EBAY BUSINESS INUNEMPLOYMENT THE FILE FOR UNEMPLOYMENT ONLINE JOB SEARCH MARKETING

Chapter 5: Setting Up your Site for Google

Domination to not get in unemployment online.

Before we begin this next section, I just want to clarify what stage you should be at

by now to not file for unemployment.

EBAY BUSINESS CLICK HERE

Decided on the keyword and product

Bought a domain

Uploaded the plugins and themes

Decided on your angle of attack and how you’re going to presell your visitors

Sounds simple when I put it like that right? Because it is. Even though we’ve covered

a lot, you’ll find that after your first few sites this will all become second nature. And

that the process from starting your keyword research to actually writing your first blog

post usually takes less than 90 minutes.

Anyway, in this section we’re going to talk about optimizing your product buy internet marketing site for

Google and the overall structure of it.

Overall site structure

This sub section serves as a guide to exactly what your site should look like,

what pages it should have and what content should be on them so to not file for unemployment online.

. This is important

because Google likes to see certain things on websites (privacy policy, contact,

about me) and having them, as well as a properly optimized main page, will greatly

improve your SEO rankings.

On the next page is a diagram of what is the setup of the majority of my sites,

although admittedly some are larger (maybe 5 6 posts instead of 3) and some are

smaller (like 2 posts and no `useful article’ page). However, after much testing this is

the basic structure that has produced killer SEO results.

You can decide what works best for you, but this is the structure that I recommend

you start off with. It represents a good balance between providing enough good

content for visitors, enough content for Google and time (with practice, it will only

take 1 2 hours to create the entire site).

There’s the basic structure. You internet marketing site will have 5 pages, 2 of which will take

less than a minute to create (Contact and privacy policy). Don’t worry about LSI

keywords for the moment, we will talk about them in a minute.

Some key things to point out about each page:

Home page This is the meat of your site, the other pages just serve to support the

content you have here. Notice that the first post you make (this post will rarely get

read so don’t put too much effort in) is at the bottom. I’ve done this to represent how

as you make posts to a wordpress blog, the older ones get pushed down. So, don’t

write your main post (story or review) straight away. Only write it when you’re sure

that it will be the final post, since it’s what you want your visitors to see first to keep you out of the unemployment offices.

About me This page will just have a picture of you along with your `story’ and

make sure to include why you created the website. Curious visitors will want to know

what your motivation behind it is.

Helpful article Later on we’re going to be talking about creating youtube videos

and how effective it can be both to bring traffic AND getting your site indexed faster.

By the way, indexed means that Google has discovered your site and has added it to

their database basically.

So, on this page you can write a couple of hundred words talking about something

related to the niche and then a link to your youtube video. If you decide not to create

a youtube video, then you can still link to a related one. Why? Because it gives you

something to base your article on, and Google does like to see some external links

of some kind. And I suspect they even give sites linking to their own website

(youtube) a better SEO score.

Contact Just a very quick page saying contact me here and provide an email

address.

Privacy policy Half the time my policy’s don’t even make sense. Really just

scrape anything together, it doesn’t have to be over 100 words.

So, that’s what your site should look like when it’s completed. But before we actually

create the site and start writing posts, there are still a couple more things we need to

do and also some more theory to be aware of.

Humans vs. the search engines: Striking a balance

Now, there are two goals for our product buy internet marketing website.

The first is to write quality content for human visitors, to get them to read our stuff

and ultimately buy whatever we’re promoting to keep you from a job search.

The second is to optimize for search engines, since without them we won’t get any

human visitors in the first place.

What do I mean by optimizing for search engines? Making sure our pages are jam

packed with our main keyword and related keywords (LSI keywords).

While you don’t want to spam the keyword, we do want it to represent a good chunk

of our website, so that there can be no mistake when Google decides what our

niche site is about. In fact, we want to make it seem as though our site is almost

exclusively about that one keyword Which it is.

