Internet Marketing Secrets
IMS #181 - March 02 2010

Affiliate Link Redirects and Link Cloaking

Link redirects are the most powerful tool a marketer can have. They save a mountain of time and energy. They make it easy for you to change all your affiliate links at once. Even if you've been publishing online for 15 years.

So instead of changing hundreds of links, in web pages, posts and PDFs, you can replace all the link rot, and dead links, in less than a minute. It's the super powerful server side htaccess redirect.

In addition to redirects, the htaccess file can be used to add a custom 404 page, fix a link in a printed publication, fix links from other sites and affiliate link cloaking. It also creates more memorable links, replaces url shorteners and it's more search engine friendly than other styles of redirects.

Here's the full inside scoop on how you can put htaccess to work for you…

- - - Sponsor - - -

SEO Makes Rankings Grow

If you do SEO, you must read this report by Dr. Andy Williams. He provides new evidence that themes work. He confirms my findings, that if you don't nail your on-page factors, links won't help you get top rankings.

Themes are important to Google, because their real goal is to mimic human language understanding. Links build a reputation for your sites and pages, but ultimately, the understanding of what the page is about, comes down to the semantics.

Dr. Williams shares little known secrets, on how you can leverage the concept of theming, to boost your search engine rankings. Right click to download the PDF. Do what it says. And watch your rankings grow.

- - - /Sponsor - - -

How to Use htaccess for Affiliate Link Redirects

If you've been reading my newsletter, blog or ebooks, you've probably noticed links like this:

http://www.cdzn.com/isp
http://www.cdzn.com/lfg
http://www.cdzn.com/vlt

When these links get clicked on, they do not lead to pages on cdzn.com. They are redirects. The browser is immediately redirected to the target page. Usually, but not always, they are affiliate links.

The letters after the slash / in the urls were put there by me. It's just a little two or three letter code to remind me which affiliate program the link belongs to.

In the case of /isp it's my affiliate link for iStock Photo. I use the first letter of each word in the product name, to make it easier to remember what the link stands for. For example, the /lfg redirect leads to the Legal Forms Generator affiliate program.

Now here's what makes it work. The part behind the scenes. Something called the .htaccess file. Pronounced dot h t access. The dot, or period, is a mandatory part of the file name.

(This works on almost all Unix servers. If you use a Windblows server it won't work. If you're stuck using a Windows server, grab a second hosting account over at hostica.com. Unix accounts start at a dollar a month. You can host all your redirects there.)

The htaccess file is something that you create. It's a simple text file. You can create it using any text editor.

Word processors like MS Word will not work. Use a text editor like BBEdit or the freely available Text Wrangler on the Mac. Choose Notepad or UltraEdit on the PC.

The text editor must be able to save the file as plain old text. ASCII format to be technically correct. No proprietary control codes or formatting junk is allowed.

So here again are the links we want to redirect:

http://www.cdzn.com/isp
http://www.cdzn.com/lfg
http://www.cdzn.com/vlt

The redirects in the htaccess file look like this:

Redirect /isp http://istockphoto.com/index.php?refnum=dmcorp
Redirect /lfg http://www.NitroShoppingCart.com/app/?af=1050998
Redirect /vlt http://www.dynamicmedia.com

You can copy and paste the example above if you like. Just be sure to replace my affiliate links with your own.

Note: The syntax is very important. Make one mistake like missing a space, or a slash, and it won't work. The word Redirect must be capitalized. Followed by a space. Followed by a slash. Followed by whatever you want to call the redirect. Followed by a space. Followed by your affiliate url.

Each redirect must be on its own line, with a carriage return after each one. The text file must be saved as a Unix or DOS text file.

A Mac text file will not work properly, as they do not contain carriage returns. Open the file in TextWrangler and save it as a Unix text file.

Also, if you're working on a Unix operating system like Mac OS X, periods in file names are reserved for the operating system. Any file name preceded by a . will be invisible on your computer.

In other words, if you save the file as .htaccess on your hard drive it will disappear… and I do mean vanish. The solution is to save your text file as htaccess, /htaccess, or some name without the period on your hard drive.

Upload the htaccess file - via FTP - to the root directory on your server. Then once it's on your server, add the period by renaming it to .htaccess.

Once you rename the file, it may seem to disappear on the server as well. It's probably there, you just can't see it. All you need to do, is test one of your redirects. If it works, your htaccess file is alive and well.

