We know Google’s financial results were impressively stellar last week (maybe not as stellar as Apple, but leave them as a thing apart for a moment) with that record-breaking $9bn revenue figure for the second quarter of the year.

We know that 97% of that revenue is generated by advertising, but what kind of advertising?

If you wondered where Google gets all that money from – it seems the answer is mostly the financial services sector. Searches for ‘cheapest homeowner loans’ or ‘remortgage with bad credit’ can bring in up to $50 per click for the search giant. That’s $50 per click – so not necessarily even a web user who goes on to be a customer.

An analysis by internet marketing specialists WordStream has identified the top 20 industry sectors for the most popular keyword ads on Google searches with intriguing results.

However radical and technically innovative Google might want its public profile to be, it’s the plain old insurance industry that accounts, by these calculations, for a whopping 24% of the top 10,000 keywords – and pays an estimated $54.91 per click for the most competitive keywords. Loans come in second at 12.8% with a top cost-per-click of $44.28, and mortgages 9% and $47.12. As WordStream’s Larry Kim wrote in a blog post, it’s because “these industries can afford to pay a lot to acquire a new customer”.

Infographic reproduced with permission of WordStream. © 2011 WordStream Inc.

Fancy having a look at another new internet marketing opportunity to help you make money online? This is one launched by internet marketing guru Stephen Pierce. This is an affiliate program to sell hundreds of products and is open to anyone who wishes to earn large sums of money on the internet. All you have to do is to sign up as an affiliate and you can earn up to 50% commission on all sales, whether front-end sales, back-end sales, up-sells or down-sells. What you will need to do is to promote the products through your site. The company will provide free for your use all marketing tools needed such as banners, emails, classified ads, keywords, text ads, articles, press releases etc.

Click here to learn more about this new internet marketing opportunity.  Opportunities to make money online may be many, but few give you such close guidance as this one.

(2011-08-03) Internet marketing guru Stephen Pierce Launches New Affiliate Program

Internet marketing guru, Stephen Pierce has launched his new affiliate program

McKinney, TX Stephen Pierce of SPI Inc. has announced an affiliate program to sell hundreds of products. The program is open for everyone looking to make money through the internet. Affiliates can get started immediately and earn up to 50 per cent of commission on front end sales, backend sales, up sells and down sells.

The selling shall be handled by Stephen Pierce International. All that the reseller has to do is to promote the products through his site. Marketing tools used by the company, includes emails, banners, classified ads, keywords, text ads, Google ad words, articles, press releases etc.

Besides these, theres also an affiliate blog and newsletter sent out regularly to keep resellers updated on upcoming products and new promotions as well as affiliate contests. Affiliates can either choose from other products or several of the products sold by SPI.

Besides this program, there are several other affiliate programs like the MMRI Super Cash Affiliate Program, OptiMINDzation Affiliate Program and P.R.I.S.E. While the MMRI Super Cash Affiliate Program involves promoting a ready-to-go kit, OptiMINDzation involves promoting an audio program that focuses on the use of isochronic tone to enhance different areas of the brain, such as concentration, focus, memory and more.

P.R.I.S.E on the other hand, is an acronym for Passive Residual Income Systems Extreme Affiliate Program. Through the program, Stephen shall help you with getting original content.

Newcomers looking for information on affiliate marketing strategies, may sign up for a 21 day email series, where Stephen discusses about effective strategies says the Affiliate Manager for SPI Inc.

Stephen Pierce has been in the forefront of internet marketing with his hugely successful programs. His company, SPI Inc. is now a multimillion dollar empire that manages a portfolio of premiere web destinations, products, services and provides a number of wealth building tools to home based business entrepreneurs, internet marketers and corporate marketing professionals around the world.

About Stephen Pierce International: The Company was established by expert internet marketing expert to provide total solutions to new and active small business owners, entrepreneurs and CEOs.

To know more, visit, http://stephenpiercetopaffiliateprograms.com/

###

About Us: The Company was established by expert internet marketing expert to provide total solutions to new and active small business owners, entrepreneurs and CEOs. To know more, visit, http://stephenpiercetopaffiliateprograms.com/

Contact Info: Stephen Pierce International, Inc
Stephen Pierce
321 North Central Expressway Suite #220

McKinney
TX
9725484912

stephenafp@gmail.com

Additional:

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Company: Stephen Pierce International, Inc

Country: United States

Contact: Stephen Pierce

Website: http://stephenpiercetopaffiliateprograms.com

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Phone: 9725484912

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Google and Bing appear poised to command an even greater share of retail marketing budgets in 2011, with 53% of respondents to the newest Internet Retailer survey saying they are devoting more of their dollars to search engine marketing this year than in 2010.

