The main reason behind this hiatus was my desire to focus on family issues as well as investing a lot of energy and resources in consolidating my positions/rankings and developing tools and practices for my SEO company. Two month ago, my hunger to develop sites returned. I started to take on more clients and continue with working on some big projects that have been ongoing for last 3 -4 years.

Manual Penalty..

You may also recall, that My blog picked up a manual penalty. It initially came about with me and a friend testing various services and to see how and what triggered a penalty.  But good news is that the Penalty is now removed. What did I do to remove my Manual Penalty (which was about unnatural link building) will be something I intend to describe in the upcoming posts.

Internet Marketing Today

I am a big fan of  The Oat Meal. I saw a while back a sketch that really resonated with me, it really is the way internet is heading now, you can find this here:- How to get more facebook likes . There have always been people who claim to know the answer and have sold services that work/semi work etc. But what annoys me most if why people dont actually analyse and think exactly why they are doing what they are doing!

During my break I got the chance to read, and really take time to know what is going on in the world of internet marketing today. With every update more and more people are dropping internet marketing as a way to make full time living. The influx of new people joining is steady, however the bar for making internet marketing a full time success is so high that it is next to impossible if you dont have the right skill set, and finances.

Services

I decided to look at my Paypal accounts and go through everything for the last 2 years. I wanted to figure out what I had invested and what the outcome of that investment was.

Being a strong believer in testing, I wanted to see how much of my investment on testing has actually yielded results. In the last 2 years I have tried exactly 1124 different services, from various forums and internet. From those I subscribe to 11 on a monthly basis. After ordering each package/work/promise of unheard of riches , I usually give two weeks after the order is delivered to see if there has been an impact. If the impact is positive (position movement of +5 or more) then its assigned a weighting. Weighting scales reflect the ranking position. So a movement of 5 to 4 carries more weight then 30 to 25.

From the 1124 services, I found 21 services that worked!  21!!! that is a pitiful figure. Especially considering the amount invested, I have less then 1.86% return on my investment. Though sometimes it is more important to figure out what is NOT working.

Plans on 2013 and beyond

One of the biggest changes has been me opening and closing offices around the world. I opened an office in Manila (Philippines) a while ago and was very excited, but in all honesty it was the single biggest mistake of my internet marketing career. I found that the skill force on offer there was mainly geared toward Data Entry, and robotic tasks. The development and coding skills were not to my level. It made running an office very expensive, and I made the tough decision to close it down in Nov 2012.

Since then, with the expansion of my SEO agency I am in the process of opening offices in Dubai, Morocco and New York. At the moment lease papers for the offices in Dubai are signed Staff has been hired and work begun. These are mainly sales offices, to give me a presence in the sector. Manned by local project managers and few workers. Dubai office has space for 30 employees, right not I only have 10. More importantly I can only afford 10 at the moment.

Finding enough new clients will be a bigger challenge, especially as the Dubai office is intended to attach the Chinese and Indian Markets. The Scope for any good SEO is immense especially in these countries, as they are just used to spammy techniques that semi work. My agency is not and will never be the cheapest one on the market, however we certainly are one of the most effective ones.

For anyone thinking of doing the same, the process is really really arduous. Aspects like:-

1. IT Equipment (spare laptops etc)

2. Mobile Islands for your nomad workers

3. Really nice Conference rooms

4. Amazing Reception Area, fully stocked!

There just is sooo much, in a business where appearance is everything. I was approached by a prospective client who is extremely well known in Travel and Tourism Sector, they had just done a relaunch of their new site and paid few companies to do SEO reports/proposals for them. Since the launch they have also tried a few of these companies and they came to be desperate, as their ranking were more or less the same.

They hired me as an independent consultant, and one thing that was extremely obvious was the lack of knowledge! This company SEO monthly budge is high 5 figures, and as a competitor analysis they were given yahoo explore links (back when it was live!!) 75 page report was misinformed at best and at mostly worst completely wrong!! The keyword research was done using padded numbers, from broad match. So the company was thinking one keyword will bring them 630K Visitors a month, in reality it would only be 12K maximum!!

I always until recently believed in the quality of work speaking for itself, but after my consultancy was also snubbed by another prospective client. I realized that there is a place for flashy graphics and little things like watermarked paper with embossed logos. Mainly because this kind of stuff impresses the managerial types, who need to see pretty pictures. So I will now be getting those done!

As with anything, learning from what failed is what will define a good business model (especially true if you have the luxury to take a few hits and walk away).

Personal Development

Personally, apart from reading and coding I have not really don’t much. Though this year I have set myself a target for getting a  few certifications under my belt. Things like Adwords Certifications, are on top of my list. I will also be splitting this blog into few separate heading, the architecture will look similar to the following:-

SEO

PPC

Conversation Rate Optimization (what is the Acronym for this??)

I have in the past week or so done the number and thought heavily about moving into APPS (both iphone and Android). I have about 4 great ideas for APPS that seem to fill a market, and at least two of these will allow me to establish sites as a brand even further. This is also my Challenge for this year, to make 10K (PROFIT) from APPS and digital media.

