Why Adding Blog Comments Does Nothing For SEO
Why Adding Blog Comments Does Nothing For SEO
Hello readers, this week I have a double whammy (My spell checker doesn’t like the word but i’m leaving it in!) of articles for you. The first article that you are reading now is about dispelling a myth that leaving comments on Wordpress blogs is a good way to get a back-link to your website.
The second article, that you can find underneath this one is about a nasty run in I’ve had with 1&1 Internet and a debt collection agency.
But like all chronological things, we will start at the beginning with the Wordpress/SEO article.
I’m sure you have already heard this saying many times but I’ll post it again:
“Get As Many Back-links To Your Site To Improve Your Search Engine Ranking”
The above statement is 100% correct, BUT what isn’t correct is when people advise you that the easiest, quickest and cheapest way to get good quality back-links is by posting comments on blogs and entering your website URL. Here’s an example of a comment with a “back-link” made by one of my readers, Omar Martin.
So you’d think that when the Google Bot visited my blog and looked at the comments, the Bot would follow Omar’s link out of the blog and back onto his site. Normally this would be the case, but not with a Wordpress blog!
By default, Wordpress adds a “nofollow” attribute to the URL’s you enter in your comments. This means that when the search engine bots see your links, they make a wide birth and totally ignore them. Don’t believe me, go look at the source code of a Wordpress blog, and you’ll see the “nofollow” attribute, this is an example, again from Omars comment:
So the next time you see somebody saying that adding comments to a Wordpress blog is an easy way to get a back-link, give them a slap round the face and send them to this post. Well, maybe don’t do the slap bit, but do feel free to send them to this page.
Despite all of this technical mumbo-jumbo, branding your name with your website link is still a great “Old Fashioned” way to get your website noticed. I don’t know about you, but whenever I read an interesting comment on a blog, more times than not I’ll click on that persons link and check out their site!
Thanks for reading this post, feel free as always to leave a comment – You won’t get a back-link but you will get a nice warm feeling inside! (Allegedly)
Cheers,
Dan
P.S. Next week – How to take off the nofollow attribute!
Why 1 & 1 Internet Suck
Yes….I’ve turned American, I said suck 
As I’m sure long time readers of the blog know, it takes a lot to get me “wound up” but something happened yesterday that got my blood boiling, and from the title of this blog post you can probably guess which company I had the misfortune of dealing with.
Here’s the story:
A couple of years ago I created a website for one of my relatives, I registered the domain name for the website over at 1&1, I created a new account for my relative so she could manage the domain.
Back at the start of the year I did an internal domain transfer and moved the domain name from her 1&1 package to my own, so her package now contained no domains.
All well and good, but then my relative received this through the post:
It was a letter from a debt collection agency called Arvato Finance acting on behalf of 1&1, they demanding the huge sum of £4.68 for a domain name that they claimed had not been paid for. The domain HAD been paid for, but it had been paid for through my own 1&1 account (where the domain now “lives”), yet they still demanded paying for the domain.
I logged into my aunts account and there was no domain name listed in the package, so why were we being charged twice for the same domain?
A phone call to both 1&1 and Arvato was about as helpful as BA on a long haul flight with both passing us back and forth between each other. After a search on google for “1&1 Arvato Finance” it seems to be a common practice for 1&1 to charge customers for domains they no longer have with the company.
In the end we decided to just pay the bill, for under £10 it really wasn’t worth the hassle.
But let this be a lesson to all of you, think twice before you purchase your domain name with 1&1!
You can read my 1and1 Review by clicking here.
“People Are Stealing My Commissions” - No They Are Not!
“People Are Stealing My Commissions” - No They Are Not!
This particular subject has been widely misreported and misconstrued for as long as I can remember now. It’s a regular question on forums and in emails:
“What script/software should I use to stop people stealing my commissions”
“My clickbank ID appears in the browser address bar, I’m losing commissions!”
Let me first put the world to rights on one point before I continue. What do you think would happen if you replaced my affiliate ID in the URL below with your own and then refreshed the page?
http://www.bartrickstoolkit.com/index.htm?hop=elpasso
You would probably be thinking that I would lose the commission, because you’ve just got rid of my affiliate ID (elpasso) and changed it to your own, so if all goes to plan, you should get the commission and not me.
Well, don’t take my word for it. Let’s try it now, follow the steps below to see who gets the sale.
1. Click here to go to a sales page via my affiliate link. (Opens in a new window)
2. Click on the “Order Now” button at the bottom of the page
3. On the checkout page, scroll to the bottom of the page and you will see the following:
You can see that the affiliate for that sale would be “elpasso” - which would be me.
Now try and “steal” my commission, I promise I won’t be offended 
Go back to the sales page, change the hop=elpasso in the address bar to hop=yourID and push refresh. Then click the order button and see if the affiliate has been changed.
You’ll notice that it still says “affiliate = elpasso”
Is that enough proof that changing the hop = value doesn’t have any effect on who is awarded the commission?
