Link Shrink, Cloak and Track

3 Good Reasons Why You Should Re-Direct Your Affiliate Links

2007-12-19T15:14:00.001-05:00

Affiliate marketing can make you a decent amount of income on the side without having your own product and sales copy.

The trick is to be different and not appear like everyone else. One main way to look different is to re-direct or cloak your affiliate link.

However, this article is going to tell you three other ways that re-directing your affiliate links can benefit you.

The first is Spam. When you use the same link coming from the same domain as everyone else, the spam filters start to pick up on that domain as being a sales letter email and blocking it as spam. i.e.

www.affiliateprogram.com/?id=111

So when ever the filters see www.affiliateprogram.com in the email it will get blocked as spam and get blacklisted, especially if it is a large promotion.

By re-directing the link - it will have your domain as the link and help to make it thru the spam filters.

The second reason is search engine optimization. If you write articles and submit them with a signature file that has the affiliate link, the affiliate site gets the back links. Plus it makes it easy for people to get rid of your affiliate id.

By using your domain as a redirect to the affiliate program you get the back links to your site and better SEO rankings.

The third reason is that it will make you look more professional as a marketer and not just someone who is out promoting all kinds of affiliate programs. When potential customers see

http://affiliateprogram.com/?id=111 they know it is an affiliate program and will be less likely to click on it.

However when they see

http://yourdoamin.com/affilliatename or http://yourdomain.com/recommends/program

They will view it more as your personal offer or recommendation.

There are many programs that offer to change your links. Many are simple software solutions and can have you changing all your links easily. The programs for changing links do not have to be pricey at all, and many are available as freeware or shareware through popular sites that offer these kinds of products.

Whatever program or software you choose, the key is to make your domain as the primary one. This will make your site seem more like the authority and have potential customers clicking away on your links in no time.

Are you losing thousands of dollars online?

2007-11-14T18:13:00.000-05:00

by Christopher Stigson

Fellow Marketer!

Hey, Affiliate Link Cloaking is something you MUST do in order to survive in todays highly competetive market. Affiliate Link Cloaking is a great way to earn potentially thousands of dollars more online. If you do not cloak your links, get ready for a treat.

What is affiliate link cloaking?

Affiliate link cloaking is a way to protect your affiliate link. How does one protect their affiliate link? Well, there are many ways to be honest. There are many ways for each different affiliate network as well. Cloaking your affiliate link means that instead of sending your visitor to a really ugly link that is 42 characters long, you send them to a simple domain or a website on your domain. Your website looks exactly like the target website, but it is located on your server.

There is another way of cloaking as well. This is called a page redirect. Sometimes referred to as HTML redired or PHP redirect depending on the website you are hosting that particular page on.One thing here is that PHP redirect is so much better than HTML redirect and does not require much code at all.

How can affiliate link cloaking make me more money?

Well, if you didn't already realise the importance of link cloaking then here is a little bit of news for you. Link cloaking alone has been proven to increase clickthrough ratios with over 400%! If that wasn't enough, it has also proven to increase sales with over 35%. Cloaking is a fantastic way to make more money! What you would to is take a snippet of code and put this on your website in order to hide your affiliate link. This makes sure that a potential hijacker does not steal your affiliate commmissions and you are paid for the sale that you deserve.

There is another element to link cloaking that I have not brought to the table as of yet. That is what is called cookie stuffing. Cookie stuffing basically means that you can get commissions for sales that your target prospect doesn't even click on. What this means is that your cookie is embeded into a webpage in order to generate a cookie on the visitors computer. This gives you a sale even if the visitor types the original website of your affiliate companies URL. in the adressbar and hits enter. What this does is enables you to drive traffic to your website. The visitor that leaves and then decides to buy a certain product that you promoted with cookie stuffing would still make you the affiliate for that specific sale. This is so powerful that if you are not doing this promoting your affiliate url then I suggest you start cloaking!

