Coined the “Yahoo and Microsoft Search Alliance”, it looks as if the search engine platform that has been pushed under the carpet by Google is looking to re-emerge. Now marketers will be able to control all their Yahoo! Search Marketing efforts as well as their Microsoft adCenter ads under the same platform as the integration finishes up later today.

No word yet as to whether or not this will be fully functional through the Microsoft adCenter Desktop tool, but my guess is that they will add that functionality shortly, if its not already available. Combining these two search behemoths will no doubt give Google shareholders a stirr but I feel like this is a great thing for internet marketing. It will allow for advertisers to effectively double their search traffic and make for a more valuable media buy for agencies.

How Yahoo! and Microsoft will work together:

• Search ad inventory from Yahoo!, Microsoft and their respective partners will be combined into a new unified search marketplace. Microsoft adCenter will be the platform for all search campaigns.
• Microsoft will acquire an exclusive 10-year license to certain Yahoo! search technologies.
• Microsoft will manage the technology platforms that deliver the algorithmic and paid search results used by Yahoo!
• Full implementation of the terms of the Search Alliance is expected to occur within 24 months following regulatory clearance.
• Yahoo!’s Sales team will exclusively support high volume advertisers, SEO and SEM agencies, and managed resellers, and Microsoft will support self-service advertisers.

The Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance does not include each company’s display advertising, web properties and products, email, instant messaging, or any other aspect of the companies’ businesses, so rest assured they still want to maintain some of their own value with the network they’ve built. Microsoft is undoubtedbly pleased with the deal as they need all the help they can get making Bing! more socially acceptable, and why not start with the advertisers.

All in all I look forward to testing the new transitioned ad platform and I feel it will be a positive thing for advertisers everywhere. For more info on this change over check out the Yahoo/Microsoft transition page.

Its not always easy to find what your looking for on Google, whether the results are skewed or your just looking for something that isn’t there, it can be frustrating especially if you don’t know which keywords to search for. Well today you are in luck, for I have comprised a list of search techniques that shall take you above and beyond search splendor.

Some of these I use daily, while others I don’t think I’ve ever used, but I hope that they still serve some purpose and are of use to you. If you are a savvy web user these may already be in your arsenal of tools, but for most people these with definitely improve upon your productivity, and if I can make that small difference in the online world my life is complete.

While Google makes it easy for you to search things like images, maps, news, photos and groups…they don’t really help you find specific’s unless you know how to do so correctly.

Search Modifiers

Search modifiers help you narrow down your search from the bazillion websites that come up for your search query. Here’s some of the modifiers I use the most, and how they can help you refine your searches.

• inanchor: <keyword> — Returns pages where your keyword was used in the anchor text of other sites linking to that page.
• allinanchor: <keyword> — Returns exact results for your search query if it was used in the anchor text of other sites linking in.
• intitle: <keyword> — Returns pages where your keyword was used in the title.
• allintitle: <keyword> — Returns pages where your exact keyword(s) were used in the title.
• inurl: <keyword> — Shows pages where your <keyword> is contained within the url itself.
• allinurl: <keyword> — Shows pages where all your <keyword(s)> are used within the url itself.
• site: <website> — Returns pages from a specific website. Conversely -site will remove pages from a certain site.
• link: <website> — Shows sites linking to your search query.
• cache: <website> — Will give you the web cache of your search query.
• movie: <movie name> — Will give you information/movie times.
• stocks: <stock symbol> — On the fly stock market information. ex. stocks:GOOG
• related: <keyword>– Will return related queries for your keyword.
• time <place> — Similar to a world clock at your fingertips, just enter the place and you will be given their time of day.
• weather <place> — Same as time only for weather.
• define: <word> — Works like a dictionary to give you the definition of your search term.
• filetype: <file extension> — Will return files of a certain extension.

There are plenty more that I may have missed but these are the most used queries that I feel serve the most purpose.  For an extremely comprehensive listing check out Michael Gray‘s list.

