How To Create and Rank Inner Website Pages

Posted by JR in Affiliate Marketing, Article Marketing, Blogging, Webmaster/Website Optimization

With the recent changes in Google SERPS and the Google Mayday update mayhem of thin inner pages, ecommerce and thin affiliate pages getting slammed in rankings, I thought it was important to look at how to properly create and rank inner pages of websites and blogs.

Probably one of the most overlooked and potentially powerful aspects of any website or blog are the inner pages. So many times people focus on the home page in getting links and also for the display of content and navigation that the inner pages become almost an after thought in the overall site architecture – this is a big mistake!

Inner pages offer the most potential for bringing in tons of traffic and for dominating the SERPS for various keyword terms that people are searching for and if you are not targeting and optimizing your inner page content correctly you are really missing out on a plethora of traffic, which means you are missing out on strong streams of revenue.

While some ignore inner pages others have tons of them but they are not properly optimized and so they do not reap the benefits that they potentially can for the webmaster or blogger.

More Inner Pages Ranking in SERPS = More Traffic

and

More Traffic = Bigger Potential for Revenue

How To Get High Rankings for Inner Pages

1. Proper KW research
I know, keyword research – UGH – we eat, sleep and breath it, but again, we will not succeed without it!

Many people just create blog posts or static website pages without giving any thought or research into what people are searching for related to the niche of the site.

Search out keyword terms and phrases that people are searching for

AND

make sure the competition for those is fairly low (this can depend on your site’s overall authority)AND
do this for each and every page that you post.

otherwise…
you just have pages floating out in the Web that nobody will ever find!

Learn the steps in Step By Step Keyword Research.

2. Nauseatingly Long Posts and Pages – Competing in SERPS for Affiliate Product Pages and Ecommerce Sites
It is a fact that the search engines, and especially Google loves nauseatingly long posts and written content pages, remember that the search engines are very content driven and pages that are 1000, 2000, 3000 + words long are just so attractive to them.

For many 300 - 500 words may seem like enough, but I say NO WAY! This is especially true for affiliate and money sites, because remember in order for those to be favorable in Google you need to add additional value to the user above and beyond just affiliate and product links that all ready exist on the merchant’s site.

It is more important than ever to make sure that your product pages and affiliate feed pages have some added value, whether it be product descriptions, user reviews and comments, or anything related to the page.

If you cannot conceive of writing such long pages for money sites, or you just don’t have the time, then use PLR. There are some great PLR articles out there, such as the very well written niche topic Flamillion PLR Packs and eBooks, then rewrite them yourself, or use the Best Content Spinner, to easily and quickly make them unique. A perfect combination for creating tons of great content pages for your money sites.

For product pages, such as those on e-commerce sites, or affiliate sites that use product data feeds smaller blurbs of about 250 – 400 words are really helpful, especially since Google is favoring such pages in SERPS, as we are seeing in the Mayday update.

If you can’t stand writing and don’t want to spin then outsource your writing, for as little as $5 you can get 500 words of original well written content that you own. Check out 99 Cent Articles, I’ve been using them and they have excellent writers at a great price.

3. Link Building for Inner Pages
Once again, many strive to rank the home page in the SERPS and so they spend all their time building and attracting links to their home page, but what about the inner pages?

Get links to your inner pages and get plenty of them, write content people will want to link to, and don’t ignore your most important inner pages.

You can use this really great Article Marketing Submission Software to get exposure and links to your inner pages, try writing some articles and link only to your inner pages in the resource box. With 2 links in the resource box and submission to several hundred sites, you can easily get hundreds of backlinks to your inner pages with one submission.

Check out Article Ranks, this is a unique system for getting within content backlinks to you inner pages.

Use Unique Article Wizard

Trusted Domains and High Ranking of Inner Pages
One of the most magical aspects of having a trusted and high ranking domain in Google is that most inner pages (with exception of highly competitive keywords) that you launch will almost instantly take the top positions in SERPS. This is basically due to the fact that Google views your site as an authority and your links base profile is already so strong that all new inner pages will piggyback off that link power.

This blog for example has many inner pages sitting on page 1 in Google SERPS and this is because the base link profile is rather strong and the Google trust rank is high and so I can write a page of content, post it and most of the time within a couple of days it goes to Page 1.

Also, if you notice many of my posts are very long, 1000 words + because I want to provide a lot of value to my readers and so this happens naturally and I truly believe that this has something to do with the ranking success of this site, not only because people have naturally wanted to link to the value here, but also because of the length of the posts.