And while Google easily remains the focus of retailers’ search efforts, Bing is making headway, with nearly 41% of respondents to the survey saying they will shift at least some spending from Google to the 2-year-old search engine operated by Microsoft Corp. New technology that makes it easier for marketers to shift their search campaigns to Bing is contributing to that shift, search experts say.

The Internet Retailer survey generated 96 responses, 58% of them from web-only merchants, with the rest from chain retailers, catalogers and consumer brand manufacturers. Nearly 39% of respondents have annual web sales of less than $1 million, with 29% taking in between $1 million and $5 million per year; 11% earn more than $50 million a year from online retail.

The survey covers both the placement of ads on search engine results pages and strategies for moving up in natural search results, or search engine optimization. E-retailers are trying out a variety of strategies to improve both their pay-per-click and SEO results, and those efforts appear to be paying off.

Pay-per-click

Traffic from both paid and natural search is growing, survey respondents say. Paid search traffic is up over the past year for 33% of respondents, while natural search traffic increased for 47%. Just over a third of respondents say paid search accounts for at least 26% of site traffic. Natural search is even more important, accounting for at least 26% of traffic for 53% of respondents.

Meanwhile, the survey shows that almost half, or 49%, of respondents are increasing their spend on pay-per-click advertising. E-retailers are increasing their spend at a time when search engines are being more selective about placing ads, says search marketing agency Marin Software, which reported the number of search ads seen by web consumers decreased by 3% in the second quarter compared with the same period last year.

“Less ads were served up but more ads were clicked on,” says Matt Lawson, Marin’s vice president of marketing, noting that total clicks on retailers’ paid search ads increased 14% in the second quarter compared with the same period a year ago. That could suggest retailers are becoming more efficient in crafting paid search ads and bidding on relevant terms.

The Internet Retailer survey, meanwhile, shows that most retailer marketers—68%—are paying at least 26 cents per click, on average; about 13% are paying between 26 and 40 cents; 11% between 41 and 50 cents; 18% between 51 and 75 cents; 11% between 76 cents and $1; and 16% more than $1.

Bing spending

Google remains the king of search, and doesn’t have to worry about any usurpers anytime soon, survey results suggest. That’s because for nearly 65% of respondents, Google brings in at least 71% of search traffic.

Bing can’t even come close to challenging that, according to the survey. 56% of respondents say the Microsoft search engine accounts for less than 10% of their search engine traffic. 39% give Bing credit for between 11% and 30% of traffic, with 4% saying Bing accounts for between 31% and 50% of traffic. A single respondent says Bing brings in between 71% and 90% of traffic.

And when it comes to conversion rates, Google crushes the upstart, with 66% of respondents saying Google yields higher conversion rates than Bing.

But that doesn’t mean retail marketers should ignore Bing. The return on investment for ads placed with Bing increased 10% year over year during the first quarter, while the ROI for ads placed with Google decreased 12%, according to a report from digital marketing firm Efficient Frontier.

“If you’re not looking at Bing, you are leaving money on the table,” said Jake Fenske, director of new media for movie retailer Redbox. “You have to understand the mindset of Bing customers—it is more shopping and retail focused than Google.”

The differences are apparent in a search for a movie. If a consumer searches for a specific title on Bing, he can click to watch a preview of the film from either Netflix or Hulu, to buy the film from iTunes or Zune, to read review summaries on both the Internet Movie Database and Rotten Tomatoes, as well as to see which of his Facebook friends Liked the film.

According to the Internet Retailer survey, more than two-thirds of respondents are shifting some of their marketing dollars to Bing, though most are moving cautiously. Less than 16% of respondents say they will shift more than 20% of their spending to Bing, and only one lonely respondent says at least half of search spending will be moved to Bing.

“Yes, people are doing more with Bing, and it’s the biggest spenders who are doing the most,” says Aaron Goldman, chief marketing officer of online marketing firm Kenshoo. He adds that most retail marketers in the United States by now are used to Bing and its features—even if not entirely convinced of its effectiveness—which at least leads to retailers taking the top keywords and keyword phrases they use to advertise on Google and transferring them to Bing.

And, he notes, it is easier to make that transfer with automated keyword software that vendors sell to retailers. Pet supplies retailer Drs. Foster Smith, for instance, uses such technology to avoid manual coding in spreadsheets when tweaking a paid search campaign originally created for Google but now being fashioned for Bing, says Matt Stelter, the retailer’s assistant manager of Internet marketing.

