Web Developement | Affiliate Marketing Tips from Super Affiliate Zac Johnson

Google Anchor Text and Panda Updates Videos

Everyone is talking about the recent changes with Google Panda and how they are killing off the major link building networks and changing the way links reflect on listings in search engines. While a lot of focus is on Google Panda updates and what link building methods will be acceptable and worth pursing in the coming months, the way we link to our web sites and the anchor text we use will also be important.

While looking around at the latest comments and blog posts on these topics, yesterday I came across some useful videos that talk bout the future of link building, understanding the latest Google Panda updates and everything in between.

Everything You Need to Know About Panda 3.3 Video

The video below is from THE HOTH, who we’ve done multiple link building campaigns and interviews with. It’s a very long and detailed webinar that goes into some great detail on the following:

What EXACTLY is Panda 3.3 and, more importantly, what is it not?
The step-by-step guide to building your very own blog network in 1 afternoon (and why you shouldn’t).
The 5 changes we’re making at The HOTH to give you safer, more effective links.
The 8 action items to stay on Panda 3.3’s good side.
The 3 SEO strategies that’ll make you stronger than ever going forward.

Beyond Exact Match Anchor Text Links Video

Another great video I came across, is one from Cyrus of the SEOMOZ team. This is a short 5 minute video but it’s a good one. Cyrus goes into detail on how the old days of building text anchor links with the same key phrases are no longer as effective as they used to be, and you now have to spread our your anchor text and bring a variety to it. This is the future of search rankings, as the search engines are now becoming more humanized and less of a ranking system.

30 March, 2012 Posted by: Zac Johnson Filed Under: Web Developement

Why SEO Isn’t Going to Disappear Overnight!

To a lot of people, SEO is a form of spam. Over the last 10 years, affiliates and webmasters have invested an endless amount of time trying to arbitrarily “fix” Google’s ranking algorithm and cash in on the 1^st page rankings. Users have complained, Google has invested in countless updates to trim the spam from their search engines, and webmasters have lost their income source.

What people forget however is that there are also A LOT of big brands and marketing agencies who use SEO. Whether Google likes it or not, SEO has become an integral form of online marketing in the 21^st Century.

There no two ways about it – SEO isn’t going to disappear overnight. I remember reading in the WebmasterWorld.com Forums, after one of the Panda updates in October 2011, that it signaled “the end of SEO”. It was now impossible for one-trick ponies and black hat gurus to rank their sites in the search engines.

SEO still continued however. Webmasters just worked out how to beat Panda. They, you, and me evolved.

Will Google be Able to Penalize Websites in the Future?

In a lot of competitive industries, such as gambling, porn and pharmaceuticals, everyone is engaging in some form of grey-hat SEO. Even the biggest brands and companies are breaking Google’s Guidelines about link purchases and manipulating the search results. I was at the LAC (London Affiliate Conference) last week listening to a lecture from UniBet’s Head of Search, who was talking about grey-hat tactics. In industries like this, grey-hat has become the norm.

But whether or not the biggest brands are engaging in SEO is irrelevant. The big issue for Google is that SEO is going mainstream, and it isn’t disappearing overnight.

The search engine index has become the new “marketplace” for ecommerce and retail sites, which are rapidly encroaching the high street market demand (particularly here in the UK and USA). SEO is becoming a legitimate, cost-effective, method for companies to market themselves online – just like Facebook adverts and PPC marketing.

Some of the top SEO experts, working for big brands such as Amazon and BMW, have already estimated that grey-hat SEO marketing is around 10^th the cost of running an Adwords campaign for the same traffic and keywords. Grey-hat SEO can also generate an ROI of 130%-500% depending on which industry you work in.

The problem for Google is that if SEO continues to become the norm for online marketing then they’re going to be limited to the extent to which they can penalize websites in the SERPs.

Think about it. If everyone is doing it, it creates and ethical dilemma for Google. Of course it’s impossible for them to condone link purchases (Google’s own SEO Guidelines literally haven’t changed since 2003), but there will come a point where Google has to realize that everyone is buying links. The “natural” link graph won’t be legitimate anymore and neither will the “social graph”.