Finding Filetypes

This is probably the most underused, but most useful searches you can do on Google. Just doing a quick search for pdf documents brings me up a massive selection of books whether relevant or not.  If I were to type in “ebook filetype:pdf” for example, I would get a comprehensive listing of ebooks in .pdf format, ready to download and read on a whim.  Obviously you may not find what your looking for by using the term “ebook” so you can type niching it down to actual titles of books.

The great thing about the “filetype:” search modifier is that you can search for practically ANY filetype you are looking for.  Whether its a pdf, mp3, avi, ppt, doc, 3gp, and the list goes on and on.  This is a very powerful tool at your disposal and most people dont even know about it.

Search Tricks for SEO

While all those are fine and dandy, what if you are looking for a certain website for SEO purposes or to do some background checks on your competition, you will find that most of those search tricks don’t really help at all.  What you need is a little ingenuity.
If you are for example looking for wordpress blogs you may search:

<niche> blog “Powered by wordpress”
or
<niche> “Remember my personal information” “Notify me of follow-up comments”

With a little thinking outside the box it is possible to find pretty much anything you want. Combine this with inline search results using something like SEO for firefox and you will be blowing away your competition in no time.

If you wanted to find educational sites and didnt feel like using the scholarly search you could always use this search query in Google: site:.edu blog or take it a step further and add site:.edu <niche> + blog to find a specific genre.  Obviously these are all fully customizable and will deliver different results for everyone but the method is still the same. If you have any other search queries I missed or just want to add your own feel free to leave a comment below.

While most SEO’s already know the ins and outs of off-site search engine optimization, but what often gets overlooked is the actual on-site SEO which may be a key reason as to why you are not at the top of the SERP’s. I’ve compiled a list of things the beginner SEO can do to make sure his or her site is fully optimized for the search engines.

1. The Title Tag – Single handedly the most crucial element of on-site optimization. Make sure you have your main keywords in here. A useful plug-in for this if your using WordPress is optimal title.
2. The H1/H2 Text – Are also extremely important because they show the search engine the main subjects and “table of contents” for your sites content. These should be targeted towards the keywords you want to rank for, and should be indicative of your title tag.
3. First sentence of body text – In terms of advanced SEO tactics, the first sentence for the body for every page on your site will be picked up by the SE’s and more importantly are picked up by Google’s LSI algorithm.
4. Meta Keywords, Description and Robots Tag — The site’s meta tags are always used to place your site in the rankings. As well your sitemap.xml will be looked at by Google on a regular basis so keep it updated.
5. The Body Text – Try to keep your focused body text in bold as this will be more emphatic to the search engines.
6. The URL — The subdirectory folder and page of content should be optimized. A useful way to do this with wordpress is through permalinks. (Settings -> Permalinks -> Custom Structure, and then use “/%category%/%postname%/”) So for http://site.com/SEO-optimization-in-toronto.html would rank higher for a page devoted to “SEO optimization in Toronto” simply due to this structure.
7. Same Site Link Texts — Make sure all your pages of your site are inter-linked or have some type of navigation whereas your main pages you are trying to rank for are linked. Make sense? Having your targeted keywords linked to other relevant pages can go a long way for a little higher rankings.
8. Same-Site Link URLs — Don’t just use keywords to describe pages inside your site, those URLs you link to should include SEO URLs as well. (eg: http://site.com/your-keyword.html)
9. Keyword Density — While this topic is generally up for debate, the general consensus is to have anywhere between 5-8% of your total text. So for a 500 word article you should have anywhere between 25-40 of those words as some sort of derivative of the keyword you are trying to rank for. While this isn’t THAT important for rankings, it should still be considered.
10. Image ALT Tags — Lastly you should always make sure to have your images optimized for keywords you wish to rank for. It wouldn’t hurt to go as far as to change the names of the images to be keyword-rich as well.

By using these simple methods, you can get a jump start on your off-site SEO so that you can focus more on getting inbound, authority backlinks from relevant sites. Then all you can do from there is write viral content and link build like a madman. I will be doing a follow up post on off-site SEO methods so stay tuned.

When it comes to getting your website ranked in the SE’s, it comes down to variety of factors that all pertain to your pages overall visibility. Lower visibility on the search engines means less traffic, and less reach, we don’t want that. So how does page ranking actually work you may ask. Behind all the complex algorithms put in place by Google, the actual system for ranking is quite simple. I will go over some of the best ways you can optimize your site to make sure you have the best ranking possible across all SE’s, not just big G.

