The Death Of Reciprocal Link Trading

It has long been somewhat of a practice of finding sites related to yours and exchanging links with the other site owners to increase ranking and build traffic. It has gone on forever, but now I am afraid that is coming to an end. As Google gets smarter on tracking unnatural backlink building strategies, related sites or not, that practice is officially in the gray hat area of link building. Look at from what Google sees. If two sites in a small window of time have backlinks pop up on site linking to each other, what are they to believe? Especially if it were to happen on a link partner page and not in the course of content page or blog post. Does this mean you should not link to someone who links to you naturally? Of course not, but it should happen in a course that is natural and make damn sure that the site or page you are linking to passes the mustard. Remember that you are who you link to. You may find something on the site that is useful after discovering that the site is indeed linking to you, but use your common sense in doing so.

Google holds you 100% responsible for everything on your site and the places you link to. If your site is filling a need, has great content and is engaging, it will develop backlinks on it's own from the right places. If your site is freshly built and acquiring backlinks fastly in a method of reciprocal link trading, it will be sniffed out in a heart beat. Once again, you should not be afraid to link out, but know who and what you are linking to. Not all reciprocal links are bad as well. To get a little more clarity on the continuum of link exchange riskiness, check out the most recent offering by Ranf Fishkin. he breaks down from white hat to black hat.

The Ever Changing Affiliate World

I have received quite a few emails from readers that are disenchanted with the new EPN QCP structure. What I most want to get across in this post is that the world of affiliate marketing is always changing. Rankings change, affiliate programs change, payout structures change and on and on. If you do not stay on top of things happening in the industry and stand by unprepared, you will always be behind the eight ball. You should always be looking at different places to send your targeted traffic. Relying on just one affiliate program can be detrimental to your bottom line. Hopefully many of you are already using multiple sources of income, if you are not, you should be. Thus far it is too early for me to make a judgment on how EPN will effect me. On the surface things look good, but also the small range of dates is not enough for me to make an informed decision. That said, many many of my sites employ alternate means of places I can send my traffic and I am ALWAYS looking for more places. This will not be the last thing that changes in the affiliate world, I promise. The more prepared you are, the easier it is to continue plowing ahead.

Saturday Around The Web August 29th

Another week has come and gone and Saturday is here. I like you am still plowing through the new EPC QCP reports. I have taken my shoes off to help decipher the numbers and am close to taking my wifes shoes off as well. I am starting to pick up on a few patterns, but am a long way from breaking the EPN Divinci Code.

On to the things I read on the internet this week:

Rand Fishkin breaks down the three major content classifications of a site - editorial, machine-built, and user-generated in his weekly Whiteboard Friday segment.

Shari Thurow has a look at Commercial Intent & Web Search Behaviors on Search Engine Land.

In a further continuation of a quick social media tips series, John Jantsch has 5 Tips for getting more from social media marketing.

Peter Da Vanzo has a post up on the SEO Book blog addressing the fact that there is more to optimization than SEO.

Website Magazine has the low down on the opening of AdSense to Third-Party Ad Networks and also details on the new Wordpress Facebook plugin.

Chris Boggs of Search Engine Watch has an article on the common SEO problems of E-commerce sites. Frank Watson fires back as usual at the end.

Another great feature by Ezine Articles to integrate in your Facebook account to Ezine Articles.

Some EPN alternatives for those freaking out over QCP and EPC. Pay close attention to Popshops, it is extremely underrated and they have a Wordpress plugin as well.

EPN EPC Quality Click Pricing Preview Report Released

As promised, EPN (eBay Partner Network) has now made available the Quality Click Pricing Preview Report from August 18th on. You can read the blog post on it here along with some tips. Also I found that paging through the multitude of pages tough, I suggest you export the data via the Export All Data section on the right to Excel. You can then hit the Data drop-down in Excel and then sort in a various number of ways, starting with the campaign name or number. I suspect in the near future they will give a better sort function in the report admin. You can view your current Current EPC versus the new QCP EPC number. Hopefully your new number is higher than your Current EPC. If you not, you have some work to do, to improve your quality of traffic you are sending to eBay.

Following the announcement of Quality Click Pricing last week, we are pleased to tell you that your Quality Click Pricing Preview Report is now available in the eBay Partner Network interface.