Quick notes

Though this blog has never really been about making money from you lot. I have been blessed to be in a situation where I make a comfortable living online, I want to help. So if you have any thought and direction please let me know, either via comments section or through contact me page.

Life in 2013 is a post from: Mansoor Affiliate Marketing Blog

No related posts.

I have also find that my inability to let go, and trying to micro mange everything is directly promotional to my stress level. I try and check everything that my employees do. However i found initially this was OK, but now not soo much.

This was bound to happen right, these algorithmic updates seem to be more and more heavily biased towards “brands” and it seems that Google is heavily modifying the playing filed so only with the deepest pockets and through knowledge of SEO survive.

Can Internet Marketing Earn Sustainable Cash?

Short answer yes, and long one is one where careful analysis is needed to actually determine if the effort is worth the reward, and the risks are involved. no longer is it true that an authority site wont be hit. They do get hit and are getting hit. I had one wonderful authority site, with over 1000 pages of content each atleast over 800 words, brought down with the latest updates, the site was a affiliate site moving slowly toward being a brand. going from just over 1500 visitors a day to 85 visitors a day leaves a bitter taste to say the least. This particular site has  has 119 number one spots in Google UK 85 number one spots in Google USA and many more like this. All places being dropped min of 5 but maximum of 10 places (with no message in the WMT, is something that is not acceptable)

What is an affiliate to do?

Not much at the moment, there are black hat techniques that are working at the moment, and with black hat you are always having to stay one step ahead of the game, it very tiresome, also constant investment is needed. In my opinion Black hat only works in extremely profitable sectors like loans, insurance, pron, and gambling. The site lifespan will be in the region of 3 months. These are the only sectors where a 3 months tint at number one in google will pay/be worth the effort of going balck hat and working.

One thing that is DEFINITELY working

Gust post, these are great. Especially when they are on worthwhile and long established blogs. Blogs that are an authority in your area, and are there to help the user. Place where there is natural traffic. I firmly believe that Google is now  also looking at the rankings of the page that is giving out the link, how visible is it in search engine. Do people read it? If its going on an obscure article directory, is anyone actually going to read this article.

Other Key Points to Take away from the October Updates

• Pr (page rank) is actually now getting a bit (note i said a bit) more inline with the strength of the links.
• Number of links is NOT the deciding factor (it was not so, for the last year anyway)
• Traffic of the Page is more important
• Relevance of the Page is very important
• Relevance of the domain, or domain intent is also worth while factor. Its not a deciding factor in my opinion but an every growing one. For example i am seeing that sites that scrape material. Say that the domains is bout pharma goods, but publishes articles about kids toys. There is no correlation, and hence i have notice these links are producing less and less value. More over, this “worth” is not changing even if a lot of relevant links is point to the pharma site, or page on the pharma site that contain links to your site.

All the above changes have meant in concept at least only authority sites are getting promoted. However as its an algorithm the triggering filter for each of these is very arbitrary. This is the reason why I am convinced with enough care and money invested that I can still continue to make 5 figures or more a month from Marketing.

Diversifying

Regular readers know that I am all about diversification.  It has been this diversification that has helped me stay kind of ahead for the last 4 years. Most are aware that I now have my own SEO agency, and this has taken off quiet well.  This agency has now I am very proud to announce a full media department (consisting of two people lol)  where we use online news as leverage to get our selves or our client news into “main stream” printed news.

I am also busy building relationship with clients, however this month I am culling the client portfolio mainly due to funding issues. I think by January I will cut my client load to half.  As bad as it sounds I will only work with clients with adequate funding and willingness to do the work.  I am keeping my very old clients, though they pay little but they were my first clients and I am not ready to let them go just yet.  Besides ranking locally is soooo very easy.

My diversification has been especially focused on new areas/sectors to sink my teeth into, especially keen to try areas which have a online and offline physical flavor to it as well.  I have also notice that taking a dedicated effort to rank in Bing is also really worthwhile, though its harder as it takes a lot to push into Bing, however good thing is once there it does not go away..

Google Disavow Tool

Are you getting on board? NO for me, I don’t see why we should tell google what we think are spammy links. Very hard to do with sites that have over 100K links!! To be honest i don’t even know how the mechanics and impact of this is? For example Webmaster A files a complaint/reports a link on an article directory (which he was responsible and worked hard to place) on that page are three other links to other sites. Does the page in its entirety gets devalued? Is it link specific? Is it algorithm dependent (got to be right)?  There are just too many variables for this.

To top this off good will is in short supply towards google, especially after the recent traps set by Google , after they blanket sent mass link warnings to thousands of webmasters. People who panicked and replied were whacked, those who kept quiet were ok after one or two months!!

Algorithmic Updates and Culling the Herd.. is a post from: Mansoor Affiliate Marketing Blog

No related posts.

Thanks!!! (now go an read my new article below!!!)