If you don't know how to cloak that is fine. There are many resources on the internet. There are also many softwares that teach you how to cloak. I have found one site that covers most of the basics of marketing and advanced cloaking in a $7 report. I found that on the other side of this report was a OTO for $47 which covers everything in great detail, in videos and give you a software that generates you the code instantly. I decided to go for this package and I really like it. For more information see the resource box of this article!

www.AffiliateCloakMagic.com has been developed over the span of several months in order to help struggling marketers with link cloaking! For the price of $7 you can get started with a business online. If you are more serious about marketing then you can go with the extra $47 for a video course and a script in order to spit out HTML code in a matter of seconds.

Download My New Viral Marketing Link Software - Free!

2007-10-10T10:29:00.000-04:00

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The Importance and Benefits of Link Popularity

2007-08-19T22:06:00.000-04:00

Everyone likes to be popular. In a way, the web is just like one big popularity contest. It wasn't fair in high school, and it might not seem so fair now. You can have the best-designed, most informative site online, but if no one links to you, you're going to have a harder time getting a high search engine ranking. Ranking high with search engines relies on two things: content and link popularity.

Of course, if you have the most informative site online, your job is half done. One of the keys to bringing in new links is having a well-designed site. If you go after link exchanges and your site looks like it belongs in the last decade, you're going to be hard-pressed to find any takers. People don't have all the room in the world to add links on their site. You need to provide a site that is worth linking to. On the flipside, you should find link partners with quality sites of their own.

Link popularity is not just about quantity, but quality. Certainly, it is a good idea to have a great number of links coming in, but search engine spiders also take into account the quality of those links: i.e. how many sites link to the site that links to you. Spiders hold a premium on sites that link to you without a corresponding reciprocal link. When search engine spiders surf your site, they're looking for the type of content that you have on your site and the number of links going both in and out.

An easy way to start building link popularity is to add your site to a number of directories. These directories may or may not require a reciprocal link. The higher the quality of the directory, the more the directory listing will be worth. Really, you should spend a good amount of time adding your site to as many directories as possible. Look for other immediate avenues for link building as well—post in forums, on blogs, or create a blog of your own. All of these will be indexed by search engines, which will help increase your ranking.

One of the major advantages of having a blog is you have one more place to add a link to your site. In addition, you have one more place where you can trade links—contact other bloggers in a similar field and trade links. You should not only be looking to increase link popularity for the host site, but for blogs and other sub-sites as well.

It is absolutely imperative that your site is useful. The more content you provide, the more you can get a foothold in your industry. When you write new content, promote it: Digg.com the article and add the article to directories and other sources. Websites can then potentially place the article on their sites, linking to the site where the article originated. A link doesn't necessarily have to be permanent—a temporary link to an article can help search engine ranking as well.

What this all means is that link popularity is an evolving process. You should always be corresponding with site owners looking for a link trade. And you should be frequently providing new content to ensure that your site is worth the link.

For more information visit: http://www.joebucksinfo.com

6 Things To Consider Before You Buy A Text Link

2007-07-08T10:28:00.000-04:00

by Jeff Schuman

Text link advertising has helped many websites get traffic including from search engines. It can have some pitfalls though if you do it wrong.

Here are 6 things to think about before you buy a text link ad.

1. A text link ad is a keyword phrase hyperlinked back to another page. For example if your website is about music downloads you could buy a text link ad for that phrase.

2. Look at how your ad will be displayed. Your ad can be good for traffic as well. Try and get on a page or website that gets a lot of traffic. This will give you a chance to get a few visitors clicking on your ad as well.

3. When you buy an ad look to buy one on a web page that is a PR3 or higher. This is Googles' ranking system for the worth of a page and it helps improve your own page rank when you are on a page that has good page rank. How much you pay will be determined by the page rank of the page your text link is on, but a PR5 will cost more than a PR3. You could pay anywhere from $50 to $150 a month for a quality link.

4. Another thing is to link to pages other than your home page. This is known as deep linking and it is important not only for how your site is viewed by the search engines but also for the traffic it can bring you. People will search for multiple versions of a keyword and you want to come up on as many searches as possible.

