As I was reading a blog post from a fellow IM’er today it reminded me of how barren this place has been when it comes to seo promotion.  So here goes my first post to remedy that!

Consider this post to be an addition to the conversation, not a correction in any way.  The post I’ll be referencing is called 2 types of link building (and when to use them)

This a great topic that affiliate marketers using SEO to get their traffic should understand.  It’s half of the whole SEO traffic equation (some would say more than half).  After we build our content rich, optimized websites we need to gain backlinks to increase rankings.

Types of links to get the job done

Michelle’s post has a nice list.  Here it is (with 2 additions from me)

• Blog commenting
• Forum posting
• Article submission
• Social media profiles
• Directory submission
• Social bookmarking
• RSS submission
• Blog carnivals
• Strategic Linking (interlinking off site pages ie: mini nets)
• Internal linking (not off page obviously, but still link building)

These are all very viable sources for one way anchor text backlinks.

3 Ways to Use These Links

1. Volume link building

2. Targeted Phrase Campaigns (what Michelle reffered to as link building for anchor text)

3. Link Building Maintenance

#3 is what I’d like to add to the conversation.  It’s more interesting than it’s vanilla name may sound.  I’ve seen affiliates build sites, get to the top of Google, and decide to sit back and collect their cash.  Much to their surprise they eventually lose their rankings and the income stream in a short time to come.

Side note – If you’re into SEO consulting – this is exactly why clients need to keep you.  Don’t let them forget it.

Unfortuneatly once you start link building you cannot just “stop.”  There has to be a level of maintenance to your efforts.

I can hear you already…

“But, but Dustin… how am I supposed to live the affiliate lifestyle if I’m building links for the rest of my life!”

My answer is outsourcing – but that’s for another post.

Let’s get back to maintenance and what to be aware of.

There are a couple of industry terms I’d like to introduce you to.  Link velocity and over optimization.  Michelle’s post covered the later well so we’ll discuss the first.

Link Velocity

Velocity – In physics, velocity is the measurement of the rate and direction of change in position of an object.
- snippet from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity

Sounds pretty fancy.  Let’s see if we can break it down and make sense of it all.  The word position in that definition can be a bit misleading when we’re applying this word to link building.

All websites have what is referred to as a “link profile.”  When spiders (or humans) look at all of the links pointing to your website they’re looking at your link profile.  It’s the sum of all links pointing into you.  This is your “position” as the wikipedia deffinition mentions.

As you build links your “profile” of links grows.  How much and how fast your profile grows is your link velocity.

When it comes to SEO a steady ever increasing link velocity has proven useful for me.  Steady or in other words, consistent really is the key here.  That’s why there must be maintenance over time.

If you launch a site and get 200 links to it the first month  you should be prepared to get another 200 (give or take a few, doesn’t have to be exact) the next month.   It’s all about appearing “natural” in the eyes of the search engines.

There are scenarios when the link velocity theory doesn’t apply.  For example, imagine having an article or post on your site featured on Digg.  Your traffic would spike immediately, sustain a short amount of time, then die off.  During this time your link profile would expand dramatically.  People link to noteworthy pages.  When you’re featured in places like digg, you’re noteworthy!  Scenarios like this would not hurt your site.

The moral of the story here is that erratic link building efforts will never be as effective as consistent link building.

You’ve heard it before I’m sure…

Test Test Test

It’s the only way to truly improve the conversion of your pages.  It’s scientific, methodical, and very effective.

Sometimes though testing is more than what you see on the surface.  Let me explain…

A long time IM friend of mine Mathew Glanfield posted some great content on a conversion test – eCommerce product pages.

What was most interesting here was not just the fact that he was able to increase his conversions.  Nope – the interesting part was that his initial test that produced an outstanding increase in conversions was actually the loser version in the long run.

that was a long sentence…

The point is here – testing is more than what’s just on the surface.  Initial results don’t always equal the best solution.

Here’s one of my favorite sites for split testing information:

http://whichtestwon.com/

It’s a site run by Anne Holland – the founder and former President of  Marketing Sherpa (a well respected site in IM on market analysis and testing)

So how good is your gut?

I got this week’s split test right!  How about you?  Let me know in the comments

My friend Martin passed along some interesting news the other day.

We all know Google is the big dog in the search game.  That huge advantage has taken on a slightly new face in the search market space.  It’s called mobile search market share.

Google Mobile Search Dominance

Image thanks to http://www.pingdom.com

It only makes sense, right?  The search engine that has the largest piece of the search pie would naturally take the largest piece of the mobile pie too.

What I found interesting was the 8% odd points more share within the Mobile space.

My guess is that their hugely popular “Google search” app on phones makes that difference.  (It’s a neat app you can search by voice – at least on the iPhone).

So… here’s MY question for affiliates.

Is there any advantage in building mobile only websites VS building traditional websites that utilize a plugin or script that make them mobile ready?

You know the drill – hit the comments and let everyone know what you think.

Check it out:

Correction That's Alexa's Top 10 Hot URLs, Not 100

Sounds pretty fancy, no?

Actually it’s not really significant of anything in terms of traffic or rankings.  But it is kind of cool.

My listing is located under some fairly recognizable IM names like Brad Callen and Andrew Hansen.  Not to mention the warrior forum too.

So why the share if it’s a statiscally irrelavant ranking? (fairly certain that’s because I did a webinar on Offervault.com and had a spike of visitors from that)

On page SEO!

It was interesting to see how they read the meta title and description of the site.  Not exactly how it’s setup on my end.

Other than that, it was just kind of fun.  Thought it would be cool to share.

After a sadistically satisfying workout with my TRX suspension trainer the other day, I got a cooky idea about building an affiliate site for it.

Imagine that – creating an affiliate campaign for a product I actually own and love

So I started out by doing some initial keyword reserach on the Google Adwords tool.  Here’s a snapshot of that:

crappy Google keywords

That’s a start…. I guess.

When it came down to it, there are only 2 keywords on that list that have any relation to the actual product I’m researching.  ONLY TWO.

Pretty lame.  It was at that time that I remembered a newer keyword tool developer.  They’re called Wordstream.com.  I remembered them because I was impressed by their nice suite of free tools.  You can tell they’re really dedicated to the “moving the free line” concept.

“What the hell”, I said to myself.

Let’s try searching using the same seed as I used in the Google Keyword tool.  Here’s what came back:

not crappy Wordstream keywords

Just for those who are counting, Wordstream brought back 40 keywords.

Of the 13 that show up in that screenshot – ALL 13 are directly related to my product.  Infact there’s even a “buyer phrase” or two in there.

Thanks Wordstream – I put in my email address and downloaded all 40.