Back at the end of October 2009, I came across a disturbing post about fake soldiers bilking unsuspecting lonely singles out of their hard-earned money.

Running an internet dating site, I felt it only right that I should share this post with my readers and warn them about the dangers of military dating scams.

Little did I know what a beneficial effect that one post would have on my site!

Next to the homepage, that is the most-visited post on the site – with 8.69% of the traffic over the course of a month going directly to that page.

I attribute that success to the continuing run of comments made since the day the post was published.

As of August 5th, there have been 768 comments made on that post and they keep coming in….

So rather than dying a slow death and disappearing into the depths of long-forgotten posts (on a blog that doesn’t get very much attention anymore), that post still ranks high for it’s original keywords – ‘military dating scams‘ (3rd), ‘fake soldiers’ (2nd) and ‘fake soldier scam’ (top 2 positions).

The reason the homepage also shows up in the search is because I added a link to the post from the homepage after it became so popular.

Granted, although I was never looking to rank for terms that included ‘dating scam’ on a site that promotes internet dating services, the point is to go with the flow and try your best to make conversions.

In this case, I added a link to a well-known and respected dating service that caters to military singles.

You can see the original post about military dating scams here.

Ever wondered how webmasters create feed mashups?

If you don’t know what I mean by ‘feed mashup’, take a look the homepage of this blog where it says “Ros’ Other Blog Posts“. You’ll see another example on my personal blog under “Recent on Ros’ Other Blogs“.

What you’ll notice is that the most recent posts from a variety of my blogs show up in those spots.

In the past, I’ve used software to create mashups, but now I’m using Google Reader.

Creating your own mashup with Google Reader is easy.

• Subscribe to the feeds you want to publish in Google Reader.
• Create a new folder and assign the feeds to that folder.
• Make the folder public by going into Manage Subscriptions (on the bottom left-hand side of the page), Settings, then Folders and Tags.
• The public page now has a feed of its own which includes all the feeds in the folder. To get the feed URL, click on “View Public Page” and copy the link.
• To post the mashup on your WordPress blog, go into Widgets and drag the RSS widget into the section where you want it placed, i.e. the sidebar.
• Enter the URL, a title and other particulars as you want the feed displayed.

So there you have it, an rss feed mashup of your own!.

Webmasters who spent their time gaming search engine results with low-quality content farms and scraper sites have been hit hard since Google’s latest algorithm change last week.

In a February 24th, 2011 post on the official Google blog, Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts stated:

Many of the changes we make are so subtle that very few people notice them. But in the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what’s going on. This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.

Although a CNN Money report cited a number comments made on the WebmasterWorld forum about the traffic and business-killing nature of this latest change, I’ve personally noticed that are just as many statements to the contrary by webmasters who don’t rely on content farms to drive traffic to their sites.

I too have seen traffic increases to my sites in the past few days, ranging anywhere from 15.2% to 82.36% and 125.5%.

So, no complaints here.

As always, follow Google’s guidelines regarding quality content and your sites will do fine. Try to game the results and you could find yourself looking for a job offline.

So… did your traffic increase or decrease since the latest Google Update?

Amazon just announced that they’ve integrated their Associates program with Google Blogger accounts. The post, “Amazon Associates and Google Blogger Now Integrated” reads:

Today we are excited to announce Amazon Associates for Blogger, a direct integration between Amazon Associates and Blogger. This new collaboration enables Bloggers to monetize their content by adding relevant Amazon products to their blog posts without interrupting the blog editing process. Amazon Associates for Blogger is available now at http://affiliate-program.amazon.com/blogger. Amazon Associates who don’t have a Google Blogger account can set up a free Blogger account with their Associates ID and start earning right away.

How does it work?

The new tool allows Bloggers to add links and images to their blog posts in just 2 easy steps:

1. Bloggers highlight the relevant text and the Amazon Product Finder will search Amazon’s millions of products and recommend the ones that are most closely associated with the text
2. Bloggers can then insert a link or image to that product which includes their Associates ID, enabling them to earn up to 15% in referral fees from Amazon

Bloggers will also be able to show dynamic content in their blog sidebar using a new set of integrated Sidebar gadgets, such as gadgets for MP3 clips from the Amazon DRM-free music store, an Amazon Deals gadget, and an Amazon Search box.

Also as part of this new integration, Bloggers who don’t have a free Amazon Associates account can create one directly within Blogger so tell your friends that use Blogger how they can start earning with Amazon Associates today.

Of course, the only way a REAL affiliate blogger would use a Google Blogger account is in addition to their own blog on their own domain for driving more traffic back to their own domain.

But hey, if a few visitors exit your Google Blogger account and head to Amazon, rather than back to your own site — that too might prove profitable.

On the ‘Inside Adsense‘ blog, Google writer Arlene Lee states “After reviewing our AdSense video units feature, which allows you to show YouTube content and ads on your pages, we’ve found that it hasn’t had the impact we had hoped for” and that they’ll be terminating the program at the end of April.

Or, in other words, the Adsense for Video program hadn’t made enough money for Google within the year it was running, so it gets the axe. Sounds about right — and I’d add that Google has a lot more patience than I, but they also have a lot more money to play with — mine included

The option to sign up for video units is no longer available to new publishers and if you currently display video units, Google recommends that you start removing the video unit code from your pages ASAP. Earnings from video units in the past will still be credited to your AdSense account until the end of April. At that time, any video units that remain on your sites will direct your visitors to YouTube – for which you won’t get paid.

