Google’s Love / Hate Relationship With Affiliate Marketers
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Programs, Google, Internet Marketing, seo
This fantastic infographic provided by SEOBook, shows how Google’s attitude towards affiliates has changed over the years. First, they loved you because you bought PPC traffic, then when that traffic began to get noticed by big companies, they started a slow but steady campaign to oust most affiliates from their PPC network; even going as far as to ban many affiliates.
At first you would think that it may be the affiliates problem right? They should have known that their ads would get banned. Not so fast…whenever you delete or pause a PPC ad in Google, no matter how old it is, it still remains in your account. Many affiliates were banned because these old, outdated ads, which may have been deleted or paused, were at the time completely within Google’s terms and conditions; however, because they currently don’t adhere to the rules, they were banned, some for life.
Essentially, Google had them by the throat. They ran completely legitimate ads in Google say in 2005, decided that they didn’t want to run that ad anymore for whatever reason, deleted it, (although still contained within the account, thus, not truly deleted), and then had their account banned because it didn’t adhere with Google’s current terms and conditions.
Can you see the problem here?
Over the years, affiliates have been taking some pretty big hits by Google; either getting their sites pushed down in the search results, or whatever the case may be.
Ironically, during this short amount of time, Google has opened up their own affiliate network. Which leads one to wonder if these same sites were to promote products from Google’s affiliate network, would it make a difference in rankings? I haven’t tested this but would sure be curious to hear of anyone who has.
So, all this rant out of the way, here’s the infographic I was telling you about…
Internet Marketing Infographics by SEO Book
Force Google to Notice You
Filed under: Google, GooglePlus, Internet Marketing, Marketing Strategies
Back in mid-to-late 2010, I published a blog post that explained in detail about rel=author. Essentially, it’s an easy way for users to see your head shot when they do a search in Google.
Here’s an example. All I’ve done here is a search on “google rankings drop” and in this screenshot alone, there are two search results that stand out – why? Because they’ve added this little attribute, which is a single piece of code to their page.
Now, in order for you to accomplish the same thing, you’ll need to follow a few simple steps.
The first is you must create a Google profile – if you already use Google+, then you already have one.
Secondly, you’ll need to do one of two things in order for Google to recognize that you are the original author of a piece of content and that it’s tied to your Google profile. The first is covered in the original post located here, but the second alternative you have is new.
The newest option is to be sure that you have added your name and email address to any post that you have authored. Google states that this option is best for those sites who have multiple authors contributing to it. The email that you use on the content that you’ve authored should then be placed within your Google profile. Once you’ve done that, Google will send a verification email to that address.
Now, why is this all so important? Aside from the obvious that it makes the content you’ve authored stand out in the search results, Google has now added the number of people who follow you in Google+, gives you the ability to follow them in Google+, and even a way to view the comments on that post directly from the search results.
Additionally, they’ve added a way to see how often your content is showing up in the search results via their Webmaster Tools – another very nice, new addition.
Aside from the fact that Google continues to improve authorship, and respond to what authors would like to see, the whole bottom line is that authorship builds trust. Now, while it’s easy to assume that since this is tied so tightly to Google+, that you might believe that it’s just a “round about” kind of way to promote Google’s new social network and, you may be right, but the bottom line is, if you want Google to notice you, use their own suggestions and make yourself stand out!
Written by: Kristine Wirth
Success at Affiliate Marketing WithOUT a Website?
Many times I have heard “I don’t have a website so I can’t be successful at affiliate marketing.” – nonsense! While it is 100% possible to earn affiliate income without a website, I won’t lie to you and tell you that it will be easy; as a matter of fact, it can be downright difficult.
But before we go any further however, I do want you to know that if you have been putting off creating a site because A) you felt it was too complicated or B) you felt it would be too expensive, I have some really great free and easy alternatives at the bottom of this post.
But for now, let’s just assume that you don’t want to create a site.
Just remember, the way to become a successful affiliate is to get people to click on your affiliate link and subsequently make a purchase, fill out a form, or whatever it may be that gets you a commission.
Therefore, the most important thing to do is to get your link in front of people right? There are a multitude of ways to do so but, again, they will take time because no matter where you go, how you participate, or even what you say, it will take time to build up trust in you so that someone feels comfortable clicking on your link.
First off, one thing that you can do is create a free eBook that you simply give away. Within this free eBook, you can simply add in your affiliate links so that as your eBook gets passed around (which should be encouraged), the more people will have exposure to it, and the more likely you are to get clicks on your affiliate links.
Obviously, this eBook would be on a similar topic that your affiliate links are promoting. You don’t want to write an eBook about soy candles and then promote golf clubs.
Participate in forums. Virtually any forum online will allow you to add a signature to your profile and this signature can then link off to your affiliate offer. That being said, you should pick a forum that again, is directly related to your affiliate programs’ topic. Once you’ve found these forums, you can then start posting but whatever you do, make certain that you are posting helpful information. If you create a new account and then start making posts on the forum that say things like “great post!” or “thanks for the information” or some other comment that doesn’t directly contribute to the conversation itself, you will not earn a heck of a lot of trust. It takes time.
PPC Marketing. Now, this gets a little “iffy” because if you don’t want to put out the money for creating a website you probably don’t want to have to pay the costs of pay-per-click advertising. Not to mention that Google will probably not let you advertise a direct affiliate link on their network; Facebook however (at least at the time of this writing) will. Not to mention, Facebook is a lot cheaper, and you can target groups of people by age group, interest, where they’re located in the United States, etc. So this is another option to consider as well.
There are lots of ways to market your affiliate link but without having a website but to be honest, it takes about 1,000% more work than if you have a website of your own. Plus, having a website of your own let’s you track how well something is doing for you – something that would be incredibly time-consuming without a site.
That being said, I want to give you some really cheap alternatives to start with. Each of these locations will let you build a website for free (although I do recommend that you have your own domain name if not now, at least a little bit further down the road), and these sites are so easy to use you’ll even surprise yourself!
