I hear this all the time when people are talking about old-school static HTML sites versus newer WordPress sites.  They say it loud and proud as if it were a law of nature like gravity or something.

Google Loves WordPress!

The truth is (as far as I know) that there is no real data that says Google prefers static WordPress versus HTML (or vice-versa). There is no reason that they should care -- and I don't think that they do.

People say "Google loves WordPress" because they see WordPress because they see WordPress sites doing well in Google. The question is this: is this correlation, or causation? In other words, are these sites doing well because of WordPress, or for some other reason.

If two sites were COMPLETELY identical, Goggle would not care if a site was WordPress or Static HTML. In fact, if they were truly completely identical, Google could not tell easily which was which.

I don't think Google loves WordPress.

Why WordPress Sites Perform Well

Rather, I think Google loves what most WordPress installations do automatically (and most static HTML sites do NOT do at all).

If you install WordPress with a decent theme and use a few popular plugins, you get some killer stuff that is not present on many plain-jane HTML sites:

• Ping-O-Matic to announce new content
• Blog pinging to encourage back-linking
• User-generated content (comments)
• An RSS feed (promotes traffic)
• Auto SEO optimized titles and URLs (in most cases)
• Good automatic intra-site linking (in most cases)
• et cetera

This is why "Google loves WordPress". It is not because there is some unfair bias in Google or some magic in WordPress itself. All of the above things are possible with an HTML site, but people usually do not do them.

So, while it looks like Google loves WordPress, what they really love are well constructed sites. Constructing site well is something that WordPress does automatically.

Build good site, follow the webmaster guidelines, and you too will live a long healthy and happy web life.

photo credit: AlbertaAndMe

Hey there;

I was hanging out on Lynn Terry’s very cool private elite mastermind   forum (LearningWithLynn.com) this morning  and I ran into someone who asked for a simple explanation of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  Here is what the poster said (I deleted and changed some stuff to protect her identity since LearningWithLynn.com is a private forum):

This may sound silly to the Pros, but your help would be appreciated as I really need to understand this aspect of my business.

I have been writing blog posts to my main site and have seen a number of them go to #1 on Google in a few days. The only thing I do is focus on keywords and especially long-tail keywords as taught by Lynn.

While I'm happy that it's happening I'd like to understand more. Help, please?!

I took this question to be “please help me understand more about SEO,” and I thought you might be interested in my reply.  (Note that this discussion will probably be pretty long, which is one of the things I love about LearningWithLynn.com.) 

Like most things in life, the 80/20 rule applies.

When someone opens google.com and types "best wireless headset for pc" (without the quotes) what happens?

Google does two things (basically):

1. It get the list of all the pages (pages, not sites) that it knows about (all teh pages it has indexed) that have something to do with "best wireless headset for pc"
2. It ranks them in order of importance the best it can and show the best ones first.

Remember, Google's goal is ALWAYS to guess what will help the searcher the most and put that at the top of the list. They need to do that, because if they do a poor job finding what you are looking for, you will use Bing.com next time and Google will lose ad revenue. Simple as that.

OK -- as the page owner/author there are only 2 things you can do

1. Optimize stuff on the page (on-page SEO)
2. Optimize stuff off the page (off-page SEO)

By on-page optimization, of course, I mean making sure that you do the things that tell Google what your web page is about. By far, the most important thing is having your keywords in your HTML title tag. But, you might also want to have your keywords in the URL (or the domain name for specific highly targeted applications). You also want to have your keywords and related content in the article.

Off-page optimization, on the other hand, refers to making sure that Google knows that other people value your page.

As you probably already know, Google tries to determine if people value your page by counting the number of backlinks to your page. You can think of them as votes for your page.

People say that there are over 200 factors considered in the Google search engine algorithm. However, it’s been shown numerous times that one of the most important factors is the number of backlinks to your site.

Note that G seems to consider the anchor text of the link when trying to decide what your page is actually about (and/or how much to value the link). That means that if it sees links that say Click here for a review of the "best wireless headset for pc" -- that helps more than a link with unrelated keywords.

So, think 80/20 rule for SEO. Get links with your keywords in the anchor text, and make sure your keywords are in your title tag, URL and article.