Now, the balancing act comes in when you realise that you have to factor in

readability for humans and cramming in a good amount of key phrases at the same

time.

One or two of our three main posts will need to have the keyword as the first part of

their title. This can be tricky to implement if you’re targeting a long tail keyword, ,

since if it’s long then it doesn’t leave much room for anything else to entice the visitor

with.

Here’s an example. Let’s say your keyword is best way to make money quickly .

Now, it’s hard to pair that up with another phrase that serves to entice the visitor to

read the post. You couldn’t have my best way to make money quickly story for

example, since it just doesn’t make sense.

But if you forgot about the search engines for a minute (and therefore forgot about

including the full keyword), you could have How I made $10,000 quickly & how you

can too .

The human visitor would interpret that as what they were looking for and it would

trigger their interest at the same time. But the search engines aren’t THAT smart

unfortunately, so we must include the full keyword. Not just part of it either, honestly,

it needs to be the FULL keyword.

So, here’s a what I do. If it’s a story site you’re building, I simply add How I did it to

the end of the keyword or My story.

Best way to make money quickly could become…

The best way to make money quickly How I did it , or

What’s the best way to make money quickly My story .

Notice that they appeal to the search engines AND entice visitors at the same time.

Post titles aren’t the only place where this balance will have to be stricken either,

you’ll need to do it throughout your site. For a review site for example, in places

where it would just be easier to say `the system’ or `the product’ you could slip in the

product name, if it was your keyword. Sure, it’s unnecessary a lot of the time but you

need to please Google as well as your visitors to not file for unemployment the job search vacancies compensation online extended office claims.

.

It’s all about getting your keyword count up. But don’t spam it, don’t say it too often

more on this in a minute.

Basically, what I’ve been getting at in this section is this:

You need to make your content read as well as it possible can to humans, but at the

same time get your keywords (main keyword and LSI keywords) in there for the

search engines. Just remember that when you’re writing your posts and you’ll be

fine.

Keyword Variances and LSI

Waaay back when internet marketing was in its infancy (a LONG before I was a

marketer), I’m told that ranking on search engines was as easy as spamming a

single keyword throughout your site. Whatever your thoughts are on that (surely it

wasn’t really that easy was it?), one thing’s for sure: it’s certainly a not viable

strategy today. Spamming (or strategically placing) a single keyword throughout your

site will NOT get you a good position of Google.

Because Google changed the way it ranked pages. My guess as to why they did

it is that it was too easy to rank just stuffing the same keyword And therefore that

the `user experience’ of the searcher was suffering as a result, from crappy,

unhelpful affiliate websites dominating the rankings.

In today’s ultra competitive SEO climate, Google also places a massive emphasis on

synonyms (keywords that Google thinks are related to the keyword in question).

Essentially, Google looks at all of the keywords on your site, pairs each keyword up

with similar keywords to develop well, we’ll call them `clusters of keywords’. Then

uses the biggest cluster of keywords to help determine the topic or `main keyword’ of

your site. E.g. If you’re site was about `get a six pack fast’ you would want a lot of

keywords that relate to getting a six pack fast.

Obviously, these clusters aren’t the ONLY factor in determining your sites topic, but

getting this part right plays a big role in the overall effectiveness of your on page

optimization.

Now, that’s probably the most unscientific explanation of what’s really going on I’ve

ever written (or seen for that matter), but essentially it IS what happens.

And more importantly, we don’t need to understand the maths behind it, we don’t

need to know HOW Google does it, because at the end of the day, it won’t make us

any more money. Which never forget, is what internet marketing is all about: Making

money without looking for an unemployment check.

All we need to know is how we can use these keywords to our benefit. By exploiting

their importance.

These related or synonym keywords have a name by the way… named after the

mathematic formula from which they stem from, they are known as Latent Semantic

Indexing keywords.