Ranking and trusted domain = easier rank of inner pages

New and Unranked Sites and Ranking of Inner Pages
When you site is new and the trust rank isn’t there more work will be required to get those inner pages to rank, so write some articles, build some links, including some social media links in the proper niche categories and get the word out about your great piece of content to attract good links to get you inner page to rank and bring you traffic and the potential for revenue.

New and Unranked Sites = The Need for More Links to Rank Inner Pages

44 Comments

Does Blog Post Frequency Affect Google Rankings?

Posted by JR in Blog Promotion, Blogging, Search Engine Optimization

Ever wonder how the frequency with which you post to your blogs affects your rankings in Google?

This has been discussed all over the web with two differing opinions -

1. Bloggers need to post consistently and frequently or else you have a dead blog that will fall in rankings. This basically comes from the notion that blogs are dynamic and are expected to be constantly updated, versus static sites which do not carry the same expectation.

2. A blogger should not post just to post, and quality of content always wins over the quantity of it.

I for one have always believed in #2, and it was proven to me with this blog.

As most of my faithful readers know, I do not post everyday nor even every week. I do not believe in posting for posting sakes or because I am in some race to have a thousand posts a month. I take the time to do proper research and make sure that I am providing the most value I can for my readers, which for me takes time and thought and if it means only 3 posts per month so be it and my rankings are great, many of my posts are on page 1 for various keywords.

What About Readers?

Now the two opinions above are usually discussed just in relation to rankings and not so much in relation to readers and visitors (especially returning ones and subscribers).

When it comes to readers and subscribers a solid argument can be made that adding content on a higher frequency brings that freshness factor and brings them to the blog more often. I agree with that. But I also do not think it should be forced.

I read several blogs that update on a daily or every other day basis, and I have to say that the quality of content is not so great and sometimes it is quite transparent that posts are being rushed and are therefore not very useful or thoughtful.

In general, if you have something of value to post then post it, but do not post mediocre or crappy content just for the sake of posting or being bent on meeting some deadline of 1,000 posts in one month, whether for rankings or for readers.

In a nutshell, for me quality always wins over quantity, if you want to establish authority in your niche then quality, useful and spectacular content should always be your first concern.

But of course, if you can have both, quality and quantity that’s even better!!!!!!!!!

Matt Cutts Clarifies Frequency of Posting and Ranking

In the following video Matt Cutts clarifies this issue of post frequency affecting Google rankings, it’s a good watch. This video came from Google Webmaster Help on YouTube, where Matt posts videos regularly answering a variety of questions submitted by webmasters from Matt’s grab bag. It’s a good idea to subscribe as there are a variety of issues being answered all the time.

What do you guys think? Are you going for quantity, quality or both and why?

62 Comments

Google Mayday Update, Caffeine and Tanked SERP Ranks

Posted by JR in Google, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization

Well looks like Google is at it again, making changes to their algorithm, shaking things up and causing webmasters to pull their hair out. Two things have happened in the last few weeks, Google launched the Caffeine update which they have been working on for some time and also there is what is being called the Mayday update. (By the way, this is a typical action on the part of Google, they usually make major tweaks in the summer time, around May and June). These are two very distinct actions on the part of Google.

Caffeine
Caffeine has nothing to do with ranking, it is just the method in which data is being stored, retrieved from keyword searches and then displayed in SERPS.

Mayday
Mayday IS about ranking and is a search quality algorithm change, ( not manual) launched by the Google Search Quality team and impacts long tail traffic referrals that DOES change how sites are ranked in SERPS.

Basically if your long tail traffic referrals fell heavily in the SERPS, Google is telling you your site sucks….Thanks Google, we love you too!

Last week at Google I/O, Matt Cutts said – ”this is an algorithmic change in Google, looking for higher quality sites to surface for long tail queries. It went through vigorous testing and isn’t going to be rolled back.”

Check out the video regarding Mayday by Matt Cutts

MAYDAY and GETTING SENT TO THE GOOGLE BLACK HOLE

Mayday has significantly impacted long tail keyword searches and therefore, inner pages as opposed to having a widespread affect on home pages and many have lost their precious rankings for these queries in SERPS.

There has also been a lot of buzz about the especially negative affects of Mayday on e-commerce sites ( that link offers some real useable insight into the e-commerce issues with Mayday, thanks to Link Builder) losing rankings and SERP placements that have significantly impacted their earnings and bottom line.