Note: You must upload the htaccess file to the root directory. That's the same place as your home page or index.html page. It cannot be inside any folder on your server.

Note: Do not over write your existing .htaccess if you already have one. If you installed Wordpress into your root directory, you don't want to destroy, or replace the file that's already there. You can add to it, but only if you know exactly what you're doing.

(That's why I use a separate domain for my htaccess redirects at cdzn.com. It's the web site's real purpose. You don't need to build a site on the redirect domain, it can be used for redirects only, or you can put up a single page like sellwhatyouknow.com if you really want to.)

- - - Adv - - -

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If marketing was an Olympic event, the 2010 System Seminar would walk away with the Gold. Want to be a part of the winning team? Come join us.

- - - /Adv - - -

Now it's time for you to try it. Open your text editor. Copy and paste this one redirect.

Redirect /vlt http://www.dynamicmedia.com

Yes, it's just one line of text with a carriage return. Save it as a DOS or UNIX text file. FTP it to the root directory on your server. Rename the file while it's on the server to .htaccess.

Now try it. For example, type in http://www.yourdomain.com/vlt and you'll be redirected to the Dynamic Media site. (Replace yourdomain.com in the example with your real domain name.)

That's all there is to it. You can now repeat the process with your affiliate links.

In the future, if an affiliate link stops working, or you no longer support the program, you can change this one redirect. Just like magic, every link you've ever created in your legacy of blog posts, articles, web pages and PDFs will have a new destination.

Other purposes of the redirects include:

Adding a custom 404 file.
Fixing a link in a publication.
Fixing links from other sites.
Private affiliate link cloaking.
Creating more memorable links.
Making all links smell similar.
Replacing nasty url shorteners.
Being search engine friendly.

Wishing you all the best for online success,

Michael

P.S.

The rest of this strategy is inside Michael Campbell's Private Site, the Dynamic Media Vault. Find out how you can trick out server side redirects, make custom 404 pages and PHP redirects to solve all sorts of linking and marketing problems. Want to become part of the club? Come on over:

Internet Marketing Secrets
IMS #180 - February 09 2010
Using Social Media for Marketing

Find out how a 10 page minisite, and a little social media elbow grease, can earn swift commissions in the affiliate marketing space.

Using Social Media for Marketing

The websites we use for affiliate marketing have changed over the years. White hats have used microsites, mininets and authority sites. Black hats countered with scrapers, splogs (spam blogs) and MFA (made for AdSense) sites.

All have come and GONE as the strategy of choice. Even SEO has become "old school" and will soon take a back seat to the social media space.

In 2007, everything started to shift. With all the social media available, it became a lot easier to advertise your personal brand and get backlinks.

You could create mininets, doorways, pumpers and links, without having to set up your own websites. You could do it on the backs of the social media networks.

Two years ago I wrote on the #1 tech blog at the time, ""Search is becoming secondary in many markets. Word of mouth is taking over faster than ever, thanks to the reach of Myspace, Facebook and Twitter."

"For example, if I'm looking for a product, I'm more likely to broadcast a tweet on Twitter, and get the opinions of people I trust. Only as a last resort would I rely on a search engine, that constantly gets gamed by people in the SEO business."

"People can live in the Google SEO world as long as they want, with its 2003 search technology. But future traffic lies in (dare I say it) social media properties with conversational WOM (word of mouth) marketing."

"Change happens. You either adapt or perish. SEO and its effectiveness have declined."

"When it comes to getting traffic and paying customers, SEO has become secondary in many markets. It's no longer effective at getting the word out, because it takes too long.""

Remember, that was TWO years ago…

Within two months of writing that post, I wrote the Goobert conversational marketing method. I wanted to prove that everyone could have a successful affiliate marketing business, without learning SEO or having to pay for advertising.

In my very first test, I got up to 400 unique visitors per day in just four weeks. Fast forward to the present day and the Gooberts rule the roost. A mini site is all it takes.

I'm talking a topically tight 10 page site, with a Wordpress blog on it. It might feature three items for sale. One in the low, medium and high price ranges. Something for each budget.

But rather than focus on SEO and organic search, and getting found passively, you jump into the conversations and take an active role in getting traffic to your site. It's a lot more fun than setting up mininets, or one giant 200 page site, and waiting, hoping that you'll get found.

Start your marketing by setting up a few pages on social hosting properties like Squidoo, Weebly, Tumblr and HubPages. These become topically related pumper sites to drive additional traffic and links to your mini site.