LSI keywords and how to use them to your benefit

If you thought the smartest way to force Google to give you a high ranking was by

stuffing the main keyword, you’d be wrong. The smartest (and most effective way) is

by stuffing the LSI keywords!

I use the term stuffing loosely by the way, this isn’t black hat SEO (true spamming).

But, what I mean is that the more LSI keywords you have `backing up’ your main

keyword, the more important and relevant your main keyword will appear to the

search engines.

Basically, if we use the unscientific principle mentioned earlier, you want loads of LSI

keywords to create the biggest cluster, and you want the main keyword at its centre.

How do we do that?

Well, first of all we’ve got to find out what the LSI keywords are. Obviously, you can

take a pretty good guess at what the LSI keywords are going to be (stuff related to

your topic) and in all likelihood you’ll probably include some LSI keywords in your

content without even knowing it.

So why then do so many SEO marketers go to all the trouble of looking for the most

`highly weighted’ LSI keywords? Because they want to find the MOST related

keywords, the ones which will link closest to their main keyword and therefore give

them the biggest ranking boost so to not seek unemployment services.

In fact, If you do a search on yeah, you guessed it: Google (does your whole life ever

seem to revolve around that site?) you’ll find hundreds of crazy and inventive

methods that SEO marketers have created to find them.

And I’ve no idea why, because it couldn’t be simpler to find what the most important

LSI keywords are, all you have to do is go to the very company you’re trying to

impress and see what they think they are…

And Google is more than happy to tell us, in order of importance, exactly what the

LSI keywords are for ANY given root keyword.

So, here’s step by step how to find your key LSI keywords straight from the horse’s

mouth, so to speak…

Step #1: Go to the Google keyword tool and type in your main keyword.

Step #2: In the results you’ll see your keyword plus a whole bunch of other related

keywords. These are your LSI keywords. These are the keywords that Google

expects to find on a high quality site about dog training.

Please, don’t be intimidated by the quality of my graphic design skills by the way…

So with the root or main keyword for our site as `dog training’ you can see that they

are some of the LSI keywords. However, I also recommend that you scroll down and

use some from the `additional keywords to consider section’:

As these are ones that Google would expect to find on a site related to dog training,

without actually having the term `dog training’ in them, so it doesn’t look like you’re

spamming `dog training’.

How many LSI keywords should I use? I tend to use quite a few because while

Google will punish you for stuffing (spamming) a single keyword, they reward you for

smart stuffing, as I like to call it (stuffing a variety LSI keywords).

I recommend that you try to incorporate at least 10 of the LSI keywords into your

main blog page and sprinkle them throughout the rest of your sniper site as well so you will not have to apply for unemployment job search.

Keyword Variances

Before we move on, I think that it’s important to understand that every search

conducted on Google is typed in by a unique person.

And often, they will type in completely unique query’s (they’ll type something in that

no one has searched for before and that no one will search for again probably).

These obscure keywords are usually longer versions of a more popular keyword

(your sites main keyword for example). And it’s important that I explain just how

important they will be to your site.

Because while we are `sniping’ a single keyword, anywhere from 30% all the way up

to 90% of your traffic will come from these obscure keywords. Keywords that you

never even optimized for in the first place.

Now, this might be a little tricky to get your head around, but in my experience this

has proved to be true. I think what explains it best is if I give you a real life example

of one of my sites so you can see how many visitors the main keyword brought in

and how many visitors the unique variations did.

Note: By the way, I am showing you one of the real keywords I built a site around. So

please, don’t come in and steal my niche. I’ve got enough competition as it is!

As you can see, the keyword I targeted and built my whole site around ONLY

brought me 17% of my visitors. In fact, there were 1,306 different phrases in

February alone that led visitors to my website. And what’s really shocking is that I’m

not even number one for the main keyword.

am I telling you all this?