Don't believe me about the importance of backlinks?

Check this out. Google "click here" without the quotes. What do you see?  (You can see the results here).

That's right -- acrobat reader. Why? Because there are 1.6M pages out there that say "click here" to get acrobat reader. Note that "click here" is NOWHERE on the page.

If you need help getting your web business going (or getting to the next level), come hang out with us at LearningWithLynn.com.  You’ll love it (I do).

Check this out.  I am working on an autoresponder series that includes SEO information.  I needed some additional content, so I turned to EasyPLR -- Nicole just released a new SEO PLR Pack.

So here is the thing -- the content is so good in this pack, that I thought I would just publish excerpts from one of the 10 pieces for you.  This particular article hits on something that is important to me -- the fact that PageRank is meaningless.

Now, normally I edit PLR before I publish it and I also add my own voice. To edit this PLR, I probably would have added an intro (sort of like what I am doing here), some data based on my own experience, and maybe an affiliate link to Josh Spaulding's Utlimate Link Building Report or similar.  I would have also added information about the Title Tag (which is very important for SEO).

But I just wanted you to see the raw thing here so you could understand the quality you can get from Nicole.  So, the below is excerpt from the article is unedited.

So -- you should get three things from the below article

1.  PageRank is not meaningful (and Meta tags are no longer relevant)

2.  Content is king

3.  Nicole's PLR is really really good.

Thanks,
Mark

P.S. -- If you happen to buy some PLR from Nicole -- don't forget about the bonus that I am offering.

Begin excerpt

SEO Mistake: Obsessing Over Meta Tags or Your Site’s Google PageRank

Meta tags are so 1995.

Even so, you’ll still find a few web designers, programmers and unscrupulous SEO “professionals” who’ll insist that, in order to optimize your site for the search engines, you need to fill your keyword and description meta tags with all your relevant keywords (and then some) – and keep an eye on your PageRank.

Stop the presses!

If you’re new to this search engine optimization business, you probably have no idea what a meta tag or PageRank is. Here are a couple of definitions, just for you:

Meta Tag: These are tags placed in the head of your HTML pages that give the visitor’s browser, or the search engine spider, information about the page. Two mid-90s search engines, Infoseek (now defunct) and AltaVista (now owned by Yahoo!), first popularized the keywords tag, which they used to determine what each page on a website was about.

However, by 1997, search engines realized that spammers were misusing the tag to make pages rank for terms that were completely irrelevant to the page’s content. Search engines completely stopped supporting keyword meta tag information by 2002.

End excerpt

Second excerpt

Meta tags are not going to ensure that your page ranks in the top 10 for your keyword phrases. And PageRank is not an accurate measure of where your page appears in the SERPs for your keyword phrases.

You’re better off spending your time writing quality content, developing relationships with the owners of high ranking sites in your industry or relevant industries and making sure your site is search engine friendly.

Even better, spend time getting to know your customers or site visitors and find out what terms they use to search, what they are looking for when they arrive at your site and what they think you can do to improve their experiences while browsing your site.

End excerpt

Be sure to check out EasyPLR -- and the newly released SEO PLR Pack.

photo credit: kiewic

This is the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast, Episode 5.

You want to build a business that you can call your own, but you can’t imagine abandoning the security of your day job. You are confident that you can find a few hours a week to pursue your dreams of creating a business on the internet, but you don’t know where to start. You’re looking for a plan.

Congratulations! You just found one. You are listening to the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast, with your host Mark Mason, building internet businesses one night at a time.

Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast. I’m your host Mark Mason. It’s great to be back on the microphone. I hope you’ve had a fantastic couple of weeks since I talked to you last. I hope they were very productive for you.

I know I’ve been incredibly productive over the last couple weeks. In fact, in some ways a little too productive. I tend to get too many tasks going all at the same time. I don’t know if you have that problem. That’s a huge problem for a lot of internet marketers.

I was talking to Lynn Terry about this over in her Elite forum the other day. Her theory, she had a post in that forum about this, is that you really need to focus on something, one thing extensively until that thing is finished to really get the maximum productivity. I’m really going to need to look at that a little more carefully.

