I often get asked how I pick a profitable niche market, and what keywords I choose. These are of course very good questions indeed.

So in this post I thought it might be helpful to share an example of a market and product that I came across, which I don’t have time to build a site in, but maybe one of you will.

I should also add that this style of affiliate site is for Amazon affiliate marketing, which is very easy to get accepted into, all you need is a website!

Ok so let’s get straight into it, the product that I came across is ‘Morphy Richards Breadmaker’. I don’t know much about this brand of breadmaker, but I don’t need to know much either. What I first did was go to the Google keyword tool and check what sort of search volume this product has.

Typing in the phrase “Morphy Richards Breadmaker” into the keyword tool, shows me that an exact match gives 8,100 searches a month, which is great!

Next I do a quick competition analysis of the keyword for SEO, and what I found was that on the front page of Google that there is not one website directly targeting this phrase. By that I mean no one has the term “Morphy Richards Breadmaker” in their title, keyword, description or H1 tags of the page!!

Now I look for the number of backlink to these sites on the front page of Google have, and to my surprize the most is only 15 links!

So this keyword phrase is really really easy for SEO, and it is highly targeted, because it a brand name.

Affiliate Sites

I did some more research and found this site:

http://www.morphyrichardsbreadmaker.com

This is a great example of a site that is an Amazon affiliate and is targeting this brand of bread maker. Notice that they are targeting many model numbers too.

Although the model number may not get much search volume, it you have enough of them, it will soon add up. So you could make a simple site, like the example above and target the phrase “morphy richards breadmaker” and also all the model numbers, and before you know it have a 20 page site!

The only problem with Amazon affiliate marketing, is that the commission is low, and is usually about 4%. However often customers will buy more than one item, and so the basket size increases and so do your commissions (especially around Christmas).

Morphy Breadmakers may only get you $5 commission a sale, but if you can get top Google rankings for many keywords, that are highly targeted, then you can have yourself a nice little money earner. Just remember many streams form a large river! Also the best thing is that the SEO is pretty easy for these keywords too.

That’s all from me, I hope this post opened up some new ideas of different types of sites you can build and also the potential with Amazon affiliate marketing too

Matt Carter

Recently I caught up with a friend of mine and he shared with me some really great ideas on outsourcing my business, among other things.

However one really cool thing he showed me, which I was aware of already, but had never taken the time to look into, is Jing, a website video marketing tool!

In this post I am going to discuss why I now like Jing so much and how it might be of use to you also. The best thing is that it is totally FREE!! (got to love that)

After installing Jing and playing around with it for a few minutes, I realized how awesome this free tool was, and started thinking of all the ways I could use it.

My friend who told me about Jing (an outsourcing guru) explained that he was using this tool to communicate with his outsource staff in the Philippines….and that is definitely one of the ways I will be using it also, however there are some other cool things you can do with it too.

Outsourcing

First off lets talk about how you could use this tool in your outsourcing, and if you are not yet at the stage where you are hiring workers in the Philippines to work on your business yet, then when you are, this will be helpful (keep in mind that you can hire people for cheap rates in the Philippines).

Whenever I am training someone to do a task for me, such as building links or using a new software tool, I always record a video of myself doing the task. Then I save this video in my training videos library and send it to my worker.

However up until recently I have been using Camtasia, which is a paid tool, that records my screen. Camtasia is awesome, however Jing (made by the same company) does the job you need for free!!

Not only that though you can also take screen shots and Jing has simple but effective editing tools that allows you to draw straight onto the screen shot. This way you can comment on what you are viewing, and send that over to your workers for feedback too!

Here’s an example of what I mean:

Video Marketing

Most of you have probably been through my 12 part (actually about 14 now) free video marketing course on internet marketing. If you haven’t then you can sign up for it in the top right of this blog now.

The response I get from this free website video marketing course is outstanding, and the number of leads I have gained from it is mind blowing! I don’t say these things so that you think I’m cool, I say it to encourage you guys to do similar things yourself using Jing. People love video, especially when it’s free.

However I realize that not every niche will work with the style of videos I created, as they are for the Internet Marketing niche. However you can just as easily create  a slide presentation with great information for people in any niche. Really all you need to do is turn your emails into slides, add images and record it all with Jing!

This approach does require an email list to market too, but you could also you these Jing videos on your sites or blogs too I suppose, but like I said I am new to Jing myself so haven’t tried that yet.

