Affiliate Lounge » google

Google pagerank update – March 2008

Phillip van Coller — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 21:45:15 +0000

Well it looks like it’s that time again. Just noticed now that 3 of my websites went from pagerank 0 to PR 2 and my backlinks updated. I also see that my position for this blog for the term “affiliate marketing” on Google South Africa has also rose from #46 to #11 which is real good news.

I found a real nice tool to help you increase your pagerank, backlinks etc. The software is free but there is a better version for sale if you want to take the cash out for it. You can download the free version here.

If you want to go check your pagerank goto THIS LINK or if you want to see the amount of backlinks to your website goto THIS LINK

Good ranking!

The power of the “ANCHOR TEXT”

Phillip van Coller — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 13:58:46 +0000

I never really realized the power in the anchor text in your backlinks until I was scooping round a bit. I used to run a website Secunda.co.za which is a local town website. One of my partners bought it in 1998 which is a real long time back…

In that time (the 90s) they started building websites for people all over (which is real ugly) and all the websites had a link back to this town website Secunda.co.za.

So the other day I was looking at a couple of websites built in that time and I saw the backlinks which were mostly images with “alt” in the image tags. All the links pointed to Secunda.co.za and another website and the anchor text was “club Internet” and “club Internet link”.

“Club Internet” you might think! Well it was in the 90s so to have internet was like being in a club, very small.

This is what shocked me:

The Secunda website ranks #1 – #2 in google south africa for this phrase and there is NO text like this inside the whole website! I mean none! No Club Internet here!

I was truly amazed with this, I have underestimated the power of the ANCHOR TEXT. I am now experimenting with anchor text to this blog, “affiliate marketing”. If all goes well I will be ranking #1 in google south africa with the next pagerank update.

Well, let’s see…

So how does Search Engines work?

Phillip van Coller — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 22:51:50 +0000

Since the start of the net search engines evolved from one type to another. Today there are a few types of search engines named:

Crawler Based Search Engines
Meta Search Engines
Human Powered Search Engines
Pay for Performance Search Engines

Crawler Based Search Engines

Examples: Google.com, Yahoo.com, Msn.com

Exactly what the word says, they crawl the web using what they call robots or spiders. They continually follow links from websites to other websites and then again links to other websites… When they visit a website they look for all the on-site links and saves it into an Index.

When a search is done using that search engine your pages that was indexed will be displayed in the search. The position/ranking of your pages is determined by a lot of factors including relevance, keywords, title, description, content and backlinks (links pointing from other websites to yours).

Meta Search Engines

Examples: www.metacrawler.com, www.dogpile.com

These are search engines that gathers listings from other search engines, rather than using its own resources and tools.

Human Powered Search Engines

Examples: Dmoz.org, www.sabest.co.za

These are typically directories where manual submitting is applied. You as the webmaster needs to select a category and enter all your website’s information manually. In most cases the directory editors validate and review websites before accepting, so in this case it does matter how professional and resources full your website is.

These directories is important for your pagerank and to get indexed when you start up a website. Crawler based engines such as Google.com regularly index these human powered directories and you need to get found.

Pay for Performance Search Engines

Examples: Google.com, Yahoo.com, Msn.com

This is typically a PPC (pay per click) module that is merged with most search engines. You can easily rank higher than your competitors without doing any Search Engine Optimization by paying a per click or flat fee.

For you as a website owner your main focus must be to get high ranking in crawler based sites. Why?

Cause the most users use them and it’s totally free!

Google Pagerank Updated – 2008!

Phillip van Coller — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 22:29:39 +0000

Google Pagerank update finally arrived!

When I came back from a long evening today I saw that I finally got a pagerank on my blog.
What are you waiting for, go check your’s now @ Blogflux

Post your comments of your blog’s PR change here…

Google pagerank update – March 2008

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) vs Pay per Click (PPC)

Phillip van Coller — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 13:43:24 +0000

After getting numerous visitors from the video I posted on SEO vs PPC I decided to go more into the topic by creating a series. The next couple of weeks I will blog more about using PPC and some great SEO strategies. For now I just briefly want to go into what PPC and SEO is and the basics of it.

Pay per Click – PPC

Pay per click is buying an “ad space” in a search engine and paying for it by every click that you receive. You can set your budget and the amount you would like to pay per click. Depending on the amount you pay per click your ad position is affected. The leaders in PPC is listed in order of my personal ranking:

Using PPC linking to Affiliate Programs

I absolutely prefer Google Adwords and have not played around much with the other two. As an affiliate you can use PPC to promote affiliate programs. The only issue is that PPC is overpopulated, so you have to search for keywords that gets good searches in search engines but not many ads on that keywords.

Using PPC to promote your website

This can get very expensive if you have no sales conversions. If you are running an eCommerce website selling products/services PPC is the best way to go. But if you just want to attract new visitors to your blog/website I would suggest using SEO tactics rather than PPC.

If you aren’t using PPC yet, here is a link to a free Google Adwords $50 voucher and a $25 MSN voucher

Search Engine Optimization – SEO

Search engine optimization is what it say: Optimizing your pages for better search engine rankings. When users search using google for a certain term or keyword they get an amount of results. The idea is to get yourself on the first page of these results, or at least the second page.

There are tons of on-page:

Title tag, Keywords tag, Description tag, Headings, Image alt, Content and more

and off-page:

Incoming links, link text, pagerank and more

factors that is concerned when doing excellent SEO on a page. Every website needs organic visitors coming from search engines. It’s free, you don’t pay a cent and mostly it’s targeted visitors. They search for “Foods in Holland” and your page is optimized for “Foods in Holland” your page will appear in the Search results.

I will create a post and link to the series soon.