Internet Affiliate Marketing Blog

1. Google Calculator
How this works is your type an equation into the search field and it will give you the result. Example: 2*4 - 23*5 + 1000. After you type this in and click search or enter it will give you the result. You can do addition (+), subtraction (-), multiplication (*), division (/), to the power of (^), and square root of a number (sqrt).

2. Dictionary Definitions
You can get the definition of a word by typing “define:” followed by the word. Example: define: canucks. This will get you the definition of canucks.

3. Search for a specific title
Suppose you came across a website you thought was awesome but you forgot to bookmark the site and only remembered the title of it and wanted to find it again. Well you can search by title with Google to hopefully find that website a bit more easily. All you need to do is type “intitle: then the title”. By doing this you will only get results of websites with that line in the title.

4. Google Converter
This is a very useful one if you need to convert something from one unit to another unit quickly. All you need to do is type something like “5km in miles” and it will do the conversion for you. I also use it a lot for changing from Fahrenheit to Celsius (25F to C).

5. Compare Currencies
Google search engine has a built in currency converter so you can go from one currency to another. This is done by simply typing something like “1 USD in CAN” and press enter and it will do the conversion for you.

6. Weather Updates
If you want to know what the weather will be like in your area you can type something like “London weather” and it will give you the conditions in that area.

7. Search for specific file types
If you want to find a certain type of file on the Internet it is normally pretty difficult to find what you are looking for but with the use of Google search you can find file types a bit more easily. You can search for file types by doing something like “Guide to build a good website filetypept”. That will look for files with that name and the file type of a powerpoint presentation.

8. Search on a particular website
If you want to search a particular website from Google you can do this by typing “hitch DVD site:www.amazon.com”. By typing in site: and then the website it will search that website for what you have type before site:.

9. Get the local time anywhere
Want to know the time in London now? You can do that by typing “what time is it London” in the search bar. You can also do it by typing “time (location)” without the quotes.

10. Remove unwanted search results
Have you ever wanted to search for something in particular but wanted to remove some of the search results? You can do this by type -something after the search term to remove it from the search results. Example: James Bond -movie. What that would do is remove the search results of James Bond that included the movie so you would find other things like news, books, etc.

11. Search for URLs
Want to search for a particular URL? You can do so by putting a “_, . , -” in between the words instead of a space. Example: What_are_you_talking_about. This would search for URLs that included those words.

12. Track Flight Status
Want to track a particular flight status? You can do that if you know the airline and flight number. You just need to type in the airline and the flight number to get the status. Example: British airways flight 5. This will bring you the results of this flight from this particular airline.

13. Search Google Groups by the subject line
You can search Google groups by subject line with this little trick. Type “insubject:then topic here” and you will get the Google groups with that subject line.

14. Find Related Sites
This trick will probably be familiar to a bunch of people but is helpful for finding related sites. What you do is type “related:www.site.com”. So if you wanted to find an alternative to the website your are looking at that you may have liked you can use this feature.

15. Find Links to a specific URL
This is pretty helpful for finding backlinks to your website. If you want to find out what websites link to your website you can type “link:www.yoursite.com” and you will get all the results of the websites that link back to yours.

Black Hat SEO techniques are methods webmasters/marketers use to get a leg up on the competition in the search engines. Whether they are fair or unfair, legitimate or illegitimate is not up for discussion here. This is a list and explanation of ten of the top black hat SEO techniques.

10. Buying Links
Is buying links a black hat technique? Of course it is. When a marketer pays for a link, they are essentially “buying a vote” for the page they are promoting. That link would not exist except that it was paid for. This gives extra weight to the promoted page in the search engine algorithms. The paid-for link does not itself add extra value to visitors, so the technique must be black hat.