One thing I have seen people do though, is create free PDF’s focusing on good content, and in the PDF have links to Jing videos, which I also thought was a cool idea. If you made a great PDF and it got passed around, of course making sure you had a link to a squeeze page in it too, then it could work really well!

Simplicity!

What I also like about Jing is that it so easy to use. Once you have created your video or screen shot, all you need to do is click a button and it is automatically uploaded for you and they give you a URL that you can send out for people to watch. This takes all the hard work out of having to upload it yourself!

Well that was just my thoughts on why and how I would use Jing. If you have some others ideas why not share them in the comments below, and if you liked this post please give it a Tweet using the Tweet icon at the top of the post.

Oh yeah and to give credit to my buddy who told me how to use Jing, it was John Jonas who I did a webinar on outsourcing with recently, which was a pretty awesome webinar with more awesome tips like this too. The recording of that is here if you want to watch it:

==>Outsourcing Webinar Replay<==

That’s all from me, enjoy using Jing in your website video marketing ventures and what ever other cool ideas you have to use it!.

==>Click here to download Jing<==

Matt Carter

I am about to share with you today some really important tactics that you need to be using on your affiliate marketing sites.

I have noticed recently, from emails people have been sending me, that a lot of people are leaving money on the table with their affiliate marketing sites, by not monetizing their pages properly.

This is a real shame, because you can work so hard to get traffic, however that can all be wasted if your pages are not laid out correctly. So that’s what I am going to talk about in this post.

Affiliate Links

We all know that an affiliate marketing site needs to have affiliate links on the page, that’s a no brainer (I hope). However what I like to do with my links is make them VERY obvious, and lay them out in such a way that they draw the attention of the visitor.

There are a few simple but effective ways to do this. The first thing is to use BOLD font for you links, and also include arrows surrounding them in some cases. Below is an example:

==>Click HERE To Get Your FREE Acne Cream Trial<==

That would work well for a CPA offer where the customer gets a free trial of the product. Notice how I always tell the visitor what to do in the link and reinforce the benefit of clicking here.

I will usually have 2 or 3 of these links inside my article, spread out, and have them placed directly after a very strong benefit that I have mentioned in the body of the article.

Ideally if you set up your affiliate marketing sites so that the web pages are all targeting BUYER keywords, then really you want to get them to click those links as fast as you can, and shuffle them over to the merchant and let them take care of closing the sale.

Affiliate Banner Ads

Make sure that you check the affiliate resources section of the merchant that you are marketing for, and see what kind of advertising they have for you. A good merchant will have a range of image ads, all different shapes and sizes that you can use on your affiliate marketing sites.

There are a couple of places that I like to place ads on my affiliate sites, and I think this will be best described using a diagram, as you can see below.

Now this is just one way to lay out an article page to increase conversions, however it does work really well on a number of my affiliate marketing sites.

You will notice that in the top left I have a product shot, and this usually only done when I am writing a review of a product. Make sure though that the product shot image is still an affiliate link that can be clicked!!

Above The Fold

The above image may not have really illustrated this next point that clearly, however what I also make sure I do is have as many obvious image ads and text links above the fold of the page, without making the page look silly of course. I don’t want visitors to my sites to have to scroll down before they see the ads and links. Doing this can increase you click through rate to the merchant and henceforth sales!

Headlines

If you are going to to use headlines on your affiliate pages, then try and make them have some form of a benefit to catch the readers attention.

This next point is more aimed at sales letters, however it is a good trick to know nonetheless, and that is to make sure that your headlines tell a story in themselves.

What I mean by this is, if the visitor scans you page quickly and only reads the headlines, then make sure they tell a story that flows, on there own. So they either skim the headlines and are convinced to take action, or at least keep reading the rest of the copy.

Apart from these tips, what I always say is remember not to try and sell too hard in your copy, and instead opt for a more balanced but still convincing approach, as I have found that helps my conversions also on my affiliate marketing sites.

Matt Carter

I hope you guys are making some progress with your marketing efforts!

After many requests from people, I have decided that I will write a post explaining how to set up Wordpress, and use it for your affiliate marketing strategies.

I will be showing you, how to get some really nice, and FREE, Wordpress templates, and also some of the best plugins for Wordpress, and why I use them.

How to Set Up Wordpress Templates

The first thing you want to do is choose a Wordpress template that is going to work for you. Keep in mind that your job with any website/blog that you are using for affiliate marketing, is to pre-sell the visitor and then move them on immediately to the merchants website.