The hop = value, or variable is passed to the page and can be used by the webmaster to perform his or her own tracking amongst other things, it doesn’t actually set the affiliate cookie. The cookie is set when you click on the link, NOT if you change the hop value and refresh the page.
So with that out of the way, why do we bother to cloak affiliate links?
Well, for me the answer is simple. I don’t cloak my links to stop people from stealing my commissions, I cloak them because they look better! Take a look at the 2 links below and tell me which looks better.
http://elpasso.gizmodrake.hop.clickbank.net
http://elpassoblog.com/recs/bar_tricks.php
For me, that is the sole reason of cloaking links – they look better. It’s all very superficial, and the raw links may have a great personality but in this case, for me, looks are everything!
I was going to end this entry with that, but there’s a bit more info that I’ll share with you, and this is what probably causes quite a lot of your commission loses, but unfortunately there isn’t much you can do to stop it.
The 2 main causes for “stolen” commissions:
1. Having an “affiliates” link on the sales page
If you send a customer to a sales page and the customer can see an “Affiliates” link at the bottom of the page, the customer is likely to click on the link, generate their own affiliate link and buy the product through that link instead of yours – simple but true.
2. Malware/Adware **Play spooky music**
Malware/Adware is not only un-ethical, it’s also a pain in the backside to get rid of if you do become infected!
These applications, once activated on your PC can, and will replace any genuine affiliate cookies they find with their own ID. So for example, if your visitor goes to a site via your affiliate link, the malware/adware will detect that your cookie has been placed, and it will replace it with it’s own cookie – meaning you miss out on the sale.
And that brings to an end my extra little “brain fart” (thanks Pat!) for today.
Just one thing left to show/give you now, and that’s a freebie.
Don’t spend lots of money on fancy affiliate link cloakers – you don’t need them. You can easily make your own links, details can be found here and here.
Or, you can download some free affiliate link cloaking software at the location below – it’s 100% free! (The download contains a number of different items, the item to create the affiliate links is called “Affiliate Diamond”)
http://d9hosting.com/clients/dl.php?type=d&id=6
Feel free to leave any comments or questions.
Regards,
Dan
A Simple Way To Create Another Income Stream
A Simple Way To Create Another Income Stream
If you are anything like me you will always be on the look out for a new way to make a bit of extra cash. The hard thing is finding something that is easy to set up and then runs on auto-pilot…so let me present to you:
The Super Income Power Blaster 3000 Pro!
Just kidding…this method doesn’t really need an over-hyped title or even a sales page with shiny graphics. It won’t make you Heather Mills rich, but at least you won’t have to marry an ageing Beatle to make a living! (Apologies if you came to this post via my email notification – I just did the same joke twice)
The method that I am talking about today is the good old fashioned “ezine”
Now you may think that the ezine died out with the dinosaurs but I think you would be wrong. I personally still subscribe to a lot of free ezines for subjects that I find interesting, you won’t be surprised to hear that my interests are the usual dull subjects of web design and coding standards but each to their own!
These ezines are sent out on autopilot every few days. The owner of the ezine makes their money by displaying adverts that are relevant to the content of the ezine. Take one of my ezines for an example; one day I received an informative article on new SEO (Search Engine Optimization) standards, and half way through the article there was an ad for a free trial of some new SEO software. I downloaded the trial and then purchased the software, which then made the owner of the ezine a commission.
The great thing about these ezines (or at least the ezines I receive) is that the content isn’t actually written by the owner of the ezine. The owner simply sifts through the article directories looking for good, informative articles and then add’s the article to the email/ezine template.
So, what do you need to get started?
1. A subject!
2. You need to decide how you will deliver your ezine – via email or will you send them a web page that contains the article?
3. You’ll need an auto responder like Aweber to send out the automated emails
That’s it!
If you are able to find a good subject that a lot of people are looking for information on you could quickly generate a big base of readers/subscribers. The internet may have changed over the past few years but people still love free, top quality information and in my opinion, there is no better way to distribute this information than through an ezine.
I’d love to hear your own opinions on this, do you subscribe to any ezines? Or maybe you already run an ezine, if so do you have any tips for us ezine newbies?
Until next time,
Regards,
Dan
How To Set Up Google Analytics eCommerce And Goal Tracking
It’s a wet and windy morning here in Yorkshire, which means it is perfect weather for me to write part 2 of my Google Analytics guide. In part 1 I showed you why Google Analytics is so cool, and I gave you some very basic instructions on how to set it up on your website.
In part deux, I’m going to give you a comprehensive step by step guide, showing you how to use Google Analytics to track your e-commerce transactions.
Before I start let me just give you a quick run-down about the different “goals” and e-commerce tracking options, depending on your site some of the guide might not apply to you.
In this example, as well as setting up basic tracking so I can see what the conversion rate for my product is, I’m also going to be setting some goals. Goals can be used for any number of things, you could have a goal set up to see how many visitors sign-up to your newsletter through your opt-in form, or you could use it to see how many people go through your shopping cart and go on to make a purchase.
In my example I’ll be showing you how I use Goals to track how many customers make it through the D9 Hosting shopping cart! Don’t worry if it isn’t making sense, it should all start to come together when you read the guide.
