seo and affiliate marketing blog

Digital Marketing Online Forum Contests
This months contest has ended. We have a winner to the Refer a Friend contest, theuniek1. Congrats on winning a copy of SEO Book, dontated by Aaron Wall.

March Digital Marketing Online Forum Contest
This month we will have an easy contest. what is your favorite affiliate program (sponsor) and why. It could be an affiliate network, google adwords, or any other program you make money off of.

For more details visit DMOF.

Prizes for Affiliate Program post winners:
1st Place: 1 Premium full site spot in one of our directories for 1 year. Value $600.
2nd Place: 1st Spot (in your choice category) in 2 of our directories for 1 year. Value $40.
3rd Place: First Page Spot (anywhere on pg 1 of category) in 1 of our directories. Value $5.

List of Directories are here:
http://www.overthemark.com/seoblog/item/11 Does not include Vfunk.

Multiple Class C IP’s Solution
Preorders are now being taken, for hosting that has multiple Class C IP’s and muliple nameservers available. The hosting company will be setting up the first packages 7-14 days.

Virtual Hosting Packages
There are two virtual hosting packages available.

Virtual Hosting with 5 Class C IP’s
This package includes 5 different class C IP’s and 5 different nameservers. It also includes 2000 MB storage, 20 gig of bandwidth, php, MySQL and more. The cost of this package will be $79. Setup fee of $25, but this is waived on all preorders.

Virtual Hosting with 10 Class C IP’s
This package includes 10 different class C IP’s and 10 different nameservers. It also includes 4000 MB of storage, 50 gig of bandwidth, php, MySQL and more. This package will be $129. Setup fee $50 waived on all preorders.

Dedicated Hosting Package
This package includes 50 IP’s on 10 subnets, 40 GB Harddrive, 200 GB of bandwidth, PHP, MySQL and more. This package will be $249. Setup fee of $150. $50 waived on all preorders. Only $100 setup!

For those interested, these packages will be first come, first served. They will not be instant hosting setup. We take care in making sure the servers are setup with the best SEO Tactics possible. If interested, get your order in now by contacting tanyamartin@gmail.com. If you require anything special please be sure to include what you need. If you need more than what the packages offer, let us know and we will get you setup.

If you haven’t already read steps 1 - 5, you might want to do that first:
Step 1 - Picking a domain name
Step 2 - Research the niche
Step 3 - Building your site template
Step 4 - Building a Product Page
Step 5 - Putting Your Site Together

Sitemap
Create a sitemap and keep it updated. Link to every section and page you put on your domain. Making a sitemap and linking to your own products or services, plus listing them again on your main page, should keep your all your pages indexed.

Product Map
If you sell products, like As Seen On Tv Affiliate Program, then make a product map for your site as well. Link to any pages you build that are just for the products. Also, link to the buy pages (your affiliate links). So you have a link directly to your page on your site, but then have a buy product now link as well.

Niche Map
If you have several niches or themes on your domain. Make a map of all your niches, link to each niche. You can even seperate niche maps if you have too many.

Link to every map you build on all your pages. Link back to the main index from all page (which you already did in your template and the head image of your template )

It is always good to link to internal pages within your site. If you can link to every page on every page, then do it. Thinking of it as showing even the most unfamiliar surfer (the dummy that thinks email@emailsite.com is a website), how to find things on your site. If they can find it, a bot can too.

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Written by Tanya Martin from Over The Mark. Keep an eye out for more great articles and tips at her SEO and Affiliate Marketing Blog. Interested in having your linking methods evaluated or your affiliate system evaluated? Contact Debbie Bonventre at debbie@overthemark.com. or call 1.888.987.7861

Host Crowding Facts
In an earlier article on SEO Theories and Fact I went over how Google filters some websites based on host crowding. We know host crowding is a fact. It is stated in Google’s own FAQ’s about their API. You can read about the Automatic Filtering they do here:
http://www.google.com/apis/reference.html#2_3

Now, because they don’t exactly say how they filter for Host Crowding. We can only go with different theories.

SEO Theories on Host Crowding Filter
Some theories are they filter by Class C IP (this is the most popular one). Some are they do it by whois. Another is they do it by nameservers. Some even say by all of them.

Static IP
From my own experiences with Google and their host crowding filter from years ago, it seemed like they did it by IP. So if you shared an IP, all you had to do is get a new static IP for each domain. For the past year, this has not been enough.

I believe they filter somehow by class C. Now don’t panic. It doesn’t mean if you have 10 sites that they are only going to list one based on what the API Faq’s say. They are looking at the results. So if you have 10 different sites, all going after different niches or themes, then you probably have nothing to worry about. However, linking within your own 10 site network probably won’t do much for you (we will get into that more with link building).

