Two things I need to tell you about in this post, both of which will have immediate and lasting effects on your search engine rankings… both take minutes to implement.

The first of these things I’ve written up totally in this post, and the second one is at another link. So relax and read all the way through this post now…

#1: If You’re Doing This, Stop NOW

As Andrew Hanson taught in his Unstoppable Affiliate course, one of the more distinct changes in the Google algorithm implemented in the Panda update is the integration of user feedback data as an influence on search results (no, it doesn’t mean people commenting on your blog).

That sounds complicated, but all it means is that now – more than ever – Google is looking at how searchers for YOUR keywords, and visitors to YOUR sites are actually interacting with your site and using that information as a judge of the quality of your site.

It’s no longer just how many keywords are on your page or how many links you’ve got… it’s how users interract with your sites too.

This has a few parts, but let’s talk about just 2. How people react to your search listing, and how they react to your content.

How Users React To Your Search Listing

Say you’re ranking on page 1, position 5, of Google for your chosen keyword. Google has a broad idea of what percentage of the search impressions you should receive if your site is of real interest to users searching for that term.

If your site is getting less than the expected number of clicks, (because your page title and description aren’t enticing enough), Google may decide that you shouldn’t be ranking in that position. If your site is getting higher than the expected number of clicks, Google might determine that your site is highly relevant, and boost it up in the listings. This is a simplified example demonstrating a real principle.

NOW…

Let’s say you… excited about how your sites are progressing… go and search your target keyword every day. You just enter the keyword, check where your site is, then close the window. You do that 3 or 4 times a week.

What YOU’RE doing, is sending the message to Google, 3 or 4 times a week, that NO sites ranking on page 1 for that keyword were enticing. You didn’t click any of them, did you? Right, so that’s what you told Google. You’re telling Google that none of the sites – yours included – should be ranked there.

Post Panda… this WILL harm your rankings.

How Users React With Your Website

Next, Google is looking at what the users do after they click your listing in the engines.

How long do they stay? At what rate do they click the “back” button? How do they leave your website? Via a link you shared with them, or another way?

Generally, the longer they stay the better… the deeper into your site they get (the number of pages) the better, and if they leave following something you’ve recommended, that’s better.

NOW…

Let’s say on those times where you search your target keyword, you click on your own site. You just want to see it’s loading properly… see it’s all still there.

You let it load up – see it’s all good, then click BACK.

BOOM… Bounce Rate adjusted. User left the site in 4 seconds. Site may not be highly relevant to searchers.

That’s what Google sees.

OR…

Let’s say you search for your keyword and and want to check out your competitor’s sites. You click on their links, you spend 10 minutes analyzing all the elements of their page, you check where their affiliate links go to… and more.

Message sent to Google: Competitor site is high quality – kept user on site for a long time – user left via a recommended link. Boost this site up the listings.

YIKES!

Bottom line… and yep, this one’s going in caps…

STOP SEARCHING YOUR OWN KEYWORDS. STOP CLICKING YOUR OWN SEARCH LSTINGS!

If you want to track your rankings, add your site to Google Webmaster Tools (or use another tracking service like Piwik or Clicky). They’ll update you on all rankings for all your keywords every day… simple as that. You’ll see them all plus how they’ve changed, how much traffic they’ve brought, your click through rates and more. And you can check your Webmasters account as often as you like with no penalty.

Ok. Let’s move on.

#2: PR 7 Backlinks For FREE In Under 60 Seconds

This is the coolest SEO trick I’ve seen for a while.

If you want to quickly get PR7 DO FOLLOW backlinks to any site you wish, for FREE (they normally cost a few hundred dollars per month each) then you have to check out the free video at the link below.

And I don’t mean like “on a PR7 site” either, where you get a link from an inner page on a PR7 domain – no, no, no. I mean a real link on a real PR7 page. Just one of these links can skyrocket your rankings.

It’s from Matt Carter, and you have to enter your email to see the free video, but if you’re not on Matt Carter’s list, you should be anyway (he’s one of the best affiliate SEOs on the planet, period.)

Click Here To Watch This Video Now

Trust me, you’ll thank me for this one

Alright, those are two things that will change your rankings, traffic and income today.

Anyone who runs a blog always want more of one thing – traffic. The traditional way of driving traffic has been to build backlinks to your site and inner pages.

Some bloggers are also using plugins to add Facebook “Like” buttons and such to their sites. However, these don’t take advantage of Open Graph which Facebook uses to classify content. Worse, Facebook plugins can conflict if you use more than one on a blog. This is down to the different SDK’s and API’s used when the plugins were written.

The Max FB Seo plugin for WordPress

But regardless of what Facebook plugin you might be using, are all “Likes” created equal? Well, with the Open Graph meta tags used by Facebook to differentiate, it doesn’t seem to be the case.

Facebook Search now analyzes the web page or blog post that a link comes from to see if there is any relevant information it can use to better serve it to their “social graph”. That means it will connect information from various websites onto the Walls of facebook users based on their “social graph” and the meta data on those web pages. The “social graph” is how they are connected to friends based on “likes” and “comments” amongst other things.
Read the rest of this entry »

Adding products from Commission Junction advertisers to a blog has not been one of the easier tasks for affiliate marketers, especially not as posts for individual products.

One way to do it is to use the datafeeds provided by advertisers but you need a plugin like CVSPig or EZ EmpireBuilder to convert the datafeed into posts. And there may be some massaging of the datafeed required to remove unwanted products for example.