Mayday Impacts

1. Pages in long tail keyword searches that do not have healthy link profiles and so do not hold enough “authority” in the eyes of Google

2. Thin pages, like product pages without any other significant added value

3. Pages that are several clicks away from the home page, hence ineffective heirarchy and overall site navigation

4. New and much stricter guidelines have been set by Google as to what qualifies as an “authority” and “useful” site for a particular search query and only those sites that do will now rank for those terms.

5. Likely most thin affiliate sites pages went down hard.

6. Evidently the long tail pages that got hit were ones without significant amounts of written original content, hence the product pages of ecommerce sites, that only had product listings.

7. The long tail search referrals were tweaked to impact sites lacking authority in Google’s eyes.

8. This is not a manual penalty – purely algorithmic

9. Metrics measuring the “quality” and “authority” of sites has been tweaked, tested and launched and this is a permanent change.

10. Has nothing to do with Caffeine

Now What?

Likely many of you have been impacted by this, and if you haven’t yet done so, I suggest you go and check your sites rankings and see what’s going on.

At this point it is imperative to think quality and get creative.

Analyze everything about your sites and evaluate if your content really measures up to getting better links.

Look at your navigation – all inner pages need to be 2 or less clicks away from the home page.

Check your site structure – hierarchy always matters, make sure it’s clear and well balanced.

Bounce Rate – While Google denies this is a deciding factor – I’m not sure, if your site has a high bounce rate then that is a problem, and Google aside, you want to improve your user’s experience so they stay longer.

Check your website speed and fix any issues – See Complete Guide To Website Speed

Most Important

Take a look at those site that ARE ranking for the search queries you lost, use Link Diagnosis and take a look at their links. Their site structure, their content. What are they doing that you’re not?

Healthy link profiles to ALL pages of the site, not just home page, are significant for ranking.

Build authority – most important – authority is still gaged by a healthy link profile, I don’ t believe that has changed. Quality, natural, diverse links going to all pages of your site establish authority, when your site has high overall authority, inner pages will usually rank and rank quickly for most any search terms. If your long tail search traffic is suffering, get better links to those pages.

Don’t give up – like anything else in the world of Internet Marketing, this is a learning experience, and another opportunity to push your business and skill level to another level. Do the requisite research and then take action!

I have a lot of sites, and a few were affected by Mayday, which of course means loss of traffic, and therefore money. For me, I see one common denominator, the sites that suffered were not authority sites in the eyes of Google, which I already knew but it has never been a problem before. And, good quality links to those sites were few and far between.

LEARN MORE WITH PART 2 - How To Create and Rank Inner Website Pages Post Mayday

More Useful Stuff on Mayday

Mayday Thread at Webmaster World Forum – Good discussion going on here with all the techies and veteran webmasters who have lived through many Google shake ups.

Search Engine Land on Mayday

Why Google is Costing Some Sites

Was the Google Update a Complete Failure?

SEO Moz – Google Mayday Update and What it Means For You

How did you guys do? Anyone lost rankings? What are you doing about it?

40 Comments

Website Speed Now A Definite Factor in Google Rankings and 12 Tools to Check Site Speed

Posted by JR in Google, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Website Tools

Google announced on Friday that they have officially incorporated site speed into their algorithm as a factor in rankings, see their blog post about it at Google Rankings and Site Speed, Matt Cutts elaborates more on this issue here.

All in all, site speed should always be our concern since slow loading pages drive visitors away, but now that it is definitely going to affect rankings we really need to check and monitor our site speed to be sure that they are at their optimal speed. While Google does confirm that site speed is not as important as the relevance of a page or other factors for rankings and that all in all they surmise that less than 1% of rankings will be affected by this you still ought to check your sites to make sure that they are loading quickly, again mainly for the traffic that comes through.

It’s a fact that website speed can have a big impact on conversions and overall site ROI, all other factors being equal simply because you keep visitors longer on your site. Most Internet users are instant gratification junkies, they want to zip through pages, and not wait around while your site is trying to load. And statistics show that visitors tend to stay on a site longer when it loads quickly and overall provides them with optimal performance.

Tools To Check Website Speed

Page Speed – I have talked about this one before, and it’s a very effective Firefox/Firebug add-on that evaluates the speed of web pages and provides suggestions for improvement.
YSlow – This is a free Yahoo tool that offers suggestions to improve speed, also uses a Firefox add on.