Link Request Removal is a post from: Mansoor Affiliate Marketing Blog

Related posts:

1. Seo Link Monster Review Avoid at all cost

One of the highlighting areas that I gathered from the survey was that a huge majority of you wanted this blog to be updated more regularly. And this is an extremely fair point, so here goes:-

SEO is Getting harder…

Unless you have been living under a rock you know this already, SEO is harder but what things do webmaster have to do differently now vs to “the good old days”. Not only that what aspects are not working now? I have been doing a LOT of research and trying desperately to keep up with a lot of these developments, and the following is an synopses (and yes though its long it’s only the summary believe it or not!!) of that research.

The good Old Days

Here is a list of things that are now out of fashion, due to them either being directly penalized or with the threat of it looming much like the threat of the blog networks was looming.

-Keyword stuffing content
-site wide footer links (I know you are going to give examples of it still working but this is definitely on its way down)
-Embedding links in Widgets (damn this used to be one of my primary methods!!)
-Huge scale article spinning (WP robot anyone)
-Comment Spam (when was the last time you ranked a new site with comment spam, Scrape box anyone?)
-Mass Directory listings (depends on what you mean by mass, and depends on what purpose you use it for so put this in a maybe pile)
-Paid networks..(will duh….)

All the above were designed to be workarounds for google ranking algorithms, as the algorithms get smarter so should you..
SEO Task List (Encore)

Site Speed..

Regular reader/s know that I have been harping on about site speed for a long time, please read (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html) and section where they now categorically say site speed is a factor in search engine rankings, is it a huge ranking factor then my research shows no, but is it a factor definitely.

I also happen to think there is some for of varying scale here if you have a site that is built for content and not a scraper site then you will invest in its speed and hosting especially if you go over 1000 pages etc, so I think site speed becomes more critical with more pages you have (just my gut feeling really). Consider site speed now, especially if you are thinking along the lines of authority sites. Some of the non Google alternatives in site speed are:-

• YSlow by Yahoo (plugin or command line)
• WebPageTest.org (visual graph of load times by element)

Brand anyone?

Smaller sites are out….really, well no but to make a smaller site “algorithm proof” you will have to invest in a lot of content and a lot of work more specifically lot of money. Building a brand brings with it some recognized authority, and feeling of familiarity with our prospective clients (something that just can not be underestimated) .

Obviously the bad part is that if you have done poor link building or you think that creating a press release (of I have a press release service now don’t you know!!) is the only things you need to do to create a brand, then this is a losing battle anyway.

As my Seo consultancy has evolved I am exposed to bigger clients with bigger budgets and few with entire departments of PR people (and by department I don’t mean the owner or his cousin sitting around and calling themselves head of pr! )

At this moment I would say if I had an EMD vs a Brand I will go after the Brand EVERYTIME, its just gives me more flexibility, period. The above task is so easy to say “go and build a brand” but how difficult is it to achieve? And more importantly how difficult is it to achieve based on a small budget!! The answer un surprisingly is very and almost impossible.

If you are thinking about brands then read the following:-

http://www.seobook.com/potential-brand-signals
http://www.seobook.com/learn-seo/infographics/brand-branding-brands.php
http://www.cision.com/ (if you have the money and resources!!)
VOCUS (PRweb owners..)

If you are in the brand business, or thinking of taking the leap then I can not stress enough how important it really is to be media savy, to understand really what it takes to get your news and make it go viral. If you can make one story go viral, and repeat the process then you have done most of the hard work. Unsurprisingly media relations and PR executives are the highest paid individuals in a given company, I am now working with several firms with their own Pr Executives and I a gaining new appreciation of what they do and how much time it really takes to make one story go viral. A good Pr executive is worth their weight in goal, and learning what they do and how they do it will help anyone market any site GURANTEED.

Not everything is news worthy, and if you are selling motor oil, then having a facebook page on the stuff does not really make sense. I could do ahead and populate it with 15K face book likes and 4K followers, but is there any need? NO

There are two ways to be a brand, one is to go viral which is the most difficult and time consuming to achieve, and this produces the most long term effects. The other is of course link building lol.. and I laugh because though its easier of the two so many people (including myself) fuck it up..

Primarily this is because of the content, and so much that actually goes on the site is regurgitated rubbish, and falls in the section of “fit for purpose” however this is no longer acceptable. Content on sites now MUST be prestine.. it MUST be of the highest quality and MUST tick atleast one box of the below:-

- Be memorable (by wit, or by scandle)
- Be Relevant and informative

There is a reason why so many e-commerce site fail, actually its reasonS but one of the primary is content, how its presented and what needs to be done with it. Branding is difficult and please don’t think I am boasting but I have a client with a monthly budget of $25K for SEO and PR and though I priced him (pre panda) I am struggling to not go on a loss every month due the effort and man power it needs to launch a brand (effectively).

Incidentally we just had one of his stories go viral a month ago, and I noticed his backlinks yesterday he gained 13K links in one month with over 112 varying anchor text all completely natural. His rankings have shot up as a result and he is sitting on bottom of page one for the major term we wanted to rank for. This is after working my company’s collective asses off for a very long time promoting ONE content!! Lol.. It is possible.. and it can happen just believe..