5. One text link will never hurt you with a search engine if it is on one page. If the ad you buy and it ends up on hundreds of pages for the same keyword you should make sure you are getting linked back to your website for other keywords as well of it could appear you are spamming the search engines for your one primary phrase.

6. Buy text link advertising for the long haul and it can really give you some good traffic and search engine rankings. Buy it for one month to get spidered as soon as possible if you website or blog is new.

This is 6 reasons text link advertising can be good, or may not be for you.

Jeff Schuman is offering text link ads for $50. Your ad will be on over 1000 pages including his home page and all blog pages. His website is on page one of Google for over 1200 keywords and growing everyday. You can view his website and blog here: http://www.team-schuman.com/

Link Popularity through Directory Submissions

2007-06-27T20:45:00.000-04:00

by Karan

Link Popularity means how many websites or pages are providing link to you. Link popularity is measured keeping both the quantity and quality of sites that link to your site. You can improve the rank of your website by increasing the number of high quality sites linking to your website. High quality websites are those sites whose page rank is higher than your own site.

Directory Submission is one of the best way to get natural and one way links for your website. While optimizing your website you must concentrate generating more and more quality one way links. You can either submit your website to these directories at your own or engage some seo company to do the same on your behalf or install a directory submission software though it is not recommended by most of seo experts. Many SEO Experts, Web Directory owners and Search Engines do suggest to submit your links manually whereas you may find hundreds of thousands companies offering fast, easy and cheap software for directory submission. We will discuss one by one the advantages and disadvantes of automatic versus manual submission:-

1. Automatic Submission through Softwares - Automatic Submission is fast and easy and economic too, but most directories use Registration Code for every submission to protect from automatic submission. If you use some software to automatic submission, your submission will fail. There are high chances of improper category selection, if you submit to wrong category, it may be deleted. Another major problem you may face that your submission may be treated as spamming by the Directory owners and the rejection rate may be very high. Everyone hates spamming including search engines and so by the web directories.

2. Manual Submissions – Manual submission task is a labour intensive, time consuming and costly way to build inbound one way links but it gives you a better control in submission process. You submit your website to the most appropriate category and sub category. Many directories reject the submissions mainly because of wrong placement of the website. Most directories have already placed a system to prevent automated submissions in order to regulate quality listings and prevent junk submissions by automated softwares. Moreover while submitting your website to different directories, you must ensure that your submission meets the quality guidelines of each directory that includes right titles, descriptions and anchor text etc.

Now the most important question - can you run the link popularity campaign at your own or you should hire a SEO company for the same.

Do it Yourself - you can submit your links at your own as it is cost-effective and an opportunity to learn about seo techniques and moreover you retain complete control over your site and its link popularity campaign. If you are new to it, you can learn it here also http://www.softsolutionsindia.net/search_engine_optimization/optimize_website_at_my_own.html

Hire a SEO Firm - If you don't want to shift your focus from the main function of your business, then you have to rely on some seo professional with a lot of knowledge and experience. You may also hire a full time person for this job but you have to pay regular salary with other benefits.

Sukhdeep Singh is founder and CEO of Soft solutions, SEO company specializing in one-way link building campaigns.
Our SEO friendly directories help increase link popularity and trafic. Submit your site today!

Why One Way Links Are So Important

2007-06-17T10:03:00.000-04:00

When establishing links and exchanging links this helps your rankings with the search engines and builds on connecting with other business owners. When exchanging links with other webmasters you will need to give them your code and you will need to use their code on your site.

A few years ago if you placed a link on each page of other sites this would help your rankings, this does not work anymore. However, nowadays a site wide link on another website will not help you at all. Many people would agree that having a lot of links to your website is the key to rank well in all search engines. As a website grows and is around for a long period of time links will be established that point to the website and this will happen slowly.