If you don’t use Firefox and other tools

Use your Google Webmaster Tools account – Go to Labs then Site Performance and see a graph of your site’s speed performance.
AOL Page Test – Free tool to measure and analyze website performance.
BrowserMob – Alerts and monitoring of website pages.
IntroSpectrum – Online tool that actually simulates your traffic’s experiences on your sites via their web browsers.
Microsoft VRTA – This one provides visualizations of web site loading and provides suggestions for improvements.
MySpace Performance Tracker – This tool is for Internet Explorer browsers and displays possible issues and problems that will affect load times and performance.
WebPagetest – This one is pretty neat and offers a waterfall of your page load time and performance along with a comparison against an optimization checklist.

More In Depth Tools for Site Speed and General Site Performance

Pylot – Free and runs HTTP load tests, verifies server responses, and generates reports with metrics.
Wbox – Performs a variety of tests, including, site speed, server and web application stress testing. Also verifies the proper configuration of domains configuration, HTTP compression, and redirects.
mon.itor.us – This tool offers a personalized and customized Ajax dashboard that checks server performance and availability, tracks all traffic, generates up time reports, checks CPU, memory as well as various other systems resources, and offers alerts whenever problems are detected.

Improved Page Speed for WordPress Blogs

If you are like me and other bloggers and those of us that use WordPress to build money sites or any kind of small niche sites then please check out WP Super Cache plugin. Often times blogs get over loaded with all those cool plugins, badges, and social bookmark and Twitter submission buttons we love to use and they can really affect WordPress blog speed and load times. WP Super Cache works great to improve the speed of blogs no matter how many frills you have.

16 Comments

Hi, My Name is Dick and I’m Addicted to SERP Analysis

Posted by JR in Internet Marketing, Motivation & Success, Odds and Ends, Search Engine Optimization

I was perusing a forum the other day and someone wrote a really long post about how he is perplexed with the Google dance going on with his website in SERPS. He went on to describe in excruciating (and quite painful to any reader) detail how he is perplexed as to how his site keeps jumping 1 or two spots on an almost hourly basis, and yes he provided the forum members with a blow by blow of his day of checking minute by minute, and his frustration with these developments as his site was dropping a little bit at a time.

Ummmmmmmmmmmmm….Can You Say SERP Addicts Anonymous?……………….Yeah!

About 1/4 of the way through I stopped reading of course, and I wondered if he realizes that if this is how he spends his day, then his SERP positions will just continue to drop because he is not focusing on nor doing anything to enable better SERP positions and checking them minute by minute will certainly not make that happen

Getting obsessed and addicted to these types of things can often happen and especially with newbies to the business. In reality becoming fixated on those stats, as well as other aspects of Internet marketing and online business that people get caught up with, like checking commissions every 10 minutes is really self defeating. These are not productive activities as they only take valuable time from doing the array of important tasks for Internet marketing. There are regular fluctuations that occur naturally in SERPS and especially Google, and constantly checking these can be a source of great stress, which inevitably affect your work performance.

As an alternative spend some time…

Commenting on dofollow blogs, Gail from Growmap has a really useful resource to find some at Dofollow Blogs. How about some website promotion, link building, writing some good website content, networking for guest posts and article marketing.

You can also…

Work on boosting online conversion rates, commenting on some great blogs that have Comment Luv, testing ad placements, researching hot keywords for new or existing website pages, maybe you have been lacking in your search engine marketing efforts, or any number of other millions of tasks and duties that are on our plates, like social media marketing.

SERP analysis is important, don’t get me wrong, but there are limits, the Google dance is constant and it’s better to spend valuable time securing our positions rather than checking on them.

SERP analysis is important but they are the end all, in the grand scheme of things, falling some spots in Google will not crush you. The SERPS change all the time, and it’s much better to spend time focusing on the tasks that promote those SERP positions than obsessing over them and getting some good links that will ultimately aid those positions.

When you do need to check the SERPS, try this neat little checker, Instant SERP Rankings Checker that offers a simple interface for SERP analysis.

If you should find yourself checking the SERPS all the time, then please stop. Don’t let such distractions take over your online business and Internet marketing success!

What do you guys think?

46 Comments

SERP Ranking Factors That Matter Most

Posted by JR in Search Engine Optimization

There is a great report compiled from some very comprehensive data over at SEOMoz, that highlights the most important factors in ranking high in the SERPS.

