Several days ago, Google made some significant technical changes to its services that make it impossible to reliably perform large volumes of free queries.

To tell the truth, the post shades no light on any details and looks more like Raven Tools promo: Eugene Ware recommends it as a Market Samurai alternative (read the full text). More to this, he doesn’t elaborate on the treacherous ‘significant tech changes’ in Google. By the way, no other rank tracking software developers are reporting any issues.

We decided to check what functions became impaired and how it may affect current Market Samurai users. We downloaded and installed a fresh build of Market Samurai. It now welcomes you with a new splash screen:

First thing we surely clicked Rank Tracker tab. It welcomed us with another warning:

Wait, checking only 10 keywords per run?? Are they kidding? Sure, there might be the guys around with up to ten keywords per project but they all are on the endangered-species list. We picked up twenty keywords (the minimal reasonable amount) and ran the rank check… Bing and Yahoo passed well, Google stalled on the seventeenth keyword… It can’t be worse.

What about the second (and the last one) core function of Market Samurai – keyword research? – Another epic fail! Keyword suggestions tool is screwed up and returns this error (thank God and Majestic ,the keyword analysis tool is still working).

How are the users supposed to “find and target profitable niches”?? – Hell knows… wait wait… Eugene Ware blessed his ‘samurais’ to try Raven Tools. That’s another entertaining point.

Up to now Market Samurai was sold on a fixed cost basis. It is one of the cornerstones in their sales pitch. Their ‘samurais’ would cut throats on forums in the Holy Wars with the developers, supporters and users of the software for which you’d need to buy a subscription or sort of a live plan. According to some samurai code of conduct a subscription is a rip-off and unfair business practice.

Now Market Samurai unexpectedly states:

So, we’re left with the difficult decision of having to pass these costs on to our users in some fashion (most likely a monthly paid service).

They are going to fetch ranking data from Raven Tools and sell it on the subscription basis. By the way, Raven Tools in their turn are fetching, at least partially, the ranking data from AuthorityLabs (let’s hope AuthorityLabs are getting the information directly from Google). The supply chain obviously has some redundant elements. This weird business model alone should urge users to switch to other service providers.

Any Market Samurai alternatives over there?

If you are among those few guys with ten keywords per project and have a need to check rankings occasionally – try Rank Ckecker. It’s a free add-on for FireFox from SEOBook. It’s pretty lightweight and fast. You may use it directly from your browser. On the other hand, it can’t bypass captchas, it has no human emulation mode or proxy rotation features. Thus, it stalls after 20-30 consequent queries to the search engines. Also, it can’t store rankings history.

If you are serious about SEO, check out Rank Tracker by Link-Assistan.Com. It’s a fully functional keyword research and rank checking tool with a bunch of options and additional functions. It includes a proxy manager, task scheduler, human emulation features, anti-captcha module. Using this armory a skilled SEO may check rank for hundreds of keywords. Unlike Market Samurai it works smoothly despite any ‘tech changes’ in Google.

Any ideas for Market Samurai alternatives are welcome in comments section.

- Do, or do not. There is no try. – Yoda

I love Star Wars. I think it’s the second greatest sci-fi movie ever after The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (sorry, George Lucas, no offence). And, one of my favorite Star Wars characters is Master Yoda, a walking oxymoron (a powerful shorty) and a talking inversion.

I think some of his teachings are actually encoded Internet marketing messages, since here is what I discovered while listening to his words of wisdom:

1. Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? – Yoda

OK, I guess this one pertains to content. Some people believe that the longer a blog post or the bigger a website, the better. Like, it’s more presentable this way. Well, guess what, sheer volume does not mean better rankings, nor does it mean more visitors. Think of Seth Godin and his brevity.

So, here is what I learned from this one – make your posts/articles as long as is required to convey your message, but not longer than that.

2. Luke: “I don’t believe it…” -Yoda: “That is why you fail.”

Here is what I learned: you gotta believe in what you do and you gotta be sincere with your audiences. We hear it a lot and yet NOT many of us, Internet marketers, take this simple rule seriously.

Thing is (and you’ve probably heard about it) that SOMEHOW, in an almost magical way, people are always able to sense whether you believe in what you say or not. And, if you don’t, they do not either.

3. If no mistake have you made, yet losing you are … a different game you should play. – Yoda

Sometimes you may be going by the books and doing everything correctly, and implementing all these proven SEO/IM/social media methods on your site, and YET not getting the results. Why? Cause in online marketing there are lots and lots of variables, and you will barely find a one-size-fits-all recipe for success.

So, what to do if certain methods are not working out? Change your ways! There’s no point continuing doing it just because everybody else does it. You gotta tweak your ways to accommodate them to your particular campaign.

4. When all choices seem wrong, choose restraint. – Yoda

I think this is true of certain reputation management situations when taking no action works best. For example, consider this great post by Dominique Ellis called “How NOT to Tweet With Your Customers”, in which she describes how responding to some meaningless (and sometimes rude) comments about your business in the same manner can be harmful.