9. Cyber Hoaxing
Hoaxing is a way of “creatively” making news. First, create a fake news website that looks real. Second, write a sensational but false news story. It helps if it is difficult to prove the veracity. Third, create multiple accounts on various social networking sites such as Digg, Stumbleupon, Del.icio.us, etc., and submit your story there. Fourth, be ready for emails and phone calls from actual big-time media outlets with questions about your story. You will generate buzz and get links to your fake news story. Eventually, when it is discovered your story is false, try to capitalize on the outrage. How to monetize the whole situation is up to the webmaster, but it is commonly done with affiliate programs. More Info

8. Keyword Stuffing/Hidden Text
This technique involves picking a bunch of keywords for which a marketer wants a page to be optimized, and then placing them on the page in such a way that they will be read by search engine spiders, but not by human visitors. They can be located in a hidden div tag, colored so that they blend into the background, or even placed within HTML comment tags. This is truly an oldschool technique, and is not nearly as effective now as it was back in the day.

7. Doorway pages
Doorway pages are web pages created solely for the purpose of being spidered by search engines and included in the search engine results pages (SERPs). They are usually optimized for placement in the SERPs by being stuffed with keywords and created in bulk. Often, you will see that the pages are named after the primary keyword being targeted. Also, doorway pages will likely have a form of redirection involved sending visitors to the “money site”. The redirection can be a meta refresh tag or javascript. Most webmasters using this technique will have software which cranks out doorway pages by the thousands.

6. Web Page Cloaking
This technique goes hand-in-hand with the doorway pages technique. The idea behind cloaking is to show a doorway page to search engine spiders but the “money page” to human visitors. Both pages are accessed using the same URL. Software is used to identify the search engine spiders and serve the doorway page to them. There is a dual purpose to web page cloaking: competitors are kept from scraping the content of the optimized doorways, and human visitors are kept from seeing the ugly doorway pages (the redirect is unnecessary in a properly executed cloaking solution). I may be a little biased about web page cloaking because I am the author of KloakIt, a cloaking software application.

5. XSS Injection
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) is a technique used to take advantage of certain pages with a special security flaw. They accept input from the HTTP GET QUERY_STRING environment variable (the text after the “?” in a URL) and display it on the page. Therefor, it is possible to construct a URL to one of these pages which will be displayed as a link to the site you specify, with the text you specify as the link text. The constructed URL can be set up as a link somewhere that a search engine spider will follow, getting the XSS-generated page indexed. Very sneaky.

4. 302 Redirect Hijacking
This technique is a really nasty black hat trick where the evil webmaster creates a web page on a high-page-rank domain with a 302 redirect to the page he is trying to hijack. Googlebot (or another search engine spider) follows the redirect to the second page and indexes it, but on the SERP, the URL of the indexed page will be that of the page with the redirect. In other words, the evil black hat webmaster will own the SERP, and the page with the content will be de-indexed. A truly evil hijacker builds cloaking into the redirect so human visitors to the page will go to his “money page”, while search engine spiders will still see the 302 redirect.

3. Scraping and Spinning
Scraping and its cousin spinning are a black hat technique that uses software to spider websites, grab the content, mix it up a bit, paraphrase, randomize, and generate “new” content from it. Often it will contain links to sites the marketer is trying to promote. Or, it will contain Adsense or other ads which are used to monetize the content. Spinning content into duplicate-content-penalty-avoiding text is the holy grail of black hat techniques. Programmers who come up with methods for doing this on-the-fly have created true money machines for themselves. Here’s an excellent scraping and spinning story.

2. Splogs
Close cousins to scraping and spinning, splogs are simply blogs with worthless, automatically generated content. Many splogs read RSS feeds and create blog posts for themselves from them. Splogs are the framework into which scraped and spun content is laid out to create made-for-Adsense (MFA) sites. Also, splogs can be used to get other sites indexed or their Pagerank increased, by including links to them. A large percentage (some say 20% or higher) of the blogs on the web are actually splogs. More Info…and the number one black hat SEO technique is…

1. Link Spamming
King of black hat techniques, link spamming is just a way getting links to the websites of your choice through the use of automated software which accesses unprotected blogs through anonymous web proxies and leaves links in their comments. Long, frequently updated lists of proxy IP addresses are necessary, as well as decent comment generation software. Blog software developers have fought back, however, such as the the development of the Askimet comment filter for Wordpress.