External Links: Page Rank is frequently amplified by the # and quality of inbound links. The better the sites that link back to yours, the better. You can attain these through massive email campaigns, networking with similar sites, or buying reciprocal links. Stay away from link trades as they are now deemed a negative impact on ranking as well as your SERP.

google pagerank explained

Keywords: SEO, SEM, Meta Tags, various social media advertising platforms (Adwords/YSM/Facebook Ads) all rely on these crucial elements. There are two types of keywords that can be implemented. Firstly there is the primary keyword which is the base for what you are targeting. Then you have a secondary keyword which is less pertinent but still helps to pinpoint what you’re targeting. Try to avoid keyword spam, as you need to place your primary keywords throughout your site strategically (H1, Title Tags, etc.) so that the SE’s can place your site quickly and easily.

Optimizing website content: The driving force that contributes to page ranking is textual content. You need to ensure that your web site has sufficient text on each page to facilitate proper indexing by the SE’s. Also keep in mind that the text on your page will not include images or Flash elements. The body copy of a web page should have the correct and most important keyword phrases.

Page titles: You need to create appropriate page titles for each of the web pages on your website. A page title is the first line of copy that is displayed during search listing. To attract visitors, you need to apply the right keywords and compelling copy in page titles.

Dynamic URLs: If you are using a dynamic URL then search engines will face difficulty in indexing your web pages. Try to avoid using dynamic URL’s.

Edit: Flash/JavaScript content: I was unaware, but apparently the SE’s can now read data from flash files, so feel free to create your menu’s and navigation in flash, however I would shy away from this as im sure not ALL the SE’s can read your swf’s. As for JavaScript, the SE’s also have trouble indexing websites using Java based navigation, so stay away from it.

Recently the guys over at Tracking202 had sent me an email saying they are ready to launch their brand new updated platform Tracking202 Pro. I’ve toyed around with Tracking202 but have always used Prosper202, and it has always been good to me. But now all that has changed with the launch of Tracking202 Pro!

Tracking is definitely one of the single most pressing issues when it comes to making money online with PPC marketing. How else would you be able to track and monitor your clicks for your keywords to see what is converting effectively. The truth is that most affiliates dont have good enough tracking and fail to monitor their clicks properly, costing them thousands of dollars on advertising. From what I saw from the original Tracking202, they allowed multiple campaigns across multiple networks similar to Prosper202, and it was great, but apparently that wasn’t enough because the guys at Trackign202 have upped the bar to add even more features.

Original Tracking202 Vs. Tracking202 Pro

Unlike the original, Tracking202 Pro is fully integrated with the big three PPC networks (Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, MSN AdCenter) and the affiliate networks which means the application is able to download all of your data automatically without you having to do anything. It is also able to get 100% precise cost tracking, and it also pulls in your subids from your networks nightly.

The Tracking202 setup is also made easier than ever. Simply add your PPC account login information, your affiliate account info, and place one piece of javascript code across all of your affiliate pages. Once that is done, the only thing you will need to do is make a simple PHP redirect, and basically redirect your traffic to your affiliate link and add in their Tracking202 subid at the end.

Tracking202 Pro will download nightly, all of your cost data from the Google, Yahoo and MSN networks, and then automatically sync all of your conversions. This will enable you to view your conversions with pinpoint accuracy, so you can find out exactly which keywords are performing and/or underperforming.

You can analyze your keywords as well as your bids on keywords next to each other. You can also split your traffic between search and content network. You can see the campaign, adgroup and creative being clicked on in real time using their spy-view. This will eliminate the labourious importing of keyword lists and in general make your life a hell of a lot easier.

Free 7-Day Trial Offer

Tracking 202 Pro Free Trial

Tracking202 Pro is a paid hosted enterprise level PPC conversion tracking platform. Unlike the original, Tracking202 Pro isn’t free. The platform was built expressly for affiliates using search to promote CPA or CPS offers. You will increase your tracking effectiveness, save tons of time and in general make MORE money using this system, and I would recommend it for new affiliate marketers and seasoned ones alike.