So, sometimes, not taking any action is the best way to act, if all other choices seem wrong!

5. Luke: “Vader… Is the dark side stronger?” -Yoda: “No, no, no. Quicker, easier, more seductive.”

Now, this is soooo true about the black hats, really! If you choose the Dark Side, yes, you will succeed, and it will happen quicker and easier, but your success will not last long, because you are not STRONG enough to pull it off in the long run. And all weak things are to be destroyed sooner or later.

Hence, better safe than sorry: stick to ethical, white-hat ways, while this is where the strength lies.

6. Ready are you? What know you of ready? – Yoda

Dear Internet marketer, what do you know of ready? Do you believe your site should be ranking #1 for this keyword, but it’s not ranking? Means you are not ready. See, Google knows better. Sometimes a final touch is required, some extra intuitive THING to influence Google’s subconscious.

So, if you are not ready, keep up the good work, keep searching, don’t give up, cause, sometimes, only Google knows when you are ready. And, when you are, you’ll know it.

7. Decide you must how to serve them best. If you leave now, help them you could. But you would destroy all for which they have fought and suffered. –Yoda

Sometime Internet marketers believe their audiences need an extra push or another reminder to visit their (Internet marketers’) site or blog. However, when overdone, this may even put the audiences that were already half way to your site OFF your site, which would be counter-productive.

So, be careful not to overdo. Know when to stop. Pushing your agenda too much can destroy all that you have fought for.

8. If so powerful you are, why leave? – Yoda

It makes me sad when people discard some good content or decent webpages just because they cannot use them right away. Never let a potentially powerful page/content go wasted. If you cannot use it immediately, save it for later (or for some other project).

For example, sometimes, instead of casting away a webpage that is not ranking highly enough and creating a brand-new one, give the underperforming page a boost. Might save you time.

9. When you look at the dark side, careful you must be … for the dark side looks back. – Yoda

This is how I deciphered this one: when looking Google’s way, be careful, for Google looks back. This is true of bringing your site to Google’s attention at Google’s Help Forum, filing all sorts of requests, and maybe even using Google Analytics (after Panda, Google now looks at your analytical data to determine the quality of your site). So, beware of that!

Ok, these were the 9 IM lessons I learned from master Yoda. And, in case I missed something, do let me know!

Michael Gray of Wolf Howl tweeted on December 31, 2011:

Ok, jokes apart, let’s get down to some serious stuff.

Social Media

According to Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz, there will be no such thing as SEO without social media this year, as the two will walk hand in hand in 2012. Well, social media started playing a big role in SEO when search engines began considering site’s social media popularity (to some extent) in their ranking algorithms, and the influence has become even greater with the introduction of Google’s +1 button and the birth of Google+.

Besides, SEO has been moving beyond site rankings and towards social media (among other things) for quite a while now.

Google+

As far as Goolge+ is concerned, SEO bloggers are not unanimous as to its fate in 2012. Some think that, despite all the hype around this Google’s own social network, it will remain 2-nd to Facebook, while, according to Paul Allen, the unofficial Google+ statistician, Google+ is expected to hit 400+ million users by the end of 2012, which would definitely change the balance of force in the social media world.

At the same time, some SEO folks look at Google+ from a different perspective and believe that its impact on site rankings will only increase (especially with the recently introduced author tag), and, therefore, the social network should be taken seriously in any case.

Twitter

Craig Kilgore of Mainstreethost is certain that, despite becoming increasingly popular, Twitter will NOT reach the 7 billion users they have set as their goal for 2012. Just think about it, 7 billion people is actually the world’s population! Couldn’t agree more, Craig.

Content Marketing

This year, great content will be as important as ever. In the post-Panda SEO world, great content means more visitors, more time on site and lower bounce rates, which ultimately equals higher site rankings.

E-mail Marketing

In 2012, email marketing will remain vital. Better targeting and a more delicate approach to subscribers will be the trend, leaving the “batch-and-blast” method behind. So, leveraging such intelligence as products left in online shopping carts or abandoned subscription forms may become a norm.

Mobile Search

Due to intense iPhone and tablet sales, the number of mobile Web users has mushroomed over the past 2 years and is expected to surpass the number of PC Internet users by 2015. So, in 2012, optimizing websites for mobile users is likely to be on many SEO’s agenda.

Local Search

Chris “Silver” Smith of KeyRelevance is certain there are many more online resources that local businesses can leverage nowadays, which will most definitely lead to further growth of Local Search. Just think about Foursquare, a website that “helps one find the best in any area”, or the improvements Google is constantly making to Google Places and Google Maps.

Search Engine Ratings

AJ Kohn of Blind Five Year Old believes that DuckDuckGo will become the world’s 4th largest search engine, besting both Ask and AOL. We’ve already mentioned this young yet powerful search engine in our blog post called Vertical search engines: taking over search.

DuckDuckGo provides different thematic categories of search results, is significantly less commercialized than Google, and the relevance of the listings it returns is also quite impressive. So, if you have never tried using or optimizing for DuckDuckGo, it’s probably just the right time to check it out.

