RosalindGardner.com

Learn Blogging & Affiliate Marketing with Rosalind Gardner

Search Engine Marketing Tips Report

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More on the topic of how to avoid getting Google slapped, here's a link to Jason Potash's report that dissects what is happening in the world of search engine marketing (SEM) – including Google's plans to use LSI,
phrase matching and co-occurrence to automatically seek-and-destroy websites that rely on natural search.

The report is a relatively quick read, doesn't require an email addy from you and it'll get you thinking about how to use the strategies that are still approved by Google to get traffic from the search engines now.

Download it here now.

Link Trading

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I get link exchange requests almost daily.

Although most follow a similar pattern, many are worded more politely than the example shown below and include both my name and some ‘nice' comment about my site by way of introduction.

The blank space to the left of my URL makes it obvious that this is just a quick fill-in-the-blank and get-it-out-there request.

Greetings,

I was looking over your website,   https://rosalindgardner.com/ and was wondering if you would be
interested in exchanging links. We currently have over 14,000 pages
linking to our home page, and are always looking for more quality
websites to exchange links with.

14,000 QUALITY sites! Wow! He's GOOD!

Then he proceeds to tell me about the benefits of link trading.

As you may already know, having your link on another website, especially one with
a high link popularity, will greatly increase your search engine rankings. This is followed
with an increase in traffic, and thus, more sales.

What I KNOW is that we LOSE sales when we link to other sites for no good reason other than the link, and that there are much better ways to gain search engine rankings and traffic. What I also KNOW is that reciprocal linking is for the most part, a HUGE waste of time.

Then he tells me where I can go…

If you are interested in a link exchange, please visit our website at:

http://www.blah-blah.ws

I'd like to tell him where to go.

Quite frankly, the only kind of link trading I do nowadays is blog link trading… and never by request. If I like what they have to say, I link to it… and I've noticed a lot of links coming into my blog for the same reason.

I find this a very valuable source of traffic and credibility – unlike his site which I visited for a lark.

This was his excuse for a ‘links' page.

My point, exactly.

Cheers,
Ros

P.S. If you want to learn how to do link exchanging properly (as well as other techniques to improve your search engine rankings), check out Brad Callen's SEO Elite.

New Site Ranks High for Competitive Keywords

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Colin McDougall and I were chatting yesterday afternoon and he casually mentioned that a domain he registered on January 13th, Crediteria.com, has already achieved a Top 10 ranking at Google.

To check this out, use one of Google's Bigdaddy data center search boxes at 66.249.93.104 or 64.233.179.104 and search for ‘best credit cards', no quotes required.

Watching Google's datacenters gives a good indication of where a site will land when a Google update is completed.

Note: The Google results are currently in flux due to the fact that they have thousands of servers to which the data has to be propogated, so his page may not come up in the top 10 when you do a search.

So, I've included a screen capture from what I saw this afternoon.

Crediteria

Woohoo!

So much for the notion that a new site can't rank for highly competitive keywords!

How Ros Gets Free Traffic to Her Sites

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Who on earth started the rumor that the Rosalind Gardner doesn't get search engine traffic from having pages optimized for the search engines, but only pays for traffic?

Oh, I can guess who that might be… but I won't mention any names, 'cause he's already at a decided disadvantage in super-affiliate-dom… and hitting your competitors when they're already down just isn't nice 🙂

I may indeed be blonde, but I'm not (so) dumb not to take advantage of free search engine traffic at any and every opportunity.

Sure, I pay for advertising. That's the best way to get traffic to your web site FAST. Paying for site traffic puts your sites directly in front of the eyeballs of potential customers, which is exactly where you want your web sites to be.

But that's not the only way I get traffic to my sites.

As a matter of fact, I utilize all 31 traffic-generating methods that I write about in the Super Affiliate Handbook –

– OK, maybe not ALL… I don't wear my URL's on ball caps or t-shirts, because:

  1. a) I don't wear ball caps or t-shirts, and;
  2. b) I don't wear logos unless they're on high-end designer clothing (purchased on eBay). 🙂

Getting free search engine traffic to my web sites in other ways helps me dollar-cost-average my advertising expenses.

For example, my advertising expenses average out at around 6 cents a click.

Getting visitors to my sites from the search engines then DOUBLES my site traffic, which in turn HALVES my overall cost per visitor.

Three cents per click when you generate between 6 and 30 cents per visitor (depending on the product sold) is a very worthwhile investment.

I get free traffic to my sites primarily in two ways.

First I distribute content that I write for my sites to article submission sites, posting my author's resource box at the bottom of each article. The resource box includes a link back to my site, which people then click to get more information on the topic they were researching.

Putting my articles on other webmasters' sites increases the number of links pointing back to my sites which in turn increases my sites' popularity, and …

…the more popular your site is, the better it is ranked on the search engines.

The better your web site is ranked on the search engines, the more free traffic you get FROM the search engines.

Make Pages Search Engine Friendly

Making pages search-engine friendly to get free traffic is the easiest work you can do as a webmaster, and therefore represents a huge return on your investment.

To make my pages search engine friendly, I basically create a separate page for each product or service I recommend. I usually use the name of the product as the page name, and in the title, keyword and description metatags. I try my best to get the keyword density around 2 percent which is the keyword density recommended by search engine optimization specialists to achieve high search engine rankings.

Let's look at an example.

uDate.com is one of the dating services that I promote at http://sage-hearts.com.

Type ‘udate' into the search box at Google, as 66,256 other surfers did in January 2005 (according to the Overture Keyword Selector Tool at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/). you'll see my uDate review page, http://sage-hearts.com/dating_services/udate.html, come up in the #7 position. (Not bad, especially considering I just looked at the contents of that page and realized that the keyword density on that page is absolutely terrible!)

Here's a better example.

10,456 surfers looked for some permutation of the term ‘Senior Friendfinder' at Overture and its affiliates in January 2005. My ‘Senior Friendfinder' page, http://sage-hearts.com/dating_services/seniorfriendfinder.html, comes up in the #2 position, right behind the merchant's own site at seniorfriendfinder.com.

Does this good search engine ranking have a bearing on the fact that I'm a top Senior FriendFinder affiliate or that Senior FriendFinder commissions add substantially to my earnings each and every month?

You bet it does!… and neither program costs me a penny to advertise on Google!

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