11 Ways To Be Non Engaging

I thought I would make a list of 11 ways to be be non engaging to the eBay partner network program.

Be careful... SARCASM ahead!

1. No Original Unique Content - This is the easiest way to be non engaging. Just throw up an out of the box BANS store and let it fly. This will make you a thin affiliate doorway site and offer no value to the surfer or the internet.

2. Hide That You Display Ebay Listings - Everyone who reads this blog knows I am a big fan of not hiding that I list eBay auctions. Some people will be turned off and leave right away because they do not like or trust eBay. Let them know up front. Show the "Now On eBay Logo" and if you need to, put a disclaimer that you are an eBay affiliate.

3. Cloak Those Links - I know, I know, you got a letter from EPN or PJ saying it is OK to cloak. Yada yada. Cloaking is not being honest and is not engaging. If you feel different, be my guest and cloak away.

4. Standardize Your BANS Look - Make sure you do not stand out as different. Try to look just like the other 1000's of other BANS stores out there.

5. Put Your Ebay Store Listings On The Home Page - Forget about using that space for keywords and info on what surfers can find at your store and easy navigation to where they really want to go. Just be in their face like a used car salesman.

6. Do Not Review Hot Items With A Blog Post - God forbid you let them know how good a product is and get them really revved up to buy.

7. Put Up Standard Navigation - Do not easily organize eBay listings by category. Make it hard and confusing for the surfer to find exactly what they need. Just take your chances and let them use the search feature. Who knows, they may find it.

8. Do Not Optimize For Long Tail Searches - Someone looking for limited edition red fuzzy short steel widgets is probably just curious about them, they would never buy if they found them easily.

9. Do Not Give Them Other Ad Alternatives - If they do not like your eBay stuff, make an automated popup that says GET LOST! Tell them you do not want any of their money.

10. Make Your Site Look Like Las Vegas - Instead of giving them a few alternatives to shop elsewhere, put up as many banners as you can get your hands on. 100 is too few. If you need to put up banners of products not even related to meet the 100 quota, so be it.

11. Never Never Respond To Customers - Ignore people who send emails or comments via your site. Responding to their questions or comments will surely waste minutes of time you could use to add another 100 banners.

More Tips On Engagement From EPN

EPN has a blog post up on Tips for Sending Engaged Buyer Traffic to eBay Sites. In the post the describe a little bit better what they mean by engagement of surfers they also suggest that a user is far more likely to be engaged if they knew prior to the click that they were going to be driven to eBay. They suggest maximizing the amount of unique content on your site and integrating eBay links within your content.

In the last paragraph they state they will screening new affiliates even tougher, so if you are new, make sure the Build A Niche Store site you submit in the application process is up to all standards.

Who Links To Your Competition And Why?

You can really learn a ton from looking at your competition in the rankings for particular keywords or phrases. The top 10 on the major SERPS are there for a reason. More than likely you will find they have great backlinks and possible an abundance of them using varied anchor text. Also you will likely find other reputable more established closely related sites linking to them as well. I will once a gain point you to a free tool that I have pointed out before. Backlink Watch can show you a majority of backlinks for any site. Take a good look at the sites linking to your competition. Are they mostly directory listings? Are they solid like sites? Are the forum post? The good thing it will also tell you is the anchor text pointing back to the site along with the number of outbound links the site linking from has on the particular page and whether or not it is a nofollow link or not. Are these places you can get links from. Most of the time they are. A bunch of times it will not take as many backlinks as your competition has to outrank them as well. I would gladly take a solid backlink from a like site in the same general realm of my niche than I would 100 link directory links. The less outbound links a site has on a page the better the juice. Not all backlinks are created equal. That is why you certainly need a mix of them and vary up the anchor text as well to remain natural looking. Google the keywords your are trying to rank for and look at the backlinks for all top 10 sites. You will likely pick up on a few patterns you can learn from doing this as well. Are the backlinks trades or are they one way links? Is your competitions site very content or info heavy that it seems to pickup backlinks naturally because it is linkable to. Do the research you will be amazed what you find.

Is your site linkable to? Is there a reason people should link to your site?

EPN Transaction Report Changes Starting September 10th

Below is the current notice from EPN....

As explained in our Blog Post published August 19th, we wanted to make sure you're aware of the enhancements to the Transaction Download Report in our upcoming September 10th release. If you are using the ePN API to automatically receive and process this report, or are an active user of this report, please be aware of these changes and make the proper adjustments.

Field Changes:

We will be adding three more fields to the right of the existing data columns (note that there will still be an unused last column, which will now be to the right of these three new fields). These three new columns are the Site ID, Meta Category ID, and Unique Transaction ID.

New Field Details:

The Site ID will identify the site on which the conversion took place (e.g. eBay.com, eBay.co.uk, ebay.fr, etc)

The Meta Category ID will provide the top-level category of the item according to eBay's category structure (the "Leaf Category ID" available today only gives the most detailed category classification of that item. . With this information, you will be able to identify which general category of goods the item belonged to, and in turn understand which items convert best. For example, the eBay US category ID for Clothes, Shoes, and Accessories is (2559875).

Unique Transaction ID for Revshare transactions: this will contain a unique Transaction ID, which will help you to track each transaction individually, as well as any associated actions taken against this specific transaction, such as a credit.

You will be able to find more information on Site ID, Category ID and the Unique Transaction ID in the help section after the September 10th release.