If you’re a seasoned PPC marketer, then Tracking202 Pro is a must have tool. If you’re just starting out, then begin with the free Tracking202 to get your feet wet. Or, you can jump right into Tracking202 Pro and see if you can make back that $19.95 monthly fee in the next seven days. Either way it’s a great product that I fully endorse and would recommend to any affiliate out there.

For those of you who may be relatively new to pay per click advertising or simply the Google Adwords model in particular, here is a helpful video that will explain to you just how the model works.

So everyone knows that knowledge is power, and I myself have been on a reading binge the last month or so, soaking up information like a shamwow… you getting this camera guy? Anyways everyone has their own set of must read books that has helped them in some way or another, and I am no different.

I made a list of books I’ve read that have personally helped me gain both financial freedom and valuable insight on personal wealth and well-being.  I feel that these books more than others I’ve read influenced me the most and left the most lasting impression on my thought process and my business life in general.  So I present to you:

Books for Affiliate Marketers & Entrepreneurs

Four Hour Work Week – Main concept follows an 80/20 rule, where 20% of your work/actions account for 80% of profits (campaigns, keywords, affiliate networks) – you should be finding the most important ones and scaling/optimizing. Stop wasting time on the meaningless pursuits.

Think and Grow Rich – In the original Think and Grow Rich, published in 1937, Napoleon Hill draws on stories of Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and other millionaires of his generation to illustrate his principles. This is carried on into the 21st century where many of the principles still hold true today, and can be very powerful for getting yourself in the right mindset.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad – This book tells a story about a man who was raised by two different households, and two different mindsets. One an educated dad stuck in the proverbial “rat race” and the other a college dropout who simply understood investing and how to work with “smart people”. To sum up this book in one word, outsourcing.

The Long Tail - In the most important business book since The Tipping Point, Chris Anderson shows how the future of commerce and culture isn’t in hits, the high-volume head of a traditional demand curve, but in what used to be regarded as misses–the endlessly long tail of that same curve. Inspirational book on finding those niche niches.

The Snowball – The biography of one of the richest men in the world, and possibly one of the smartest investors that ever lived.  Although not written by Warren Buffet himself, it is still a great read that will put you in the mind of this invesment genuius.

There are obviously way more books out there that I am missing, so if you have any *must read* books that I missed,  leave a comment and I’ll be sure to check em out.

When you get down to the core of affiliate marketing, you will come to realize that its all about your ad copy and your landing page.  Sure you can try your luck at direct linking, but for the most part your conversions will suffer and you will lose money and time again and again.  A quality landing page can be the difference to a profitable campaign and a big loser. There are several things you can do to help make your landing pages better, and to convince the surfer to follow through with your offer.

• Split Test – When you first start running an offer, its always a good idea to have several mock up landing pages to use to drive traffic to.  Use these as a base from which to test your conversion rates and find out what is and isnt working.  A lot of the times a simple lander is better, while other times the longer review ad copy landers prove more effective.  You need to find out if the niche your targeting falls into either of these categories and stick with the one that works.  Affiliate marketing is all about going out and seeing what works, dont get lazy, testing is KEY.
• Avoid Distractions – When your targeted visitor comes to your page, you want to make sure that there is a bold call to action.  Giving them multiple options and outward links is distracting and can cause your surfer to not follow through on the offer.  Make sure there is a clear, concise directive and if you have multiple objectives (ie. acai & colon cleanse), try using a seperate landing page for each of them.
• Above the Fold – While a spanning page with multiple reviews and reasons why the user should sign up for your offer may be a good thing, more often that not it is better to keep the sign up/order now button above the fold in plain sight so that the user knows that you are selling something and makes a painless decsion. Often times the surfer can be burdened by an encompassing sales page that is drawn out and confusing, stick to the K.I.S.S. philosophy and you will notice the difference in your bank account.
• Avoid Extra Elements – Having too much graphics or too much text on your lander can make or break your sales.  Avoid over-using graphical elements such as animations and images that simply do not contribute to your objective of the page.  This can take away your visitors attention and eventually lead to a failed conversion.  Try and keep the visitors attention by using a blend of text and imagery that flows naturally.
• Navigation/Outbound Links – Your best bet is to keep the navigation either off page or in the footer area so that the user doesnt become distracted and navigate away from your offer.  If you have more information or in-depth reviews to offer the surfer, give it to them in an AJAX pop-up or CSS based slide down content so that it keeps them on the page and only helps to upsell the offer you are targeting.  While you can go the route of having no external links whatsoever, this is frowned upon by Google and will usually end up getting your page penalized.