Anchor Texts

Multiple bloggers predict that anchor texts will play a significantly LESS important role in 2012. For example, consider the post by Zac Grace, in which he states that, in 2012, link building will have to look even more natural than before, since Google now seems to attach little to no value to links with many identical anchor texts.

SEO tools

SEO software provider Link-Assistant.Com predicts that SEO SpyGlass will become the most popular backlink checker, used by approximately 40% of SEO’s around the world. Backlink checkers have been in high demand lately, ever since the termination of the uber-popular and FREE online service, Yahoo! Site Explorer, which ceased to exist on November 21, 2011.

SEO certificates

There is likely to be a major breakthrough in SEO certification and standardization this year according to Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz. Quite a few companies provide SEO certificates for their trainees ALREADY, but there is no centralized program or common standards that have been agreed upon on either a national or an international level. Will that change in the nearest future? We shall see!
And what are your SEO predictions for 2012? Do share!

Is there a way out? Sure, there is. There are several simple techniques one can use to generate a virtually limitless number of blogging ideas. What’s important to understand is that A NEW IDEA IS NOT THE SUM TOTAL OF YOUR OLDER IDEAS, and the most unproductive way to create something new is just to reshuffle or amass something old, in a technical sort of way. While in fact, each new idea requires some creative thinking, a new twist and a fit of inspiration, I’d say.

So, let’s see what those creative thinking techniques are.

Different perspective = novelty

Which one do you see: a young or an old lady in the picture?

Sometimes, it’s all a matter of the perspective. Most things and concepts are multi-facet. So, by exploring new facets, you come up with new ideas.

Say, a hot topic has already been covered dozens of times on dozens of blogs in your niche. Well, so what? Has anyone considered looking at it from a completely different angle? In my experience, posts covering a hot trend often echo one another. So, find an interesting stance that no one has assumed yet and write about the subject from THAT perspective!

Dig deeper

Very often, it helps to look for scalable subtopics on the Web (or in real life). For example, there is a blog post that you liked. And there was one point in the post that was very interesting, but the blogger didn’t dwell on it too much and had not exhausted it completely. So, you’d like to add something.

Well, you could just leave a comment, or you could zoom on that particular point and turn your comment into a full-fledged blog post!

Leverage the power of association

Another thing about things and concepts is that, as a rule, they are interconnected. Think of it as the World Wide Web – a huge interlinked space with lots of hyperlinks leading from one webpage to another, etc.

I came up with lots of blog post ideas in the past JUST because of the things other authors had mentioned in their blog posts, often in passing. In most cases, there are many ways to navigate from the main topic and tap into another one connected with it. So, use such hints if you see them. The trick is not to overlook those possibilities.

Quite often, these would be little-explored or complicated topics that no one dares to go too deep into.

Make a U-turn

What happens if you turn the mug upside down? It does look different, doesn’t it? Sometimes, changing the polarity of the viewpoint brings forth a completely new idea.

Have you always believed that chocolate was good for the brain? Try looking at it from a diametrically opposed point of view. Could chocolate be harmful? Huh?

Get inspired – draw parallels

Think of something that you enjoy doing, something that fills your heart with joy and always puts you in a good mood. This could be a hobby or some small things that you fancy.

The point is to draw a parallel between the things that inspire you and the topic you’d like, or perhaps need, to blog about. Sometimes, brilliant ideas come out of things not connected with your professional life, for example, friends, family, hobbies or passions.

I have a friend who admires Brazil. She simply likes the culture, the people, the music – everything about this country. So, when she needed an idea for an advertising campaign, she made it Brazil-esque. Came out splendid, I must say.

Build up on non-verbal content

Sometimes, you may come across a really inspiring, niche-related image, video or infographic. In which case, don’t miss the opportunity to convert it into a blog post. There is nothing wrong with spreading the word and providing your own interpretation of it. Well, just remember to credit it the appropriate way.

The mistake that some people make is they assume that, beyond any doubt, everyone has already seen this awesome piece of content. Hence, there is no need to talk about it. Well, this is often not the case.

Seek and you shall find

The last tip I’d like to leave you with is to NEVER GIVE UP. One may argue that it should not be singled out as a separate creative thinking technique. However, I believe that inspiration plus zero hard work creates nothing.

As the French saying goes, “appetite comes with eating”. Same is true of creativity – it comes when you simply get down to the creative process. What I’m trying to say is that, perhaps, even with all the tips provided in the post in mind, you might not come up with tons of ideas right away. Let that not discourage you. Keep on using the techniques, and you shall succeed!

Google Base?

Many of you must have heard of Google Base. As Google is keen on restructuring and renaming its different services – what used to be called Google Base is now called Google Merchant Center. The service allows business owners to create listings of their products that will later appear on Google Product Search and will be included into Google’s Shopping search results.

