat tools or white hat tools, and free affiliate link cloaking tools.
I can sense that you are discouraged. Perhaps you are doubtful that you will ever make any real money with Clickbank. Truth is, you know that the income potential for Clickbank affiliates is unlimited. So why doesn't it feel that way to you?
Clickbank is easy. You visit the Clickbank marketplace, select a product that you are interested in selling, drive traffic to your affiliate webpage and bam...you will have sales, right? Well sort of. Many affiliates fail online because they are faced with a learning curve that they just can't seem to overcome.
You know you need to choose a product, but you are unsure of which one to choose. You know you need to drive traffic to your website, but how? Well, you need guidance. You need someone to show you how.
Here are a couple of tips just to get you started.
----When choosing a product, select something of interest to you. Do not promote a product about golf if you have no idea what a birdie is! You will have a better chance of selling a product if you can honestly recommend it to others.
----When driving traffic to your affiliate, try cloaking your link. Often times, when potential buyers are viewing your affiliate link and they see the following format http://xxx.publisher.hop.clickbank.net, they are able to recognize it as an affiliate link and will purchase the product under their own Clickbank ID. Use a redirect to send those customers to a more friendly looking site name.
----Build an opt-in subscriber list. Once you build a list, you can email them your product offers anytime you wish. The larger the list you build, the more traffic and sales you will generate.
About the Author, Katie Ford: You can receive a FREE 5 day mini course on discovering the secrets of Clickbank affiliates by visiting http://clickbank-affiliate-secrets.com
You could be losing up to 30% of your affiliate commissions if you're not cloaking your links! Find out which link cloaking solution is best for you! Click here to cloak your links today!