Set up social bookmarking accounts on Delicious, Mr. Wong, StumbleUpon, Mixx, BizSugar, Yahoo My Web, Faves, Simpy and Google Bookmarks. These are used to link and promote any page where you leave comments.

And if you still don't think bookmarking is worth it…

Bookmarks apply the law of liking. (Robert Cialdini fans take note.) If you comment on someones blog, tell them why you liked their post. People tend to like people who already like them.

Bookmarks also apply the law of reciprocity. If I link to you, or bookmark you, that same type of behavior should be extended to me.

Bookmarks create links to pages that would otherwise be isolated nodes. You can give link love to those pages, so they get spidered and pass the link juice on to you.

(To learn more about the benefits of using social media for SEO, read Jiggling the Web. The entire strategy is available free online.)

Now here's where the fun starts. How a 10 page site, and a little elbow grease in the social media space, can generate some swift affiliate commissions.

1) Subscribe to the Google Alerts, not one keyword, but dozens surrounding your market. Jump into every conversation related to your topic.

Go comment on their blogs. Be helpful while trying to divert their attention to your site. Social bookmark - not just their sites - but every post you comment on.

2) Go to Twitter Search http://search.twitter.com and type in your keyword phrase. Did you notice that Twitter is a search engine now? It's real time results. This makes Google very nervous and Twitter could end up as a serious competitor.

You can jump into these conversations as they're happening. In real time. You can prevent these people from needing a search engine. It's being proactive, reaching the prospect earlier in the decision making process.

3) Start conversations and answer questions on your blog. What questions? As you monitor the Twitter stream, you'll see plenty of questions being asked. Take note of the popular ones.

But if you want to jumpstart your blog with all sorts of useful content, go to the Wordtracker Question Tool. Type in your keyword phrase and the top 100 questions in your niche will appear.

Go down the list and answer those questions with posts on your blog. (Multiply the numbers by 54 to get accurate monthly Google search numbers.)

It's this simple…

1) Subscribe to Google Alerts
2) Participate in blog conversations
3) Jump into Twitter conversations
4) Answer questions on your blog
5) Direct prospects to your products

Take one small 10 page mini site and sell the heck out of it. Talk about it. Advertise it. Market it. Brand it. Social bookmark every post where you leave a comment.

Tap the "social" aspect of social media. Be a good listener. And when it makes sense to do so, jump in and tell your product story to anyone who will listen.

Sell to this market. Agree with their pain or pleasure. Intensify their emotions.

Then aim their desire. Focus it on your product or service, as the solution to their problems.

That's all it really takes to get started in social marketing and taste success. And once you taste it, you'll never go back to your old routines of watching reruns on TV. You'll have a whole new outlook of motivation, inspiration and burning desire for more success.

When you're ready to try it, get Goobert 2.0. It's the most powerful social media marketing method ever devised. I guarantee it.

Wishing you all the best for online success,

Michael

P. S.

A couple of relevant tweets…

Word of mouth = conversation, trust, loyalty. It’s how our grandparents marketed themselves. Social media lets us do it on a massive scale.

15 years ago SEO didn’t exist. 5 years from now it may be irrelevant. Conversation and persuasion on the other hand, since Adam and Eve.

P. P. S.

A more detailed version of this strategy is in the Vault. Find out how you can make social media your number one source for traffic, conversions and sales. Want to become part of the club? Come on over.

Here's how you can get a head start in everything from social media to internet marketing to SEO. A Vault of information that's waiting for you.

Everything I publish. Everything I think of. Everything I do. It goes into the Vault first.

Eventually some the goodies I create will end up in this newsletter. Most of it never will. What Vault members get, that the public doesn't, is a head start.

Take for example Jiggling the Web. Vault members knew about it for a whole year, before it was published. They blew away their competitors.

Right now it's Pumper Linking. How to do link sculpting without nofollow. Just good old fashioned links. It's in the Vault right now as a whitepaper.

On top of that, there's mounds of podcasts, articles, notes, brainstorming, how-tos, FAQs, white papers, ebooks and more.

Just think, as a Vault member, you don't have to buy any of my new products, because you'll already own the components of them, before they get released. It's another head start.

This "all you can eat" info buffet, is less than a dollar a day. There's no forced continuity, you can unsubscribe any time you like.

One more thing… you won't find any hype, sales pressure or B.S. Just good content and answers to your questions.