Google Product Search and Google Shopping

Just to make things clear for you: Google Product Search is Google’s database of different products that are submitted by merchants through the Google Merchant Center. If you search the database for a particular item, the results will get displayed in Google’s Shopping search results.
Another thing is when those Shopping results (just the top 3 listings) get incorporated into Everything search results on Google.com if Google considers them relevant for a particular query. However, this feature that is called Local Shopping (Google serves you items that are being sold in your country) is only available to merchants targeting the following countries – the U.S., U.K., Japan, Germany, and France.

Google Checkouts

Another major service that should be considered in regards to Google Shopping is Google Checkouts – a popular Google-powered shopping cart platform that, in addition to being a shopping cart, also allows users to review products and services.

Why bother optimizing for Google Shopping?

All in all, Google Shopping is not as popular with SEO-optimizers as Google Places, so, some SEO’s do not even bother optimizing for Google Shopping.
However, we believe that, in the nearest future, Google Products search will become more widely used than it is used now. What points to that?
-Google Products homepage has been recently redesigned and now offers one to compare different categories of products in a hit, contains snippets from Google Catalogs and Google Offers, has a “Popular This Week” section and other sections.

-Google has just launched the much talked-about Google Wallet. Google Wallet makes shopping easier than it has ever been before. It’s now unclear how Google Wallet will interact other Google’s services, but Google have already said it is possible that, in the future, “receipts, boarding passes and tickets will all be seamlessly synced to your Google Wallet.” Why not expect Google to incorporate Google Product Search into Google Wallet as well?

Where do I start?

So, say, there is something that you’d like to promote on Google Shopping. Where do you start? First off, you need to set up a Google Merchant Center account.

1. Get an account with Google Merchant Center

Here is where you can sign up for a Google Merchant Center account.

You have to provide:

• Website URL (needs to be verified and claimed)
• Store name (must conform to the service’s guidelines)
• Business name and address
• Country and region of your business (cannot be changed later)
• Contacts

You can also get a multi-client account (for big e-commerce portals), in which case each vendor will be able to have a distinct store name and URL. You can request a multi-client- account here.

To find out whether Google Product Search and Google’s Local Shopping is available for the country/countries you are targeting, have a look at the following chart:

Please, note that to make your products appear in Google’s Local Shopping results, your business has to be listed on Google Places.

*A tip for those targeting the countries where Google Product Search is not available yet – optimize for Google Images! Ranking highly in the Images search results can attract lots of customers to your site.

2. Prepare product data feeds

A product data feed is a structured description of your product that’s normally submitted in a particular format. First, make sure that the products you’d like to submit are eligible for submission. Then, check for the requirements to product listings in specific countries.

When preparing your product feed, fill out as many fields as you can. It is believed that the more information you provide about a product, the better it will rank on Google Shopping. Now, some things to pay attention to:

• You can target several countries. The target country is specified right in your feed. Please, do not confuse the country/countries you are targeting with the country your business is associated with (this one is specified while signing up for a Google Merchant Center account).
• You are not allowed to use redirects or pop-ups on the landing page associated with the product you are submitting
• On the landing page associated with your product, the submitted product must stand out
• No promotional language is allowed in a data feed
• It’s recommended to use your main branded or your main non-branded keyword in your product’s title, if appropriate
• Remember to make your product’s description keyword-rich (but not keyword-stuffed!)
• The price on the landing page has to be equal to the price in your feed

3. Submit your product data feeds to Google Merchant Center

For that you need to upload your feeds through your Google Merchant Center account. It’s recommended to upload a test feed first, and then submit a regular product data feed for review.
Also, Google says that it may take several weeks for first-time feeds to go live in the search results if you are submitting them to other locales than the U.S., U.K. and Germany.

Here are some product data feed requirements to help you upload your feeds without errors.

4. Add Google Checkouts to your site

If possible, integrate http://checkout.google.com/seller/integrate.html your site with Google Checkouts. As I said above, it is Google-powered shopping cart software. Well, what does it do for your site? First, if your site accepts Google Checkouts, a small blue shopping cart icon will be appearing right next to your listing in Google’s Shopping search results. This may boost your conversions substantially.

However, the biggest advantage of Google Checkouts is that, once a shopper places an order, Google sends them an invitation to review the seller.
Also, here is what Google charges you for using the service.

5. Get rated and reviewed

Getting ratings and reviews of your products is key to higher Google Shopping rankings. Google considers ratings/reviews from Google Checkouts and other third-party sites, such as ResellerRatings.com,TrustPilot.com, Epinions.com, BizRate.com or RateItAll.com, to give your listing a particular ranking.

Snippets of those ratings/reviews are displayed along with your product, and its average rating is calculated. However, for your product’s rating to EVEN APPEAR on Google Shopping, it needs to have at least 30 unique reviews, associated with your store name and the name of your domain.

What if someone posts a review that does not sound fair at all? Unfortunately, you can’t reply to reviews right on Google Product Search. But you can contact the rating/review site in question. If the review gets removed, it might take some time for the changes to be visible on Google Shopping.

6. Track clicks and impressions

Within your Google Merchant Center account, you can see the number of impressions and clicks each of your product listings receives.