Content

I eluded to this earlier but it really is something that I wanted to address separately. Quality is important, but crap content is still ranking. So why bother? Firstly line algorithmically speaking between crap content and useful content is blurred (remember not talking about manual inspections here). If a content is crap enough it will trigger a filter, trigger enough of these filters and your entire domain could go down.

This is not meant to be a scare you out of your pants tactics, but a fact. I have seen some competitors go into oblivion because of this. Their link profile was ok only think I know was bad was the crap badly spun unoriginal content. I would always advice on DONOT take the risk, as doing it now will affect you down the road and at that point it will be extremely hard to remember why it’s happening! This is especially true for ecommerce sites. There are tricks as to how to rank an ecommerce site effectively, however it probably goes beyond the remit of this article I feel.

Social Integration

I have to mention this really, as the importance of this just simply cannot be stressed enough. Bing and Google have openely stated that they consider social signals as ranking factors. Certainly true for Facebook and twitter, jury is out on Google +. Does this mean to ignore G+ Nope most definitely not, sad reality is that Google have enough resources to really hype G+ and I see no reasons why they won’t do that.

As they have stated the importance of social signals and then released their own signal it stands to reason they are in it for the long haul. Correctly targeting content and engaging users to promote your content is the way to go (remember to like and tweet this damn it!!)

Happy users?

This is one of my pet peeves to be honest. I have been after learning this and more importantly click though optimization for some time, so much so that I personally offered to work for free for a well known company, and do any donkey work in an attempt to learn from the best (I was rejected by the way lol…)

I have spend a lot of my time, money and energy on this in hopes to become better at User experience and click through optimization techniques. I really feel books can be written on this topic and to be honest they have been written. If you are not looking at wasy of reducing your bounce rate or improving your CTR’s then you are already dying a slow painful death. After traffic it is the biggest factor in profits, and it even over takes traffic in certain cases.

Happy users are created for few reasons

They trust you

They found what they were looking for

They are “like” you

Notice I said like and trust as two different things, I don’t have to like a few sites to trust them, I LIKE amazon AND I trust them, in the middle of this sandwich is navigation. I pull my hair our (and I don’t have much ahir anyway) when it comes to navigation. Pretty navigation is always good.. but pretty navigation that gets in the way of a user experience is well flawed.

A navigation serves two purpose tell you where you are and assures you that you will get to where you want to go in a very short time. That is it.. Design sites with that in mind and you will be happy, your users will be less frustrated and you will have a direct decrease in bounce rate. I just rank a Kissinsights on one of my more successful sites and this site has bounce rate of 35% which I consider to be good.

The my surprize when i asked the question from my consumers “did you find what you were looking for” a whopping 50% said no..yet they stayed on the site and ploughed along in hopes of finding the right information, because they trusted the authority of the site!

I now ask this question on most of my sites and client sites.. I spent one week going over the navigation architecture of the site, the results were amazing my very large affiliate site conversions went up 5% (not a lot but it’s a lot lol..) and my customer satisfaction went up by a whopping 75% and very few percentage actually complained about not finding the right information.

Navigation really comes not its own on a large ecommerce site and something that needs a lot of time an attention to get right.

I think is there is enough demand I will include bit about e commerce seo, however as I keep saying seo is stilla round, we need to be in teams really to do that. Time of sititng in a bedroom and working way on your seo is gone. There are far too many factors to think about to get any kind of real money from seo and internet in general. Personally I still have no idea when I made the switch to a guy trying to make money online, to a guy with a few staff to a company with clients and “media experts” lol.. oh well onwards and upwards eh…

If you like then talk about it.. it will make me very happy indeed…

SEO is getting harder is a post from: Mansoor Affiliate Marketing Blog

No related posts.

There is potential for long term work here, so if you are someone who can produce results you will get work and lots of it.  Any recommendations and ideas will be fantastic

Thank you all

Looking for AMAZING WordPress Designer is a post from: Mansoor Affiliate Marketing Blog

No related posts.

It allows the user to convert CSV and XML data into individual posts with the ability to add categories, tags, specify whether comments and trackbacks are allowed; and to filter items based on individual keywords. It was created by web developer Andy Walpole.

He said:

“Last year I had a client whose previous developer had integrated a commercial script into her build. It was nightmare to deal with, not just in trying to understand the backend code, but also the user interface was alarmingly unfriendly and resembled a software product from the 90s. “This year I set myself the task of creating an addon that affiliate marketing publishers could use.

“It’s a tricky challenge because, unfortunately, there is no data standard between companies so that while they all use the CSV or XML format, the structure differs from one company to another. “This is the first release and in the coming weeks and months I plan to expand its features. “Hopefully those involved in the industry will give me feedback so that these new features fit the needs of the users.”

The plugin is released for free under the GPL license and can be downloaded from the main Wordpress repository: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/affiliate-hoover/. Alternatively, it can be installed via any WordPress plugin administration section through the usual process.