Longer keywords

For natural search, rewriting the descriptions of key product terms on home and product pages emerges as the top improvement tactic, with 73% of respondents doing so. That was followed by working into product pages the phrases that searchers use, 58%, and including in image file names and display captions common product keywords, 44%.

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Let’s face it, SEO is a little bit complicated to people who have never heard of it. At least once a week someone asks me what I do for a living and if they don’t know what SEO is I have trouble answering that question in less than five minutes.

I’ve worked at SEO agencies where you have to sell the service as a salesman but also explain the process as an account manager to a client. I’ve also done in-house SEO where explaining SEO seems to happen on a daily basis to a programmer, a marketing executive, a designer, a PR person or any number of other people.

Because you and I have to explain our industry so often, I thought it would be helpful to share an analogy I’ve used to show others how search engine optimization works. SEO is really a lot like buying a home.

The Process Of Buying A Home

When buying a home, most people consider hiring a realtor. Sure there are people who drive around town trying to find “For Sale” signs. Sure there are people who ask friends, neighbors and co-workers about available real estate they may have seen.

But these people usually don’t find what they are looking for. They find a lot of real estate that doesn’t exactly match their needs. This is why so many people hire realtors.

Realtors have access to the MLS listings database. If there is any home for sale in the database, they know about it. They can access hundreds and thousands of listings for you, and pretty quickly.

All you need to do is tell the realtor what you are looking for and they find it for you. Usually people specify a certain price, location, number of bedrooms, square feet or some other requirement in the home they are looking for.

Realtors take all of this information as well as what they know about you from meeting with you and sort through all the listings to find viable options. Once they have found matches to what you are looking for, they show you the homes.

Now realtors only get paid by commission, meaning they only make money if and when you buy a home. It is in their best interest to show you exactly what you are looking for as quickly as possible. They will only show you the properties that match your needs that are most likely to sell.

So once your realtor has found all the listings that match your requests, they determine an order to show them to you. They do this based on what they know about you and about other buyers in the area who have looked for similar homes. They also base it on how likely a home is to sell. As you see new homes, you will explore a bit and find more information about the property from your realtor.

Eventually you will settle on a home you would like to purchase. Before you buy anything, however, you want to get an inspection. You’ll want a contractor to look everything over, or you may even have a few specialists come over, like an electrician, a plumber and a roofer.

Once you’re satisfied the home is in good condition and meets your requirement for what you were looking for, the process is finished. You found what you were looking for and you have your realtor to thank for it.

How This Relates To SEO

This helps to explain how search works. Search engines (realtors) have access to a large web index (MLS listings database). They understand certain characteristics of every website (home which they have discovered. When someone comes to them with a request for a website containing certain information, they quickly match websites to their query and display them in an order they think is most relevant to the search.

Now, a good realtor won’t take you to a run down home that is in need of major repairs. They won’t take you to a home that is filled with trash, has holes in the walls and is a danger to those inside.

Likewise, search engines have a habit of filtering out bad websites that they feel are either of low quality or could literally harm your computer.

And just as a realtor will only show homes they think can sell, a search engine will only show websites they think are useful to users.

I tell people that web design is the landscaping and exterior of the home. If that doesn’t look inviting, people are very hesitant to see how the inside looks.

Performing search engine optimization is like cleaning up and staging the interior of the home. It’s also the process of defining the space in the home. No one wants to walk into a home with no walls or rooms. They want a space for a kitchen, a space for a bathroom, a space for a bedroom, etc.

The more staged a property is, the more likely it is to sell, so the more useful and cleaned up a website is, the more likely it is to rank well in a search engine.

It’s up to those of us in SEO to look at the function and utility of the website. We also have to make it pass inspection if you will. A website must be crawlable and free of malware, just like a home needs sound plumbing and electrical connections.

Now think on this. You wouldn’t hire a gardener to inspect your electrical, would you? And you wouldn’t hire a painter to inspect your plumbing, would you? And you wouldn’t consider hiring a roofer to stage your home, would you?

So why would you hire graphic designers, programmers or similar people to make sure your website is SEO friendly? You want an SEO expert doing this.

Conclusion

Hopefully you can use this example to help you explain our industry to a boss, co-worker, client or potential customer. The more we can simplify SEO for people the better.

I’m not sure how all facets of SEO fit into this analogy, but I would love to hear how you could expand this analogy further to include them.

Affiliate marketing has become a popular method for retailers to expand their distribution networks. But affiliates may also help the scammers as well, according to a researcher who will be speaking at the Black Hat USA conference this week.