Today is the deadline to have all your FeedBurner accounts moved over to your Google account.

Although I’ve heard various opinions on whether the old Feedburner subscriptions will continue to work – with some bloggers reporting that subscriptions should work indefinitely and others already reporting glitches with the old addresses – I’d trust the Feedburner to Google FAQ which reads:

“It is our intent to keep backward compatibility with your feed address as long as this service exists.”

I updated my accounts last week and haven’t yet changed all the feed addresses, but the old one’s are redirecting just fine.

The real issue is in updating your accounts. According to the FAQ, if you don’t update your account:

“…you will no longer be able to access your account at http://www.feedburner.com, and your feeds will either begin returning a “404 Not Found” response or a “301 Moved” response back to your source feed.”

Learn more on the Feedburner to Google FAQ

Seems like everytime I hear the news, or read my email, another company directly related to our Internet marketing businesses is tightening the reigns due to the recession.

Last week I mentioned that a number of banks have either temporarily suspended or permanently shut down their credit card affiliate programs.

Back in December, I received notice that the Westin and Sheraton hotels changed their affiliate program payout structures to pay on completed stays rather than on bookings.

Also in December, Yahoo! Search Marketing announced that it would no longer provide telephone support on many of their advertisers’ accounts.

Then last Wednesday, Google announced that 70 workers would be affected when it closed 3 engineering offices in the U.S., Norway and Sweden. Worse still, the free cafeteria for employees was closed and Christmas gifts to workers this year weren’t quite as lush as usual. The cutbacks at Google are apparently due to the fact that although its advertising revenues are still growing, they’re not growing quite as rapidly as before.

Aaaah, Poor Google. Apparently we’re not spending enough.

In a video post this morning, my good friend Colin “Google” McDougall reveals Google’s plans to eradicate the value of inbound links from social media sites.

Like Colin, I’ve never been an avid user of MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter exactly because it was inevitable that Google would eventually have to turn that traffic off due to abuse by backlink hungry Internet marketers. Most of the ‘content’ is pure time-wasting rubbish anyway. Seriously, who cares if I’m running off to Starbucks to get tall non-fat moccha? Good grief.

Colin also emphasizes that you can still garner benefit from social media sites when used for the purpose of real networking and sharing content of value.

Hmmm… gaining backlinks and therefore site traffic through the sharing of valuable content. What a novel concept!

Despite continuing problems with getting my blog posts to show up or stay listed in Technorati and Google Blogs, it appears that at least one of Google’s spiders still loves me.

Immediately after I posted “A 9K Walk Along Icey Roads in Rohdes” to my travel blog, I searched Google for the keyword phrase that I was targeting – Rohde boots – and was delighted to see that the post showed up in the 8th spot on the first page of returns (see the screen capture below).

Although I’ve seen posts get listed that quickly before, many also seem to disappear from Google’s results almost as fast, so I searched for the keyphrase again this morning, and much to my amazement, it is still there.

Granted, Rohde boots isn’t a particularly popular search term. According to Wordtracker, the phrase has a predicted count of only 12 for today. Furthermore, I haven’t found an affiliate program that sells Rohdes.

So, why would I bother to target the phrase ‘Rohde boots’ if so few people are looking for them and I don’t make any money promoting them to people who find the post?

Well, my primary motivation for writing such a post is to share information about a truly great product that will benefit walkers like myself. In return, I hope to earn new feed subscribers with the invitation “If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!” that appears at the end of every post.

Furthermore, the site is monetized in many ways. Those who appreciate the information may browse around and find other products of interest to them that are sold through an affiliate program. Or, they may leave the site through a Google Adsense ad for which I get paid.

Assuming I get only 1 click per day from that listing over the period of a year, that would be 365 visitors to my site — for free — from a post that took me only 10 minutes to write. If only 10% of those visitors sign up for my feed / newsletter, that would be 36 new subscribers to whom I can promote products on a continuing basis. Now, if you write a post like that once a week, you can multiply those results by 52, and estimate nearly 19,000 visitors and 1900 new feed subscribers — for free.

But, those traffic estimates are probably low, especially considering the personal nature of the blog post title and content description that appears on Google, which is in striking contrast to the ‘salesy’ nature of the other listings that appear on the first page of Google results.

For example, inthe last 23 hours, my most recent first page listing has generated 4 site visits, or 33% of the estimated traffic for the term ‘Rohde boots’.

So, imagine how much free traffic and revenue you can generate by targeting those ‘less popular’ phrases if you post to your blog 3 or 4 days a week, or better yet, every day!

[tags]rohde boots,google,seo,marketing,free traffic[/tags]

Here’s just one of the many comments that I received about my Revenue Magazine article titled “Google Hates Affiliates”. This one is from Richard Gaskin, CEO of Fourth World Media Corporation’s and developer of Webmerge.

Hello Rosalind

I finally got around to the November issue of Revenue magazine and really enjoyed your article, “Google Hates Affiliates”. It was so refreshing to read practical advice rather than the gray-hat tricks so many others resort to.

It’s long been my belief that keeping your focus on adding value to the customer experience is the most profitable long-term strategy. It’s nice to be in such good company on that.

Wishing you a very happy and prosperous new year.

See… it’s not only Google that appreciates (and rewards) affiliate marketers that add value to their sites. Affiliate managers too appreciate those affiliates who focus on customers, rather than tricks.

Why? Because those are the affiliates with the top sales and highest conversion rates.

Learn more about Webmerge.