Andy Walpole is a London-based freelance WordPress coder. He’s previously been involved with a number of WordPress-based projects in the past, big and small, but this is his first addon released to the public under license.

You can contact him on at this email is hidden

Launch of WordPress Plugin Affiliate Hoover is a post from: Mansoor Affiliate Marketing Blog

Related posts:

1. WordPress Backup Plugin – Introducing BackupBuddy

I certainly won’t stand here and say that I am not affected, as I was. Two of my money making sites went from number one spots for very very good terms to number 2 and number 3. The result has been significant interns of money that they earned. I had noticed that three sites that I had and long forgotten were also gone into the wilderness. These are aged sites with decent on page content.

After getting over the initial shock and feeling of going on a murdering rampage, I spent most of Tuesday evening all the way through to Wednesday morning analysing all my and client sites. And with an estimated 35% loss in rankings over all.

Luckily this loss was mainly absorbed by my sites, though had two clients that took a sizeable hit. Ad had to send most of Thursday explaining to them that it will be ok, and all of you IT WILL BE OK.

Algorithmic penalties, or devaluations are nothing major to worry about as long as you determine what part of the algorithmic penalty you have triggered. You can be on your way to rectifying the problem. Some sites/pages I could see what was the problem, other it’s just completely ridiculous. I have a 3 year old page, hat ranked very well for a term with correct everything just dropped with no where to be seen. This blog also got a message saying it was doing unnatural linking, however I have not taken part in any such thing, and all links I have acquired are just through readers, I was ranking for all sorts of terms though. I was ranking for negative SEO, and how to do negative SEO as an example. Not intentionally mind you but hey!!

What I intend on doing on this post, is to go through a small list of what I think has caused this loss of rankings, I am sure many people would have been effected, and since last Wednesday I have received over 185 emails regarding thoughts on penguin update alone.

I am a bit sad as this blog probably won’t be ranking for many terms, but am hoping it will pass manual reviews!!

Moving Forwards

So like me I am guessing most people have been hit, and hopefully you have not suffered too badly, but what are the ways to move forward, are there any practical steps that can be taken?

I am certainly no expert and will only try and report what my thoughts and findings shows. As it is too early to see any effect these variables have I have highlighted everything that the sites have in common. Before I continue, I would really like to stress, I love promoting websites, but do so cautiously. If you have a website with spun content, or auto generated content and let’s of web 2.0 type it should be no surprise that we are at this stage.

Without sounding preachy if you have an original website, with useful content that does MORE then just selling/promoting, and your link building has been more varied then just web 2.0 and building ties, then you may well have a case of genuine grip as to why you are not ranking any more.

In my short study I have found all of my sites that were hit had the following things in common:-

1. The main keyword that I aimed to rank for was in anchor text for 60% or more. I strongly suspect that the over optimisation penalty strongly figures anchor text diversity. As of now the mandate I am setting myself and my clients is that the main keyword must not exceed 40%. This single factor will now mean that link building and promotion is now exceeding, expensive. As simply out I need to acquire more quality links to rank for the same term.

2. Over Optimisation WTF????? Yeah this little nugget seems t target the traditional way SEO was done, as in place your keyword in h1 tag and also in h2 tags etc.. Now I have found that sites hat did well were ones that contained h1 tag with keyboard in and h2 and hi3 tags targeted other keywords or generic terms. In short under Optmization is now the over optimisation.

3. Keyword density, there is a lot of talk about this all I can save for sure is hat sites that did extremely well were the ones with keyword density of under 1% or just at 1%.

4. Devaluation of links, I definitely think this effect has clouded the issue, of course if an update happened on its own which just targeted spun content then it would be easier to determine what type of spun content is being targeted and if there is others relevancy issues. I happen to think google algorithms are at a stage where if a statement does not make since and link placement seems to there just for SEO then that links get devalued.

Lot of us have been guilty of the above, especially in the early days where lets face it this kind of shit worked, so we did it. But is it natural, is this how a natural website develop?.. I doubt it.

Final Thoughts

It is bad especially if you don’t have much interns of financial backup, and you need money that or lots more then 24 hours a day. Also I have to say the way google have reacted, it really leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. It completely stinks of throwing SEO on its head, with simple aim of getting more money from Adwords from people who are now effected.

With this massacre (and it is a massacre) there has to be side casualties, and my advice would be to wait a while see remains once the dust settles. See if there is a roll back, indeed one of my site that was effected last Tuesday was now up and running by Sunday back to is normal self.

It’s is easy to say but soo soo difficult to implement, diversify your traffic source engage in long lasting relationship with your customers so that you are not reliant on another company to determine your livelihood.

I started full time affiliate marketing to make sure my income is not dependant on one company or man. Though I now work on my own, enjoy a reasonably successful lifestyle and am happy I am still painfully aware that I am still reliant on google. TIME TO CHANGE…

P.S. This is the first post written on my brand new iPad

The Penguin update moving forwards is a post from: Mansoor Affiliate Marketing Blog

No related posts.