Unethical affiliates are at the root of an inordinate number of ills perpetuated by the Internet’s criminal element, acting as facilitators for scam companies selling drug knock-offs and botherders who bombard consumers with spam, according to Bradley Anstis, vice president of technical strategy for M86 Security.

Putting the screws to sketchy affiliate marketers may be one of the most effective means for fighting spam and botnets, Anstis says.

“Security research is going after botnet networks, and they’re going after all those sorts of aspects of the cybercrime ecosystem. But affiliate programs can also have a pretty interesting effect on cybercrimes,” Antsis says. “We’re trying to raise awareness and understanding of affiliate programs so that when the researchers come across a dodgy or an iffy affiliate program, they can have some ideas on how to recognize it as such — and then some ideas and suggestions as how to go after it.”

Antsis has spent the last few years studying botnet networks, spammers and crooked “retail” operations. These bad guys are often tied to a smaller number of affiliate marketers who seem to do the logistical marketing management for scammers who don’t know how to do it on their own.

“So [scammers] talk to the affiliate program, and the affiliate program is kind of the go-between organization, a middle-man between the spammers and the actual merchants,” Anstis says.

Affiliate programs will design website templates for to hook customers after they click on an enticing spam message or online ad, Antsis explains. Scammers often pay big bucks to run advertising campaigns — just like any legitimate marketer — and the affiliate may even handle the order-fulfillment process. For their trouble, affiliates usually get a cut of the sales they generate.

Depending on the clients they represent and how legitimate their product claims are, these spam-happy affiliates sometimes operate just within the bounds of the law.

And sometimes they don’t. Within the last few months, the FTC has been working on a multi-state lawsuit sting to punish a cluster of affiliates responsible for the ever-present ‘belly fat ads’ that have plagued the Internet for the better part of a year now. While the ad and general marketing scheme they use is the same, affiliates crib from one another to save on overhead, Anstis says. They also are pitching a wide range of other scam products, including acai-berry supplements as a diet miracle.

The FTC intervened because the affiliates involved were linking the ads to fake news sites and fake articles to enhance the sales pitch.

“Both the merchant and the affiliate can make money. Here’s the problem,” Steve Wernikoff, an FTC attorney, told the media in April when the FTC filed 10 lawsuits against affiliates and other firms mixed up in the acai-berry scam. “Sometime affiliates are willing to cross the line to generate the sale.”

While the FTC is making some noise, there are many affiliates that get away with their exploits, Anstis observes. The security research community might be able to help — Anstis points to the shutdown of the notorious affiliate Spamit last year due to negative pressure from a variety of security outfits and other interested people. He hopes security professionals can keep up the pressure.

“The piece that really nailed it for us was the closure of Spamit last year, in which we saw the volume of spam plummet overnight,” Anstis says. “Rustock just went completely dead, and those spam volumes haven’t recovered to the volumes they were at before. The closure was the single biggest impact on spam volumes in the last four years.”

Have a comment on this story? Please click “Comment” below. If you’d like to contact Dark Reading’s editors directly, send us a message.

Businesses keen on search engine optimization (SEO) tactics to improve their site ranking should understand that it isn’t just about analyzing the impact of or accommodating search algorithm changes only when they happen. They must also ensure their online properties and content are of high quality, say experts.

Adam Bunn, director of SEO at London-based search marketing agency Greenlight, said Google’s Panda update does impact the SEO landscape but is “not something that most business need to worry about specifically”.

“Panda only targets and affects a small minority of poor quality sites, and the things businesses need to do to avoid being hit by Panda are the things that any good business should be doing anyway,” Bunn told ZDNet Asia in an e-mail interview.

In other words, he said Web sites should always be well-written and offer rich user experience to keep visitors “happy” on the site. These are the basic requirements for almost any online site, he added.

For example, the content should not repeatedly stick to one keyword and whatever message a business wants to put across to its audience should be clearly stated in the page title, meta description and URL (uniform resource locator).

Implemented Apr. 11, the Panda algorithm tweak essentially changed how Google’s search engine ranks Web sites and was one of the company’s various efforts to improve its search quality. In February, Google announced a strategy that targeted content farms or sites that duplicated content primarily to leverage search results-optimized purposes, as well as sites consisting of “spammy or low-quality content”.

John Ng, director of digital marketing agency Mezmedia, noted that bumping up site rankings is not just about perfecting the art of search engine optimization. He said in an e-mail interview that SEO tips can be found anywhere, but these tips may end up “not really changing anything if a Web site is badly planned to begin with”.