7. Update your product info at least once in 30 days

Thing is, all your products expire after 30 days. So, a product data feed for each product needs to be submitted as least once every 30 days.

Other useful resources to check out:
Google’s E-commerce YouTube Channel
Google’s Commerce Blog.

Well, guys, this is NOT just another post that gives you tips like, oh, you gotta make your site unique, make it stand out, be passionate about what you do, yada yada.
What it IS about is a life-changing, revolutionary idea by Simon Sinek that I’d like to share. It will virtually transform your business, and, by doing that, will ultimately change your life.

Like all genius ideas, it’s plain simple. And it’s not based on anybody’s years of experience as the head of the marketing department, and not even on human psychology – it’s based on BIOLOGY.

Why do you do what you do?

One day, it simply dawned on Simon Sinek that what made all uber-successful brands uber-successful was one simple thing – they were not selling WHAT they did, they were selling WHY they did it.
Let me explain. The part of your brain responsible for rational thinking is called the neo-cortex. This is what the brands that sell WHAT they do appeal to – they appeal to your reason. They advertise their products’ advantages, features, and so on and so forth.

Now, the limbic part in the human brain is responsible for emotions and behavior. And emotions are something that DRIVES us in life, something that actually makes us do things. And it is to this part of the brain that companies that sell WHY they do what they do appeal.

So, Simon Sinek pictured in his mind the “golden circle” of success that shows how different companies function. Thing is that most companies and individuals know WHAT they do and HOW they do it, but very few realize WHY they do it.

First, state your cause

So, here is the most important part of Simon’s concept:

Communicating from the inside out of the circle, instead of communicating from the outside in, makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE!

In other words, first you tell people WHY you do what you do, and then you talk about HOW you do it, and WHAT it is that you actually offer.

This is what makes really outstanding companies and individuals really outstanding. This is what makes Apple fans wait on the line for 18 hours to get the new iPad, while many people believe that Dell makes just as great computers as Apple.

It’s just that when you look at apple.com, you see that Apple talk about WHY they do what they do FIRST, and only THEN they tell you what’s in it for you.

Can you see through their cause? They are set to change your entire computer experience. This is their goal. Does it resonate with what you’d like? If it does – get yourself a Mac!

Now, let’s see how many online business have their cause stated. Actually, not that many. It’s quite rare that you see a website with the company’s motto clearly spelled out.

However, here are some examples. The Tropical Rays Tanning homepage:

The Aggressive Marine group:

Well, I personally think that by simply saying, oh, we are passionate about what we do, you don’t achieve much. You must put some blood and sweat and tears into working out your motto. Only then will it work to attract like-minded people. And those will be your most loyal customers!

Moreover, they’ll spread the word. Thing is, the WHAT-sites need to promote what they do, while the WHY-sites promote themselves.

Still missing your WHY? It’s never too late to add it to your site – and rule them all!

So, what’s the fastest SEO software?

The tests prove SEO PowerSuite (the just-out high speed version of the toolkit) an absolute SEO tools market leader in work speed, productivity and results accuracy.

Here’s just a brief summary table of the testing. Read on to see how the testing went on.

*WebCEO, AWR: Multiple dynamic URLs mistakenly treated as different pages.

Speed Testing Workflow

To get the most accurate results, we’ve carried out the testing on a just installed shining-new Windows 7 Professional OS.

Besides, to ensure equal entry conditions, we used a quick, fresh proxy for each of the tests run on each of the tools. As IBP uses Internet Explorer to access search engines, proxy settings for all IBP tests were entered through this browser.

So, check out what the comparison has shown.

P.S. As not all the tested tools provide you with time stats and results count, we had to time their work with external time keeping tools and count the number of results manually. That is why proof screenshot were provided only where it’s possible.

Test 1. Rank checking with default settings

The first test compares rank checking speed.

Using each SEO tool, we’ve checked website rankings for 50 keywords in 3 search engines. The safety settings (such as proxy rotation or delays between search engine queries) where left untouched – in their default state.

Click to view detailed comparison results

Test 1.1. Rank checking with minimum safety features

In the second part of rank checking speed test, we’re using each SEO tool to check website rankings for 50 keywords in 3 search engines once again. Yet this time the safety settings in each tool were minimized to increase the check speed.

Click to view detailed comparison results

Test 2. Backlink research: speed + number of found backlinks

In the third test, we’ve charged each tool with finding the maximum possible number of backlinks pointing to a website. The search safety settings were left unchanged.

Click to view detailed comparison results

Test 3. Website structure analysis: speed + number of pages

The last test deals with checking website structure; this means that each SEO tool was to find all pages of a given website in the minimum possible time. Market Samurai and IBP SEO software have no such functionality at all, so the test was run for SEO PowerSuite’s WebSite Auditor, WebCEO and Advanced Web Ranking. The search safety settings were left unchanged.