With soooo many updates happening, what has been the biggest change? Well the way I see it the biggest change has been devaluing most mass linking options, in search for quality links Google has been coming after these options like a spurned ex lover with an axe to grind. Anyway here is is simple list of what is hot/will be hot and what is not.

What works in 2012

• Variety of anchor text, more so then before. I firmly believe if you are targeting term “blue widget” for a given page, then that term should only be used as anchor text for just under 40% of the total links. My trails has shown that 30% of your links should be or other supporting or misspelled variations. The remaining 30% should be for terms link click here, find our more and some root domain type links.
• Long pages of content, 1000 words+ pages are always ranking higher and that is a fact
• Absolutely unique content, yes its the same old. But I don’t even bookmark my pages on software which auto grab titles etc. I create them manually or have them spun. Uniqueness and relevance is Key
• We all know relevant keywords are important, however I think Google has expanded on that yet again. If your site is about blue widgets and that is how your site seo is done, or at least that is how your site is see by google. Then if you link to a site about purple shoes then that automatically creates a warning filter. Do it enough times and that site will be flagged. Domain relevance is the key, also perhaps more so when anyone does things like blog post submission etc. The fundamentals of it are ignored like, H1 tags pictures with correct alt tags and and On page SEO yes each blog if it contains your keyword in the title page correct meta information etc then links contained thereunder will be considered more relevant right? Well in my case studies If I published and article privately gave it the basic seo treatment then point link from that to another RELEVANT site, my sites ALWAYS increased in ranking.
• Private networks are always harder to detect (specially if big enough)
• Article marketing, yes so many people are frowning upon it but if done correctly it does still pose a valuable resource. Though I find its rarely for mass linking these days, just possibly another tier.
• Press Releases, especially if you get them from reputable places they are a wonderful and legitimate ways of actually increasing your visibility (aulthough there are now reports that major Press Release organization are also being effected)
• Tiers work wonderfully, and the more tiers you have the better. To that end I would like to recommend Link wheel Bandit this litle program is a BEAST. Builds mini nets for you and self heals them as well. If you have Proxies, and Captach balance, then run his program. In one night it created over 16K links to my Level 1 support. The result is a GREAT infrastrucur that leverages authority and links. For all of you woderful readers there is a reoccuring discount for Life if you just type my name in mansoor.

Things to Avoid in SEO and link building in 2012..

• Blog commenting (take it with a pinch of salt) as this can still work however most people will point it to a tier 2, I move it further down the pecking order, tier 5 or 6 even.
• Blog Farms, yes its obvious. Lots of people advertising will say stuff like Panda Proof. No such things if you make a farm public it is NOT google proof there will be  a footprint. There are ways of mimimizing footprint, but most or should i say all will never bother as they will entail lot of work and lot ofmoney being spent.
• Wikis, it was great whilst it lasted eh.. I used to have a killer list of wikkis and my own custom software to post to.. Did it for the last two years and in January some douch started to sell this as a service, and knew this was going down the pan. Now Wikis can be useful for some ip divercification however not for anything else. SHAME
• Putting you Keyword at the start of your title. We all know that carries the most weight, however under optmization is now the new optmization. Move you keyword a bit more inside and see you rankings increased.
• Xrummer (No I am joking this bad boy is still the king, and people who think al it does is forum profiles all i have to say is.. )

There is going to be a lot of talk abot poor webmasters suffering becuase of the updates. Sure the bar is higher, and people will now find it (Internet Marketing) harder to get into.

I have been tracking big money keywords, for better part of 2 years now, keywords that if google did what they say they are doing would have dropped like a stone, but they are still there.

Why becuase, these networks bans deinexation etc are just public executions Designed to out fear into the general populas.

Why then do i say avoid blog networks, reason is simple sustainability. These kind of techniques allyou are doing is playing catch up ALL the time. Would it not be easier to build something once and KNOW this i will be around for the next 5 years. I never did much with adsence sites so I was never really effectd by the above fold crap..

The biggest issue that exists is SEO and Linkbuilding in general is Earning links based on its own merit, does such a thing exist? If you have asked youself this question then chances are you dont have great content anyway.

Please dont misunderstand, I have sites with amazing conetnt written by field experts, that content needs a push to get he ball rolling. so I dont agree with he G ideology “build it and they will come”. I do belive that great sites are more defendable.

As an example, my SEO Clients know this my actual cost per link is about $130, this is a singular link mind you and I reckon 10+ superchanged relevant links will get most sites/keywords moving. This is unfrotunately where we are at this stage of SEO, and I would also say that I think cost of acquization of good links isnly going to increase as time passes by.

Google Updates its impact on SEO and Link building in 2012 is a post from: Mansoor Affiliate Marketing Blog

Related posts:

1. Google +1 Metric and its impact on SEO

Seo Link Monster What it does

There is a whole history about who created this service, which personally I don’t give a crap about. If you want to read about that there are plenty of people who will talk about this. The service is an article syndication service (that is the best word that comes to mind). It is designed to place you spun content on various blogs. These blogs unlike other networks, are actually owned by the network outright. The network of blogs are supposedly huge, although there is no true way of finding this information.