I’ve really been enjoying Lynn’s forum. I spend a lot of time over there. I’ve been getting to know Lynn, she’s great. Some of you saw the video on my blog of Lynn opening up the Elvis bobble head that I sent her. That was kind of fun.

If you get a chance to check out Lynn, I recommend that you do that. You can check out the information about her Elite Membership Forum at MasonWorld.com/recommends/lynn. If you just want to kind of get a taste of what that’s like, you don’t need to pay any money at all. You can go over to her blog at ClickNewz.com and check it out.

There are links to the forum over there, and she’s got a free side to the forum too and that’s really excellent. I’ve been having fun over there with Lynn. She’s got lots of cool peeps that hang out with her over there in the Elite Forum, it’s really good stuff.

The other thing that I’ve been working on this week is a site with my nephew. We’re going to talk about that a little bit in the interview. My nephew and I have been working on an affiliate marketing site for the last couple of weeks. I’ve actually got him on the podcast today as the featured interview as a new internet marketer.

He’s going to tell us the three things that he learned from me this summer working on an affiliate site. He actually cleared over 100 dollars on that site in the month of August, which was only one month after we really started working on it. So, he’s pretty pleased with that.

We’re using the phpBay plugin to work through eBay to sell some comic books online. We’ll talk about all of that in the feature interview.

Before we get into that, let’s take a look at the feature segment and see what we’ve got going on today.

It’s time for the feature segment.

It’s time for the feature segment today, and we’re continuing our discussion about all the different possible internet business models. We’ve talked about affiliate marketing, last week we talked about eBay, we’ve talked about information marketing.

One thing I wanted to talk about today, because it’s timely, is the idea of creating residual recurring income through membership sites. In order to understand why membership sites are important, you really need to sort of understand the idea of a sales funnel. So, we’ll talk a little bit about sales funnels, and we’ll talk about membership sites.

This, again, points to one of the resources that I’ve provided you for this discussion, and that’s Jimmy Brown’s excellent report, which is called 10 Proven Ways to Make at Least 10,000 Dollars Every Month. In Jimmy Brown’s report, item three in that report is tap into the back end automatically.

Jimmy basically talks about the idea that most marketers really are concerning themselves with the creation of the sales funnel. If you’re not familiar with a sales funnel, I can sort of explain it to you like this. When you have an initial contact with a perspective client, you bring that person in to your range of influence and you essentially get their permission to receive your message.

Now, if you’re a person who’s being effected by TV marketing, sometimes you barely even have permission, you just happen to be watching the channel and you see a commercial and that’s sort of your first contact into the sales funnel for whoever is selling something to you on television. In the context of internet marketing, this sort of thing usually happens when you sign up to an email list.

You’re at the top of someone’s funnel, they’ve gotten your permission to market to you, basically. So, you’re at the top of their funnel. Then you might at some point buy an inexpensive product from them. That moves you a little further down the funnel.

You’ll find that a lot of internet marketers spend a lot of time creating more and more products at higher and higher price points to move you further and further down the funnel. You see, there’s a big difference between someone you’ve never talked to before, at the top of your funnel or just entering your funnel, and someone who’s bought two or three products from you over a period of time, who trusts you and understands the quality of your product.

So, that sales funnel should be architected to move you further and further towards purchasing higher and higher end products. That’s a classic marketing strategy. It’s not unique to internet marketing, but it’s used very well in internet marketing in a variety of product lines.

One sort of special version of that, that can replace the sales funnel to some extent, is the idea of continuity programs. One way to implement a continuity program is through a membership site. Now, a continuity program simply means, you can think of it as monthly billing.

Continuity programs have gotten a bad rap over the years, because of various problems, usually having to do with them being deployed in a sneaky manner. You’ll recall that Joel Comm had a problem where he had a continuity program attached to one of his Adsense books, I believe it was, and it wasn’t clearly indicated on the order form. A lot of people were upset with Joel, because he didn’t make it clear that in addition to buying the ebook for 9.95, you were also signing up for his 27 dollar continuity program.

Now, I happen to know Joel, Joel Comm is a really good guy. I really personally don’t think that was something that he did maliciously, but he upset a lot of people. So, continuity programs in general have gotten a bad rap.