In fact on that note, I think more people would do a lot better with their sites if they just realized that point, and didn’t try and ‘hard sell’ the visitor on their affiliate sites, because you just lose all credibility by doing so.

Ok, so here is a link where you can get some free Wordpress templates that you might like to check out:

==>Click HERE for Free Wordpress Templates<==

There are more you can find also with a little searching too, but these ones are pretty good. One thing that I do recommend, is to stick to the simple themes, that are well laid out and not too cluttered or over done with flashy graphics, because they can actually be a distraction to the visitor, and draw them away from your all important ‘Affiliate Links’

Once you have a template the you like, all you need to do is load it onto your domain and you are ready to go. Most hosting companies, such Hostgator, will give you access to a C Panel, where you will find a cool little function called Fantastico. What this does is allow you to install a Wordpress blog onto your domain in a matter of a few clicks!

How to Set Up Wordpress Plugins

When you have got your new Wordpress blog loaded onto you domain, you then want to fine tune a few things, and this includes adding in some plugins to help you with your SEO.

There are a number of different plugins that you can use, and I will show you two great ones in a moment. First however I want to explain, for people that may not have ever done this, how to set up Wordpress plugins.

Once you download the plugin you want to use, you then have to upload the folder that the plugin came in, to your domain. The place you are uploading it to, is the ‘Plugins’ folder which is under wp-content. Below is a screen shot for you:

The next thing you need to so is activate the plugin so that it will work. This is very easy to do, once you are in the back end of your blog, which is accessed at:

http://www.YOUR-BLOGS-URL.com/wp-admin.

Then you will need to put in your user and password that you set up when use installed the blog using fantastico, and you will be in the back end.

Next navigate to and click “Installed” which is under the “Plugins” tab, in the left menu of your wordpress blog. Once you are in there, all you need to do is locate the plugin you have just uploaded and click ‘Activate’ and that’s it!

One of the best Wordpress plugins that I use on all my Wordpress Blogs is found here:

==>All in One SEO Pack<==

This neat little plugin basically makes doing all your ‘On Page’ SEO much easier. When you write a new post for your blog, you will see some settings under the area where you add the content. It is here that you need to add your keyword phrase you are trying to rank that post for.

A screen shot will make this a lot easier for me to explain:

In the shot above, there is three places that you MUST have your keyword phrase that you want to rank this post for in. The All in One SEO Pack, make it so simple!

The Date Exclusion Plugin

Sometimes it might not be suitable to have the date it you posts, as you might want to hide that from your visitors, and also from Google. The reason being that Google sometimes will read the date of your post and place that at the front of your description that it shows in their search results.

This is ok when the post is new, but when it starts to age, it doesn’t come across as new and relevant, and this can have a negative effect on your marketing.

This problem is easily solved, and I am going to show you how, by using this plugin:

==> ‘Wordpress Date Exclusion Plugin’<==

Once you have downloaded the Date Exclusion plugin, all you do is upload, it as I showed in the example above, and remember to activate it too, or it won’t work.

Now there will be no dates on your posts, however keep in mind that you don’t always want this, as sometimes the date may be needed, but if you are creating small yet very effective Google Sniper style Wordpress blogs as your affiliate sites, then the date is best removed.

How to Set Up Wordpress URL’s

The next thing you need to make sure that you do, is change the structure of your posts URL set up. This is super easy to do, but it is important as Google prefer URL’s in the format that I am about to show you below.

First you need to click ‘Permalinks’ which is under ‘Settings’

Then you need to select the setting for ‘Custom’ as you can see in the image below.

Once you have done that, your post name will show up in the url for the post,
which is now search engine friendly.

One more and final plugin for this post is the Wordpress XML site map generator plugin, which you can find here:

==>XML Site Map Generator Plugin<==

This plugin will create a search engine friendly site map that will help search engines to easily index your blog!

That’s all you need to do to know how to set up Wordpress. Now you just need to pick a niche, write some posts, and drive the traffic to them.

I hope that helped you guys, and have fun with Wordpress!

Matt

(Note: The Google Sniper link on this page is an affiliate link, if you purchase after clicking, my business gets a commission)

I am going to continue today with some training on my favorite topic, and in case you hadn’t worked it out already (Matt’s attempt at sarcastic humor) it is the topic of link building.