So that it, hopefully these tips will prove effective in making your landing pages even more profitable, and increase your conversion.  The main thing to remember is to keep trying different things, and that no matter how simple the offer may be, it is always better to sell the surfer before they follow through to the signup page.

The main reason why personal review blogs like Becky’s weight loss worked so well is because they utilized all these elements, with an effective ad copy telling a personal story to play upon the visitors emotions.  Mix and match different ad copy with an easy and direct call to action, and you will see much more profitable landing pages for your all your campaigns.

If I missed anything feel free to comment and let me know what other methods you utilize to increase conversions on your landers.

Aaron Wall over at SEOBook has recently released a great tool that I am just diving into called the SEO Toolbar. So far this thing looks great, its got a bunch of nifty features as well as an SEO X-ray tool and a competitive analysis tool which look like they will be really useful. The competition tool can track data from Compete, Google Trends, Quantcast, Alexa & SEMRush as well as show PPC destination urls.

What would happen if you smooshed together many of the best parts of Rank Checker, SEO for Firefox, the best keyword research tools across the web, a feed reader (pre-populated with many SEO feeds), a ton of competitive research tools, the ability to compare up to 5 competing sites against each other, easy data export, and boatloads of other features into 1 handy Firefox extension? Well, you would have the SEO Toolbar.

Some of the main features listed are:

• Google PR
• Yahoo linkdomain/pagelinks
• DMOZ/Yahoo/BOTW Directories
• Archive.org Site Age
• Compete.com Uniques
• SEMRush.com Traffic Value
• Competition Analysis
• SE Rank Checker
• SEO X-Ray
• Keyword Suggestion

And that’s not even half of it.  There are tips and techniques available for the more advanced SEO’s out there, as well as a generalized section for the total newbs.  All in all I think this will be a great plugin, and might even replace my Google toolbar and SEO for Firefox altogether.

For a full list of features head over to the download and overview page.

Okay, so it’s been awhile since I dropped a knowledge bomb on you fools, and I figure I need to start writing quality content rather than posts on how much alcohol I was able to consume, or how many girls I was able to… well you get the point.  So I am gonna kick off my 2009 with a guide for the seasoned affiliate marketer looking to branch out and add another stream of income to their reservoir.

I have a “bunch” of automated blogs that I just leave on autopilot building themselves 3-4 posts a day using some nifty software (we’ll get to that), and slowly but surely increasing in organic rankings and traffic. One such blog I have done no promotion whatsoever, just some onsite SEO and blast off.  After about 2 months its already getting 150-180 unique’s daily consistently.  While this may be nothing to write home about, it still banks me a dollar a day ya heard. When it comes to online marketing, you should know by now that its a number game, and without the numbers you just wont have the moolah.

Now in terms of monetization I find it best to make sure the blog doesn’t look like a spammy automated blog (duh), so I don’t put ads on the homepage, I just scatter them on the inlay pages and hope that the surfer stays on the site long enough to click. Automated blogs are great for adsense earnings because they do all the work for you once you put the initial effort in. $30/month per blog is not bad either for no promotion. Note: On all of my blogs I make sure to only post 3-4 new posts daily, others have said you can get away with 6-8, but Im not greedy and I want them to look as natural as possible.

Installer Software

WP Mass Installer – One of the best mass installers for WP, just fill out the required fields and your up and running.

BlogSlammer – Recently came across this, purchased it and am loving it. It costs $129 and you can literally setup a blog in 2 minutes FLAT using Blog Creator. Which is great, and really helps when it comes to scaling your blogs. You also get 9000 articles when you buy it which come in handy for your content needs.