The 2009 report, is a compilation of data from over 72 successful SEO’s. While there were not too many surprises, it’s definitely worth a look, check it out at: SEOMoz 2009 Ranking Factors.

The Top 5 ranking factors that are listed are pretty much in line with what most of us know, and of course #1 SERP ranking factor is still Keyword Anchor backlinks to the site.

#3 on the list is diversity of link source, which we sometimes over look and should be a focus since links from a variety of domains, IP’s and sources is important and will count much more for ranking. They also list the 5 top negative ranking factors, most of which are black hat strategies. Overall, it’s really a great read.

Also, make sure to check out their Link Building guidelines which is mentioned in the post, lots of great information there where they breakdown the effectiveness of link building from a variety of sources and methods, as well as, factors affecting the values of external backlinks. Great stuff, check it out!

Overall SEO Moz, provides some solid SEO info on their blog, so subscribe to their updates.

19 Comments

Google’s Latest SERP Update: Caffeine – Where Will You Rank?

Posted by JR in Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization

As my friend Matt @ Sacramento Weddings commented in the last post, and something that I have suspected was coming for the last couple of months, Google has announced their latest algo update called Caffeine, which is still being finalized and which inevitably will affect SERPS across the board.

The test run is at http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ and an offer from Google to give your feedback, which is at the bottom of each SERP page.

I suggest you go over and search your keywords to look for any changes in SERP positions for your sites and to see how they may be affected when Google finally rolls out this update. I suspect that there have been some significant changes in the algorithm as far as link values go and that many sites may suffer.

What I have noticed for some competitive keywords I watch is a more content driven SERP results with Google favoring very aged sites that have a diverse link profile. Another change I noticed is fewer home pages on Page 1 and a lot more inner related pages.

I think this update will not be as heavy as the Big Daddy update was, but I do think that link values have changed somewhat, though it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact change.

Within content links on semantically related websites and pages are still the greatest in link value.

Matt Cutts Said:

“We’ve been shooting to get them [the results] pretty close [to "old" Google], so most people won’t notice a difference.” – Matt Cutts video interview

Google Caffeine Brings:

Results reflect a more real time indexing of pages, which of course will lead to more frequent updates.
Much larger index than Google had before.
Real time information from social media sites seems to be ranking higher, which is indicative of Google wanting to provide searchers with the most relevant and recent information from sites like Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed.

I have seen a lot of buzz going on about Caffeine, but overall I have not seen a huge change from existing SERPS.

What do you guys see in the SERP update? Any analysis of how your websites were affected, if at all and your analysis? This will help all of us, so please leave a comment!

26 Comments

Internet Marketing – Laughing our Way to Page 1 of SERPS

Posted by JR in Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing, Link Building, Search Engine Optimization

Happy Holidays everyone! I really wish you guys and your families the very best this holiday season and endless success for all your online endeavors.

I really want to thank you all of you for reading my ramblings and all the support and participation on the blog and I look forward to interacting with you more in the coming year!

Internet Marketing – Link Building Affirmations

Never forget that the cornerstone of Internet Marketing is link building. The main way to Page 1 of SERPS (Search Engine Page Results) is via quality backlinks from other sites with relevant keywords in the anchor text.

Manual Link Building vs. Natural Link Building

Manual link building is basically building links via manual efforts, such as with, articles, reciprocal linking, directories, blog comments etc, as opposed to natural links when other’s link to your content and web pages on their own.

It looks like the scrooges have spoken, and manual link building doesn’t work! HA HA!! Meanwhile I am LMAO all the way to page 1 of SERPS!

Lately I am seeing posts in the blogosphere that manual link building is dead, and those links are worthless, and these links don’t work anymore and that it’s a waste of time to build links manually, blah, blah, blah.

Well, I beg to differ, because several of my niche sites sit high in SERPS, a few on page 1 for their keywords and this blog is on page 2 with over 52,000,000 competition primarily from manual link building.

Now, I do get lots of link luv for this blog and that really helps, and I am not saying those natural links aren’t fantastic and wonderful, but what I am saying is that you can rise to page 1 of SERPS with manual link building only and sometimes manual link building is the only and best option for Internet marketing!

The Difference Between Blogs/Flagships and Niche-Affiliate Sites

Often times, a flagship blog like this one will get a good share of natural backlink link luv from the blog community, since there is a lot of interaction with other bloggers and the blog model usually brings about more opportunities for natural link building overall, but in most cases this alone is not enough to rank page 1 anyway.