Ng and Bunn outlined 10 ways businesses should bear in mind when attempting to boost their site rankings on search engines. When contacted, Google and Microsoft spokespersons also referred to their online Webmaster tools that offer tips on optimizing site rankings on Google’s and Bing’s search engines respectively.

1. Create useful content for readers.

This should be the aim of any Web site, specifically since the drive behind Google’s decisions to update its algorithm typically revolve around delivering content that is high-quality and relevant to users. Ng noted that writing original content is not easy and requires significant resources and time, but he reminded businesses of their end-goal.

“Give great info and folks will visit and link to your site, thereby increasing your page rank,” he said.

He added that companies also risk the possibility of plummeting site rankings if they are found “cheating” by resorting to tactics such as content farming or link farming to increase their search rank.

2. Be unique.

“Search engines hate duplicate content,” Bunn said, but noted that original content aside, businesses fundamentally have to think about the proposition of its site.

“Is it really any different to the hundreds or thousands of other sites offering the same thing? What makes your site remarkable? If your answer to this question is ‘nothing’, then you will struggle to achieve ranking success,” he said.

3. Research the SERPs.

Search engine results pages (SERPs) nowadays are populated with many different types of content besides traditional Web links such as video, news, maps, images and shopping information, Bunn said. Hence, businesses must first find out what types of results tend to appear with their target keywords. For instance, he noted that for some keywords, optimizing for images or maps rankings are the quickest and easiest route to higher online visibility.

4. Keyword everything.

Ng explained that besides the actual text, other features on the site such as the URL, image names and links should also reflect the content by utilizing keywords that users would likely use while searching. The site will be more organized and better crawled by search engine spiders.

For example, by titling an image “healthy chicken.jpg” rather than “image001.jpg”, the pictures will turn up on image searches, he said. Similarly, use a link that reads, “Our menu offers healthy options” instead of “To find out more, click here“.

5. Don’t use Flash to hold key content.

Search engine spiders cannot read Flash, Ng explained. So, even though Flash can be optimized for search, dedicating resources to do so is “usually not worth the effort”, he said. Flash can be used to build fancy animations around the site, but not to hold the core of the site’s content, he advised.

6. Measure it.

Metrics is a must for all Web sites and requires constant attention, Ng said, adding that there are various options available today including free ones such as Google Analytics.

“Watch your numbers closely. They tell you what your visitors are doing, which page is performing best, how long they are staying, which sites they are coming from and so on.

“Know what your visitors want, and give them more of the same. That’s common sense,” he said.

7. Optimize page-loading speed.

This component is more important than most people today think, according to Bunn, who noted that how fast a page loads has been a factor in Google’s ranking algorithm since April 2010. “For maximum benefit, your pages should load entirely in less than a second,” he advised.

8. Pay attention to bounce rates.

A “bounce” occurs when a user clicks on a Web site after performing a search, only to immediately return (or “bounce”) back to the search results. Search engines collect bounce rates as data to validate their suspicions about the quality of a Web site or lack thereof, Bunn highlighted.

High bounce rates have become an even more significant issue now that Google allows users to exclude or block a site so it will not be seen in future search results, he said.

9. SEO does not exist in a vacuum.

Search engine optimization should be adopted as an integral part of a company’s broader marketing efforts. Employees who are responsible for their company’s SEO should be aware of the latest trends in the associated markets, channels and communities such as social media and television, and they can often “piggyback SEO on their other campaigns”, Bunn said.

He pointed to U.K. insurance price comparison company Compare The Market, which in 2010 launched a site called “Compare the Meerkat” that tapped interest generated by its TV ads involving meerkats, as well as the increasing number of Web searches containing the keyword “meerkat”.

10. Get help from an expert.

Bunn acknowledged that most Web development outfits know a bit about search engine optimization but it would be “unfair” to rely on them as experts.

He suggested companies sought out proper SEO expertise at the very outset of building or redeveloping a Web site, as it would save one a lot of money down the line.

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On SEO forums one of the most often discussed topics are Google penalties. Webmasters seek help to determine whether and why they have been penalised by Google. They also want to know how to deal with the penalty once it’s established that they have been hit by one.

What is a Google penalty and what isn’t? There seem to be different definitions floating around.

While Google employees will tell you that many SEO issues described as penalties aren’t actually penalties, most people seem to consider sudden and unexplained ranking and/or search traffic drops as a penalty. They at least suspect they have been subjected to a penalty.

Today I’d like to assist webmasters in determining whether they have been hit by an actual Google penalty by listing common reasons for getting penalised by Google.