However in this post I want to explain a concept that most people do not understand, and that is linking to your links! Where we create a spider web type effect with our links.

Sounds a little funny I know, but what you need to be aware of when you are building links to your websites, in order to increase their search engine rankings, is that if Google thinks that you are creating all these links, which is what everyone does anyway, then it can get a little funny sometimes about that.

Now of course this usually only matters if you are building links in large numbers, but it is important to understand the concept. One way to make your links look more natural is by making sure that all the links that link to you have some links coming to them also.

This way those pages linking to you will look like they are credible also. Not only that though but they will pass some page rank to your site, and the power of that link will become stronger!

So How Do We Link to Our Links?

Well I don’t get carried away with this to be honest, as link building to your sites can be tough enough as it is, so what I do is whenever I submit an article to say Ezinearticles, once approved I take the URL of the article and I bookmark it, and then also submit it to RSS aggregators, which takes no time at all and gets that articles some links.

You can do the same thing for blog posts, web 2.0 properties etc….but I need to stress that you don’t need to get too carried away with this, however it is just an easy way to reinforce your second tier of links, so that you overall link
structure looks natural and strong!

Vary Your Anchor Text

A few other points that you should also consider on the topic on ‘natural looking links’ is that it is also a good idea to vary up your anchor text, so that not every link to a page has the exact same text anchoring it. Once again this is only need when you are building large amount of links, and not so much of a problem if you links are below 100 to the page.

However let’s say that you are trying to rank for the term “acne remedy”, you obviously use that text as your link anchor text, however 10% of the time, you might use: “best acne remedy” or even “acne remedies”

No Follow Isn’t All Bad

Finally my last piece of advice for you is, although getting links that have not got the “No Follow” tags turned on is important, if all your links are not “No Follow” or as some like to say are “Do Follow” then this again will possibly raise red flags with Google, as it just doesn’t look natural, so don’t shy away from the odd “No follow Link”

That’s all for me for this update, there will be more on the way!!

Have a great day all

Matt

In this weeks post I am going to stick to the theme of working smarter and not harder, and I am therefore going to show you a very simple and effective way that you can leverage the work of your competition, and also get some very valuable links from .edu and .gov domains.

Building back links to your website is absolutely key when it comes to getting good search engine rankings. However if you have spent any time doing this you will realize that it can be hard work.

However there is are free ways that can help you see what your competition have done, in regards to back linking their sites, and that is by using search strings in Yahoo.

The first thing you want to do is get a few url’s of your top competitors and for example purposes let’s use this site: www.barkbuster.com. What I would do is then type this into Yahoo: link:http://www.barkbusters.com

Below is a screen shot with an example of some results:

Keep in mind that when you are searching like this, if you are searching for a professional well established site, you will find that a lot of the links, .edu and .gov included, are natural links and therefore it will be tough for you to get links from these sites.

However if you search for a typical affiliate websites back links then it is a safe bet that these links will be all forced and therefore there is every chance that you can go off and create a link there also! What I mean by forced is the website owner went off and created them, so they didn’t just get linked to naturally from other sites.

Government and Education Links

Not long ago I did a post on how to search for blogs and forums that were on .edu and .gov domains, which I hope you found helpful, and below is another example of how to to this. All you need to do is type these strings into Google:

site:.gov blog

site:.edu blog

You can also add you niche keyword before the word blog to find specific blogs to your niche , but to be honest I find this narrows the search field too much so I rarely do it.

By typing this into Google the results are for government and education domains that also have a blog. Where there is a blog there is often comments, and that is where you want your links to be.

Oh and if you are really lucky you might find a military domain to get a link from: site:.mil

Now you may also want to find forums on these domain also, so one way to do that is to search on:

inurl:edu forum

inurl:gov forum

What you have to realize is that finding these blogs and forums that will allow a link to your site can take time, but you have to remember that these links are worth A LOT more for your search engine results than regular links.

Also if the links you do successfully place are ‘No Follow’ then don’t be discouraged, because many leading SEO experts agree that ‘No Follow’ from these trusted domains still getting indexed and help your sites rankings.

My last point before I finish this weeks post, is that once you find a site that you want to post a link on, make sure you use the Google Advanced Search technique that I talked about a few weeks ago. If you missed it then here is the link to that post: High Page Rank Links

These are just some ways of searching for back links, there are many more, but this should help you find some useful links for your sites.

Have a great day!