If you want to improve your page rank of your site, make sure that the links you exchange are relevant to your site. Make sure your site has incredible unique content and it is related to your site. If you exchange links with a bad site this will hurt your sites rankings on the search engines. Bad links lead to reduced link popularity and in turn can eventually lead to being banned on search engines. Search Engine Robots give a lot of weight to relevancy. Link farms are a definite no. Most of the sites will not be relevant to yours.

Quality is better than quantity. If you are starting a website and you receive hundreds of one way links in a short period of time, does this look natural to you, well it sure doesn't look natural to the search engines. Remember that value and quality are more important than volume of links.

The most successful way to get links pointing to your site is to create unique original content. Webmasters who visit your website will see that content is good and will link to your website to provide their visitors with some useful websites. There are many different approaches and techniques required when optimizing a website for a high ranking in your chosen search engine. Content on the other hand is what brings the readers. It is still the number one factor, content gets visitors back to your site and unique content also gets inbound links, overtime this will increase the presence of the site. The site should be optimized for your chosen keyword or keywords.

Link exchange is an essential part of search engine optimization and website traffic. More thought and planning you put into your title and description, the more powerful your link exchange will have. When the link is in the body of the content it shows that this link is relevant to the content, and the visitor is being recommended that they visit the website which is attached to the link. Reciprocal link exchange is still a very popular practice among webmasters. Since everyone knows by now that you need many quality links many SEO webmaster try to think up many different ways of getting links.

Many websites are competing for the same keywords and for the same spot on the search engines, you need to pay close attention of who your competitors are. Since a high ranking in a keyword can “make or break” a business, webmasters are looking to find any method to increase their ranking.

David Marc Fishman is the owner of online directory site. The website that helps people who use link directories like yahoo directory.

Anchor Text Optimisation Guide

2007-06-09T09:31:00.000-04:00

by Stuart Mortimer

What if I were to tell you that one of the most important principles of search engine optimisation is so simple you that you will kick yourself for not realising it before? I'm talking about something called anchor text optimisation. The basic idea behind anchor text optimisation is that when one website links to another using a text link, the text that the web designer uses to form the link is called the 'anchor text' i.e. someone linking to this article would probably use something like 'anchor text optimisation article' or 'anchor text optimisation guide'.

Why Is This Important?

You may well ask. Well here it is. Behind the scenes search engines look at the anchor text of the links that point to your site and use it as one of the major factors in deciding what your site is about and what search terms your site is relevant to. Let’s take a look at an example. If I were to set up a website discussing the advantages and disadvantages of anchor text optimisation, I would want to collect as many incoming links from other SEO related sites as possible that contained the key phrase 'anchor text optimisation' in the text of the incoming link. If I have 100 incoming links from related websites that all have 'anchor text optimisation' in the link text then the search engines can conclude that my site is indeed related to the topic of 'anchor text optimisation'. When you combine this with the fact that my site is also optimised for my target key phrase then the search engines can clearly see that my site is all about that particular topic.

But Why Do Search Engines Place So Much Weight On Anchor Text

When you stop and think about it, a web designer can put whichever key phrases he likes into the content on his website so these on page search engine optimisation factors are very easy to manipulate and very easy to change. Links on other people’s websites however, are very difficult to manipulate. The owner of each site has a choice of the text that they can use to form the link. So by looking at all the links that point at your site, the search engines can make a more accurate and unbiased decision about what the internet community are saying your site is all about.

An Extreme Example of Anchor Text Optimisation

If you visit Google and enter the key phrase 'click here', you will find that the result that is returned is the Adobe Acrobat Reader download page. Furthermore if you look through the page you won't see the key phrase 'click here' on there anywhere! So what's happening here you will probably ask. Well when someone puts a PDF file on their website, they invariably but a link next to it that says something like:

This file requires adobe acrobat. To download a free copy of adobe acrobat please 'click here'.

The anchor text on the links to the adobe acrobat download page is invariably 'click here'. Consider the fact that there are thousands, if not millions of links pointing at this page and I’m sure you can understand that the search engines are getting a pretty strong indicator that the adobe acrobat download page is in fact about the key phrase 'click here'!