So with that out of the way, let’s get started!
Step 1
This is a nice easy start for you, if you already have an Analytics account then simply log in to your dashboard (admin) area. If you don’t yet have an account then you’ll need to sign-up first – it’s free!
http://www.google.com/analytics/
Step 2
Next we need to create a profile for the website that you wish to generate the stats for. With you now logged into your dashboard, click on the “Add Website Profile” link.
You then need to fill out the small form with the details of your website, it’s all very straightforward but I’ve added a screenshot showing you my settings if you need to use them as a guide.
When you have entered all of the information, click on the “Continue” button.
Step 3
Moving swiftly on to step 3 and one of the most important parts of the process – The Tracking Code!
After clicking on “Continue” in step 2, you will see a screen like the one below:
You are presented with 2 types of tracking code, Legacy and New. I prefer using the New tracking code as it helps get your site ready for any future Analytics features that wouldn’t be available if you were using the old code.
So select the new style code, highlight it and “Copy” it to your clipboard. (Right click on the highlighted code and select “Copy”)
After you have copied the code, click on the “Finish” button. Don’t worry if you lose the code, you can always retrieve it later!
Step 4
Next we need to add the code that we just copied in Step 3 to EVERY page we wish to track – this should be every page on your website, not just the home page!
You should paste in the code just before your closing </body> tag in your HTML source code.
If you have a site with a lot of pages, you could do a global find/replace and find:
</body>
And replace it with:
**The google tracking code here** </body>
When you have added the tracking code to all of your pages, you then need to upload the pages to your web space.
If you then go back into your Google Analytics account and look at the Status of your tracking code, you should see a “Tracking code installed” message next to your website profile. If you don’t see this message try again in a few minutes, if you still see errors after a few minutes you need to double check you have pasted the tracking code into your pages correctly.
Step 5
With the tracking code installed, we need to then tell Analytics that our site is an e-commerce website and that we wish to track sales and conversion rates!
To do this, click on the “Edit” link that appears next to your website profile.
You will then see a set of e-commerce options that you can edit, make sure you select “Yes, this is an e-commerce website” and that you select the correct currency that your site sells items in.
When you are done, click on finish.
Step 6
I am now moving onto “Goals”. If you only have a 1 page website and just want to track sales, you can skip to part 7!
In this example I’m setting up Analytics for www.d9hosting.com
One of the things I wish to track is the effectiveness of the shopping cart. The cart is made up of multiple stages, part 1 you select the hosting package, part 2 you select the domain name and so on.
Setting up goals allows me to track visitors as they go through the different steps, it also shows me if the abandon the cart, and at which point they abandon. If a lot of people abandon the cart at the same stage, I know there is a problem and I need to take a closer look!
So now you know why I’m setting up the goal, here’s how you do it:
Find the “Goals” section for your website profile, and click on the “Edit” button:
You will then be presented with a screen asking you to input your goal details.
To save typing out everything here, I’ve taken a screen shot showing you how I set up my goals for my hosting shopping cart:
Your funnel URL’s will obviously be different to mine but as long as you get the URL’s in the correct order you shouldn’t have any problems!
You can also make things easier by not defining a funnel at all. This would be useful if you wanted to track newsletter sign-ups. You would just set the “Completed Goal” URL as:
http://www.yoursite.com/Thankyouforjoining.htm (Or whatever your opt-in success page is called!)
When you are happy with the settings, click on the Finish button and you are done, wasn’t so bad was it?
Step 7
The final step for setting up e-commerce tracking is to add some extra code to our “Thankyou” or “Download” page, in simple terms this is the page that the users gets sent to after they purchase your item/s.
You should already have the default tracking code installed on this page, but you also need to add an extra bit of code, this allows you to enter the sale amount, the order ID and so on.
You can see full details here:
http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55528
But in short, you just need to add the following code under the “pageTracker._trackPageview();” line of the default code:
pageTracker._addTrans( “1234″, // Order ID
“Mountain View”, // Affiliation
“11.99″, // Total
“1.29″, // Tax
“5″, // Shipping
“San Jose”, // City
“California”, // State
“USA” // Country
);
pageTracker._addItem(
“1234″, // Order ID
“DD44″, // SKU
“T-Shirt”, // Product Name
“Green Medium”, // Category
“11.99″, // Price
“1″ // Quantity
);
pageTracker._trackTrans();
*Please don’t copy/paste the above code, copy it from Google instead. Wordpress tends to make a mess when you copy/paste code.
Your final code should look like the code on the Google page here:
http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55528
If you are only selling 1 product then you can enter the values manually, if you are using a shopping cart you should be able to use it to pass the details into the Analytics tracking code. Please contact your script vendor if you are unsure about how to do this.
That brings to an end this guide, Analytics usually takes around 24 hours to update so you’ll have to wait until this time tomorrow to see your results, but once you have everything set up correctly it’s a great resource for any webmaster to use!
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have found it useful.
Let me know if you have any questions,
Regards,
Dan