I just became aware of a brand new Commission Junction plugin that takes a different approach. What you do is select the advertisers you want to work with (only work with advertisers who’ve approved you) and select the products based on a keyword search. The plugin will then convert each product that it finds into a post on your blog.

This video will give you a better idea:

You get the developer licence version which means you can use it on as many of your sites as you want and you can sell sites that use the plugin (but you don’t have resell rights to the plugin itself).

This version of the plugin normally sells for $299 (the basic use-on-one-site-only version is $39) (you can see the prices here on their website) but you can get the CJ plugin here for only $9!

Sounds like that’s a link to a pirated version of the plugin, doesn’t it? It’s not. The author wants to get word out about the plugin and build a sizeable list of testimonials so he’s offering it to Warrior Forum members at that surprisingly low price. If you’re not a Warrior Forum member, you can still buy it for $9 using this link.

[Update June 14th] I’ve had a bit of time to play more with this plugin so here are some more observations:

1. The plugin publishes posts immediately. There is no option for scheduling posts. This means you’ll have to manually select a number of products to post on a daily or near daily basis.

2. The plugin does not filter out already published products. They are marked as “Already Posted” but they still appear in the search results.

3. A typical search could produce thousands of products. The only way to navigate through these is via the Prev and Next links on the search results screen. Since it only shows 20 products at a time, it takes forever to navigate through a large set of results. And when you return to the search screen the next day, you have to start at page 1, wade through the already published products till you find more you can publish. In other words, it will take you longer and longer each day to find products to post.

4. The keywords box (for searching) only allows 20 characters. Not enough to add negative keywords to help refine searches.

5. This plugin isn’t yet ready to command a high price as it’s lacking what I consider to be some essential features. However, it is worth $9 to have a play with. I built this Laptops Price List site using the plugin. I did beef it up a bit by adding eBay listings with PHPBay and Amazon listings with PHPZon. However, all the post content is provided by the Prodo CJ plugin.

I modified this plugin for my own use to add the following features:

1. Already published products are filtered out of the search results.

2. 50 products are now displayed per page instead of 20.

3. I extended the keywords box so it can now take 100 characters.

4. I’ve added paging to the search results. Instead of just Prev and Next links, links to 10 pages of information are also listed along with links to the First and Last pages. Whatever page is selected for viewing, the links update so that the links to the next 10 pages are displayed. This makes it much easier to find products to post.

I’ll send my modified version of the plugin to anyone who buys the Prodo CJ plugin from my link above. Just email me with your transaction details and I’ll send the mods on to you.

The only other Commission Junction plugin I know of is this CJ plugin which adds products from Commission Junction into your posts but doesn’t create posts based on CJ products the way Prodo CJ does.

One Affiliate Marketing Difficulty

One of the hardest things for any Affiliate Marketer to do is to pick a Niche that will allow them to build a successful and profitable blog or website. This is especially true for Auto Blogs. “How do I find the best Niche?” or “What is the Best Niche to Start with when building Affiliate Websites or Auto Blogging?” are the most common questions asked by affiliate marketers.

It’s actually quite difficult to explain this process as it’s more art than science. We all know there are great tools out there like Micro Niche Finder and Market Samurai, but these tools can’t tell you if a niche is good until you find it yourself, right?

A New Affiliate Marketing Solution

The great news is that today, a new tool has been released that will search and find 100s of new niches each and every day. Each day, 20,000 new keywords (that are evaluated for profitability) are added to the system’s database and there are currently now over 500,000 keywords in the system.

Niche Reaper is the name of the system and it has a “Live” ticker that actually shows you the results of the Niche searches as they are going on in Real Time. This new tool actually uses the same criteria that Mike Johnson sets out in his Autoblogging Blueprint course for finding Niches.

The system uses a number of sites for Niche research. It’s well worth watching the video on the sales page to understand how the system works. And it won’t require a big learning curve.

I am sure you understand that the single most important factor in deciding if your sites make you money is the Niche you build you build your site on.

Right?

So if this has been your single biggest hurdle to success so far, this tool is going to be the single most important tool you have gotten your hands on this year.

Niche Reaper will not only show you the Primary Keywords for the Niche, it will also tell you what Domains are available and if the Facebook Name is available as well. There is so much to it. You really need to see it yourself.

Now For The Bad News

They are only letting 1,000 people join Niche Reaper to keep the Niche’s valid and with 20,000 new keywords beings added each day, that means there’s more than
enough to go around.

Plus, Niche Reaper requires a monthly subscription of $67. Only you can decide if the time you normally spend doing niche and keyword research is worth less than the $67 per month subscription fee. (Fill in your details in the top right of the sales page to access the order page).

Me? I jumped at this and have signed up already.

I thought I’d written a review of Web Traffic Genius some months back but, since I can’t find such a review on this blog, I guess I never wrote it!

Normally I’d add a new product review here but this time what I’ve done is set up a new domain exclusively for the review, so click here to read my Web Traffic Genius Software Review.

I now use Web Traffic Genius on all my blogs because it makes generating backlinks so easy but like all software, it has its good and bad points. I detail those, as I see them, in the review.

You can ask questions and post comments here if the mood takes you, but I’d prefer if they were left on the review site as I can keep all Web Traffic Genius related matters there where they’re more applicable.