Conclusion:

Anchor text optimisation - although a very simple principal is very, very, important to your search engine optimisation success and in my professional opinion is just as important as having the right target keywords written into the content on your website. The best advice I can give is to decide which key phrases you intend to target and set about obtaining as many links as possible with that key phrase in the anchor text of the incoming link.

Stuart provides search engine optimisation in Barnsley, Yorkshire, UK. Stuart specialises in SEO in barnsley for businesses of all types.

Article Source: The FREE Article Distribution Center

Ten Tips For Developing A Successful Linking Building Program

2007-04-23T10:59:00.000-04:00

by Wisam Abdulziz

As you go about developing a strategy for increasing traffic to your Internet business website, you will want to keep in mind the ten tips for link building and best practice associate with link building. Through this article, you are provided with those ten top tips associated with link building and with the best practice in link building today. Of course, there are other tips and pointers that can be helpful to you. However, these basic tips will be fundamental to getting a solid inbound link building program in place.

1. Have a great website.

Before you start any sort of inbound link building program, make sure that your own website is as good -- as great -- as it can be. Make sure that you have an attractive, functional and user friendly website in place and in operation before you begin a link building campaign.

2. Link with high traffic websites.

When it comes to link building, look to link your website with other websites that already have high traffic. The net result, the end result of any link building campaign is to attract more traffic to your own site. And, you’ve a far better chance of doing this if you link with websites that do have high traffic.

3. Look for sites that invite links.

Some websites actually invite other sites to place links on their sites. Provided these websites meet your other criteria, consider linking up with sites that actually do want to place a link to your website on their venue.

4. Improve your search engine rankings independent of link building.

As you go about crafting a link building program, use other methods of increasing and improving you search engine rankings as well. You do not want to put all of your eggs into one basked. Moreover, some sites will be more apt to allow you to place a link on those sites if your own site rankings are solid.

5. Link only with quality sites.

Make sure that you only link with quality sites. A site that links to your site will reflect on your website -- and you want that reflection to be positive.

6. Make sure a linked site is relevant.

Make sure that any website that contains a link to your website is a website that is relevant to your own venue. A link to your site on an irrelevant site really will not be greatly helpful to you.

7. Check out how many quality inbound links a site already has in existence or in place.

Pay attention to how many quality inbound links a particular site you are considering placing a link on actually has at this time. Search engines sometimes do consider inbound links to a site that you are linking with when it comes to determining your own website search engine rankings.

8. Limit Reciprocal links.

Try as you can to limit reciprocal or other outbound links at your own website. You do not want people linking through to your own website only to link out again and go somewhere else. You want people to stay at your website long enough to buy your products or to engage your services.

9. Follow up in regard to inbound links with regularity.

Take the time to check on inbound links to your site from time to time to make sure that they are functional and to make certain that the websites at which these inbound links to your own website are locate continue to meet your needs and requirements.

10. Make sure your website information remains current.

Finally, make sure that the information and materials at your own website remains current and up to date. Make sure that your own website remains functional, in fine form and user friendly.

Don't stop links building you need it all the time. Free Articles

4 Fast Ways To Improve Your Link Popularity

2007-03-14T18:03:00.000-04:00

4 Ways To Improve Your Link Popularity by Jay Moncliff

There are numerous factors which a search engine has to consider in order to rank various queries of which link popularity is a crucial factor. To gain link popularity is not a difficult task but it sure does take a great deal of your time. The importance of relevance in the process of attaining link popularity is often argued upon by several SEO theorists who consider it highly essential. All the means which help in gaining link popularity have their own pros and cons. Hence you have to choose an option which would give you a relevant link without neglecting link popularity.

One effective way of acquiring free inbound links is by submitting your website to one of the many web directories. Most of these web directories do not charge you and you can have some more if you just reciprocate their links. But since this will consume a lot of time considering the large number of directories, most webmasters prefer to submit their site to a large number of high PR directories. So an effective long-run strategy would be to have high PR directories and apparent relevance to give a few excellent links without spending much. And if you submit only to a few directories everyday, you will have a continuous influx of relevant backlinks.