Click to view detailed comparison results

To sum it up

So, as the testing proves, SEO PowerSuite:

• Checks rankings faster than any of the 4 other tested tools
• Proves the most resistant against search engine blocks
• Collects the biggest number of backlinks in the shortest time
• Provides the most accurate site structure analysis in the shortest time

Now, as you know, for the sake of fair testing all checks were run on special equal conditions. The test passed, but what results can the just-revealed leader show you in real life, without testing restrictions? The exhibition tests show, for instance, that checking your site’s rankings for 50 keywords in 3 search engines (which is up to 1500 times to address the search engines) with new high-speed SEO PowerSuite can take as little as 43 seconds. Believe it or not, but that is the truth:

Hey, guys, in case you missed our first affiliate marketing post, here is the link. In Part 1, we spoke about different ways of choosing a nice partnership program to make money with. In this post, we’ll discuss basic Web marketing techniques that help you succeed.

There are tons of affiliate marketers online talking about their experiences and sharing success stories. But, no affiliate marketing campaign is like another. Thus, we decided to provide distilled piece of advice extracted from multiple case studies and our own affiliate marketing experience in one single post. Ready? Let’s kick off.

Look at the product through the client’s eyes

Before you start selling anything online, do get to know your product. Consider it from the customer’s perspective, that is, see what it can do for them. Take notes of your findings (since later you may forget quite obvious things) – you will need them for your reviews, comparison charts, discussions, etc.

By the way, savvy affiliate marketers recommend going for something material to market, rather than information. Because the Web is sort of choke-full of free info nowadays, so, it’s hard to sell people more of it. But, hey, it’s up to you what to market.

Build a site

A lot of associates create so-called partner sites where they advertise different products or services. Of course, it requires certain skill to create one, but, it’s not that hard, after all. You might want to use WordPress to set up a blog or a site, since it’s quite easy to master, and it offers many affiliate marketing-friendly WordPress plugins. For example, 123Linkit Affiliate Marketing Tool helps you create pretty-looking redirects, offers nice stats, and more. Besides, there are a lot of adsense-ready WordPress themes that already have special slots allocated for your ads. Check out StudioPress, Amazing Grace or LightWord.

Once you get a site (or a blog), employ different online promotion techniques, such as SEO, PPC advertising, and some others to make it popular with Web users.

Write product reviews

Write a review of the product you market. You can then post it on review sites or on your own site. Provide an affiliate link whether in the body of your review or immediately after it – whatever looks more natural. Reviews tend to perform very well, because people who read them are, as a rule, much further in their buying cycle. You can also review a couple of products side by side to sound more convincing and objective.

Comment on blogs and forums

Leave comments on related blogs/forums and stick a link in those comments. There is a proper way to do it that is not pushy and inspires users to click on your link. Make sure your comments are helpful and tactful, and really contribute to the discussion.

Get coupon codes

Keep track of seasonal sales in your merchant’s company and feature those offers on your site. Moreover, you can get discount coupons for different products (or even your partner’s product) from special coupon sites and put them up on your resource. Such offers work fantastically! For example, here is the affiliate offer from coupons.com – a major coupon distribution site.

Content comes first

They say “content is king”. This is true not only of SEO or article marketing but also of affiliate marketing. Even if you manage to bring visitors to your site or somebody sees your review online, it will fall on deaf ears in case it’s of poor quality. Thus, focus on creating catchy, well written, high quality content and it will inspire online folks to surf your resource, link to it and, ultimately, buy your product. Use viral marketing to attract visitors and get lots of “Shares” and “Likes” for your site.

Catch that eye

Images normally catch one’s eye better than text. Thus, a lot of affiliate marketers recommend attaching your affiliate links to images on your site. As experience shows, those get clicked on much more often and convert better.

If you push, you lose

The art of getting people to click on your link lies in NOT being overly pushy. When visitors come to your site and get slammed with an offer right away – this is likely to put them off. Don’t you dislike those sites with pop-up offers that appear as soon as you “land” on their homepage? It’s better if your offer is carefully camouflaged with high-quality, gripping content that you put your heart into creating. Even though an online marketer can normally recognize the true purpose of an affiliate marketing article or a post, it’s still delightful to see how delicately some authors break their offers to prospects.

Do email marketing

A very smart way to do email marketing is to prepare a really nice offer that users can’t refuse (for example, a free application, a bonus or a discount) and email it to all the prospects on your email list. What you do is you provide an affiliate link in the email that you send. Intrigued by your offer, recipients will click on your link to learn more – which is just what you want them to do.

Try and err

Before you succeed in your affiliate marketing campaign, there is likely to be a lot of tweaking of your site and exploring various promotional channels on your part. Since, you never know what is going to work for a particular product. So, use Web analytics tools to see what’s working out on your site and what’s not. Check out what areas of your website visitors click on, what links they follow, what anchor texts perform better – all that stuff.

Also, don’t get stuck with one product, promote a couple of products at ones or substitute the product that’s not working out with something else.

Be near and dear

One more key to successful associate marketing is to be open, outgoing and available for your site’s visitors who might want to contact you or simply learn more about you. If you have a blog, write a nice “About” section and put up a picture of yourself on your homepage. Same goes for your site. Reply to other people’s comments on your blog. In a word, build a relationship with your audiences and that will definitely pay off. Also, the more people know about you, the more they trust you.