Firstly, because I think it’s important to understand where your traffic will be coming

from. And secondly, to give you a real example of just how important LSI keywords

are to the success of your internet marketing website. You see, it is the LSI keywords that are

responsible for a lot of that `unplanned’ traffic…

You may have noticed that the search phrases other than my main keyword look a

lot like LSI keywords. And a lot of them are by incorporating more LSI keywords

onto your website you’re increasing the number of search phrases that you’re

website will rank for.

Basically, you may or may not rank for the LSI keyword itself, but you will rank for

some weird variation of it. So, LSI keywords don’t just serve to increase your

rankings for your main keyword, they also increase the chances that you’ll rank for

these `unique’ search terms (which will bring you a hell of a lot of visitors so you won’t be looking for a job!).

Optimizing your site

Now that we’ve talked about what keywords to use and how to use them (remember

humans vs. search engines), I wanted to do a section specifically on how EXACTLY

to best optimize your site for your main keyword.

Up to this point, there are some steps we’ve already taken to optimize our site:

A keyword rich domain name

A keyword rich blog name

A keyword rich blog description

Believe it or not, these things alone are often powerful enough to rank you way up on

the first page. And we haven’t even talked about link structure, keyword densities or

post titles. These are all important elements to the `overall package’ and in this

subchapter I’m going to show you step by step how to best optimize each section.

Link structure

I don’t know why, but the default setting for the wordpress link structure is just plain

awful and very Google unfriendly. Let me explain.

When you make a post, the default setting will set the URL of that post to something

like

www.mydomain.com/p2334

. As you can imagine, that’s bad for SEO as we want

the keyword in the filename. So here’s how to change it..

.

Step 1: Log into your wordpress blog at

www.mydomain.com/wp admin

Step 2: On the left hand side, scroll down to settings and click that. Then click on

permalinks.

Step 3: Select custom structure and enter: /%postname% in the field.

Click save changes and you’re done.

This will improve your SEO score because you’ll now have the post name in the URL

instead of a random meaningless number.

Keyword densities

Keyword densities are the subject of near endless discussion by marketers from all

walks of life. And there’s no `right answer’ as far as I’m concerned of what’s the

optimal density Some of my sites rank #1 with only one mention of the main

keyword on the page, some rank #1 will with 4 mentions.

I’m pretty sure there’s no real `secret density’ which works across the board. What

works best seems to vary from site to site but keyword density isn’t that important in

today’s SEO environment anyway.

Basically, I wouldn’t worry too much about keyword density of the main keyword.

These are only three rules I have as far as keyword density is concerned. I’ve had

great results with them and if you follow them too, you should be fine:

Bold the main keyword once in every post.

Mention the keyword in t he first couple of sentences.

Mention the keyword once, maybe twice more in the post.

So mention the main keyword two to three times in each post (depending on length)

and you’ll be fine. Mentioning it more often will have a negligible effect on your

rankings and you even run the risk of being seen as a spammer, which will actually

seriously harm your rankings leading you to the unemployment offices.

As mentioned previously though, try to include 2 5 LSI keywords per post (assuming

your post is about 500 words) and also try to include related synonyms, keywords

from the `additional keywords to consider’ area if you’re using my Google keyword

tool method.

Post titles

Referring back to our sniper site structure, our main page will have 3 4 posts on it.

Now, since you don’t want to spam your main keyword, I will generally include the

main keyword in the title of the first and final posts. I think that the first one’s

important because it’s the first thing Google will see if it indexes the site too soon

(before you’ve finished writing all your content about me etc) and the final post

since it’s the most important one.

These are just guesses of mine and not based on any Science but they work very

well for me. For the middle one or two posts use an LSI keyword or if not, just write

about something that’s related to the overall topic.

I already talked about how to write posts in the human vs. search engines section

but just as a reminder you want the keyword first, followed by something that will

entice humans to read it when they see your site listed on Google.