And, when it comes to affiliate marketing websites, or small niche sites, natural link building can be elusive, unless your Laptop Mag or CNET. So, you are not left with many other options but manual link building, such as with articles, forums, blog comments and directories.

And, yes those links still work!!!

I have several niche sites that are sitting high in SERPS, with all manual link building and not one natural link. And, yes this includes directories, because depending on the directory, those links do still work, contrary to the hype. And, in reality all I really care about is results as they are always the proof of what works and what doesn’t!

Manual Link Building Time Strategy:

40% – Article Marketing
25% - Reciprocal Link Exchange/Blogroll (home page & within content links)
25% - Social Bookmark Links & Forum Sig links & Blog comment links
10% - Directories – 2 Free Directory Submission Softwares

Plus some random links, such as press releases and Squidoo lenses as listed in 13 Ways to Link Building.

In conclusion, just build links everyday! Use your anchor text and get all the links you can get, including some of those no-follows, that Google ignores but Yahoo, MSN and Live still follow and those search engines do bring website traffic as well.

And, don’t worry about the scrooges of Internet Marketing, they are probably just lazy, and while they are waiting for those natural links, and bitching about what doesn’t work, we’ll be building links and laughing our way to page 1!!

36 Comments

Internet Marketing: SERP Rank Experiment Results

Posted by JR in Affiliate Marketing, Build a Niche Store - BANS, Google, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Webmaster/Website Optimization

One thing is certain, with Internet Marketing something is always changing and the Google SERPS are unpredictable. It is important to stay on top of changes and roll with the punches.

Some of you may have heard of recent issues that thousands of affiliates have had with BANS (Build A Niche Store) sites and similar affiliate marketing websites getting de-indexed completely or massively losing SERP position. There was speculation that lack of original written content was the main reason for this. And for many I know this was true. Time and again Internet marketers do not understand the value of original website content in affiliate marketing.

Many affiliates literally just slap up affiliate sites, whether it’s BANS or Amazon, or other such sites with nothing but affiliate link pages and without any original content. As I have said before in The Importance of Quality Content, this is a really bad strategy and will kill your chances of ranking in the Google SERPS, if you even get indexed at all.

I too was hit with this issue on two BANS sites and it was important for me to correct these issues quickly as my BANS sites make money regularly and the best traffic comes from the search engines, especially Google.

These two sites rose steadily in the SERPS when first launched with regular link building and on-site SEO. A while ago, the two sites began dipping in and out of their high SERP positions on a regular basis, one day they were there, then they were gone. Then suddenly a few weeks ago the home pages were de-indexed all together and only some content pages showed up in SERPS for their keywords, an Internet marketing nightmare! So, I began to do some experimenting, which is your best friend in Internet marketing.

SERP Experiment

First, I added more content, though I knew this probably had nothing to do with the content since both sites have more content pages than auction/affiliate link pages and I add content on a regular basis, but I wanted to eliminate all possible factors.

Second, I built up more links via article marketing, some new forum postings and do-follow blog comments, to see if that would resolve the issues. Neither of those tests did anything to get my sites back in the SERPS.

I then I decided to do a test with the home page.

1. I removed the eBay auction listings (affiliate links) that I had listed below the welcome messages on the sites.

2. I added 2 more paragraphs of wording to the welcome message and a related image with the keywords in the alt tags and some internal links to relevant pages for the keywords that came up within the content of the welcome message.

Experiment Results – Exactly 4 days later:

Site #1 home page appeared on page 1 of SERPS without quotes and has been there for over 2 weeks, holding steady.

Site #2 home page appeared on page 2 of SERPS (higher than it was originally) without quotes and has been there for 2 weeks as well (Page 2 is not surprising since there are some big guns on page 1 that I am currently working to out rank).

Since I had eliminated all other factors the lesson here is obvious, affiliate links on the home page affect SERP position for affiliate sites.

While I have heard this before, it never had affected me until recently and so Google is obviously hitting hard not only on affiliate sites with little or no content but also on those sites that have affiliate links on the home page.

This just proves how important experimentation in Internet marketing really is. While many panic and follow hype instead of using common sense, checking results and testing.

A great example of this is the widespread and ongoing inaccurate hype about duplicate content and how it still manages to be a leading and misleading focus on many forum threads because people just do not check things out for themselves and therefore limit their success online.