Matt

I hope you are all well and enjoying 2010 so far!

To kick things of this year I thought it would be a good idea to share, perhaps one of the biggest lessons that I have learned in my online marketing career, and that is to work smarter and not harder.

So, in this post I will be sharing with you some tricks that you can use, to ensure that you get the most out of your marketing, and work smarter than the bunch!

I see a large number of newbie internet marketers, in their over zealous enthusiasm to make money online, race in, head first and build websites that target any keywords they can think of.

Next they virtually burn themselves out doing SEO or burn their bank accounts out on Google Adwords, and sadly often to little positive effect.

One of the major reasons behind this, is that what most people fail to realize is that even if you have two keywords that get the exact same search volume, and are both directly related to the niche, and even be quite similar, they may not necessarily convert to sales at the same rate.

So with that said, it is a good idea if you’re an SEO marketer like myself, to test your keywords before you launch into a full blown SEO link building frenzy. This way you make sure you are targeting the highest converting keywords.

To do this you can set up a Google Adwords campaign and send traffic to your pages, using the keywords you are considering targeting for SEO and see what the results turn out like.

Some of you might not want to do this, as it can cost you anywhere from $50-$300 to test, but what you need to factor into the calculation, is that if you are targeting a keyword that converts at three times the rate of another one, then you will actually be saving money in the long term.

If you do have the cash to spend, another way to do this is to use PPC Spy tools and see if other marketers in your niche are using these keywords, and also what others, and for how long.

However I always like to make sure there is a free option available for everyone, and there is, that being your common sense!! You can have an educated guess at what keywords will convert to sales better than others, by just thinking about the mindset of the person who is typing that keyword into the search engine. I have mentioned this point before but it is so important that I really need to stress it again and again.

I like to refer to this as, how far down the sales line the person is. For example if they are ripe and ready to spend, then they might be typing words like: Buy XYZ, XYZ Review, XYZ Product, Best XYZ, XYZ Scam.

Obviously XYZ  stands for the niche word, here’s an example : Buy Forex Trading Software.

However using the above example, the keyword: ‘Forex Trading Software’, would not convert as well as say: ‘Buy Forex Trading Software’. Its not that difficult to spot a keyword that a person, closer to pulling out their credit card, ready to buy is typing into the search box. However you would be surprized how many people just focus on the search volume, and don’t use their common sense, and consider the conversion rate.

One last point I want to add also, is that if you are working with a network that assigns you an affiliate manager, then do not be shy to ask them for as much information as you can, because they often have great statistics on how well different offers are converting on their network, and believe me this info can be like gold!

So in summary, one of the biggest lessons I learned in my career as an online marketer is to target keywords that convert. In fact with some really great converting keywords, you might only get 10 visitors a day only, but it can be the equivalent of 100 from another keyword.

That’s all from me, so remember to work smarter and not harder in 2010 by choosing your keywords carefully, you’ll thank yourself in the long run.

All the best

Matt

It has been a few weeks since my last update on the blog, my apologies for that, however in today’s post I am going to make up for it, by showing you a neat little trick, which is free by the way, that you can start using today, to find high page rank pages, that you can potentially get back links from.

First of all, why would we want high page rank back links? Well it’s simple and I’d be surprised if most of you didn’t know this, however if you have back links from high page rank pages, they can help your seo ranking much more than low page rank zero or even worth n/a pages (less than zero).

So how do we find these pages? We will be using a few tools that will help us find high page rank forum and blog posts that we can comment on, and leave our links at the same time.

The first thing you need to do is install a free Fire Fox addon, called ==> SEO Quake <==

Once you have downloaded and installed the plugin, you should see a small little icon in the bottom right of your browser that I have shown in the image below:

When you click that icon, it will change color, and when you are in a Google results page you will see a whole lot of extra stuff all over the page.

Most of this extra information will not be needed for this exercise, however might be something you want to explore for yourself.

The next thing we will do is open up Google, and then just start searching for forums. You can do this by simply typing in “KEYWORD Forum“, the word KEYWORD is obviously replaced with the keyword you want to find forums on. (you don’t have to only find forum related to your niche either, I don’t).

For example “Business Forum” or “Health Forum” etc…One tip would be not to go too specific, otherwise you wont find many good forums.

Once you have some results pages showing from Google, all you do now is select the url of a forum, by copying it. Next we will be analyzing this forums domain for the highest page rank posts, so we can comment on these ones.