The other hyped quality about this network is that the domains contained there in are aged and has trust associated with it from Google’s point of view. This review will be basing on where Seo Link Monster Actual delivers and what can be found about from the service.

First impressions are:-

• Cost is $147 a month, and is the most expensive article syndication type system out there.
• There is poor editorial control about what content actually gets published.  There by allowing weak and badly spun articles to be published. Great news for some marketeers and not so good as with enough bad content on a given site. It will be going down regardless of age.
• Very poor link reporting tool. YES you do end up with the url of your link, however you get the entire link report in one list. There is no way to distinguish which article was published?
• Each Article is supposedly published/syndicated 14 times a day.
• Each article can have up to 3 links.
• There fore Each article has a potential to get (14*3*29) 1218 links a month
• It is unclear whether the article continues to be syndicated after the month or stops.
• The spinning function given in house and supported is a poor one. No mention about how to place image links or other media links to make your post more unique. Yet alone ways to actually spin media and image links
• Some support for html spinning

######## Review on 16th March 2012#####################################################

I have done some extensive test on the network, really the crux of the matter is that I have stopped the subscription and filed to get my money back. Something which I have managed.  The whole selling point of this network was that it was supposedly 100% privately owned, and each domains was aged and was trusted with lots of links. Hence acquiring a link from that network would be deemed useful. The fact is that though my articles were syndicated, and were indexed they posed little actual value. The domains they were on were poorly designed, crap newly bought domains.

They offered no seo value to me that would justify the cost of $140+ a month. That is the end of that, this network in my opinion is pure hype and bull shit. If you are looking for low power network that provides in content type links then just use Unique article Wizard. There are other networks with really good value however, as they are extremely expensive I am not mentioning them here. There I do (and happily) spend $990 a month on one network to syndicate content on. I will try and do a review for them sometime soon.

########  Review on 7th Febuary 2012 ####################################################

This is a quick post and will be expanding on this, I have been trying out Seo link monster, and after its general release today. I am sure most of you would have got a number of e-mails on this. Having looked at this set up I would honestly say avoid this service. So many people are bumping this I am sure because they offer a reoccurring commission. However, I have serious doubts about the sustainability of this network and they fact that its not all that good to begin with..I will do a detailed review shortly but remember you have been WARNED  seolinkmonster

##################################################################################

Seo Link Monster Review Avoid at all cost is a post from: Mansoor Affiliate Marketing Blog

No related posts.

The biggest news for me in 2011 was the passing of my father in 13th March 2011. It was the single most horrible experience of my life and it changes so many things for me. It really made me evaluate my life and where I wanted to “end up”. Having had time now to think and reflect, if I had a choice of the type of death then I would choose something similar to how my father passed. Regular readers know that I/we had no idea he had cancer, and only found out about the cancer 2 days before he passed. Doctors were amazed that he showed no sign of ill health and was running around shopping a week before his death. That was my father self reliant and selfless to the end.

Obviously many people have varying degree’s of relation ships with their parents. I am far more closer to my mum then I was to my dad, but his passing left a profound impact and really made me realize what kind of man do i want my son to remember. I promised my dad lots of things whilst i was burying him like looking after mum, but I also promised him that I will try and always become the kind of man he wanted me to become.

The other big news was obviously my sons cochlear implant operation, and the fact that now is is able to hear. This amazing hearing restoration operation was just the kind of life we needed, and I now see him progressing through his mappings (his cochlear implants are gradually becoming louder giving his brain time to adjust to new sounds). Simple things like him telling us he is hearing the sound of hammers when my builders were working downstairs are now a source of joy for me.

That is the personally life out of the way..:).. what happened in my affiliate marketing career?. I started the year aiming to make 5 figures a month, and it was the aim that I managed to achieve. My publish disclosure of the money that I earned brought me some negative attention, but over all the sentiment was that of support. One thing that I would advice any budding blogger etc is before disclosing your income, isolate you main money sites so they can not be traced back. I was not able to do that, and some people in the industry know/knew my tech sites. Which brought forward incidents like the Friday feeling.

I can honestly say I have learned more about penalty recovery this year that my entire affiliate career combined. Once this gap in my knowledge was filled, i now try and keep abreast of the latest reason why a site might be facing a penalty. One of the biggest disappointment is the growth, this year I have created maybe two sites of note, and majority of my time being spent of consolidation and protection of my current sites. I have also spend a very large amount of money and resources to create a new level of infrastructure to help me go after even more difficult terms.

It has been a slow and very arduous progress to be honest.  Though I have achieved my targets my expenditure and experiment list has now grow to an extent where I have to now cut down on them dramatically, which is a change from direction of 2011. I feel that I now have an idea of what is needed for ranking in Google, not just short term but long terms and its not very complicated. However to achieve a truly lasting site I have had to reposition lots of things especially links and content.