There are other things we still need to do, such as create tags and write descriptions,

but I will cover that in the next chapter where I show you how to create the content

for your site. But first, we need to do one last thing…

Configuring the plugins

Before we finally start writing our content we just need to quickly configure those two

plugins that we uploaded earlier: Google XML sitemaps and All in one SEO pack

respectively.

Installing the plugins

First of all we need to install the plugins to our wordpress blog. All you need to

do is:

Log into your wordpress blog

Click on the Appearance tab on the left hand side

Then select plugins

Scroll down to the section `inactive plugi ns’ and click activate on each of them.

Done!

Now, we just need to make some changes to their default settings…

Configuring All in one SEO

Click settings on the right hand side, then scroll down to All in One SEO.

Below is a screenshot of what you’ll see on the All in one SEO pack’s setting page.

Just fill in each section exactly as I’ve indicated. Make sure your description

contains the keyword while at the same time intrigues human visitors. I would use no

more than 3 keywords because too many will be considered spam by Google you’ll end up in state unemployment.

On the next page you’ll find a screenshot of how to configure the rest of the settings.

Make sure that you’ve got use no index for categories and archives checked to

prevent duplicate content.

A note on duplicate content: Duplicate content is basically bad and will harm your

SEO rankings. So we want to avoid it as best we can by not having the exact same

post on more than one page. By selecting no index, we’re telling Google not to visit

that page, therefore it won’t matter what’s on it and you won’t suffer the SEO penalty.

There are a couple of other steps we can take to reduce duplicate content, such as

using the `more tag’ in posts, so that only a summary of the post is displayed on the

home page, rather than the entire post itself. But in my experience it’s not worth

doing Well, I can never be bothered to do it anyway. I’m pretty sure it’s impact is

negligible.

Plus, think about the possible loss in conversions from visitors having to click more

to read the whole post, skim readers might not see the button for example.

Deselect auto generate descriptions because we want to write each one individually.

You can leave all of those boxes blank and just click update options and you’ve

successfully configured this plugin.

Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin will submit your sitemap to Google, which makes it easier for Google to

see the overall structure of your site and helps Google to index any pages it might

have missed. Basically, it improves your SEO. In order to access the plugin click on

XML sitemap in the settings tab, you don’t really need to change anything here, just

click on rebuild the sitemap when you’ve finished building your site and when you

add any new posts/pages after that.

So, that’s it for this chapter. There’s just one final thing to talk about before we

actually write our content… Affiliate links.

Chapter 6: Affiliate Links & Maximising

Conversions

In this chapter we’re going to look at where to place your affiliate links to maximise

conversions and also how to cloak those affiliate links.

Affiliate link placement and optimizing the anchor text

Getting visitors to actually click on your affiliate links is, bar none, the most important

task that your site needs to accomplish to avoid filing for unemployment online.

Sure, getting traffic is important and preselling is important, but at the end of the day,

if the visitor does not click that link you’re not going to get paid it’s as simple as

that and you’ll end up on unemployment compensation that so many internet marketing courses leave this

crucial part of your site design out.

Where you place your affiliate links, what calls to action you use (if any) and what

format they’re in (text or image) will play an absolutely massive part in determining

the profitability of your site. Seriously, I’m not kidding Your actual links could

literally double or halve your profits.

As I discovered a few months back…

I didn’t really pay much attention to link placement or link anchor text until a couple of

months ago, when I changed the link set up on one of sites and monthly

commissions went up from around $300 I think, to $600.

This particular website had very few affiliate links on it. I thought I’d focus the first

part of the page entirely on my content and have no distractions or opportunities for

the visitors to exit my page through any kind of link. I did this because it was my

theory that by the time the visitor found the link, they’d already been presold and

would be much more likely to convert… But I wasn’t getting a very high hop through

rate (the percentage of people who visit your page and then click your affiliate links)

So, What I changed was adding 2 highly visible links above the fold (one on the

sidebar and one in the main post).

