After making the changes I now feel a little more comfortable about the over all presence of this page and am looking forward to writing more articles about marketing, seo and online business. The overall design is also a bit out-dated (maybe an understatement).

At some point I will probably hold a template design contest for some type cash gift. If this is something you would be interested please leave a comment about your interest and what the prize should be. If I get enough people interested, I’ll definitely set the contest up.

Halfway through the week!

The marketing plan is our tool that permits us to design our road to success.  Every business designs strategic plans for the achievement of their objectives and goals. These plans can have short, medium and long time limits.

The Strategic Planning constitutes a managerial system that displaces the emphasis in the “what to achieve” (objective) to the “what to do” (strategies).  The essence of the strategic planning consists of the systematic identification of the opportunities and dangers that arise in the future, which combined with other important data they provide the base so that a business take better decisions in the present to exploit the opportunities and to avoid the dangers.

As of March 31, 2009 Google has approximately 19,786 full-time employees. Many of these employees being some of the best programmers in the World. I personally feel Google has over a million employees from which 19,786 are paid. Anytime one webmaster rats out another, they’re in a way working for Google. Google runs thousands of servers worldwide and processes millions of search requests each day and about 1 petabyte of user-generated data every hour.

Predict Tomorrow’s Google Guidelines

It’s a living document. Are you currently breaking Google’s Guidelenes? Will strategies today break Google’s guidelines tomorrow? Google guidelines will continue changing as the company continues pushing forward with the goals they have set.

Google’s mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Read More about Google on wikipedia.

Lets take a Well known company like Ford Motor Corporation. Do you see the Marketing reps at Ford ever committing any of the following marketing techniques.

~ Hidden text or links
~ Misleading or repeated words
~ Page does not match Google’s Description
~ Cloaked page
~ Deceptive redirects
~ Doorway pages
~ Duplicate site or pages

( Google’s Guidelines )

Of course not, why would they have to. They rank because of who they are for one, along with their 245,320 backlinks pointing to them. Even Ford utilizes social media and RSS of course. Check out their Ford.com New and Announcements Page. Now 245,321, your welcome Ford…as they roll their eyes. Where are their most powerful links coming from? Mostly Major news resources (CNN), Ford Enthusiasts, Stock resources, auto shops; they are the Authority!

SIDE THOUGHT: I once wondered how many News links I would receive if I got a permit to throw $10,000 off a some inner city roof top. If your a local company wanting your company website to rank for your local keywords, this is probably all you’ll need to do with a little onsite optimization. If you decide to do this give me a call and I’ll tell you which neighborhood to do this in…

Will Google ever hit white hat blog commenting or signature linking on forums you visit regularly. Maybe ,who knows. Will Google ever hit links built from news stories or PR about your Company. Of course not, How many Major companies would lose their ranking if Google did penalize links within news stories?

How many links.html pages will you find a Major Companies web address? Many right? Seo’s often say link pages are not that good for building rank but I beg to differ. If the links page has less than 20 links and appears to be a true list of useful links the webmaster manually posted one at a time than hell yea, those links are gold in my eyes. Well maybe silver or bronze but still very helpful when it comes to building rank. Here are several results for “link pages” linking to Ford found here.

A few questions to ask yourself?

- Will this link or strategy be against Search Engine guidelines now or in the future?

- If you were being paid by Google, what would you do if you were notified of a webmaster using your same tactic?

- How do you want your website viewed. Are you providing the best resource in your niche yet?

- Depending on your topic, how can you become well known to your specific target market?

- Would your service, resource or web tool gain interest like a newly developed disease curing serum. This goes back to being remarkable?