Now down to the nitty gritty insides of my wp-content\plugins folder. I’ve compiled a list as well as some of the software I use that make my life pretty easy, and hopefully yours too.

Content Generation / Scraping

Caffeinated Content for WordPress – Instant content. Targeted content. Automatic content. No this one isn’t free boys and girls, but what good things ever are.  $77 for this invaluable plugin that will give your blog a ton of legit content and serve it any way you want it.

WP Drip Feeder – This plugin automatically drips content onto your blog, this one isn’t free either, but more than affordable @ $45. Theorhetically you only really need 1 of these, but I’d opt for both since it makes for a more natural looking site.

WP-o-matic – Takes fresh content from RSS feeds.  This one is free so you pretty much have to grab it.

WP VideoTube – If you drive traffic from youtube, or are in a niche that uses video heavily, then you cant go wrong with WP VideoTube. This one goes for $30 – $60 depending on how many keywords you want to target, I got the lite version for $30 and its fine for me, but you may want more functionality.

Content Spinning

Now you have a few options when it comes to spinning your content.

JetSpinner – I recently found out about JetSpinner which is a totally free article spinner that has worked pretty nice for me so far in testing, and for $37 a month you can use their JetSubmitter service to submit all those articles to 641 directories as well as some bonus features for JetSpinner. Not a bad deal at all.

Must Have WP Plugins

Google Analytics – This is a freebie and a must have to track activity/statistics.

Google XML Sitemap Generator – . This creates a Google friendly sitemap for your blog, in seconds. It can also make a robots file, which is mega useful for WordPress MU blogs.

Global Translator - Just because they speak another language doesn’t mean they can’t click our ads.

Platinum SEO Pack – There are few SEO packs that are available, I have used All-in-One for a long time, recently switching over to Platinum’s and I haven’t looked back since, a really sweet plugin that you must have.

StatPress – Way better than Awstats, WP Stats, Google Stats, hell I think Statpress is even better than Mint, which says a lot. This ones free as well, so you cant go wrong.  Statpress is a must have to make your sites better, and to know where your traffic is coming from, as well as which pages are doing better than others.

Privacy Policy - This free plugin keeps you from getting bitch slapped by Google. 99% of blogs/autoblogs, fail to add this simple yet vital plugin to their blogs, thereby disobeying Adsense’s Terms of Service.

WordPress Automatic Upgrade – A must have free plugin for busy marketers. Just a few clicks and your wordpress install is upgraded to the latest version, kinda makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside.

PingCrawler – A really nifty plugin by Eli over @ Bluehatseo, basically it automatically pings other blogs when you make a post, which is really useful for driving traffic to your blogs. Get Linkcurl for WP2.7 blogs.

WP-Affiliate – Automatically setup affiliate links for insertion into your posts on the fly.

Auto Social Poster – This is the first one on this list that isnt free, but thats for a good reason.  This plugin will allow your posts to be submitted to 18 social bookmarking accounts/sites.  You pay for posts.  5000 is $49 their most basic package, and for the guru there is a million for $299.  It really depends on how much you are pushing, but this one is a must have for building traffic & backlinks.

Adsense Deluxe – Obviously you might need some sort of Adsense ads management, and this does the job, better than Adsense Manager.

WP Database backup – A must incase you lose your database.

Redirection – A neat plugin that simply redirects your 404 pages to the page of your choice. *cough* affiliate link *cough*

WordPress MU – WordPress administration of all your blogs from one admin panel. Pretty freakin sweet.

There are a few others like akismet, and related posts, but those are so common place you should already have them by now.

Make sure that when your setting up your blogs, you make unique ad units for every blog, otherwise it will look odd that you have the same ads on every site. Go for 4-5 posts per day per blog, there is no need to rush your content creation as the crawlers usually index rather slowly anyway.  You risk being de-indexed if you rush, so you will have invested all your time for nothing.Also make sure to use unique class-c ip’s so your blogs are on different ips. Something I didnt touch base on is cloaking, so I’ll save that for another day, but it shouldn’t be too hard for you to lookup on the web now that you have all of this information.

If there is anything I missed or you guys know of other/better (or worse) plugins/software feel free to post them in the comments below.