A Last Word
Now that you are an expert on black hat SEO techniques, go out and make your millions. But wait! I’ll through in one more technique as a freebie… “churn and burn“. This is actually not a technique, but a strategy. Churn and burn means you have to be prepared to lose domains to penalties in search engine rankings as Google or other search engines discover they are spammy. The real secret to black hat success is to always be developing new domains and campaigns. If one is slammed, you should have two on the back burner.

1. Make sure that your video clips are relevant and informative - For starters, ensure that your video provides useful and informative information. Videos that demonstrate step by step procedures are great, videos that express an opinion about a specific topic can be useful too. Videos that have nothing to do with your brand or service offering or are general or vague in nature will just confuse your audience. Save the viewer the trouble and don’t just upload a video for the sake of uploading a video.

2. SEO Video Optimization Fundamental Tip #1: Give your video a Catchy Title - Video can be used to bring visitors to your site. One way to get users to view your video is to give it a catchy title that contains a related key phrase that is relevant to your product, service or brand.

3. Use Video as a Portal to other Content on Your Site - Upload a couple of videos to portals like YouTube and provide links back to related content and other videos on your site.

4. SEO Video Optimization Fundamental Tip #2: Optimize your video for Important Key Phrases - You might want to optimize your video for terms users are likely to be searching for. Tag your video with these terms, consider naming the file name of the video with these terms in mind.

5. Provide Transcripts of your Videos - Good old HTML content is still a favorite with the search engines. If you want your video to rank well, you need to give the search engines something to index and rank. Surround your videos with onpage copy that can be indexed by the search engines.

6. Keep Your Videos to five minutes or less - there is nothing worse than a boring video that goes on an on. If you have video content that is of long duration, consider breaking it up into smaller pieces and tag each accordingly. Not only does this make for better viewing pleasure, it also keeps the user looking for more.

7. Make use of a Video Sitemap - For video that is native to your own website, make sure that users and search engine spiders can find your video content. The easiest way to do this is through the use of a video sitemap on your site. Use important keywords in the anchor text links to your videos featured on your video sitemap.

8. SEO Video Optimization Fundamental Tip #3: Tag Your Videos - tag your videos with key phrases that are reflective of the content.

9. Brand your Video with your Logo - Video is a great tool to generate brand awareness with your prospects. Take advantage of this by incorporating your brand in your videos.

10. SEO Video Optimization Fundamental Tip #4: Remember Inbound Linking Factors - Link to videos using important keywords in anchor text.

11. Offer the Option to Embed Your Video - allow other users access to the coding that will allow them to embed your video on their website or their blog. Think viral marketing

12. SEO Video Optimization Fundamental Tip #5: Add Descriptive Meta Data - optimize your video for relevant keywords and include a keyword rich description of your video content.

13. Allow Users to Rate your Video - videos that receive higher ratings from users are the ones that users tend to favorite and save. You can bet that the search engines will pay attention to this when ranking these videos.

14. Syndicate Your Video - Submit your video to RSS.

In September of 1999, Brett Tabke wrote “26 Steps to 15k a Day” in the Webmaster World forum. A lot has changed since then, and now is the time to consider a new 26-step plan that meets the current needs of webmasters in 2006. Some of the old ones still apply (writing new content everyday, for example), and some don’t (submitting to the search engines is no longer necessary), and we’re here to tell you which is which! As you probably already know, bringing in traffic is not easy - it takes hard work, determination and lots of elbow grease. So if you’re ready, roll up your sleeves and follow these 26 simple steps, and within just one year you will generate enough traffic to keep you busy for a long, long time!

A) Keyword Research

Before you do anything else, use a keyword research tool and do an extensive job researching the right keyphrases to use for your site. What keyphrases are your direct competitors using? Are there any keyphrases that create a potential for market entry? Are there any that you can put a spin on and create a whole new niche with?