Pile that cash

Have been following all the tips and using all the tricks provided here? Now prepare to pile all that cash… Well, perhaps not, because if you just started, you are not likely to see substantial results just yet. And maybe even not this month, because affiliate marketing takes time to succeed in. But once it starts really working, it can be making you money even without you taking part in the process or putting any effort in it.

Have we missed any other associate marketing techniques that you know? Do tell us!

The way affiliate programs work is quite simple. You become a company’s associate, and they provide you with a unique link to their site, which you place on your site, blog or wherever it is you want to put it. Whenever a user clicks on that unique link, it sends a tracking cookie to his or her browser. The tracking cookie is then used to track site visits, sales or recurring sales (depending on a program) back to you. That’s it.

Is there money in affiliate programs? Oh, yeah, definitely! But the amount of money you make will depend on the niche you choose and the Web marketing techniques you implement. So, in “Making Money with Affiliate Programs Part 1″ we’ll talk about picking an associate marketing program that best suits your needs and abilities. While in “Making Money with Affiliate Programs Part 2″ we’ll dwell on effective affiliate marketing techniques that help you make the big bucks. Ok, let’s get started.

Be specific

The first thing to remember while choosing an affiliate marketing niche is that you can:

A. Pick a niche that matches your current website/blog’s topic (if you already have one)

B. In case you don’t have a site yet, pick a theme you are passionate about, so that it’s easy for you to set up a partner site around it. For example, if you’re into wind surfing, you can start blogging about it and advertise an online store that sells surf boards.

Be different

There is also a totally different approach to choosing an affiliate marketing niche, which is to concentrate on no niche at all. The essence of this approach (which is relatively new and trendy) is to set up a partner site that dwells on a million different issues and make it shine. This way you can advertise anything you please, from surf boards to Santa stockings, depending on a season and your mood.

For example, here is a curious case study by Matt Carter in which he describes a really cool website that does not focus on any specific niche, but gets floods of traffic and works as an effective partner site.

Now, let us see what resources you can implement to do affiliate marketing niche research. Let’s start from the very beginning.

The founding fathers

Amazon.com is called the granddad of affiliate marketing. Launched in 1996, their associate program has largely defined the model for subsequent partnership programs. Although Amazon.com was not the first company to come up with an associate program, their affiliate marketing campaign was the most successful one at that time and inspired other companies to follow their footsteps. One of the main reasons for Amazon.com’s success is that they sell a really wide range of products, so it’s quite easy for a partner to choose one that suits the theme of his/her blog or site.

Just for the record, Cybererotica and CDNow were offering similar partnership programs even before Amazon.Com, but they never enjoyed substantial popularity and were quickly forgotten.

Affiliate program giants

The first affiliate program giant that comes to mind is, probably, Google Adsense. However, it’s quite a crowded place, therefore some folks avoid it. Anyhow, there can be money in Google Adsense, just like in any affiliate program. All you have to do is understand the specifics of the offer you are signing up for. Advertising with Google Adsense can be a hit-and-miss affair. The trick is to choose advertisers who spend decent money on PPC. However, these are likely to reside in highly competitive niches, so, it’s up to you to decide whether you can pull it off or not.
Other affiliate program giants are Ebay, Overstock and some others.

Affiliate program directories

Affiliate program directories are like online reference books that list affiliate programs, their terms and conditions, as well as popular affiliate networks (read on to find out more about these). The biggest ones at the moment are AssociatePrograms.com, JamAffiliates.com and AffiliateSeeking.com. AssociatePrograms.com is one of the oldest affiliate program directories and offers a nice affiliate marketing blog where one can finds plenty of helpful Web marketing tips on all matters associate marketing-related.

Affiliate networks

One more place where you can look for partnership programs is affiliate networks. They serve as intermediaries between companies and associates. Not all companies can manage their affiliates all by themselves, because it’s pretty hard to develop one’s own platform to track sales, pay out commissions, etc. So what some of them do is they outsource affiliate management and hire a third-party company to take care of their affiliates, that is, a professional affiliate network/platform. Affiliate networks offer an extensive database of affiliates and help merchants manage their affiliate partners.

Popular affiliate networks include:

• Commission Junction
• Affiliate.com
• ClickBank
• Share a Sale
• Affiliate Window
• LinkShare and others.

Traditionally hot niches

Niches that traditionally attract affiliates are online retailers, gambling, dating and adult sites. The niches on the rise are travel, mobile phone and finance services. Well, of course, it’s up to you to decide what affiliate program to choose, but it’s best to stay away from shady-looking businesses, such as online stores that sell fake designer shades, watches, handbags, etc.
Many folks think that, if the company does not use an affiliate platform and manages its affiliate network all by itself – it’s likely to cheat you or underpay you commission. This is not always true, but still could be a red flag, especially if the company is relatively small.