Some webmasters indulge in link exchange in order to get their inbound links easily, the only problem being unavailability of one way links. Moreover there are additional services which automatically perform link exchange thereby saving you a precious amount of time.
In order to gain link popularity and relevant links, you can also write articles and submit them to the article directories. Considering the vast number of article directories you can be assured that your article would count. Although this might be one of the best ways of getting backlinks, it can also prove to be very difficult to get the right material which would rank your page higher especially if your English skills are not ample for the task.

One of the oldest tricks in the bag that webmasters use is to design pages in such a manner that they draw in inbound links. This link-baiting is done by offering a huge list of things like web and article directories or by providing free software. Designing a good link-bait page will give you a large number of results when queried in a search engine. After designing the page it is necessary to advertise the link on other websites like forums and blogs for people to see and further advertise it through their own pages, mails or forums.

Banking on a single method for link popularity will not help. Instead you should use all the possible ways in proportion so as to get a cost-effective, time conserving and efficient means of promoting your page.

Jay Moncliff is the founder http://www.enlace-eficaz.com , a website specialized on enlace, resources and articles.

How To Do Effective Link Building

2007-03-11T21:41:00.000-04:00

How To Do Effective Link Building? by Andy Jones

Search engine optimization comprises of On Page Optimization and Off Page Optimization. As of now Off Page optimization has higher significance than On Page optimization for search engines like Google, Yahoo & MSN.

What is Off Page Optimization?
• Improving Link Popularity
• Using keyword rich anchor text
• Improving Google PR

What is Link Popularity & why is it required?
Link Popularity is defined as the number of incoming links your site domain has in each search engine. This is like the number of positive votes your site domain has on the internet. So, higher the number should be your primary goal. But you should make a note here that having a higher number of incoming links is not just enough. The quality of the incoming links matters a lot.
Search engines like Google, Yahoo & MSN would rank your website higher or lower in the search engine results depending on your link popularity.

How to check your Link Popularity?
In the search bar of any of the major search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN type the following and press enter:
link:http://www.yoursitedomain.com (Please replace “yoursitedomain” with your website’s URL)

This would give you an idea as how many websites on the internet linking to your website.What is link building & what are the different types?

Link building is the off page optimization strategy to improve your link popularity. There are basically two types of link building.

• Reciprocal Link Building
Reciprocal linking means there is one incoming and one outgoing link, i.e. there is link exchange between your site and the linking site. You first link to the other website and request the webmaster if they would like to link back.

• Non reciprocal Linking
Non reciprocal linking is to have only the incoming link without your site linking back. This would carry more value than the reciprocal link. But, this does not mean that reciprocal linking is not worth to do. It has it’s importance. Non reciprocal linking is better but a little tougher to achieve.

How to do reciprocal link building?
You need to find the websites which has similar theme as yours but not direct competition and request a link exchange. Once you find the right websites then you add a link to these websites on your links page and send an individual email to each one of these website owners.
Now, you should take care of the anchor text, also known as linking text. This is the text which is displayed on the other website linking to your website.
The anchor text should be the best keyword describing your website and it has high value attached to it.

These are the three basic things you would need before you request a link exchange with the link partner websites.

Title:
This is the anchor textURL: The webpage URL you want the link to.Description: Describing the purpose of your website in brief and do not forget to mention your keywords.

The next thing you should look into is the Google PR (Page Rank) of the linking webpage. The higher the Google PR the higher link value you get which would be converted to higher rankings in Google search engine.

Now, internet is an ocean and finding these websites, their Google PR and emailing them is a tough manual process. You can do this but may take years before you can build decent link popularity.
Is there a way out?

Yes! you bet!
There are quite a few SEO Software tools which would help you implement reciprocal link building. But making the decision as which SEO Software tool is right for you is the BIG question.