I will summarize what I have noticed in 2011. Though on each topic i guess entire posts and pages can be written and I am happy to do that if needed.

1) Duplicate content. Every one talks about it but personally I have found this to be very much a sticking point. I have done extensive research on this. If you have any given article I have empirical data that shows after how many ”syndications”  does a give article starts to loose its umph (spun or not!!). There is also a very rough guide that I have noticed where if the syndication exceeds that amount (and you have the original article published on your site) that it starts to hurt the rankings of that page. If you do it enough times then hurts the rankings of the site itself. Bold claims I know but these are trends that I have observed.

2) I have found that Google still gives slight SEO boost to EMD domains. I am sure they will continue to do this for the next year atleast.

3) Age of the domains is an important factor, and there is just no way around that. If you have a brand new domain and even though it may offer more relevant and better content and half decent seo’ed page with reasonable links will still outrank you. The only exception here will be the link quality and domain authority, the higher both of the quality the more chances you have to rank.

4) High Pr Home Page Link Networks. These were/are the craze right?? There is no changing this fact as long as Google will publish a pages PR then people will use these kind of networks. I experiment with these networks but using about 15 different networks from 15 different vendors. From them I can honestly say about 3 are any good. At this moment Google does NOT seem to be penalizing the sites (whose links are on the home page network). They instead seem to be simply de indexing the entire homepage networks.  I think this trend will continue, simply put 99% of these networks are easily detectable. The common detectable criterion they have are the following:-

a) Same theme

b) Same links on every domain

c) Same text on every domain

d) No IP diversification (I mean GEO AND class C)

e) Most are old domains, that look wildly different from what they did in the good old days.

f) Most vendor do not take the time or care to actually sift through minor details like posting times (they will all be the same!!)  and miss basics likes privace policy sitemaps etc.

Over all homepage networks are useful but only if you come across a decent setup (which you end up paying for). I would not rely on them solely. Also I would NOT rely on them for ever, and use them only as a short term means to get an extra boost, and gauge the link strength needed to get you ranking. there are few networks that I would get permanently but they are very few and far between.

5) Link indexation, there is one thing pointing your link and another to get them seen by Google. I guess the previous statement is not entirely true, I think Google seems more links then it lest on. BUT it chooses not to give it weight, why that happens is open to debate. I personally don’t have nay number to back this up. I have found that using services like (backlinkbooster.com) help in increasing my indexation rate (I am not affiliated with them but I do have a promo code which give you reoccurring 25% off that can be found here )

The indexation rate of a given link and making sure it STAYS index is something that I have been meaning to look into for a long time, and will try and do again in lot more detail. I think answers learned here will be interesting in addressing a larger issue of what make one link better then they other. As I dont think this is a straight forward matter. I have said this a number of time BUT I still have not got a definitive answer here.

6) Contextual links. They do matter, we all knew that but my personal research has given me an optimal number of words that should surround either side of your link. It is not a straight forward matter as, link placement and making it look natural is now more and more important. On the side this is where every single homepage network also fails they all say contextual links and surround your text in two or three links of text. But that simply is not enough because they spin that text AND 90% of the time the text forms part of a larger big paragraph with umpteen number of links

7) How many links per page can you put? Yes there is an answer here as well. This particular study is ongoing but early results show that you can increase the “quota” of the maximum number of links you can place on a page but doing certain things on the page.

8.  Footer and sidebar links don’t work. That is absolute bollocks, they do work whether Google admit it or not but how long will they continue to do so is another matter. For now they work and sometime do devastating effects.

9) On Page SEO. I feel not much has progressed in terms of On page SEO. Sure the number of characters read by robots has changed along with emphasis on meta tags etc. There has also been a shift in importance placed in comments in your code!! but over all if you stick to known ratios in you title and body text then you wont be too far off with SEO. I ma not sure here to be honest what do you guys think?

The other changes to hits the search engine side has been link analysis, especially with yahoo switching off their API’s what options are available? I did promise to write a review on this, though Market samurai has come back up interms of Pr analysis (if you are into this kind of thing) but other good link analysis tools exists. The obvious ones are Majestic but there are two more that offer at least same if not more information about your links. More on that shortly.

Looking forward

I have a new plan set up for the coming year and having expanded my consultancy arm of the business. I now have positions available to take up to 5 more clients. Bring my total number of clients to 30. I am please with that number and to be honest its happened relatively rapidly considering the announcement was only made very recently. I have not yet decided whether 30 will be the number I will stick to for a while, or I will continue to expand and go more into SEO consultancy. For anyone wishing to hire me they can use the page here. What I can say is that in the space of few month My team and I have delivered everything that we  promised, that is something that I am extremly proud off.

I think this year personally I will develop very few sites, and those that I do will now get more of a focused attention, though i have now thought about doing this for a few months I am not yet clear in how to do this and what projects to choose. I am also very close to becoming a vendor for one of my sites, that will bring an interesting challenge, one i am not relishing and may well establish the site and business and then sell this.

2011 End of an Epic year is a post from: Mansoor Affiliate Marketing Blog

No related posts.