Russell Brunson and others, particularly Jimmy Brown, have been talking about several ideas around continuity that make a lot more sense. One of the things that they talk about is micro-continuity through membership sites. Jimmy has an excellent course on this that he calls Membernaire. We’ll have a link to that in the show notes.

Membernaire is an opportunity to create what Russell Brunson calls a micro-continuity program. The way Jimmy does it is he creates courses that are finite duration. It’s one thing if you tell somebody that they’re going to need to pay 27 dollars, or 67 dollars a month for their rest of their lives.

But, what Jimmy says is, “Hey, we’re going to have a continuity program with a finite term. It’s going to be 6 months long, or a year long, it’s going to be 27 dollars a month.” You know the cost up front. It’s spread out over time.

Jimmy actually implements all of his stuff completely automatically, which is really neat. So, if you’re the product creator for a Jimmy Brown style membership site. Then what you can do is you can create these sites one time, market them, and then they run on autopilot all by themselves. It’s pretty interesting.

Now, there really are sort of three kinds of membership sites that Jimmy points out. Maybe four, I would say, Jimmy points out three. The first site that Jimmy points out, or sites that offer a service, if there’s something that you need over and over again rather than paying for it piecemeal you can create a membership site that offers that service over and over again or on a monthly basis. Web hosting is a really good example of that, that Jimmy offers.

There are other kinds of membership sites you can imagine. Help with homework would be an excellent example, or tutoring. Those kind of things you can offer in the form of a membership site. Related to that can be a site that offers lessons on a topic.

You could have 6 month, 12 month, or 3 month courses on how to get an online business up and running. That’s the example that Jimmy offers. How to start a restaurant, how to do home repairs, or how to do whatever it is that you know how to do.

That’s one of the exciting things about the idea of a membership site. If you’re an expert in something, and you can break it up into 48 or 50 or 100 easy lessons, then you can easily create a membership site that just drips those lessons out to your customers at a fixed rate. You just tell them up front, “You’re going to get one lesson a week, and here they come. As long as you keep paying, you keep getting lessons.”

The other kind of membership site that you hear about a lot is a site that offers a new product each month. So, each month you get a new PLR product or each month you get a new something that you need, new templates for a website, new content, new something, new cross stitch patterns, whatever it might be. People subscribe because they want that new fix of whatever it is that they need.

The other kind of membership that I think Jimmy didn’t mention, but he certainly knows all about this, because he does these sorts of things, are coaching programs. I think those are a special kind. They’re sort of like offering a service, but basically you’re paying to have some person on retainer to help you with whatever your problem. Usually those are implemented as a forum.

That’s just a few ideas that Jimmy covers in his book. He says, basically, you need to choose a niche, find out what they’re buying, and what they want, and then go build a membership site around that. I think that’s a really good idea.

The reason that I bring that up in this podcast is two fold. One is these are very, very important. In fact, I had a graphics guy tell me today that I was talking to by email, he’s over in Europe and is the guy who does most of my graphics for my sites, he told me there are four weeks out on graphics because of all these micro-continuity sites they’ve been doing based on Russell Brunson and Jimmy Brown’s sort of programs. So, they’re just swamped with work over all these membership sites that are being created. That’s one reason why I bring this up to you.

The second reason that I bring this up to you is if you’re interested at all in this, Jimmy is offering a webinar, and I’m going to give you the details on that at MasonWorld.com/jimmywebinar. That webinar is currently airing this Thursday. If you’re listening to this in a time shifted manner, go ahead and go to the link, it will give you the current next time for the webinar.

Basically, it’s an hour long tutorial from Jimmy on webinars. I’m going to see it for the first time tomorrow. I can tell you that I can recommend it without seeing it, because Jimmy is just a fantastic guy. If you don’t know Jimmy, it’s worth going over to the webinar just so you can get a sense of what he’s all about.

He’s really a fantastic marketer and somebody that I’ve really enjoyed getting to know over the last year or two. His stuff is top notch. He knows what he’s doing. He has personally created, I know for sure of two, but maybe it’s six of these sites, where he has over 1,000 members in each site. You go do the math. If you had 1,000 members in a membership site, each paying you 27 dollars a month. I think you might like that result.