Now, as predicted, the conversion rate for these links (the percentage of people who

clicked them and bought the product) was significantly lower than for those who

clicked the one lower down (I think the sidebar link had like a 3% conversion rate).

However, these links were getting clicked three times more often and I was obviously

getting sales from visitors who wouldn’t have my links at all otherwise because my

profits rose sharply. Literally, overnight with no change in traffic my commissions

increased by 100%. keeping me from unemployment statistics.

Anyway, I started to pay more attention to the placements of affiliate links and also

their text. Few of my sites saw such a substantial increase in conversions (most 20

40% after rigorous testing and some even performed worse) but I’m a bit stat crazy

and the idea of leaving money on the table (same traffic but less sales) drove me to

keep testing in an attempt to find out what links worked best.

What this means for you is I’ve tested many different combinations on a variety of

websites and what follows is what has worked best and led to the highest

conversions.

Where to put your links

This will be a no fluff section where I’m just going to tell you what spots have worked

best for me and gotten the most response. This is a short section because there isn’t

really much to say on it…

Just follow my instructions and put links in these places if you want to make the most

money.

First link At the top of your review/story. If it’s a review say something like: Note:

This a review, click here if you want to visit the product name website. If it’s a story I

might tell a story in the link itself. Click here to see how I finally got a six pack or

something.

Second link Half way through the review/story, I got the best conversion results by

giving that link right after mentioning a huge benefit of the product in bold. So even

skimmers will read that benefit when they click the link So they’ll be SLIGHTLY pre

sold.

Final link At the end of the review/story. Make it big and easily visible. This will be

where you’ll see conversion rates of 10%+ (providing your content was good).

However, depending on the length of your main post, this won’t get clicked even half

as often as the top links.

Side bar links Not only will you have links in the main post but also some in the

sidebar. I must admit that I’m still testing these today, but the best results I’ve had so

far, is by placing a big text link (maybe a banner if it’s good) directly under the Who

am I section you’ll create. So, it will usually still be visible above the fold. This will

mean there’s two links above the fold and in plain view to every visitor who visits

your page.

The rest of your site Sprinkle them throughout your other posts and pages, but

sparingly. Too many affiliate links will harm your SEO rankings. Often the link you

have in the sidebar alone will be enough for your other pages (since you’ll have the

same sidebar on every page).

Anchor text & calls to action

If you didn’t already know, anchor text is the `text’ of a link. So, instead of putting

http://www.productname.com

, marketers put `click here to see the product’. Where

`click here to see the product’ points to that URL.

This makes it more attractive and helpful to human visitors and anchor text also

plays a big role in off page SEO, where the anchor text of links pointing to your site is

used to determine what your page is about.

Now, I’ve actually found that the anchor text of a link WILL affect your conversion

rate, considerably in fact. Particularly, for the links at the top of the page, where the

anchor text might be the only thing a visitor reads before they click the link.

If it’s a story presell I’m using for example, I’ll put a benefit of the product (usually

something like `click here to see how I finally solved the problem’) right there in the

anchor text. That way skim readers will get a quick `testimonial’ from a seemingly

unbiased third party and are more likely to believe the hype on the merchants sales

page Even if they didn’t read another word on your product buy internet marketing site.,

Now, before we talk about specific sentences which have converted very well for me,

I just want to explain how important calls to action are. And to do that, here’s two

examples of similar links:

See the book that helped me to finally got rid of my panic attacks

Or

Click here to see the book that helped me to finally get rid of my panic attacks.

The difference is obviously the `click here’ part. But those two simple words will make

a big difference to number of times that link will get. Another key to success online is

providing a user experience where the visitor doesn’t have to think. By saying CLICK

HERE, you’re literally giving a simple order to follow. And we as humans, whether

consciously or not, will usually follow that order.

So, whatever anchor text you decide on, make sure you include the tried and tested,

clear as day… click here, to not file for unemplopyment online.