Companies have a “right” to market themselves through SEO just like any other form of online marketing. It’s not even just about Google.com. It’s about marketing through all of the majors such as Bing, Yahoo and Baidu, to which Google cannot simply say, “No, this is wrong”. Google penalizing sites for engaging in SEO will be like a TV network prohibiting companies from marketing themselves during adverts.

Google Will Continue to Rank the Best Results for Users

Naturally, Google will aim to promote the best results for users and will continue modifying, adding or removing factors to their search engine algorithm, which currents stands at over 240 unique variables.

I think there’s some interesting economics data to think about in the future of SEO though. If grey-hat SEO does become more mainstream, for example, then will the companies that invest the higher amount in SEO marketing deserve to rank 1^st in the search results? Surely just like offline marketing, the most efficient companies will be able to outspend their competitors, which will also be the ones that provide the best user experience and value. As such, maybe the top SEO spenders will be the best sites for users.

Google will get better at finding unique signals that indicate higher quality sites. But the problem is that if all of the high quality sites are engaging in SEO, and all of them already have positive signals such as social media followers, return visitors and strong analytics then there will always be “something” left in the algorithm to game – hence SEO will never die.

Why Most of the Information your Hear About Building Brands is Wrong

One of the things that’s starting to drive me crazy is the number of bloggers and affiliates now providing guests posts talking about how you have to “add value” to the Internet.

It’s really easy to say this, but 95% of the time I think the people writing this are talking the talk but not walking the walk. These are the same “innovative minds” that think paying someone to design a few info-graphics on their site all of a sudden makes their site amazing!

It doesn’t work like that. The best sites and brands on the Internet have slowly grown over time, either through takeovers, re-designs, partnerships or mergers. You can’t just take a 1-month old site and turn it into a brand overnight. Brand building takes time and hard work, in addition to a HUGE amount of investment in human capital, coding, editorial staff, marketing teams, and resources – something which I’ve never seen anyone mention when talking about building online brands.

Everyone acts as though the difference between a low quality affiliate site and building a brand is just about a change in mindset. It requires a completely different set of skills and investment though.

Trust me, I regularly talk to webmasters who spend $xxx,xxx on premium domains and then $xx,xxx on design and coding. I know a huge company in the finance niche who are about to launch a site that they’ve invested over $x,xxx,xxx in the last few months. These are the real success stories that will get you the “band metrics” you’re looking for. Not the smaller affiliates that decide to hire a slightly better writer for $0.04c per work.

Why you shouldn’t Worry Too Much About SEO Changing in the Next Couple of Years

First of all, SEO hasn’t changed much in the last 5-10 years. It’s still more then 60-70% about links, keywords and optimizing your page titles.

Sure, the latest 2011 search engine ranking factors from SEOMoz.org shows that social signals and brand signals are a tiny bit more important then they used to be. But so what? The fundamentals have stayed the same. Build good content, make your site good enough for users, and buy a bunch of links.

Facebook has remained a closed network, which prevents Google crawling a lot of its data, and if Social Media signals start replacing link metrics in SEO then you’re going to get a wild amount of social “noise”, and social media brokers selling Facebook Likes etc over the internet.

Even if content becomes more important, you have to remember that users prefer to read short 500-600 word articles rather then reading 1,000 – 2,000 word essays. Long articles turn off users and if anything it will damage your user metrics and increase your bounce rates. Hence, improving the rankings for sites with longer articles doesn’t make that much more sense if you’re Google.

The only thing that we can say for sure is that Google will likely be highly dependent on the link graph for the next 3-5 years. As long as you keep building good sites, which are relevant and provide some sort of value to the visitor (such as recommending the top online casinos) then you are good to go.

This guest post was written by Adam, who has been successful in affiliate marketing in a number of industries such as gambling, trading, binary options and banking. He also runs his own affiliate blog at AffiliateFYI.com.