B) Domain Name

If you want to brand your company name, then choose a domain name that reflects it. If your company is Kawunga, then get www.kawunga.com. If it’s taken, then get www.kawungawidgets.com. No dashes, and no more than two words in the domain if appropriate.

C) Avoid the Sandbox

Buy your domain name early, as soon as you have chosen your keyphrases and your company name. Get it hosted right away and put up a quick one page site saying a little about who you are, what you sell, and that there will be more to come soon. Make sure it gets crawled by Google and Yahoo (either submit it or link to it from another site).

D) Create Content

Create over 30 pages of real, original content on your site. This will give the spiders something to chew on. It will also give you more opportunities to been seen in the search engine results for a wide variety of keyphrases.

E) Site Design

Use the “Keep It Simple” principle. Employ an external CSS file, clean up any Java Scripts by referring to them off the page in an external file, don’t use frames, use flash the way you would an image, and no matter what, do not create a flash site. Do not offer a busy site with lots of bells and whistles to your visitors. Keep things nice and simple. Make it easy for them to find what they are looking for and they’ll have no reason to look anywhere else.

F) Page Size

The less kilobytes your page uses, the better - especially for the home page. Optimize your images and make sure the page loads quickly. Most people and businesses in the Western world may have high speed, but cell phones and other countries might not. If your site loads slowly, you may have already lost your visitor before they’ve even had a chance to browse around.

G) Usability

Make sure that your site follows good usability rules. Remember that people spend more time on other sites, so don’t violate design conventions. Don’t use PDF files for online reading. Change the colors for visited links, and use good headers. Look up usability for more tips and tricks, it will be worth your while.

H) On Site Optimization

Use the keyphrase you have chosen in your title (most important), your headers (when appropriate), and within the text. Make sure that your page/content is ABOUT your keyphrase. If you are selling widgets, than write about widgets. Don’t just stick the word widgets into the text.

I) Globals

Globals are the links that remain the same on every page. They are the reference for new visitors to keep them from getting lost. Sometimes they are on the left of the page, sometimes they consist of tabs at the top. Often they are in the footer of the page as well. Make sure that you have an old style text version of your globals on every page. I usually create tabs at the top, and put the text versions in the footer at the bottom of the page. Find out what works best for you.

J) Headers

Use bold headers. On the Internet, people scan they don’t read. So initially, all they will see are the headers. If your headers don’t address their concerns, they won’t stick around long enough to read your content. Use appropriate keyphrases when you can.

K) Site Map

Build a site map with a link to each of your pages. Keep it up to date. This will allow the spiders to get to every page. Put a text link to the site map on the main pages.

L) Content

Add a page every 2-3 days: 200-500 words. Create original content, don’t copy others. The more original and useful it is, the more people will read it, link to it, and most importantly of all - like it enough to keep coming back for more.

M) White Hat Only

Stay away from black hat optimizing techniques. Black hat optimization consists of using any method to get higher rankings that the search engines would disapprove of, such as keyword stuffing, doorway pages, invisible text, cloaking and more. Stick to white hat methods for long-term success. People who use black hat optimization are usually there for the short-term, such as in porn, gambling, and Viagra markets (just look at your email spam for more black hat markets). These black hat industry sites are usually around just long enough to make a quick buck.

N) Competition Analysis

Who is linking to your competition? Use Yahoo’s “link:” service to see the back links of your competition. For example, type in “link:http://www.yourdomain.com” into Yahoo search without the quotes). Try to get links from the same sites as your direct competitors. Better yet, see if you can replace them!