Some of them are simply Google filters that deal with overtly manipulative SEO techniques. Some of these aren’t penalties at all, but I list them here as well because they are often mistaken for a penalty.

So just check out this list of ways to get penalised by Google. Many of them are high risk SEO tactics considered to be black hat by some.

Backlinks

Large parts of the SEO industry still focus on link building or getting links to improve search engine visibility especially on Google. There is nothing wrong with that. Of course there are limits. There are now so many pitfalls to link building that you have to be very exact when it comes to following the Google Webmaster Guidelines.

• 5000 links for $19 – dubious offers from spam emails offering you 5000 links for $19 are too good to be true. They lead almost directly to a penalty.
• Paid links on high PR sites – while you can get away with paid links in many cases, it’s quite easy to get noticed when you buy links on so-called high PR sites where the toolbar PageRank is 6 and above. There are only a handful of sites that have PR9 and even the number of PageRank 8 sites is easy to monitor. PageRank sites like Piwik.org that have a ten are so obvious you could call Matt Cutts and tell him about it yourself.
• Reciprocal links on large scale – link exchange and reciprocal links are natural to some extent. I link out to bloggers who link to me on a daily basis. On the other hand, obvious and massive link exchange schemes or networks can be detected algorithmically, so you end up penalised sooner or later.
• Hidden links in WordPress themes or counters – these days many top ranking free WordPress themes sites are just SEO scams which rely on hidden links in the themes to be spread around. If you rely on such links for “link building”, it’s no wonder you are being penalised. Some visitor counters have done that in the past as well.
• Artificial link profile with always matching anchor text – when every single link to your site is well optimised saying something like “SEO company” this might look too artificial to stay unnoticed by Google.
• Wrong language links – an English site having thousands of links from Russia or China makes me go hmmm. Google engineers are smart enough to compare the language of your site and the sites that link to you. In the best case you just rank in Russia and China. Else you drop altogether.
• Gaining too many links too fast – it’s not always the more links the better. Even good links gained too fast can result in a penalty. Google is checking the link velocity – aka the rate in which you earn links – and if you get more links than you deserve, you risk a penalty even if the links are perfectly legit.

Outgoing links

Linking out is crucial for blogs and even static websites. Many webmasters stopped likning out in order to hoard PageRank. Google engineers have discouraged this and suggested linking out instead. Linking out can be risky though.

• Broken links – too many broken links on a page raise a red flag in the Google algorithm. This might not be a penalty in the strictest sense, but you drop suddenly in rankings once more than one or two links are broken on a page.
• Links to bad neighborhoods – even worse than 404 errors (aka broken links) are links redirected to so called bad neighbourhoods. Spammers even use this technique on purpose to fool you. Most such links happen more naturally as part of link decay. Sites disappear and domain grabbers buy them to display ad loaded “domain parking” pages.
• Too many outbound links or none at all – a site that has more outgoing links than content itself can lose its search visibility. This might not happen overnight like the typical penalty you’d expect, but it can amount to one in its effects. Also, sites that are dead-ends (that do not link out at all, or use use nofollow links out of the misguided belief that it’s good SEO) might get penalised completely.
• Hidden links in third party services (menus, widgets, counters) – free services for websites often have a rather sneaky business model. They sneak in a hidden link with their offering. It can be a CSS menu, a sidebar widget or a visitor counter. Sometimes these links are not only hidden; they are also off-topic and downright spammy. Look out and check the source code of stuff you add to your sites. Google, of course, doesn’t allow hidden links.

Content

Though Google always stresses that “content is king”, it also can mean trouble. If there is no king in your kingdom, or the king is dressed in rags, you look bad when the Google robots visit.

• Duplicate content – duplicate content on your own site or even elsewhere can result in a significant ranking drop. While Google does not consider this a penalty, most webmasters who experience the problem do.
• Low quality content – Google’s high quality update dubbed Panda focused on low quality content. Shallow, keyword-rich content on some pages can make your whole site drop in Google.
• Scraped content – scraped content, that is text taken from other sites and displayed on yours, is a surefire way to get downranked.
• Unreadable content – content that is written in broken English can be seen as scraped and then “spun” (some words get replaced with synonyms to fool Google), so make sure a human being understands what you write. Also, text decoration is crucial. Human quality raters employed by Google check that as well.

Ads

Analysts argue that Google is not a search engine but an advertising company as almost all revenue of the Google corporation stem from ads displayed in the search results themselves and on third party sites. Nonetheless, the pressure on Google has grown over the years to tackle the problem of so called MFA (Made for Adsense) sites that pollute the Google index. With Google “Panda” the search giant finally did.