1. Start your article off with an interesting title such as 30 better, 5 Cool tricks, etc… Doing this will help increase CTR (click through rate) and at the same time help maintain the Reader’s interest.
2. Add informative links within the posts that may help the reader understand the article better.  Many tend to post links to the Wikipedia for definitions.
3. Do you want to be seen as a regular blogger or the topic expert.  Be the topic expert when posting each Article. Provide ideas that are new and fresh to your readers; that are not provided elsewhere. (An incentive to come back.)
4. Share real experiences.  People love to learn from experiences, not just prediction.
5. Add value by including surveys, photos, statistical data.  A little reseach never hurts anybody.  The more reseach you put into an article, the more authority it will gain.  Are you willing to put in more time than your competitor would?
6. It’s important to take the time and respond to any comments or emails sent to you from your readers. Your readers questions and comments should be your #1 priority.  They are the reason why you blog.  Your quick response will also encourage your readers to revisit and subscribe to your RSS Feed.  Comments in a blog may make up half of the article in some cases.
7. Keep an eye on grammar.  Worpress and other blog platforms will highlight errors for you.  Too many errors can make you look not so cool.  Math has always been my strong point, therefore writing has never been.  Because of this, I usually read my articles several times before posting.
8. If you’re new to blogging, DON’T GIVE UP!  So many people start blogs only to quit a month later. A blog needs time to grow and blossom.  Those who have the most success post compelling articles daily and never quit.  This is why it’s important to blog about something that will interest you for the long haul.

Also read Quality before SEO

There will also be an introduction to mobile marketing during the morning session. This workshop will be presented to you by Cindy Krum of Rank Mobile. This will be the session from 8am to 12pm

During the afternoon sessions, SEO and Social Media will be the focus of conversation led by Lee Odden from TopRank Online Marketing. Once again this will be held from 1:00pm to 5:00pm

These sessions will be held on October 26, 2009. For more information visit searchenginestrategies.com

About Search Engine Strategies

Incisive Media’s Search Engine Strategies is a leading global conference and training series focused on search engine optimization and search engine marketing. Other Incisive resources for interactive marketers include the ClickZ network for digital marketing news, information, commentary, advice, opinion and research and Search Engine Watch which provides news and information about search, analysis of the search engine industry and tools for improving search marketing effectiveness.

Read More.

Send article idea and your website’s url to cole @ thisurl

If your article introduction is approved (usually within a day) you may then go ahead and write the article with a minimum of 500 words.  I cannot pay for your article however I can provide you with a seo-friendly signature back-link to your own website.  I also must approve the link since I’d rather not post an article with a link out to an unrelated source.

Thanks and have a good day!

“A key ingredient to success with our affiliates is conversion. We have actively managed our campaign based on conversion because we prefer to maintain a high EPC (Earnings Per 100 Clicks). This shows our ability to convert traffic that affiliates drive to our site and helps validate the strength of our affiliate campaign as a whole. If you are an affiliate driving traffic to a site and not making money in return, you’ll probably re-think who you are driving traffic to. We have been able to win over many partners from competitors by showing that our site converts the best in our industry.”

Q2. What are a few things (+ or -) companies should expect when implementing an affiliate program within their own website to help market their products?

Answer:

“When implementing an affiliate program, most companies are willing to accept any affiliates at first. The initial stages are all about building your affiliate network and you’re happy to spread it out however it may be. Over time you will see that you will have strong affiliates that bring customers to your site that you would have otherwise not received. You will also find bad affiliates that do things like bidding on your company name in other states, thus reaping the benefit from your branding. So you will want to have a good idea of how your affiliates are making money off your partnership to be able to evaluate the partnerships and assess the strength of the campaign.”

Q3. What are a few effective resources you’ve used to market your affiliate program. Do you ever scout for new affiliates?

Answer:

“We have worked with Commission Junction and Performics for years and highly recommend both networks.”

I have personally worked with Commission Junction from an advertisers perspective. Their system works great for connecting with companies who need help with marketing their products. If you’re new to affiliate marketing or you represent a business that wants to connect with affiliates to help drive sales CJ.com is worth checking into.

Check out some other Tips for Affiliates

I did find an interesting article written on Web Pro News discussing how Google was found using the title of a business in the whois as the title tag for a website that didn’t have title tags in the website’s code. You can read more about this here. Michael Gray from wolf-howl.com also provided some useful information regarding whois and Google.