Other ways to look for partner programs

In order to explore other possible niches to tap into, just search for “affiliate program”, “associate program”, “partnership/partner program”, “make money with” or similar word combinations online. Companies that offer affiliate programs would normally have a link on their site under a similar name.

By the way, since we’re also talking SEO on this blog, a really nice SEO partnership program that we recommend is the Link-Assistant.Com’s Affiliate Partnership Program. Do check it out if you are anything related to SEO.

Ok, these were different ways to choose a niche to start with your affiliate marketing. Just explore the resources provided in this post – and start making your first bucks! We’ll continue our affiliate marketing discussion with the second post in these series. Stay tuned!

• Personalization and localization of search
• Increasing aggressiveness of PPC ads
• The emergence of Universal Search
• More factors influencing conversion

Well, there are still top executives who think Google Toolbar PageRank matters. But, for those not stuck in the Stone Age, the new approach to SEO includes more emphasis on analytical data and less emphasis to purely SEO metrics. What does it mean for SEOs?

Rankings are still important, because, no matter what, you still need to know where your site ranks. But they are now only a transitional metric that should be taken into account along with other important statistical data. What is this other data? First you need to evaluate traffic sources performance. Second, you should estimate your page’s performance. Consider the number of real visitors to your site, the time they spend on your site, as well as conversion/bounce rates.

Let’s take a look at the conversion funnel scheme:

As you see, there is so much more to modern-day SEO than website rankings. Now, do SEOs pay enough attention to analytical data? Well, they should, because…

You gotta see that bottom line

Most senior managers would now expect SEOs to demonstrate how SEO helps increase their revenue. As companies now spend more money on SEO, they want to know where this money is going. So, more and more SEOs have been shifting their attention from purely SEO metrics to business metrics.

To put it simple, nowadays, you have to look at the bottom line of your SEO efforts, which is ROI (Return On Investment), since this is what your employers will worry about. It may not be your responsibility to estimate ROI, but you have to build that bridge between SEO metrics and business analytics, see how they are related and explain it in your reports.

Another important reason you need that analytical data is that it will help you maximize the effectiveness of your SEO efforts. As was said before, analytical data is now as important as it has never been before.

Track all you can

The more data you can lay your hands on, the more targeted your SEO becomes. Without having certain metrics at hand, you are missing out on some big opportunities out there. The thing is that the Web has changed. Before, there was (1) less competition, (2) fewer ranking factors, (3) basically no personalization, (4) fewer factors influencing conversion, etc. Before, it was enough to just throw in a couple of keywords, get a few backlinks, and win. While now, this doesn’t work any longer.

So, the more cards you bring to the table, the better your chances. For example, years ago websites had text and perhaps some images on them – not so many factors influenced conversion. Nowadays, it’s not that easy to figure out what may have an effect on your conversion rates. People are now used to seeing video demos on almost every site they visit. They expect a brand to have a Facebook account, a help forum, and what not. Thus, nowadays, it’s harder to predict what they might like or not like. And, here is when analytics come into play.

Thus, track all you can. Set up every possible tag in your Google Analytics account (or any other Web analytics tool). Just a few tips:

Differentiate between branded VS non-branded search terms

Why would you want to do that? Because, as a rule, branded keywords convert better. Because branded terms are easier to rank high for – sometimes even a couple of internal links from other pages will do. And, in any case, it’s best to have 2 sets of reports: one for branded terms, the other one for non-branded ones.

Make use of long-tail keywords

Some niches are so competitive, it’s next to impossible to get anywhere Google’s top 10. In this case, optimizing for long-tail phrases could be more effective than trying to elbow out all those competitors for your hottest search terms.

But even if your niche is not that competitive, it is still well worth tapping into the opportunities long-tail keywords hold. So, don’t simply ignore them like some SEOs do.

Find out what users do on your site

Employ all the available resources to get maximum insight into what visitors do on your website – where they look, where they click, what offers they check out, etc. This is important because user behavior is the critical part of the conversion funnel (see above).

To track user behavior, you can use Google Analytics, website heat maps, split testing, browser cookies, and a multitude of other tools and techniques. The thing is, the more parameters you measure, the less you have to guess what’s working and what’s not working on your site.

Double-check and triple-check

As for how often one should look at that analytics, I would say, do it all the time. In fact, you should collect different analytical data about your site prior to doing any SEO on it. This way you will be able to relate changes in analytical data to your SEO efforts. And, before starting with your SEO, set a definite objective, that is, the end results you would like to get. Because, for one website, the end result would be an online purchase, for another website, this would be a phone call or a visit to the store, etc.

Also, remember, that SEO takes time to pay off. So, don’t expect to see immediate results of your work, but rather look at longer time spans. This will allow you to see the full picture. Because there are such things as seasonal fluctuations in traffic, seasonal interest in certain products, etc.

In any case, the more metrics you collect, the better. Sometimes minor tweaks may have a big effect on the overall efficiency of your SEO campaign. And, even though the recommendations provided here should be taken with a grain of salt, if used right, business metrics can be an effective weapon that allows you to drive your SEO campaign forward.