• Too many ads (low content to ads ratio) – ever since Google “Panda” has been the talk of the town, most pundits have pointed out that a too high number of ads, especially Google Adsense ads, may lead to a penalty. I agree with that opinion.
• Affiliate sites with no value – Google always explained that affiliates are OK, but only as long as they offer some additional value beyond the actual affiliate offer. Be sure to add value or you will face a penalty sooner or later.

Bad press and reputation

The issue of so-called “SEO outing” has been a hot one in 2011, as numerous high profile websites have been outed and with them also their SEO teams or companies. Many SEO practitioners argue on moral grounds that outing is a despicable practice. They might be right, but as long as there is nothing to out you fare best. So you’d better manage your reputation online and from time to time check what the SEO team does.

• NYT and WSJ – high profile old media outlets like the NYT (New York Times) and the WSJ (Wall Street Journal) like to scandalise SEO, so if you get a call from a journalist you’d better not brag about your shady SEO tactics. Google, in most cases, reacts to high profile outings aka bad press.
• Industry blogs like SEO Book – some SEO industry blogs might focus their attention on your shady SEO business model when you get too flamboyant or obnoxious. Aaron Wall of SEO Book got so offended by the “SEO is bullshit” tirades of Mahalo owner Calacanis that he attacked his site for sites. Finally Google had to act, and penalised the thin-content site along with other offenders in the Google “Panda” update. Be sure not to slander the SEO industry if your online property is not 200% clean.
• Asking questions in official Google Groups – some disgruntled webmasters tend to speak out on Google groups or forums when they feel they have been singled out and penalised. Some of these webmasters have been penalised for a good reason. These people will be outed by Google employees in the worst case scenario when they don’t admit their mistakes and keep on complaining.
• Third party trust metrics like Blekko, WOT, McAfee Siteadvisor - if you don’t show up in Blekko, aka you are banned there, and when sites like WOT and SiteAdvisor list your site as deceptive or dangerous, this might mean you are heading towards a Google penalty. Google does not use these sites’ data but has other means to screen the Web for the same issues.
• Making Google look stupid – you don’t need an NYT article, a SEO blogger or Google employee to get penalised for a bad rep. Publicly showing off your black hat SEO successes makes you vulnerable to the “making Google look stupid” penalty. Leading SEO specialists agree that from a certain point on, Google can’t keep quiet about it and will penalise you in order to keep its face.

Google filters

Some Google penalties are just filters that are applied automatically. While many penalties can be both manual and automatic, some of the filters are obviously algorithmic.

• New domain (sandbox) – the so-called sandbox filter has been around for years, but was never officially acknowledged as far as I know. It applies when you change domains or start out with a completely new domain and site. Without a proper “moved to” sign Google will apply this penalty to old established sites as well when they change domains. Use a 301 redirect for old sites and try to gain a significant number of authority links in the early days of a new domain to beat this filter.
• Multiple h1 tags – a book has just one title. Likewise a web page has only one h1 title tag. Google assumes that multiple h1 tags are a trick to spam its index, and penalises sites using multiple h1 tags. Use h2, h3 and other headline tags instead.
• Keyword stuffing (high “keyword density”) – one of the oldest spam techniques is so called keyword stuffing. To this day, fake SEO specialists advise webmasters to ensure a high “keyword density” on your site. That’s nonsense. Be sure to add your keywords to your website copy, but no more than a few times. It’s more important to keep the text readable than any percentage of keywords. It might rather hurt you in Google.

Technical issues

Not every sudden drop in rankings and traffic is a penalty; some are stupidity or gross negligence. You can shoot yourself in the foot by messing with some technical aspects of web development.

• Robots.txt – the robots.txt is not really needed to improve SEO. It can break a lot of things though. Just recently I blocked one of my blogs from being indexed by Google. Of course I suspected a penalty at first but then checked Google Webmaster Tools to find out I made the mistake.
• Nofollow – I’ve seen leading blogs barred from the Google index because they activated the WordPress privacy mode. It simply meant that all of the blog was set to noindex, nofollow which equals blocking it in the robots.txt.
• Duplicate titles and descriptions – when your site uses the same or a very similar page title and description for every single page, it’s no wonder most of them won’t show up in search results. This isn’t a penalty either. It’s just logical.
• Not crawlable links in JavaScript – there are still JavaScript site menus out there that can’t get crawled by Google. Always check whether your menu uses real HTML links with “a href=””” in it. Or at least the whole URL must show up.