That’s the main segment for today. I just wanted to tell you about that other income model, which is membership sites. The bottom line is if you know how to do something that people want to learn how to do, and you can figure out how to bust that up into courses, kind of like a Dummies Guide to Tennis, or a Dummies Guide to Fitness, or a Dummies Guide to whatever it is that you’re interested in, you can make that into a membership course.

You can recruit people into that course and have a recurring stream of income. You can set the whole thing up automatically, and Jimmy Brown is the guy to teach you how to do that. So, that’s another way you can make money online, and that’s well covered in the 10 Proven Ways to Make at Least 10,000 Dollars Every Month. That’s Jimmy Brown’s ebook, and that’s available at MasonWorld.com/10ways.

Thanks. That concludes the feature segment.

And now the feature interview.

Okay. Now it’s time for the standing interview segment that we’ve been having for the last couple of weeks. What I’ve been promising you is that I’d interview successful internet marketers and ask them the three most important things that they wished they had known about internet marketing when they first started.

This has been very exciting. But, recently I’ve been working with my nephew on his first website. He has an affiliate marketing site based around comic books, which is something that he is interested in. He’s a sophomore in high school, very intelligent young man, highly motivated, but didn’t really know anything about how money was made on the internet. Kind of like a lot of us when we first started.

So, I thought, “Wow. Here’s a guy who just learned how to make money on the internet.” He’s made his first 100 dollars, I think his site made 136 dollars in the month of August. He’s very excited about that. We’ve got big plans for the site, because we made that 136 dollars and we’re not even ranking on the first page of Google for our search term yet. So, we’re real excited.

I thought the interesting was 2 months ago he didn’t know anything about internet marketing. He’s done all the work himself. I’ve sort of led him through it, and helped him and coached him, but he’s done all the hard work, and he’s got a result to show for it.

So, I wanted to ask him what were the three things that he knows now that he didn’t know 2 months ago. The things that really stuck out for him. I got a very, very interesting answer from him and I wanted to share that with you.

Now, he’s a minor under the age of 18. Like I said, he’s a sophomore in high school. So, I’m not using his real name. we’re calling him Bob here for the purpose of this interview, which is really hilarious, because that’s not his name at all. So, you may hear us giggling a little bit in the interview about that.

The other thing I’ll tell you, I want to apologize in advance, this interview we did in my study. We had to move the microphone around, and I forgot to put the p-pop filer on. So, I’ve edited the interview to try and cut out the pops from articulating the letter P, which is the world’s most annoying sound.

I don’t quite have them all out of the interview, but I did the very best I could. I enjoyed the interview so much, I didn’t want to do another take. Here it is live, raw, and with the pops, my nephew Bob and our discussion about his internet marketing experience.

…

Mark Mason: Hey, this is Mark Mason. I’m actually in studio with my nephew today. A lot of you who have been following me over on Lynn Terry’s forum know that I built with my nephew a website about something that he was interested in, actually the website is about comic books. We built that website and in the first month were able to generate some revenue with eBay’s affiliate program. That was a very interesting process.

So, what I thought I would do is get some insights from my nephew, who is a sophomore in high school about what he’s learned from his experience making money online. I’ve been telling people, “If my nephew who is a sophomore in high school can make money online, you can make money online too.” I think that’s a pretty straight forward kind of way to think about things.

Now, I’ve agreed since my nephew is a minor under the age of 18, I’m not going to use his name. So, I’ve agreed to call him Bob for the purpose of this interview. Hi, Bob, how are you doing today?

Bob: Hi. Good. How are you?

Mark Mason: I’m doing great. Bob came over, he lives nearby. How long have we been working on this website together, Bob?

Bob: We’ve probably been working on it maybe since the beginning of last school year.

Mark Mason: Yeah, something like that. So, we worked on it for a couple of weeks, then we kind of dropped it, but then we hit it really hard this summer. Right?

Bob: Yes.

Mark Mason: So, my recollection was we didn’t make any money or really generate much of any content last year at all. We really started working on it about in July.

Bob: That’s right.