03 March, 2012 Posted by: Zac Johnson Filed Under: Marketing, Web Developement

Online Reputation Management: Top Firms

When it comes to advertising and building a brand online, reputation is everything. Though it may take years and several happy clients for you to establish yourself as a trusting brand and service, there is always the potential for negative feedback and people out there just making it their mission to tarnish your name. Just as quickly as you can build your reputation online, someone can come along and bring it down even faster… even if the information they are posting isn’t true.

Think about it for a second… is there anyone from your past, maybe a client, friend or even someone who is jealous of your success, that could potentially damage your name or brand online? In the end, all it really takes it a few high end and well established web sites to start posting negative reviews and content, that can rank really high in the search results and do some damage.

So what can you do?

That’s where reputation management comes in. With the usage and power of the internet growing larger and larger every day, it’s more important for every day small businesses and even Fortune 500 companies, to make sure they have a great reputation online. Through the use of reputation management services, anyone can help improve their reputation online, and lower any fake or negative comments/articles out there about their company.

How does reputation management work?

Let’s take a look at a case study of how Reputation Changer, one of the top reputation management firms out there works, and how they are helping their clients deal with reputation issues.

Case Study: UWC Corp received malicious listings online that were showing up under their company name: UWCCorp.com. In less than 6 weeks, Reputation Changer completely surpressed those listings from page 1 of Google and repopulated new / positive listings. With a brand new, very positive online reputation, UWCCorp.com saw an immediate spike in revenue.

A few weeks later, UWCCorp.com started to see an improvement in their search results, with more and more new and positive articles taking over the negative listings and pushing them down off the first page of Google.

You can take a look at the full slide show process and see a bi-weekly breakdown of how Reputation Changer dominated the first page of results for UWCCorp.com.

Improving Online Reputation through Google Suggests

While the majority of searching done online is through Google and looking directly for a company or brand name, have you ever thought about how much of an influence “Google Suggest” comes into play? When you start typing a search phrase into Google, it will start to suggest other alternatives or variations of what you might want to search for.

Another case study and winning example from Reputation Changer, is how they helped improved Michael Vick’s reputation through Google Suggest, which you can see in the screenshot below.

Have you ever taken the time to see what Google Suggest comes up with when someone is searching for your personal or business name?

Do Reputation Management Services Work?

Now that you have an idea how reputation management services can improve rankings, search results and how people can search for relevant information on a company, the best question to ask is “Do reputation management services really work?“. As you can see from the case studies mentioned above, they clearly do work, as the average person is most likely going to look through the first page of results to make a quick decision on whether or not they want to use a recommended service or company.

The business of reputation management is growing daily, and even Business Week has written a full article on the topic. In the article, a few interesting points mentioned where that there has been an explosive increase in reputation management over the past couple of years due to social media and the amplified voices of individual internet users. It was also mentioned that typical costs for a small online company, can range from $1,000 to several thousands of dollars a month for search engine related reputation management.

What’s Your Online Reputation?

When is the last time you took some time to really look into your search results and see what other people are saying about your name or brand online? Reputation Changer focuses exclusively on managing the reputations of Celebrities, Professional Athletes, Brands, High Profile Individuals, and Fortune 500 Brands.

If you would like to see how Reputation Changer can improve your image online, please feel free to contact them and see what they can do for you. Mention ZacJohnson.com and you will save an instant 10% off your reputation improvement package.

27 December, 2011 Posted by: Zac Johnson Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, Web Developement

UPrinting Die-Cut Business Card Giveaway

If you only had 30 seconds to tell someone about your business in an elevator and never see them again, would they remember to contact you? Better yet, would you have an impressive business card to give to them, that not only has all of your information and what your business is about, but leaves a lasting impression? You should!

How many times have you gone to conference even and collected a ton of business cards, then look through them when you get home and find that most of them are boring and only a couple actually stand out? Wouldn’t you like to be one of those cards that stands out? Of course you would!

Through a special promotion with UPrinting.com, we are giving away a free set of die-cut business card designs. The winner will get a chance to upload their own existing business card design and have them printed out on high quality die-cut business cards, or can create their own cards from scratch using the UPrinting designing platform.