Now before you subscribe to the Vault, it's important to realize that… everything you just read about is a bonus.

Yes, a bonus.

The real purpose of the Vault is to give you $100 an hour off my normal coaching rates. You can choose phone, or email support, and get answers to your questions, the moment you need them.

I'm willing to share all that I know. The question is… Are You Ready to Learn?

If you are, I welcome you to join me, Michael Campbell, in my private site, the Dynamic Media Vault.

Internet Marketing Secrets
IMS #179 - January 28 2010
Top 10 SEO Factors Revealed

What are the top 10 SEO factors? This question gets asked daily, so I thought I'd provide you the definitive answer. In addition to my tactics, I've asked Jerry West, Ginette Degner and Dave Tropeano for their tips as well.

Here is a brief transcript of that conference call…

Michael: Here's a question from one of the Dynamic Media Vault members about SEO, "I know that Google's algorithm is a secret, but from your observations, what are the most important SEO factors.

In other words, if you could pick the top 10 SEO factors and put them in an order of importance, what would be on that checklist?" OK, how about we each pick three and see what we can come up with. Jerry, what would you say?

Jerry: The number one is links. Google is basically based on links. But one thing that people tend to overlook, is the on-page SEO. People think it's not important and tend not to do it.

In my testing, I've learned that if you get the on-page SEO wrong - no matter how many links you get - you are not going to rank as high as you would, if you took care of the on-page SEO. So let's go with number one being links.

The second most important would be your title tags. It doesn't have the strength that once had in SEO, but if you use your keyword phrase in the title tag, it's going to end up as bolded text in the Google search results. It attracts the eye. So it will get more clicks.

In addition, you want each title tag to be compelling and attract the click. It's just like writing an ad for AdWords. You want to do the same thing with your organic listing in Google. You've got to sell that click.

And third, I'd probably say the heading tags, your H1s, H2s, H3s, make sure you just have one H1. That's the largest one.

You can tinker with the size in your CSS, but what I generally do is I have one H1, a couple of H2s, and I will do an H3 at the bottom. That will give me good coverage

It also allows my content to be naturally broken up with some good headlines. That way, the reader doesn't get so overwhelmed with content. So those will be my three.

Michael: Excellent. Ginette, what would you say?

Ginette: I'll start with the robots.txt file. It's necessary to have one, so the crawlers know what directories can, or cannot be crawled. In it you can put links to your HTML sitemap and XML sitemap. Both are necessary for speedy and accurate crawling.

The second thing is make sure your pages load fast and that they validate. Meaning that both your HTML and your CSS should validate with the test at http://validator.w3.org.

The third thing I look at is browser compatibility. Jerry can attest to it. He once had an image was that corrupt and it prevented Google from actually spidering a site.

And I've had issues where a clients' site just couldn't get indexed. It turns out that the robots.txt was improperly done.

Once we fixed it, Google was able to crawl the whole site like it's supposed to. But for months, this person just couldn't figure out what was wrong.

So a robots.txt file, code that validates, and browser compatibility. Those would be my three.

Michael: Excellent.

Michael: OK Dave, what would you say?

Dave: I want to break down what Jerry said about links being important. I certainly agree with that.

But I think in the broader sense, we need to look at linking from two areas. The first one is link popularity, which is just the raw number of links you have. And I do think that can be important in context.

The second, and more important function of linking, is link reputation. It's basically the text in the anchor text, and the words to the left or the right of it. So, the context of what the link says, and where the link is, are two very important things to consider.

My third tip is to remember that SEO in and of itself, is always done in a context. You are competing against other pages in the SERPs (search engine results pages). So you also need to look at things like the domain age of your competition.

If you end up seeing that - for a given search term - you are competing against websites that have been around for seven to 10 years, you may want to think twice about entering that market. They may have a lot of incoming links to the overall site, plus a lot of incoming links to the actual page itself.

If that's the case, you'll need to do some competitive analysis to look at the potential rankability, or your likelihood of ranking. You need to determine if you can get into the top five, or give up and move on to another keyword phrase.

So my three would be link reputation, link popularity, and then the domain type factors associated with your competition.

Michael: Excellent stuff. Yes I agree with the links being important.

Usually what I do is try to break them down. For example, back links from quality pages, so that would be link quality or PageRank, as far as Google is concerned.

There are back links from relevant or themed pages, so the links carry more weight when they are in context. And then there is the sheer quantity of links, which is also known as the link popularity.