Now as for specific sentences which work well, there is no `right answer’ of a single

sentence that converts best and it will vary from site to site. But below are what’s

worked best for me:

I’ll cover review websites first (scroll down if you’re doing a story).

For the first link the most effective one has been: Note this is a review, click here to

visit product names site.

For the middle link, I’ll give them the link after naming a big (but factual) benefit of

the product. So here’s an example from one of my sites (this link has converted

particularly well).

It takes you by the hand, and shows you step by step one of the easiest and

most unique methods to profit from affiliate roduct buy internet marketing

Click here to visit the productname site

Notice that the statement made before the link was a very powerful one, yet not

sales ish in any way at the same time. I just present the facts about the product in an

appealing way. Even though I already mentioned it earlier, I’ll say it again: Do not

sell the product in your reviews Just give them the good facts (and a couple of

bad ones for good measure).

The link itself is very simple, I don’t say click here to buy it (never, EVER, say that) or

even click here to read more. I’m just telling the visitor that by clicking that link

they’re going to visit the products site, just a simple visit How can they say no to

that? (I’m not sending them there to read or buy the product).

This principle of appealing to a users emotions can be seen throughout internet

marketing. Why do you think so many sales letters start with `Discover’? Because

discover doesn’t qualify the visitor in any way. Where users might be put off by

`read’, when was the last time you didn’t want to simply `discover’ something? a

discovery implies a result from no work.

Anyway (went off track a bit there), the final link should use the same sort of anchor

text as the middle link and come straight after the positive conclusion of your review.

Click here to visit xxxx’s site

Click here to visit the xxxx official site

Click here to read more about xxxx on their website

These are the three anchor texts that have produced the highest conversions by far

for me and have kept me out of the unemployment offices

Now, let’s look at stories.

For the first link you want to give the main benefit of the product in a story form. So,

Click here to see the program that finally cured my acne.

As for the middle and final links: If you’re doing a story where you basically say

something along the lines of: this didn’t work, this really didn’t work but finally this

product did. Then don’t put the middle link until you’ve told them a bit about the

product that DID work (the affiliate product).

I’ve tried putting a link after I’ve written a whole paragraph about how something

didn’t work, with the link saying something like: Click here to see what did work for

me. But for some reason, the conversion rates were generally horrible and i almost went on a job search.

conversions are low from that kind of link because it ruins the credibility of your story.

You look kind of like a salesman by blatantly saying don’t try that, try THIS instead! .

So, don’t put the middle link until you’ve explained a bit about what the product that

helped you was. And then use a completely unbiased link that you might find on a

forum or something. Here’s some of my best converting examples that I’ve used:

Click here if you want to see the product.

Click here to see the product I’m talking about.

Click here if you want to read more on xxxx’s website.

Obviously, put the final link at the end of the story and use the same style of text.

The importance of cloaking & how to do it

Cloaking your affiliate link is the practice of hiding your ugly affiliate URL link from

your visitors. So instead of seeing john.googlesniper.hop.clickbank.net they’ll see

www.yourdomain.com/recommends/product name your

promoting. Which is, I think we can both agree, a much more attractive URL.

Link cloaking is important not only because it will improve the amount of times your

links get clicked (many internet users are sceptical of weird links with loads of

numbers) but also, it helps prevent affiliate link theft. This is when a user sees your

blatant affiliate link and thinks hmm, I think I’ll just sign up as an affiliate and save

myself 50% of the sale so you will end up filing for unemplyoment online

Link theft is particularly rife in the make money/affiliate marketing niche. Of course,

savvy marketers will also know it’s an affiliate link when they see

yourdomain.com/something instead of linking directly to their website. But it isn’t AS

obvious and in my experience it has increased conversions.

I could discuss the ins and outs of link cloaking and whether it’s worth the effort or

not, but you can find many hot discussions about it for free on Google if you’re that

interested.