Mark Mason: We started making money on the website in August, right?

Bob: Yes.

Mark Mason: Okay, great. So, the website sat idle for awhile, and after about a month we started seeing a little revenue. That’s been really exciting. I guess it’s been exciting for me, has it been exciting for you?

Bob: Yes. It’s very exciting.

Mark Mason: Okay. So, you’re actually in a very prestigious position. I’ve been interviewing internet marketers from all over the world on this podcast and asking them the three things that they wish they had known when they started internet marketing.

I thought I’d turn things around today and ask you what are the three things that you’ve learned over the summer with your first experience in internet marketing that you just didn’t know before, that you’d want to tell someone about your internet marketing experience?

Can you think of one thing that just occurs to you just right off the top of your head, Bob? That’s not your real name, I know, but it’s kind of funny. Something that you learned over the summer, that you didn’t know before.

Bob: Yes. First, is how easy it is to get a website going. If you use a website like WordPress you just pick a theme you like, get it going, and put it up. It’s just easy to make one.

Mark Mason: That’s right. So, basically, what we did was we just simply found a theme that worked well with our topic of comic books. We actually found sort of a play on Superman theme, right?

Bob: Yes.

Mark Mason: We just used that on top of WordPress to create our little kind of ecommerce site. That worked out pretty well. It looked pretty cool?

Bob: It looks really cool, yes. A lot of neat features.

Mark Mason: I think, if I remember right, we asked a virtual assistant to make some small modifications to the site.

Bob: Yes.

Mark Mason: Right. So, we started with a theme that was pretty close to what we wanted, and we had a virtual assistant make some changes. Just a few dollars, literally a few hours work, someone offshore. It’s pretty much exactly the way you want it right now, right?

Bob: It’s perfect. Yes.

Mark Mason: Great. That’s the first thing. So, that point is a really good one. That is that basically anybody without a lot of technical savvy can have a website up and running very quickly by using WordPress. Is that pretty much what you’re saying?

Bob: Yes, sir.

Mark Mason: Okay, great. That’s thing one. That’s an excellent point. What’s your second thing that you kind of picked up this summer working on your WordPress website?

Bob: Probably number two is if you want to get your website going, something very important to use is keywords through Google. Pick out a keyword phrase, get backlinks to your website to get viewers to come to your site.

Mark Mason: Now, before this summer, did you have any idea, you’ve always used Google, right?

Bob: Yes.

Mark Mason: But, did you have any idea why pages came up on the first page of Google? Did you understand any of that before this summer?

Bob: I had no clue. I just thought it was random.

Mark Mason: So, we basically spent. I don’t know, about an hour? So, we got you started with the Easy SEO report from Josh Spaulding,that was really cool. Then we picked a keyword with some traffic. Where are we now with that keyword?

Bob: Just by using that one keyword we’re almost to the first page of Google. We’re kind of floating back and forth between page one and page two.

Mark Mason: So, we’re down kind of at the top of page two. We’ve got some tricks up our sleeve, maybe we’ll talk about that at the end of this, where we think that’s going to get us to page one.

Basically, pick a keyword that people are searching for and get backlinks to the website. That’s the offpage SEO part, getting the backlinks, but we also optimized the homepage for the keyword. Right? We’ve got it in there.

Bob: Yes, sir.

Mark Mason: Kind of in a natural amount of time. So, that’s just kind of common sense SEO, and you were able to pick that up pretty quickly, right?

Bob: Yes, sir, I was.

Mark Mason: Okay. So, the first thing that you learned this summer was that you can easily build a site with Wordpres.

The second thing that you learned is that once you build a site with WordPress, you can optimize it, both on the website and off the website, so that you’ll get listed in Google for a keyword that’s getting some traffic.

What’s a third thing that you learned this summer?

Bob: The third important thing I learned was if you can get traffic to your website, you can send them to other websites and earn commission off their views.

Mark Mason: Yes. We talked about that quite a bit this summer. That’s affiliate marketing. Of course, for our website, because we’re dealing with comic books, that’s just a perfect fit for eBay, right, because that’s where comic books are being sold.

Bob: Yes, sir.