Whois or Nameservers
Now this one is interesting. Google recently became an ICANN Accredited Registrar. TDavid mentions this at Make You Go Hmm blog on Google and MSN. This leads me to believe they may in the future add this to their filter, but I don’t believe they do this already. But it sure looks like they may want to learn more so they can. But then again, maybe they will start letting you register domains sometime.

Multiple Class C IP Solution
This solution by far isn’t easy to get. It takes either breaking up your domains with many hosting companies, which usually cost more money or finding one that has many servers or many class C’s. This week, I was lucky enough to find a hosting company that has multiple Class C IP’s available. Not only that, they will also have muliple nameservers available.

If you are interested in getting on the priority list, contact tanya@overthemark.com. Let me know how many Class C IP’s you are looking for and anything else you may require.

As soon as they have the packages setup in the next week or so, I will post the information here for everyone.

We will continue the tutorials throughout the coming weeks. Don’t think I forgot More steps will be coming.

SEO Defined
Many people have different definitions of what exactly search engine optimization is. Today over at Make You Go Hmm, I have posted an article defining SEO. It also takes a deeper look at what search engine optimization includes.

If you want to get ahead with search engine optimization, I highly suggest you get a copy of SEO Book!

SEO Theories and Fact
Many seo theories or questions have been floating around about if your web host, shared IP or static IP can effect your rankings in Google. Many suggest different Class C IP’s can increase your chances of optimizing successfully. But many don’t place in facts with their assumptions.

Experience Fact
A few years back when the first wave of can my website IP effect my Google rankings hit, I decided to try switching some of my websites to their own static IP.

The Effect
Within weeks all sites increased ranking positions or ranked better. Of course, that doesn’t mean these will rank now, since Google has changed and is always changing.

Fact In Print
Google API Facts: Automatic Filtering

When enabled, filtering takes the following actions:

* Near-Duplicate Content Filter = If multiple search results contain identical titles and snippets, then only one of the documents is returned.
* Host Crowding = If multiple results come from the same Web host, then only the first two are returned.

Only the first two will be returned? What does host crowding mean? Are they looking at hosts by IP’s? Or by Class of IP’s? Are they looking at it by name servers? Maybe they are doing a whois on your site? Oh no!!!

Many huff and puff saying no way. Well it is right there in print, they are filtering out somehow. Calling it “Host Crowding". They mention same web host.

What can you do? Well I suggest doing what you are capable or can do to continue getting the traffic you want for your business. Am I saying start setting sites on different hosts? Really that is completely up to you. But if you want to optimize in every way you can, you should. Also to do that you need to figure out what exactly do they mean by “Host Crowding”. The best way to do that, is to make changes, keep a log of what you did and what happens.

Why discount anything that can have an effect on your rankings? If it is an easy fix or a reasonable change, I would do it.

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Written by Tanya Martin from Over The Mark. Keep an eye out for more great articles and tips at her SEO and Affiliate Marketing Blog. Interested in having your linking methods evaluated or your affiliate system evaluated? Contact Debbie Bonventre at debbie@overthemark.com. or call 1.888.987.7861

If you haven’t already read steps 1 - 3, you might want to do that first:
Step 1 - Picking a domain name
Step 2 - Research the niche
Step 3 - Building your site template

Building a Product Page
First open the template page we made in Step 3. This is what we will start with. Hopefully you know the products you want to promote or you have joined MixedGoods Affiliate Program.

Product Image
We will need a picture of the product. Place this in the top or side area of the page, your choice. Go ahead and link the image with your affiliate linking code. Include text for the image alt tag. ProductName is a good one. If the product has more then one word as the name, try putting it all as one word. Often there are searches for it as one word, but very low competition. This makes for an easy sale for you.

Page Tags
Next you will want to change the first Header Text (H1) to the name of the product. Then change the meta tags to match this product. Describe the product and put in the description that they can buy Product Name there.

You already have some ads on the page from when you built the template. You can customize them a little (the friend finder one) to other keywords.

Description Text
Next place the product text on the page. Describe the product. Change H2 to reflect something about the product. Example Product Name Features: can be a great Header Tag. Bold keywords in the text, don’t do this too much. Just a few times to highlight that this is what your page is about.

Anchor Text
Include the name of the product at the top of your text. Link that with your affiliate code. Also include Buy Product Name at the bottom under the text. Again link this with your affiliate code.

Repeat
Keep repeating this for every product you want on your website.

Later we will go over building the index page, internal linking and link building.

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Written by Tanya Martin from Over The Mark. Keep an eye out for more great articles and tips at her SEO and Affiliate Marketing Blog. Interested in having your linking methods evaluated or your affiliate system evaluated? Contact Debbie Bonventre at debbie@overthemark.com. or call 1.888.987.7861