Next step is to click on the Google “Advanced Search” tab:

What this allows us to do is search for pages in a domain by certain keyword phrases. Remembering that we are looking for pages inside this forum that allows us to ‘reply’ to posts, a good keyword to type in the search field would be the word ‘reply’ or perhaps ‘replies’. Also make sure that you paste the domain url that you copied into the “search within a site or domain” field at the bottom.

Here’s an example for you:

When you click search, Google will display its results for pages in this domain that have the word reply on them and hopefully these should be posts that you can post a reply to, and leave your links in your signature.

However this is where our trusted friend SEO Quake comes into play. If you haven’t already, then click the icon for this tool in the bottom right and turn it on. Now you see results like the image further down the page below.

You will notice that I have highlighted two places with the red circles in the image. The top circle is where you will find the switch to rearrange the results in order of page rank.

By clicking the down arrow, Google will then show the pages in this domain that have the word reply on them, in order of highest page rank to lowest.

The top result I found by doing a quick search as I write this post, took me about 2 mins, is a page rank 2 post. When I click on that page I can read the post and then sign up a make  helpful reply to it, leaving my links in my signature.

NOTE: You must make a helpful reply to posts, otherwise you run the risk of getting your account deleted as SPAM. So if you don’t know a good answer, then do a quick Google search and see if you can find some helpful information. What you will find is that people often ask questions in forums, with out doing much, if any Google research first. So often the answer is not hard to find. Avoid forum on technical stuff like PHP or something, because that will be harder.

That’s all there is to it. All you need to do is keep repeating the process and finding posts with page rank, so that you can get more and more links. Keep in mind that you need a lot less links to get good search engine results, if the links you have are high page rank. Anything of page rank 2 or above is great, because most people get links from page rank zero pages, and just get 100’s if not 1000’s of them.

This technique takes some practice and time, but it is worth it.

I must also give credit where it is due and state that I first learned this technique off my good friend and fellow marketer Mark Ling from: ==> Affilorama Premium <==

Hope this tip has been helpful,

Chat soon, and have a great Christmas.

Matt

(links in this post are sponsored affiliate links, I make commission if you purchase after clicking)

With the new FTC guidelines kicking in Dec 1st 2009, I thought it would be a good idea to share my thoughts and the practical steps that I am taking with my sites to ensure I am coming into line to what the FTC require.

Before I do though, I must say that I am not a lawyer and therefore the information provided in this post is my opinion only and not legally binding. It is solely your responsibility to ensure you interpret the FTC guidelines for yourself. Here is a link to the FTC site for you: FTC Guidelines and also read the guidelines here: FTC PDF

The first thing that I want to say is that I personally think that what the FTC are doing is a good thing, and I support it. After all they are essentially cleaning up the internet and removing dodgy non-transparent websites.

I don’t think it is fair when you read a so called testimony about someone’s experience with a product that is either completely false, or an extreme example and no way likely to be the result the average user would experience.

The classic copy writing technique of telling a story along the lines of “I struggled with XYZ also, and I tried everything but nothing helped, then I tried AFFILIATE PRODUCT, and it fixed XYZ immediately, you should try it too!!”, I feel is now a thing of the past, and rightly so.

Everybody, and I am sure you included, want a fair deal and to be told the truth, and this new policy from the FTC demanding transparency is only going to create that for us all.

Although the Big Gun websites will most likely be the target of the FTC first, it does not mean that small affiliates are exempt, and if you do get a fine from the FTC they are $11,000 each violation, so not something you really want to be messing with. However you do get a warning first apparently, but best not to go there I think.

Just in case you live outside of the United States like I do, please don’t be fooled into thinking that these new rules don’t apply to you, because if you are marketing to someone in the United States then you are liable.

What Am I Doing?

Well to be honest with you, my affiliate sites never used falsified examples and testimonials, because I never felt right about them. However I did have, until recently, affiliate links in the pages of my sites that did not clearly explain my relationship to the merchant, ie. that I get commission from this relationship.

Therefore from what I understand of the FTC new guidelines, is that they require affiliates to disclose all their links and inform the visitor that their links are in fact sponsored links, and also disclose if they have never actually used the product they are recommending.

Here’s a video from the FTC themselves:

Sounds fair enough to me. So what I have done on my websites is place a sentence underneath each affiliate link that says: ‘The above link is a sponsored affiliate link, the owner of this site is not a bona fide user of this product” I must also give credit to Mark Ling from Affilorama.com who helped me with this process.

