Archive for December, 2009

I understand that there are different opinions of whether duplicate content will harm your Google SERP’s or not but the truth of duplicate content can be found in it’s own history. In the late 1990′s site owners discovered that if they repeated the same meta keywords over and over on their website they could fool the search engines and receive a first page placement. But that made a very ugly website so they learned that if they placed there content on the page and then listed keywords in the same color as the background it wouldn’t be seen by the visitor but it would be seen by the search engines. So the roots of keyword spamming were planted and a long keyword spamming war began. One page of content and multiple pages of keyword spam.

And ALT tags began to be used as another form of keyword spamming with descriptions being nothing more than entire strings of keywords. This lead to what was known as doorway pages. Doorway pages were nothing more that a keyword stuffed page used for SERP manipulation with a redirect to the real page. People paid a lot of money to learn how to create doorway pages.

But soon the search engines began to combat keyword spamming. They did this by penalizing your site if you had an unrealistic number of the same words over and over or if you had text the same color as your background. And “Duplicate Content” was born.

“Duplicate Content” is any content that is repeated over and over on one site. It is not content that is published and can be found on different sites. An example would be any site that uses news stories off of the Associated Press. Most news websites use the AP and none are de-indexed by Google for duplicate content. Another example is the hundred’s of article sites all containing the same articles. Yet not one of those article sites have been de-indexed or banned from the search engines.

Is there a Duplicate Content Penalty?

I found this posted in the Warrior Forum. The post is several months old but after I read it I thought it was someting I really had to share. Yes, I think it is that good. All credit goes to Steven Lean from 100 A Day Method. I think this is one of those methods of creating an online income that most people never hear a
bout. That’s a shame because it seems like a killer method. I haven’t jumped in yet but I am planning to test the waters this week. If you give it a try or have tried this method in the past please post and let us know how it worked out for you. Good luck and a big thanks to Steven for the great information.

I’ve seen some people really need a step-by-step guide on how to get
approved by CPA networks.

When I was first started with affiliate marketing, I didn’t even have a
website which CPA networks “love” to see. Yet I’ve been approved by
practically every major CPA network that I have applied to.

Read and apply my steps, you shouldn’t have a problem getting approved
by most of the networks you apply to.

Sign Up With CPA Networks

For every CPA networks, you need to show them a decent website to get
approved. It MUST be you own site, a few networks will require you to
show ownership of your website before they’ll approve your application.

My friend received this message from Azoogle when he applied:

“If your domain(s) are privately registered, you will need to email us a
receipt from your domain registrar or a screenshot of your online
management panel—something showing the domain name and your name
and address—so that we can verify ownership…..”

As long as it’s your own website, it could be a totally unrelated website
to show them, this doesn’t matter.

When I was first started, I showed them my personal website. I used
that “unrelated’ site to apply to a few networks and get approved
without any problems.

When you fill out the affiliate application form, there is usually a field
where you can put any message for the administrators who will review
and approve your application.

Tell them you’re going to run PPC direct linking so your website isn’t
really all that applicable.

Make it sound like you’re a seasoned CPA marketer. Tell them you’re
already with a few other networks and someone said something good
about them, so you want to try out their offers.

Build a Site To Show CPA Networks.

For this method to work, you need to get a domain name and get it hosted.

[Edit: Sorry, I had to edit this portion. I didn't want to have Steven slamed with
requests for the free script he offers. Maybe Steven can post a response and
give some information about the script. If not then wordpress is simple enough
to set up and there are plenty of free wordpress themes to download.]

Call CPA Networks for Fast Approval

After you’ve sent in your application, you should receive their reply in
a short while.

Normally they’ll send a message to you through an autoresponder. Read
their message, find their phone number and call them immediately.

This is what you need to say over the phone:

“Hi, I’ve just signed up as an affiliate, and I want to talk to an affiliate
manager to get me approved”

When you’re on the line with an Affiliate Manager, tell him/her you’ve just
sent in your application and you would appreciate if he can get you
approved as soon as possible so that you can send traffic.

They might ask you a few simple questions like how did you find them, how
do you drive traffic, what offers do you plan to run with them etc….

Tell them your fellow members from Warrior Forum recommend them. A
couple of members there are having some success with their offers and
you’re planning to test some of those offers with your traffic.

Tell them you’re a ppc marketer and you do direct to merchant pay per clicks.

This is sufficient to “convince” them you know your stuff and to get you
approved.

Reply CPA Networks Questionnaire

A few CPA networks (normally bigger players in the market) will send you an
email requesting some information before they will approve your application.

If you need help, post it here. I’ll help you with those questions.

Note: Non US residence needs to complete a W8-Ben form and submit to the
networks.

Are you using CPA Networks

Understanding Backlinks.

1.What are backlinks?
2. Understanding the importance of backlinks.
3.Vary the anchor text. Backlink Anchor Text Analyzer

What are backlinks and do you really need them. Backlinks are links on one website that lead back to another website. Backlinks are often referred to as inbound links. Long ago they would have been reciprocal links but reciprocal linking is not what is needed to rank in the search engines today. Today the backlinks must be inbound one-way links. The higher the authority of the linking site the more it helps with search engine placement, also refered to as SEO.

Are backlinks really that important? I guess that depends on whether you need organic traffic from the search engines. If you have a high profile brand name like Fox News or Walmart then you probably aren’t that worried about SEO but most of us don’t have that powerful of name recognition and rely on a high search engine placing. And without backlinks it can be difficult to place on the first page of Google. Difficult but not impossible. I do have several websites without any backlinks that list on the first page of Google. How? They have domain names that have popular keywords in them. First page but not number one. With proper backlinking I should be able to take the number one spot and keep it.

One of the best backlinks to get is DMOZ. Unfortunately it can be almost impossible to get listed in DMOZ. Rumor has it that paying off the DMOZ personnel is the only way to get listed. I don’t know about the truth to that rumor but I have never had a website listed in DMOZ yet. And yes I would consider some of my sites very high authority for their keywords. But I submit every website I SEO to DMOZ and will continue to do so. Who knows, maybe someday I will get lucky. DMOZ

Social bookmarking sites are another excellent method of getting backlinks. Social bookmarking sites offer the user the chance to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. Examples of social bookmarking sites would be twitter, digg.com and StumbleUpon.com. Here is a link to the top 20 social bookmarking sites. www.ebizmba.com

A word of caution. If you have more than one website it can be risky to link the sites together. Sites coming from the same IP can be a red flag to Google. A few may not hurt but if your site is not related and/or a high authority site why take the risk. It was once suggested that for these types of links you use the rel=”nofollow” attribute but the new Google policy causes massive problems to all the sites that use the nofollow attribute as it affects the way that PageRank flows in the site and it could lead to PR loss.

Is it useful or detrimental to vary your anchor text? That’s a great question but the answer is…vary your anchor text. Use anchor text that is is well optimized and don’t be afraid to use a thesaurus to find other reasonable search terms. Remember that one of the keys to good backlinking is to make the backlinks look natural.

There are some great backlink lists for sale on the Warrior Forum. Lists that I have used and can be found in the WSO section…but.

If you want an incredibly powerful way to get hundreds…or thousands of one-way backlinks to your site in a relatively short amount of time then I would suggest purchasing “The Definitive Guide For Finding High Pagerank Forum Backlinks“. For just $9.00 it is a great alternative to paying for the backlink list that can be found. Don’t get me wrong, there are some really great lists. I am just saying that there might be a cheaper and better alternative.

You gotta have backlinks!