O) Submit

Submit to five groups of directories:

1. Dmoz.org and Yahoo (local, such as Yahoo.co.uk, or Yahoo.ca, etc… if you can).

2. Find directories in your field and get into them. Pay if you must, but only if the price is reasonable.

3. Local directories that relate to your country or region.

4. Any other directories that would be appropriate.

5. If you are targeting the local market, make sure that you are in the Yellow Pages and Superpages (because search engines use these listings to power local searches)

P) Blog

Start a blog about your industry and write a new entry at least once a week. Allow your visitors to comment or, better yet, write their own entries. This will create even more content on your site and will keep people coming back regularly to see what is new.

Q) Links From Other Sites

Simply submit your website to appropriate sites, asking that they link to your site as a reference because it will benefit their visitors. Don’t spend too much time on this, if your content is good and original, they will find you and link to you naturally. Remember that Linking is Queen (http://www.redcarpetweb.com/promotion/0409.html#feature). Stay away from bad linking partners, links farms, link scams, and any other unnatural links. They may not necessarily hurt you, but Google tracks when you get a link, how long you have had a link, who links to the site that links to you, where you live, what you had for breakfast, and more (not really… but kind of).

R) Statistics

Make sure your server has a good statistics program. Use it! If you don’t have access to a good program, then pay for one. Without the knowledge of who is coming to your site, from where, and how often, you will be missing out on some essential tools to improve your site.

S) Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Sign up for Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing. Spend money getting people to your site. Use it for branding too. This will create a steady flow of visitors to your site, and will make your site more accessible to your potential clients. You don’t have to be #1, you don’t even have to be #5… just make sure you are on the first page of search results for most of your keyphrases, when the cost is right.

T) Look Ahead

Stay informed of what is coming up in your market. If a new product will be out next season, write about it now. Take advantage of being a first mover. The search engines, and linkers, will reward you.

U) Articles

Write an article once every week and get it published in as many online publications as you can (with a link back to your site). Include the article on your site. Not only will this create many links to your site, but it will also get people to click to your site, and most importantly you will become an expert in the eyes of your visitors. They may even begin looking for your site by querying your name!

V) Study Your Traffic

After 30 to 90 days you will have enough results to analyze in your statistics program. Go over them with a fine tooth comb. Get the answers to these questions:

- Where are your visitors coming from?

- Which search engines do they use?

- What queries do they type in?

- What pages on your site do they visit the most?

- What are the entry pages on your site?

- What are the exit pages?

- What path do they follow when they browse your site?

Use this information to tweak your site.

- Use the most popular page to encourage the visitors to make you money.

- Adjust the paths they use to send them where you want them.

- Figure out why they leave from the exit pages.

Also, see what search terms people use to find you, and fine tune your keyphrases. If you targeted “green widgets”, but your visitors are finding you with the query “green leather widgets”, then start creating content about “leather widgets”!

W) Verify Your Submissions

After 3-4 months, check that you got into Dmoz.org and all of the other directories that you submitted to. If you have not been included, then submit again, or better yet, write a polite email to the editor and ask why. Also, find any new directories that would be worthy of your submittal time and submit to them.

X) RSS Feeds

RSS (Real Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) is becoming a powerful tool for Internet marketers. You can quickly and easily add fresh content to your website. Article feeds are updated frequently, so you can give your visitors (and the search engines) what they want - fresh content! You can use RSS to promote any new content, such as new pages, articles, blogs, press releases, and more!

Y) Press Releases

A press release is a written communication that you submit to journalists in the media (newspapers, radio, television, magazines) which are used to make announcements that are newsworthy. Create press releases announcing publication of any new articles or new company information or products. If it is interesting/original enough, a journalist may pick it up and write an article about it. Before you know it, your website address may get published in the NY Times.

Z) Keep Your Content Fresh

Remember to write a new page every 2-3 days. I only mentioned it briefly, but it is probably the most important point in this article. Keep writing! Without fresh content, your site will gradually drop in the search engine results. To stay on top, your content has to be the most up-to-date, freshest, and most interesting and original content in your field.

Follow these 26 simple steps and I assure you that within one year you will call your site a success. You will bring in a massive amount of traffic from within your industry and watch as your business grows!

So start writing, and write yourself to the top!