Neither a penalty nor your fault

In some cases a loss of rankings or search traffic has nothing to do with you or your site. Something else changed instead, and that’s why you get outranked all of a sudden.

• Algorithm change – Google changes and refines its algorithm all the time. Major changes are called updates, and sometimes mean dramatic shifts in search results. Just search for “Google Panda”. The only thing you can do then is to find out what changed and why your site does not match the new ranking factors.
• Competition got better – a common “problem” is also that your competition does more SEO work than you do and one day they outrank you. A ranking change from #1 to #2 on Google can mean a traffic loss of 60 to 80%.
• Current events – sometimes breaking news may push your site down. Google News results get displayed on top, and for less competitive phrases news media start to rank in regular results as well. Most of these ranking changes will vanish ofter a few days.
• SERP display change – Google experiments all the time with its search results’ display. Most notably, local results from Google Places take away large parts of the screen real estate. You might rank at #1 in organic results and still get displayed at the bottom of the search results page.

There are numerous reasons to see a search traffic slump one day out of the blue. It doesn’t have to be a penalty, but if you engage in some of the high risk SEO tactics mentioned above it can be one. Make sure you have at least two web analytics tools to check what happened. Google Analytics is not perfect and sometimes the ways it measures traffic get changed overnight without notification.

Just recently, traffic from Google Image Search has been quietly moved from the referrers to search engines (where it belonged in the first place).

Once both of your web statistics tools confirm the search traffic slump, you can check out this list of 33 ways to get penalised by Google to find out whether you’re a victim of one of them.

* Image by Alexandre Syrota.

Affiliate programs (programs run by merchants to sell their products or services via affiliates) are considered to be one of the fastest ways of making a good income from the internet. Beginners who want to make money online will especially find this a very encouraging way to start an online business, because, after all, we all need to have proof that an online internet income is good and sustainable. We need victories, no matter how small, and these victories are essential if we want to keep the mood up and the enthusiasm going.

Merchants with affiliate programs often end up joining affiliate networks. These networks offer an advantage to merchants by providing the merchants with ready made processing and payment services, as well as hordes of hungry affiliates-to-be who will do all they can to market the merchant products or services, all for a commission, of course. Usually the merchant affiliate program includes a lot of sales aids for the affiliate to use such as banners, information material and the like.

A virtual beginner will definitely find it difficult to choose between the various affiliate networks available. There are dozens of affiliate networks around and not all of them are suitable for the niche you are in. The two most popular affiliate networks in the online marketing world are Clickbank and Commission Junction.

Clickbank Affiliate Network

One of the most popular of affiliate networks. The Clickbank network concentrates almost exclusively on digital programs and ebooks. There are two ways of making money in the Clickbank network. You either market a program or ebook that you have developed (new merchants or vendors who want to market their programs or ebooks through Clickbank, CLICK HERE), or you become an affiliate of the merchant who is marketing them and earn a commission on their sales. Signing up on Clickbank is easy. Clickbank takes care of all the processing and payment issues and takes a commission out of you and of the merchant for successful sales. There are thousands of merchants in Clickbank network, marketing all sorts of programs and ebooks. Once you are registered with Clickbank you can become an affiliate for any one or all of these merchants.

The most common grouse for Clickbank affiliates is this: payment is by cheque, and threshold for payouts is for a minimum of $100, and if your commissions have been stagnant for a while because of poor sales (which needs to be made through 5 different credit card payments), Clickbank regularly deducts a small sum from whatever balance unpaid commission you have in your account. Currently this stands at about $1 per 2 weeks. So if you have not made any sales for a while, your balance of unpaid commission rapidly becomes a big fat zero. A rather unfair practice in my opinion, as this commission was earned through all your hard work and sweat.

Having said that, Clickbank is considered to be one of the most efficient and reliable of affiliate networks. Many bloggers and internet marketers do make money online via Clickbank as affiliates, through their blogs, email lists and adwords campaigns, enough to make a pretty decent living.

Merchants who wish to register with the Clickbank as vendors CLICK HERE

Commission Junction Affiliate Network

Another popular affiliate program. Easy enough to sign up, but in this case products sold by merchants can be products or services. In the majority of cases, inclusion as an affiliate of any merchant has to be approved manually, which means the merchant will need to approve of you as an affiliate before you are allowed to market his product or service. In this age of instant gratification, it can be rather upsetting if approval of your application is slow, or denied for whatever reason, and even more so if you felt that your website was drawing in enough traffic who could be big buyers for the product or service that the merchant whom you were trying to be an affiliate for, was selling.

Payments are reliable and also subject to a minimum threshold.