About BANS

Contrary to what some haters in the Internet marketing world may say, BANS (Build a Niche Store) is not at fault, in fact, BANS is regularly making lots of money for many affiliates who optimize their sites correctly and bring in regular search engine traffic and now thanks to this experiment I am back on that track.

BANS is really great, because it is cheap and allows anyone without any coding knowledge to build unlimited numbers of great money making websites centered around the eBay affiliate program, as well as any affiliate programs of their choice. One of the best things about eBAy is they have over 10,000 products and so the possibilities and keywords are endless.

Many of the BANS bashers never take the time to actually do the work required for success, instead they think they can use the software to quickly put up some sites that are nothing but mirrors of eBay and start raking in big bucks overnight. Sorry, nothing is that easy in Internet marketing and making money online takes more effort than just buying software.

I highly recommend BANS and you can see my full review with screenshots at: Review of Build a Niche Store or Check out the BANS official Website.

What do you guys think? Have you been affected by recent SERP changes? Do you add content regularly to your affiliate sites?

48 Comments

Website Traffic that Converts – Are You Missing Out?

Posted by JR in Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Web Site Traffic, Webmaster/Website Optimization

What makes the best website traffic? Well, as far as I am concerned and I’m sure you’ll agree, it is website traffic that performs the action on my website that I intend it

too. Whether it is to buy something from my affiliate marketing niche sites, click on Adsense, to subscribe to a blog or whatever action the web

master intends that will lead to us making money. So, the best website traffic is traffic that converts.

Not all Website Traffic is Equal

If I have 5,000 unique visitors a day, and they do not perform any of the intended actions that I want them to then this is totally worthless website traffic, would you not agree?

Since the social, Web 2.0 revolution on the net there has been a craze with webmasters clammering to get a chunk of social traffic. Page 1 of Digg is often considered the holy grail of website traffic, but in reality Digg and other such popular social site traffic can be pretty worthless. You may get lucky occasionally but it’s nothing to rely on long term.

The reality is that social traffic hardly ever buys anything, subscribes or performs any other actions that will lead to you making money, which is why we are all here right?

Social traffic can be great as far as “numbers of website traffic” and getting more website traffic, becoming famous, but when it comes to converting website traffic it is often a big fat vacuum. Unless your goal is to become the next Tech Crunch, social traffic is not the best for making money online.

Look at your analytics and analyze what website traffic is making you money, I guarantee it won’t be social traffic. Of all my niche sites and Squidoo lenses, social website traffic has made me too little to mention! In fact, I recently launched a ringtones blog, and I got 1500 uniques from Stumble in one day, how many sales? ZERO!!!! A perfect example of how worthless that traffic is.

There are probably many reasons for this, first and foremost of which is the fact that social traffic is not well targeted, many of them are just browsing or bored, they are not performing an intentional search to solve a problem, a basic principle of any kind of marketing is that in order to get sales there must be a consumer with a problem and someone who provides a solution and THAT will lead to the desired action. Same with Internet marketing.

Also, the same concept applies to the website traffic from article marketing and blog comments where you may get traffic and even some who take the action you desire but it’s never a consistent nor a reliable stream of well converting website traffic. While blog comments certainly are good for networking and getting known for your flagship blogs, you constantly have to comment on blogs to get even a little bit of traffic so it is not “passive” traffic.

The main purpose of article marketing, social bookmarking and blog comments is NOT website traffic but link building for BACKLINKS and those backlinks lead to higher to Page One of SERPS for your sites keywords and THAT leads to converting website traffic.

I am not including Internet forum participation here, because there you will find targeted traffic that is looking for solutions and so that traffic often converts very well.

Best Source of Website Traffic that Converts

The best source of long term, stable converting website traffic are the search engines and specifically Google, since they dominate that arena.

1. Website traffic from the search engines is the best converting traffic because it is truly targeted. When someone sits down to search for something on the net, they are purposely looking to solve a specific problem, and they are much more likely to perform an action on your website than any one else.

2. Search engine traffic is all day everyday, 24/7, unlimited possibilities. While social traffic is temporary and gets buried over with newly submitted content, sitting on Page One of SERPS is far more stable. It may take time to get to Page One, but once you are there your site will get exposure to that targeted website traffic with little maintenance.

I am not saying that you should not test every possible traffic source for your niche, and especially when your site is new and you are working on ranking high in the SERPS, you should get all the traffic you can get. What I am saying is that search engine website traffic should always be the main end goal of any online campaign and it is the best converting website traffic.