For more information on how to correctly identify a transactions' Site and Category IDs see here:

Site IDs:

For the US:
http://developer.ebay.com/DevZone/XML/docs/WebHelp/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=eBay_XML_API&file=FieldDifferences-Site_IDs.html

For the UK:
http://listings.ebay.co.uk/_W0QQfclZ3QQloctZShowCatIdsQQsacatZQ2d1QQsalocationZlicQQsocmdZListingCategoryList

Category IDs:

The list of US eBay Category IDs is here: http://listings.ebay.com/_W0QQfclZ3QQloctZShowCatIdsQQsacatZQ2d1QQsalocationZatsQQsocmdZListingCategoryList

For other countries, please check your corresponding country eBay site for the correct category IDs.

Non Paid Transaction Events:

As of September 10th, Publishers will also have the ability to view both Paid and Non Paid Transactions. A Non Paid Transaction is an action that happens on the site for which the relevant affiliate program does not pay out, e.g. a non winning auction bid or CRU in the US or UK. When you select to run the Transaction Report from your ePN Publisher Account, you will see a radio button selection that will allow you to choose to have unpaid transactions included in all the events you download for the transaction download file. The default setting is to show only payable transactions, as occurs today.

We're hoping these enhancements will allow you to optimize your traffic more effectively, as well as help you understand your site transactions better. If you are currently using the Transaction Download API we believe these changes will only require a minor adjustment. Keep in mind that if you simply delete the last four columns of the new report (the three new columns plus the existing unused column, which will be the last column as it is today), you will have the same report as you do today.

Why Keyword Tool Data Differs

I was asked by a student of mine today, why the keyword data from tool to tool differs. Plain and simply it boils down to the data source. The Google keyword tool relies of course on Google searches and it is still unclear of the exact quantifying of their numbers and the percent related to true accuracy of the numbers. Some would suggest that Google is still not painting the whole data picture, but it should be in the ballpark. Other tools such as Wordtracker rely on meta search engine queries from Dogpile and Metacrawler. Together these engines account for roughly 3.5 million searches a day. Wordtracker can provide a generic volume estimator across several search engines. Keyword Discovery has 4 databases to choose from with one being an eBay database that includes numbers of times a certain keyword was searched for on eBay.

What does all this mean? All tools should be used in association of one another when deciding on keyword volume. Google will always get the most love, but the others I listed should not be discounted and can be effectively used especially on longer keyword phrase digging. When using any keyword tool, make sure to find out what the source of the data comes from and also the age of the data used.

Google Chrome Browser Now Available For Download

Firefox and Explorer have a new friend in the browser arena as today Google introduced it's new Google Chrome browser. Versions of the new Google Chrome for Mac OS X and Linux are still in development and not yet ready for release. Google says the project was initially inspired by other open-source type projects, including Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox. The Mozilla Corporation, who makes Firefox, and its parent company, the Mozilla Foundation, which develops Firefox and other open-source type projects, have a financial friendship with Google which was just renewed through November of 2011.

Microsoft has already responded to the news of Google's new browser saying, "The browser landscape is highly competitive, but people will choose Internet Explorer 8 for the way it puts the services they want right at their fingertips ... and, more than any other browsing technology, puts them in control of their personal data online," Internet Explorer general manager Dean Hachamovitch said in a statement.

I have downloaded and begun toying with it, but can not give you a good review as of yet. Usually anthing Google touches and dedicates themselves to, usually turns out good. I suspect it will go through many enhancements as it works through bugs and user suggestions.

For Good Onsite SEO, Think Like A Search Engine

Sorry for the late post, but Gustav has played with the power off and on all day. I took the opportunity to take a nap. lol

While I am not one to design a site just for the search engines, I always keep them in mind. When it comes to onsite SEO, I like to think like a search engine. Keyword stuffing is not the way, but I do not want the search engines to have a hard time figuring out what each and every site and store page is about.

I have had several PMs of people asking me to look at their store pages and rate their onsite SEO. What I am seeing is definitely some confusion on this. Some examples of what I see include paragraphs totally unrelated to what that page SHOULD be about. Explanations about why you chose a certain domain or why someone should shop your store has only one place on a niche site and that should be on a "About" page, not on the front page or a page selling items. You will only detract from the SEO if you do this.

Think long and hard about each and every page on your site and the phrase or phrases that page is trying to rank for. If you have a site page that is nothing but news headlines for the New York Jets, the top 100+ words on that page needs to tell the surfer and the SERPS that.

Below would be an example:

Welcome to our New York Jets news section, where you will find all of the New York Jets news headlines from various sources. We list headlines from the New York Post, New York Daily News, Newark Star Ledger, Jets Official Website and New York Newsday newspapers. We also carry news from all of the Jets blogs as well. Check back often as our news feeds update daily so you can keep up with Jets player news and press conferences.

Now the above was 79 words I just thought of off the top of my head and surely it can be expounded on. This will definitely let the SERPS know that that particular page is about New York Jets news. Get the drift? And that was for a mere news page. The same concept should be applied site wide for permanent pages and store pages. Make it easier for the SERPS by applying relevant LSI terms as well. If it is not pertinant to the overall direction of the page, leave it out of the text. You want no confussion for the SERPS to easily identify what each page on your site is about. Couple this with great meta tags and great offsite keyword text links and there will be no doubt in the mind of the SERPS about what each page on your site is conveying.

What ways do you like to use to think like search engines?