Cribbed Content for May 29th
At first glance when starting to compile this week’s Cribbed Content, it didn’t look like much was going on. My Google Reader was kind of light, as were the other scoops and news coming across my desk. But then when I really started to dig, I found some cool stuff! Including a really easy Twitter Contest from DIY SEO to win a Kindle!
- Last week I reported that Affiliate Summit East 2009 was all sold out of booths. They’re now all sold out of Meet Market tables as well, the first time for them that they’ve sold out of exhibitor space before Early Bird pricing was done. Congrats to the ASE09 team!
- Speaking of Affiliate Summit, co-founders Missy Ward and Shawn Collins were in Dallas at the Inbound Marketing Summit speaking about monetizing blogs. Missy was kind enough to share their slides from the presentation.
- Affiliate network ShareASale is toying with an Affiliate API and has released the initial sections for use.
- Google recently changed their trademarks policy in regards to AdWords paid search ads. Search Engine Land wrote an article on how to protect your brand under Google’s new trademark policy, and Geno Prussakov also wrote an article on how this applies to affiliate marketing.
- Apparently Google mucked around with PageRank… AGAIN… and devalued Twitter profiles. Which is fine with me since I realized awhile back my twitter page was PR9 when this here blog was only PR2 (currently my twitter page is a PR3). What really irritated me was that, out of nowhere, this blog went down to PR0 out of nowhere with no real changes other than a redesign (that, if anything, should have HELPED SEO). So in my opinion Google can shove with with their PageRank racket anyway. Anyway, Andy Beard explains a few things about the change.
- I’ve seen a certain someone from a certain CPA network tweeting a lot in the last two days about making money from Twitter with CPA ads. That seems to be ALL this person is tweeting about and it’s getting on my anti-spam nerves. So instead of calling this person out, I’ll be passive-aggressive and just pass on this article for everyone: 10 Irritating Mistakes that People Make with Twitter. Thanks Nikki Pilkington for a good article right when I was thinking about it!
- I’m a big fan of to-do lists. There’s been some talk about different apps recently (I was turned onto Toodledoo and love its integration with iGoogle homepage). Nate Moller wrote a great article on why to-do lists are key to entrepreneur success that any slightly unmotivated or scattered entrepreneur should read!
Online Marketing Glossary: Algorithm
Algorithm:
- A set of mathematical equations or rules that a search engine uses to rank the content contained within its index in response to a particular search query.
The algorithm is what powers search engines, and also provides websites with page ranks, Alexa rankings, Technorati authority, etc. The algorithm often takes into account inbound links, outbound links, where the inbounds are coming from, where the outbounds are going to, number, quality, etc.
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Online Marketing Glossary: Linkspam
Linkspam:
- A company attempts to place as many inbound links as possible to it’s site regardless of the context of the originating site.
Unfortunately, I’ve seen this before in practice. Uninformed manager put their stock entirely into metrics, so that inbound link metric and page rank can be heavy hitters. Professionals truly versed in proper SEO strategies know that the originating content matters almost just as much as the presence of the link.
It can be difficult to push back to overbearing and uneducated managers sometimes, so remember that you have your industry peers to help you to formulate convincing arguments for your side.
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Alexa Rankings & Google PageRank
What do they mean to you? I’m never sure how much weight to give to third party rankings like Alexa and Google PageRank. Let’s review…
Interesting… isn’t it? I know that it’s a higher ranking than another site of mine, FoodAskew.net, which has a ranking of 1,147,532. To give you some scale, Google has an Alexa ranking of 2, AffiliateSummit.com has a ranking of 104,661, and Facebook has a ranking of 5.
Alexa ranks all the sites on the web based on their traffic and that’s how the ranking comes up. I guess I should be happy in the range I’m in, but what can be done to increase your ranking? More traffic, as far as I can tell.
Page Rank is another beast all together. According to Wikipedia,
PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references. The numerical weight that it assigns to any given element E is also called the PageRank of E and denoted by PR(E).
Much more complicated, and for the life of me I cannot figure out how to boost my page rank. I know by checking that my page rank is 0. I can’t understand it considering that I have a decent number of inbound links as well as outbound links that aren’t affiliate links. Perhaps it’s because most the links are direct post links and not to just the domain? Someone who knows more about this has yet to tell me.
So how much weight should be put on these numbers? Different people across the web say different things. I like to believe that as long as I’m putting out good content, it doesn’t matter. I focus on bringing more traffic to my site right now because the more eyes that see it, the more likely it is that they’ll come back.
But, I’m far from being an expert on this. What’s your opinion?
To find your own Alexa Ranking, go to www.Alexa.com. Use this tool to check your Google PR:
| Check Page Rank of any web site pages instantly: |
| This free page rank checking tool is powered by Page Rank Checker service |
Free Toolsday for June 10th
OK it’s TECHNICALLY still the 10th here in California, so here’s this week’s free tool.
SEO Quake
is an extension for both Internet Explorer and Firefox. It’s a great tool for webmasters to improve their websites, but also a terrific tool for an affiliate manager doing due diligence on the websites their affiliates list.
My favorite feature is the Whois tool. I use this to check the registrant information on websites on affiliate applications before I approve them. I use the whois data to try to weed out the shadier side of affiliates registering with websites that do not belong to them.
As with most toolbars or extensions, which features you include are completely customizable. Another great feature for the SEM/SEO minded is the page rank button and the other Alexa rankings and Google index numbers.
Of course, there are tons of features of the toolbar that I haven’t even explored! So go check it out at www.SEOquake.com and tell me what your most useful feature of the toolbar is!
Read MoreLink Glossary: Authority Pages
Authority Pages:
- Web page with many unique domains linking in to it.
Home pages tend to have more authority as most people are prone to link their visitors to the general website they want to share with them instead of a deep linked page. Authority is an excellent tool in your SEO efforts as it raises your page rank and increases your traffic. The more domains link to you, the more are likely to link to you.
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Glossary Definition From The Definitive Guide to Link Buying by Patrick Gavin