Link cloaking has worked wonders in my experience and has led to solid increase in

Conversions. And therefore it warrants the extra few minutes needed to actually

cloak your links. So therefore I strongly recommend that you do it. I’m also convinced

that link cloaking does improve your SEO rank but there’s no scientific evidence to

support that (just another one of my crazy theories I guess!)

The easiest way to cloak your links

There’s a whole bunch of different ways to cloak your affiliate links so you won’t end up on a job search they even have

Places offering link cloaking service. I recommend

that you stay away from these as I have heard of several cases where the affiliates

in question didn’t get the credit for a lot of sales ending up in state unemployment.

I’m not going to point any fingers but I suspect some link theft is going on, or

improper cloaking techniques are being utilized .Either way, I wouldn’t trust a third

party (other than of course the affiliate network e.g. Clickbank) with such an

important part of your business.

Also, I don’t understand why people use these services at all. Because cloaking your

links couldn’t be simpler. All you need to do is create a simple PHP redirect. And of

course, I’m going to show you how…

How to cloak your links step by step

Ok, so by now you should be at least relatively familiar with your FTP program (you

know the thing we used to upload our plugins and themes to wordpress). And

basically all we need to do to cloak our links is upload a tiny file (which I’ll show you

how to create) to our website. You’ll need to repeat this process for each website

you create, but in total it takes like 2 minutes to do.

Step #1: Create a new folder on your desktop and name it recommends.

That will be the

www.yourdomain.com/RECOMMENDS/product

part. Now, you don’t

have to make `recommends’, you could name it `go’ for example. If I were creating a

story website I might call this folder `go’ instead. Recommends is better suited to a

review page.

Step #2: Open the folder and inside create a text document. Name this text

document whatever you want the product part of the URL to be, but make sure it’s

all one word (No spaces in the name). Often the product name or a shortened

version of it is what I’ll use but you can experiment if you like.

I just want to make this crystal clear (I’m not a techie myself, so I know how this can

be tough)… Let’s say the folder was called go and the text document inside was

called googleshadow. The cloaked link would look like this:

http://www.yourdomain.com/go/googleshadow.php

Step #3: Change the file extension of the text document to php. So hit rename and

on the end of the filename replace .txt with .php You will need to enable file

extensions if you can’t see the .txt part. Here’s a guide on how to do that in

Windows:

http://www.wikihow.com/Disable Hidden File Extensions in Windows XP

So far then, it should look like this:

Step #4: This is where it gets kind of tricky (well I mean not really.. but anyway)…

Open up your product.php in notepad and you’ll see a blank document. You need to

enter this code, and nothing else inside it:

header( Location: affiliatelinkhere’);

?>

Just copy and paste that into the document and insert your affiliate link. Here’s

exactly what the document should look like:

Ok, save that, now all we need to do is upload it to our web site server.

Step #5: Log into your FTP program (the same one you used earlier) and on the left

hand side browse to your desktop or wherever you created the recommends folder.

Step 6#: On the right hand side, double click on public_html. Then if that’s your first

website on that hosting account, simply click on recommends on the left hand side

and hit upload. The recommends folder should now be on your web server and

you’re done. Like below (it’s in product buy internet marketing niche site in my example because I have multiple

domains within the public_html folder):

By the way, make sure to test your link by actually typing in

www.yourdomain.com/recommends/productname.php

to make sure it works! You

should go straight to the merchants website when you enter that.

Also, remember that that URL will be your affiliate link (because as users are

redirected through that other page you’ll get credit for the sale). So whenever you

want to add an affiliate link to your site, add that link and NOT plain the affiliate link so you’ll not have to apply for unemployment.

I think that some marketers put off cloaking there links because it seems hard or like

extra work. But you will want to do it sooner or later, and as I’ve just demonstrated to

you, it really is a simple process that only takes a couple of minutes at the most.

Alright then! We’ve discussed everything you will ever need (or want) to know about

links so far in this chapter. Now we’ve finally done everything we need to do before

we write the content for our sniper site.