So if you have not actually tried a product then you must make that clear so that the visitor to your website is aware of that, and they are also aware that you get paid commission from the merchant for recommending their products.

If you are a product owner then there are some more things that you need to know and once again I encourage to read the guidelines for yourself. However one key thing that I took from the guidelines is that the use of testimonials has changed. You are no longer allowed to include a testimonial and simply state that the result may not be typical, and the FTC now require ‘Generally Expected Results’.

From what I can gather ‘Generally Expected Results’ are scientifically proven, with data, and reflect an average result for a certain number of people tested. So you can no longer place any testimonial you like on your websites, and instead must do the required testing, and if you can, then include ‘Generally Expected Results’.

Check The Merchants Out!

As an affiliate you can also be held liable if the merchant that you are recommending is not meeting the guidelines of the FTC. So make sure that you review the merchants claims and ask them also if they feel they are inline with the FTC rules.

What Sites Should I Be Updating?

The most simple and safe bet is all your sites. Whether they be on social media sites like Squidoo, or Twitter posts, or Wordpress blogs, it doesn’t matter, you still must be transparent.

However if you have banner ads on your site, that are clearly advertising then apparently these are fine and do not require any further disclosure, because they are considered obvious advertising and one would assume that the website owner is receiving some form of payment for including the advertisement.

That’s all from me, and once again I am not a lawyer so please read the guidelines for yourself.

All the best

Matt

In Today’s post I am going to discuss some more SEO techniques, that will ensure that all your hard work in building back links to your sites is worth it.

You see what some people don’t realize, is that just because you build a back link does NOT mean that Google or the other major search engines will find and index that link. If they can’t find it, they can’t count it as a vote for your site, and that is not a good thing for your rankings.

However, there is a few things that you can do to help the search engines find your links. One way is by creating RSS feeds for your content that has your links in it, and sending these RSS feeds out via sites like Feedagg or your choice of RSS aggregator.

This is very easy to do, if you placed your link on a blog that already has an RSS feed, which you can see in the URL bar as the little orange icon (see image below).

All you need to do in this case is click the icon and then take the feed and submit to your RSS aggregator and they will send the feed out for you. This will help the search engines find that content and of course index the new links in it.

But what if the page you have put a link in, is a static HTML page with no RSS feed? What can you do?

A neat little FREE service I use is Feedage.com. What this does is take the static HTML page and create an RSS feed for you. The next thing you should do is check that the feed is valid, so that it will work when blasted out with your chosen RSS aggregator. In order to do this, I use  a feed validating service, such as W3C Validation, and run my freshly created feed through here and make sure I have a valid feed.

Another thing you can use this system for, is if you have written a new article on goarticles.com and want to make sure it gets indexed fast. Unlike ezinearticles.com, goarticles does not give you a unique RSS feed, however following the process above can solve that problem.

Now that might sound a little confusing at first, but really the whole process takes less than a minute to do. If you are building links on sites that are not likely to be crawled often by search engine bots, then doing this can speed up the process and help ensure your links get found.

Link Diversity

The next crucial point I want to discuss is link diversity. A common mistake that people make when building links for SEO, is that they do not have enough diversity in the IP addresses that their links are coming from.

You see if you comment in one forum and have a link in your signature, that link will count for SEO, if it is ‘Do Follow’ of course. However if you make 1000 comments in that same forum, and henceforth have 1000 signature links dropped throughout the forum, in my experience this will not do much more for your search rankings.

The key is to have a variety of different links from different IP addresses. Sometimes when I am doing SEO on my websites, I often beat a competitor who has a much greater overall back link count than me, and this I assume is partly, but not solely, due to the IP diversity that I make sure my sites back links have.

Another critical role in getting good search engine rankings, is doing your ‘On Page SEO’ well. I am going to discuss this in detail in a future post soon, however briefly, you must do the basics properly, such as having the keyword phrase in the Meta Section, H1 tags, Content and Title Tags, but there is also more to it than just these basics (more on this soon).

On Page SEO can help you outrank a site with much more back links than you may have. I like to refer to it as working smarter and not harder, after all  back link building can be tough going, so I like to make sure I only get the minimum I need. That is why using the RSS trick, and On Page SEO are things I take the time to do well.

Until next time!

Matt Carter