The report will enable you to see how your new payouts compare with the current CPA payment structure and will be available until 1st October, when all existing publishers move onto the Quality Click Pricing payment model. We recommend you use the reports to assess the impact the change will have on you and to identify ways to optimize your EPC amount.

Please visit our blog for more information on Quality Click Pricing and the Preview Report, including where to find it and how to use it.

Regards,

The eBay Partner Network Team

Last Friday EPN Webinar Available - New One September 1st

In case you missed the announcement, the eBay Partner Network Webinar addressing the new Quality Click Pricing and EPC questions that was held last Friday, is now available online. You can hear and view it at:

https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/intercall1/view?id=Aug21&role=present&pw=view

Also EPN sent a reminder of the second Webinar that will take place on September 1st. I highly suggest you tune in if you can.

Below is a copy of the notice:

August 27th, 2009

Hello all,

Last Friday we conducted a live webinar that many publishers attended where we went into more detail surrounding our Quality Click Pricing announcement. We also gave publishers the opportunity to ask questions that Steve and Will responded directly to. In case you were not able to attend the event, or would just like a replay, here is a link to the video recording: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/intercall1/view?id=Aug21&role=present&pw=view

Because this proved to be a successful way to communicate with publishers we plan to hold another webinar on Tuesday September 1st at 8:30am Pacific Time. We realize that publishers will have more questions on the Quality Click Pricing Preview EPCs and this will be a great opportunity to join in the discussion.

Here are the details, and we plan to send this out via email as well:

Attendee Direct URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/intercall1/join?id=Sep01&role=attend&pw=Attend

Alternate Web Login
Conference Site URL: http://livemeeting.intercall.com
Meeting ID: Sep01
Attendee Entry Code: Attend
U.S. Attendee Phone: US/Canada Dial-in #: (877) 252-8217
Int’l/Local Dial-In #: (660) 422-4755
Conference ID: 26202103

We look forward to having you attend and answering any questions you might have next Tuesday.

Thanks,
eBay Partner Network Team

2009 Ranking Factors From SEOMoz

SEOMoz just released it's newest 2009 Ranking Factors a few days ago. I was going to include this in my weekly Saturday post, but thought it deserved it's own post instead. They survey the top SEO experts and compile answers to questions on each of the factors and the importance each play in the search engine optimization area. Here is a shortcut to the entire list. Pay close attention to the comments below each section to see how certain individuals view that particular ranking factor.

The Best Traffic Usually Never Comes Through The Front Door

This statement is hard to understand unless you see it in action. Unless you have an established brand or several bookmarking home page surfers, you best traffic will arrive to your site via an interior page from the SERPS or a naturally given backlink from a related or semi related site. We all know the brand meaning. When I buy from Amazon, I go straight to the home page usually and start there unless I have an item bookmarked from a previous session. With niche site building, especially in the early age stages, your organic traffic will be the source of income. Once again, until you see it in action and track it statistically, it may be hard to understand. To better attract solid organic traffic, make sure you are focusing on features, specifications and benefits an item has on your product pages. It is not enough to merely target the product name in long tail. In your content, merely adding color, weight, speed, size and other features that would be closely associated with the item speaks even loader organically. Even in 200-250 words, you can encompass an item that will garner more organic traffic in ways you didn't even initially research or target. Simply drilling down in your product keyword research via Google Keyword Tool or Micro Niche Finder will reveal single words that surfers deem associated.

In the early days of niche site building, webmasters would merely target one or two phrases and repeat and bold them several times surrounded by fluff text. Now Google expects to see certain related LSI terms or words used in association with the item. Merely stating: "Flux Capacitor Model XYZ" is good and you have the best and cheapest prices on "Flux Capacitor Model XYZ" is garbage and leaving a ton on the table from an organic standpoint. Tell the surfer the size, speed and benefits of using it. You will still be targeting the main phrase, but also will encompass a slew of closely related searches you never dreamed of. Each and every page is a door in, a website all to itself so to speak. Sure it relies on the rest of the website for juice and navigation, but often times it is the only page the surfer sees if done right. Encompass the product and you will see the best traffic come through that door, not the front door.