Website Traffic with SERP Domination

Many webmasters and bloggers work hard to get their home page on Page One of SERPS by utilizing basic Search Engine Optimization. They do all the requisite tasks such as, on-site SEO, link building, keyword research and optimization etc… But, they completely ignore the inner pages of their websites and/or blog posts. This is a complete waste of perfectly good search engine website traffic. This is especially true for bloggers.

Time and again I see blog posts that are obviously just randomly picked titles without any keyword research when there is ALWAYS a good keyword that can be found for ANY subject. So the end result is that your home page may sit high in SERPS, but all your other pages are just randomly floating somewhere around the web missing out on a ton of good targeted website traffic and all for the price of ten minutes or less of research.

Also remember that as your home PR (page rank) increases it will bleed that PR to your inner pages. This blog is a PR3, but several of the earlier blog posts are PR1 and PR2 and those post titles were carefully keyword researched and now they sit on several Page One’s in Google for their keywords and continuously bring targeted website traffic to this blog. Google will spread the authority you’ve earned from your home page to inner pages placing you higher all over the SERPS, for all your keywords and this SERP domination is what brings more and more targeted, converting website traffic. And the absolute same applies to static website’s inner pages.

Keyword Research for Inner Pages

Use SEO Book Free Keyword Suggestion Tool and/or Google Keyword Tool to look for good keywords for your inner pages, I look for at least 30 searches a day, but the more the better.
Search allintitle:”your keywords” in Google to evaluate the competition. I usually choose lower competition keywords for inner pages, under 20,000.

As always you want to have the most possible searches with the least amount of competition.

3 Keyword Optimization Essentials for SERP Domination:

Here are the most important aspects of optimizing each and everyone of your website pages and blog posts for the SERPS.

1. On Page Title vs. Meta Title

On Page Title is the one the visitor sees on your page, such as the title of the blog post. The Meta Title is the title in the Meta Tags that the search engines will look to for your SERP placement. So, you can make the title the visitor sees longer and more detailed if you wish, while the Meta title can be shortened to comply with Meta Tag character standards and to zone in on keywords, but make sure it is still attractive to get the click from searchers.

Both titles should have your keywords in them
The Meta Title should have the keywords listed first or as close to the beginning of the tag as possible.
The On Page Title should be the header on your website inner page with the <h1> tags. In WordPress this is automatic.

If you don’t have it, you really need to get the All-In-One SEO Pack plug-in for WordPress. This will give you the Meta Tags module for customizing meta tags for every post and it is really a must have for WordPress. It also provides some other important features for SEO on WP blogs.

2. Keyword Density

Long posts and website pages are the best for the SERPS and getting more website traffic, they allow the most room for keyword density and they also give the edge of lots of content for Google.

5% Keyword density per post/page, especially first couple of sentences, middle and ending paragraph.
Bold the keywords a few times and especially in the last couple of sentences.
Use <h2> and <h3> tags for the paragraph headers within content using your keyword, as I did in this post. Example: <h2>Keyword – Paragraph Header</h2>

3. Permalinks

The permalink must have your keywords in it. So, if my keywords are “how-to bake”, then my permalink for the blog post page or website page would be: htttp://www.recipes.com/how-to-bake-cake. That’s it, nothing else, if you add the whole title you just confuse Google as to what you want to rank for.

Some website software, and WordPress will automatically add the entire title of your post/page into the permalink so, you must edit this. All extra words except for the keywords are UNNECESSARY and can be a detterent to ranking well in the SERPS.

Permalinks and WordPress

With WordPress you have to make sure to select the proper permalink structure. By default WordPress will create permalinks for posts using the post number, like this: http://getinternetmarketingstrategies.com/?p=123. This does nothing for you in the SERPS.

How to Change Permalink Structure in WP:

From your Admin Dashboard go to Settings and then Permalinks. From there either choose Month and Name OR if you do not want to date your posts you can choose Custom Structure and then enter /%postname%/ into the box. This way you will have the optimal setting of http://www.yourdomain.com/posttitle

Editing Permalinks on a Post by Post Basis:

When you are writing posts from the editor after you enter the title the permalink will be formed automatically, click edit and get rid of everything but the keywords with the dashes in between each word.

Performing these steps is really important for SERP rankings and getting website traffic from a multitude of keyword sources to get those visitors to your sites. Also, please see 6-Step Checklist for On-Site SEO for more techniques for keyword optimization for inner pages, such as Alt Tags for images.

What do you guys think? Do you research each page and post? If not, why?