Each SEO software has it’s own limitations as what they can achieve. The best thing to do is if these SEO Software companies have a trial version, feel free to download and test it out. One another way is to read the honest SEO Software reviews at http://www.seo-softwares.com/seo-software-reviews.html.
I personally recommend http://www.seo-softwares.com/seo-elite.html

Look out for my next article where I would talk about the easy ways to get a lot of non reciprocal links.

Andy Jones -Media Relations, http://www.seo-softwares.com/seo-elite.html SEO Software Reviews - Link Building Ezine articles expert author Copyright ©2006 SEO Softwares, All rights reserved. Free reprint rights with proper credit to the author.

A Simple 'Trick' for Making Money with ClickBank

2007-01-08T10:20:00.000-05:00

So how do you actually make money from Clickbank? One of the most popular methods has to be combining Adwords and Clickbank but that's already passe especially with the Google slap already 'slapping'… I'm assuming you've already researched a niche and found a product or products to promote. If you haven't already done so, please do that. Once you've done that, create a 'landing page' that pre-sells the product. This is a must-do. In this page (and you should keep it short), bring out the 3 biggest benefit of the product and create an opt-in form. If you're selling a dog training product you could list out points like :: Train your dog up to 10 new tricks per day using just 5 minutes with this 'secret' obedience model :: Potty training that is guaranteed to work! No more stinky and stained furniture! :: Your friends will wonder in amazement and scratch their heads wondering how you managed to train your dog to such obedience (not to mention the tricks) in just a matter of days! Of course, theses are just a few examples of what you could include in your landing page. I'm sure you can come up with many other better examples. Remember to include an opt-in box that re-directs them to the sales page once they opted in. This is the crux of the 'secret'. Start pumping out articles and submit it to as many article directories. I would say write an article a day and mass submit it so it works out to around 30 articles a month. Include a link to your landing page in the author resource area. Keep this up and you'll have a steady stream of traffic and sales coming in. Now this is where the fun begins, set your articles to be displayed to them on your auto-responder. You can promote other dog training related products at the end of each article. There's no additional work, just load the articles you've already written into the auto responder and your prospects will be exposed to your quality content and offers over and over again! This really is an easy way to build a super targeted list and get a stead flow of sales from Clickbank! Author Info: Dylan Loh If you enjoyed reading tips on how to making money from Clickbank and would like to unearth at least a dozen more profit ideas then head over to http://www.clickbankprofitmachine.com/ right now!

How to Use Keyword Phrases in Linking Text

2006-11-23T20:39:00.000-05:00

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.

Essential Tools for Affiliates

2006-11-23T11:07:00.000-05:00

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.

http://www.websitemarketingtactics.com/blog/2005/04/affiliates-alert-free-software.html
http://www.associateprograms.com/search/free-software.shtml

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.

Two free services:

http://www.getresponse.com
http://www.sendfree.com

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

2006-11-21T09:25:00.000-05:00

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.

How To Build Great Links For Your Web Site

2006-11-20T16:19:00.000-05:00

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.

Back-Linking Strategies

2006-11-20T15:57:00.000-05:00

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/

Affiliate Link Cloaking

2006-11-20T15:51:00.000-05:00

"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.

Watch this:
http://www.the-ultimate-widget.com/?affiliate_id=57486

And now this:
http://www.the-ultimate-widget.com

Well, we've just seen some pure psychology in action. Tell me?

Why does the second link look and feel better? Why is it better? Why does it get the click while the first one doesn't?

That's right. The second link doesn't look "affiliatish". It doesn't resemble a referral url. In other words;

"that unknown individual from the other side of the net won't make money on MY purchase!"

Please don't say you're not like that. Don't say you've never wanted to remove that "annoying affiliate code" from someone else's link.

About The Author:

Robert Bell is the owner of Affiliates Directory. You can find more information at http://www.affiliatesdirectory.biz

Black Hat Marketing and Ethical Link Cloaking

2006-11-20T15:46:00.000-05:00

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.

Get Relief from Low ClickBank Sales

2006-11-20T14:13:00.000-05:00

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