Part of the Google algo from the very beginning is something called "hubs and authorities." Hubs have many links and authorities have few links. Decide which one you want to be.

Usually a hub will lead to an authority, which leads to another hub. So for example, a hub might be a directory page, which leads to an article style page that's hosted on your site. The authority answers a question and usually cites a hub for more links and info.

I agree with the importance of link reputation. It's that blue clickable hypertext stuff. It builds a reputation, or keyword phrase, for whatever you link it to.

And then the actual on-page factors or that Jerry talked about, the actual topic of your page, which is absolutely critical. What's really important in all this, is that the reputation - the incoming links - match what the target page is about.

I agree with links in context, meaning that the words surrounding the links are important. But I'd also add that links in the center of the page carry more weight, and they're not likely to be filtered out, or shingled off (as Yahoo calls it) as part of the site template.

I also agree with competing against competition. You're not competing against Google. Every keyword phrase is a different playing field.

Jerry mentioned keywords in page titles, keywords in headline tags, keywords in bold and throughout the body in naturally occurring language. All very important.

Your layout should resemble a newspaper. It needs headlines and subheads to guide the readers and the search engines to the important data.

There is also keyword proximity. Sometimes the keywords are farther apart and sometimes the keywords are adjacent to one another. And that just happens in naturally in language.

As for themes, yes, search engines like it when you link from a page that's relevant to another page, if it's on the same topic or theme.

Themes are also good for the human visitor, because they can follow that scent of information from top level generic keywords, into long tail specifics, where they can find the information they need to make a purchase decision.

Ginette's got some really good points. Especially the one about clean fast-loading code. I know for a fact that it can prevent spider resets.

For example, if your site is in the process of being spidered and the crawler runs into some rough code, it can reset and go somewhere else, leaving your site unspidered. So be sure to use CSS and HTML validation.

You'll want to make sure your graphics are uncorrupted (which can happen with age), and that you have cross browser compatibility. Plus you'll want to avoid long session IDs like more than five numbers, or having question marks in the URL if you can.

Dave mentioned the domain age, which is great. I would also suggest checking your domain history on the Wayback Machine or something like that, if you're considering buying a new domain name.

The domain may have been used in the past and got banned at some point. So if you can't seem to get any traction in Google, log into your Google webmaster tools and submit a re-inclusion request. That might remove the penalty on the domain.

And that is about everything that I can think of. What do you think Jerry, did we miss anything?

Jerry: No, I think we covered it really well. The only thing that came to my mind are some add-ons that we discussed in previous podcasts. We learned how the allinanchor, allintitle, and allintext searches in Google show how pages get ranked in your market.

(Sorry… but that's another show. I had to cut it off there.)

Did you like this conversation about the top SEO factors? You can get 50 more just like it, in the FAQ Jam audio series, featuring Jerry West, Ginette Degner and Dave Tropeano.

FAQ Jam Sessions: http://www.faqjams.com

That's it for this edition my friends. Thank you for reading. Until next time, here's wishing you all the best for online success.

Michael Campbell

P.S.

I am reopening my private site - Dynamic Media Vault - next week. Come loaded with your marketing questions and be prepared to get custom answers, the moment you need them. Want to become part of the club? Come on over!

Internet Marketing Secrets
IMS #178 - January 14 2010
Jiggling the Web

Imagine getting near instant search engine rankings and  waves of fresh traffic, every time you make an important blog post. You can do it by Jiggling the Web.

It could have been a 100 dollar ebook. And up to six months ago, it was a 300 dollar phone conversation.

Seriously, it hasn't been this easy to get top rankings since 1997. And the sooner you add these strategies into your SEO and marketing mix, the sooner you'll be getting those rankings.

Today I revealed the entire Jiggling the Web strategy. And I'm giving it to you for nothing. There's nothing to buy. No optin. No squeeze page. Nada. It's yours for the taking.

All I ask is one thing…

I've been giving you - what I think is - quality content for the past 10 years. Now I'm asking if you could reciprocate the favor and help me out.

When you go read Jiggling the Web, please spread the word about it. Bookmark it using Delicious, or your favorite social bookmarking site. Tweet about it using Twitter. Email your friends. Blog about it. Even mention it on your favorite forums.

Thank you for your support.

Michael

P.S.

There's an easter egg waiting for you at the end of the article. It's a little gift that will help your marketing efforts immensely. Please enjoy it with my compliments and share it with your friends.