If I find any more information regarding this topic I’ll be sure to add it to this post. You know the more information about this feel free to comment.

Below is my list of affiliate marketing website tips and ideas.

3)  Become the affiliate of more than 1 single “related” company.  Choice is always good.  With valuable content this will help build your authority.  Using a single Affiliate Company can make your site look like a doorway.

4)  When writing about the topic, don’t ramble on; make sure the information will be useful to your readers.  Make it useful enough to come back to.

5)  Be patient with your link building.  Focus on your content and your website’s unique purpose.

8)  Dedicated Hosting IP will help engines see your time is dedicated to that one site.

9)  Also stretch out the life of your domain.  I prefer to keep my business domain expiration over 4 yrs.  Shows search engines your in it for the long run.

10)  Purchase and upload tracking software.  You may need to add code to the final page of the other website.  Work this out with the affiliate company you provide leads/sales to.     Implementing tracking and/or affiliate software will show your Affiliate Manager that you are serious and usually the Manager will help you get things tracking properly.  If they don’t, another company will.

12)  Earning trust will earn you more conversions.  I mentioned on #6 to register a Business.  If you’re a registered Business for over a year, consider registering with the Better Business Bureau Online.

13)  Continue earning trust by investing in mcafeesecure.com and etrust.org services.  These services will also help protect your site as well as insure privacy to your visitors.  This will also help your site earn credibility with the search engines.

14)  Design comes before marketing.  Make sure you’re set on all logos, site design, etc.  You cannot gain trust by changing your site’s template or logo once a week.  Keep your design changes minimal.  I’ve considered redesigning this site’s layout.  I won’t make a change until I find something I can be satisfied with for the long run.

15)  Use a secondary site for your grey hat techniques.  One grey hat technique I believe can bring some good business is paid reviews.  However the links that come with paid reviews can be seen as paid links which may affect your rank with Google.  Your main site may be the one that feeds your kids.  Don’t gamble with the site that feeds you.

18)  You should already know by now, you must build links as well as trust.  Links from directories, press releases, and related websites will help your rank.  For Directories like DMOZ, the only way to get an affiliate website listed here is by staying within the Strict DMOZ affiliate guidelines.

19)  Make sure the company site you work with are leaders with a competitive offering.  The internet makes it easy to shop around and people will do just that.  If your company has the best prices or the best service, the shopper will probably come back to make a purchase.  Cookie and IP tracking is used to keep tabs on who gets commission for the sale.  Cookies or IPs are usually set to expire in a month or even a few months.  This way if your shopper revisits the company site and not yours, you can still get paid depending on how long it took the shopper to return because of this cookie or IP.

22)  Consider offering a free service related to your affiliate services.

23)  The more times the average user will visit your page, they more likely they will bookmark the site.

24)  If you haven’t already, maybe its time to think “community”.

25)  No affiliate links should be present on the homepage.  For an affiliate website I will generally keep all affiliate links about 3 clicks deep.  Good content should be primary.

 
Check out some more seo tips.
 

From an SEO standpoint, the good thing I see with using a Sitepal is having the ability to maybe reduce bounce rate and be viewed as a better resource. Creating the Character and Video is also kind of fun.  You can actually upload a picture of yourself which can then be turned into your own animated character.  Service provides a text to talk feature which simply allows you to type in the message for your character to speak.  Monthly prices can range anywhere from $10 a month to $250 a month depending on the number of streams your video or videos receive on a month to month basis.

I initially checked out Sitepal.com for using the image characters to create videos for Youtube use.  The problem with this service is you cannot download the videos.  Therefore uploading to Youtube or Metacafe is a problem.  All videos are streamed from their site which creates video distribution problems.  They charge you by the number of streams your Sitepal receives.  It would be nice to see them make it possible to download these Sitepal videos for a small fee.  I understand they want to make a profit but not having the ability to download these videos makes this service seem limited.  I also hope to see better character designs throughout the future.  The characters they have right now are not bad but there’s always room for advancement.