How to Enter to Win Your Own Die-Cut Business Cards

I wanted to make this contest ridiculously easy for anyone to will, so all you have to do is leave a comment on this post, along with your idea on what makes a killer business card. One winner will randomly be selected on January 15th, and they will receive the business card package below.

Also, be sure to “Like” UPrinting.com o Facebook and you will be entered to win one of 3 iPod Touches and an iPad 2! Winners are chosen weekly.

Prize Details:

- 250 pcs Die Cut Business Card Printing for one(1) winner

Sizes to choose from:
2 x 3.5″ Rounded Corners, 2×2″ Rounded Corners, 1.75×3.5″ Rounded Corners, 2×3.5″ Leaf, 2×3.5
Rounded one corner, 2×3.5″ Half Circle Side, 2×3.5″ Oval, 2.5″ Circle

Paper to choose from:
14pt Cardstock Gloss / Matte / High Gloss (UV), or 13pt Cardstock Uncoated,
6 Business Days Turnaround *Free shipping

In addition to business cards, UPrinting provides a ton of other online printing services. Be sure to check out their web site if you are looking to have any printing and design services done.

20 December, 2011 Posted by: Zac Johnson Filed Under: Site Reviews, Web Developement

Branding and Pay Per Click Marketing Through Email

According to Inc. Magazine, the average employee sends about 38 e-mails a day. How many emails do you send and receive on a daily basis? Now think about how many you send over the course of a year! Better yet, think about how much extra exposure you could be receiving through all of those thousands of emails if only you had some form of customized or branded email with your personal message or company information. That is the goal and concept behind WRAP Mail.

For years companies have tried to create a platform that could easily be sent through email, without the hassles of getting blocked by filters, while also making it a big frustration for the email users to send/receive mail. WRAP Mail is that solution.

The best way to explain what WRAP Mail can do for your business and branding, is to show you. You can visit the WRAP Mail web site and watch the short video on their web site, which is quick and fun, but also shows you how easy WRAP mail is to use, and how it works.

In short, WRAP Mail…

Turn every day emails into brand marketing
Wraps your emails with a unique interactive letterhead
Shows your email recipient your regular text email, with a great design
Reports to you “Click Alerts”, which tells you who is where on your web site.
Provides benefits for any type of business, web site or personal use

Driving New Sales & Customers with Daily Emails

Now as I mentioned earlier, the average employee sends 38 emails a day… If you only send around 27 emails a day, that’s still over 10,000 emails a year! Using a system like Wrap Mail can dramatically increase your business by putting your brand and advertising right in the face of your customers. If you were to only convert 1% of the people reading your email, with the additional branding and links within your wrapped email, that’s an extra 100 leads. Depending on your sales or lead generation, this could actually be much higher.

What Will Your Wrapped Mail Look Like?

After talking with Rolv from WRAP Mail and looking through the different options and services they offer, it’s quite a great looking program. Nearly any web site or business can customize their emails with a wrap that represents the look and feel of their business, while also increasing the bottom line.

The Wrap Mail design team can built a customized look for your web site or business. Just take a look at some of the custom designs posted on their site from current customers.

Yes, You Can Even Earn Money with WRAP Mail Too!

With such a unique and fun service, you would think there would be an ad serving network attached to it, right? Well, there is! WRAP Mail is in the process of rolling out their new advertising program, where clients can earn money for users to get paid when people click on their links and complete offers or decide to sign up for a product. This platform will be similar with Google Adsense, in that the users of WRAP Mail can opt-in to receive a pay per click rate based on their recipients clicking on advertisements placed within their email wrapping. Since many people are using WRAP Mail as a personal choice and looking to customize their email, and not specifically promote their own business or web site, this introduces a whole new world when it comes to emailing. You can read their latest press release on this announcement here.

What Does it Cost, and How to Get Started?

Surprisingly, WRAP Mail PRO is free for companies and individuals looking to use their services, as long as they are less than 100 employees. It’s easy to signup, all you need to do is fill out a short form and you will get started immediately. If you would like to set your 100+ employee company up with an account and custom email design, simply contact WRAP Mail directly.