Mark Mason: And you knew that already. You’d already been buying comic books on eBay. That’s in fact, how we got the idea.

Bob: Yes, I had.

Mark Mason: So, Bob is into comic books a little bit, and knew that there were transactions going on at eBay. All it took was for me to explain to you that you could build a website that drove traffic to eBay and get commissions, and we’re off to the races, right?

Bob: Yes.

Mark Mason: What we really want is to be on the first page of Google. So, why don’t you tell everybody what you have planned for, I guess we’re hoping to get the first draft of it done this weekend, you’re doing all the work. What do you have planned for this weekend?

Bob: We’re planning to write a press release to put out there to get our website on the first page.

Mark Mason: Yes. We’re following the Google First Page Formula, that’s the ebook that I’ve shared with Bob. He’s going to write a press release according to the Google First Page Formula, and we’re going to see if we can get the same results.

I’ve actually got a special link for that ebook, where I’ve got a discount available for the listeners in honor of Bob, since he’s going to be doing that this weekend. You can pick that ebook up for a 20 or 30 percent discount. I’ll be sure and put that link in the show notes. In fact, that will be at MasonWorld.com/press.

That’s great. Bob, I really appreciate you being on the show tonight. Tell me what you’re thinking about doing next. Are we going to build some more sites? How many more are we going to build or what are you thinking?

Bob: We’re just going to keep going until there’s nothing left to do. For all those people that are doing websites, don’t give up. It takes time, but it pays off.

Mark Mason: That’s excellent advice. I really appreciate it. Thanks for coming over. Have a great day.

Bob: Thank you very much.

Thanks for listening to the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast. For more information about this program, and to get the show notes, be sure to visit our website at MasonWorld.com/podcast. Follow @MasonWorld on Twitter.

Have you got a question or comment for Mark? Let us know by leaving us a voicemail on our digital recording line at 214-444-8655. We may use your message on a future episode of the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast.

Did you like our podcast? Help us out by telling your friends and leaving your review on iTunes by going to MasonWorld.com/iTunes.

Finally, always remember that all business involves risk. Internet business is no exception. Your ability to make money with the concepts discussed in this program and on MasonWorld.com depends on many things, including your effort and capability. Since these factors according to individuals, we cannot guarantee your success or income level, and we are not responsible for any of your actions.

Thanks again for listening to the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast, building internet businesses one night at a time. Have a great day.

Hey there;

The other day I sent an email out to my list that announced a discount (expiring July 10th) on Jon Leger's linking products (1-Way-Links, 3-Way-Links, and My-Way-Links). That mailer generated a ton of questions about how the products worked and how they were different. I figured that the best way to answer those questions was with a tutorial video.

I hope you enjoy the video.  Please feel free to leave additional comments and questions below.

(Also, I have copied some key parts of the mailer below the video for your reference).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kkoPfpDHkM

YouTube Link in HD:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kkoPfpDHkM

Here is the text from the email that generated :

Hey Mark;

I hope you are having a great summer. It is super hot here in
Texas, but we are having lots of fun in the sun. Well, I'm working
inside with the air conditioning on "full blast," but my family is
having fun.

So, here is the deal...

I was not sure if I should send this message, because I personally
get tired of promotion after promotion coming to my inbox from
people I hardly know pimping products that they have never even
seen. It drives me crazy.

That's why you don't see many promotions from me. And when you
see them, they are almost always products I actually use myself.

So, why this email?

I wanted to let you know about a deal that was just announced about
an hour ago that is only available until July 10.

As you know, I am a fan of Jon Leger's link building products. In
fact, I am a paying subscriber to all three of his flagship products
(1-Way-Links, 3-Way-Links, and My-Way-Links).

That's right -- I actually pay for all three out of my own pocket.
I really believe in those tools (and in Jon).

I use all three products together to rank for keywords in Google.
They are designed to complement each other, and work great together.

It's one of those "whole is greater than the sum of the parts" things.

So, what's the catch?

The problem is, these products are not cheap. In my opinion, they
are totally worth the money (that is why I pay for them), but
that does not mean that they are cheap.

Sure, people might tell you that "these tools can pay for
themselves" -- but that doesn't really help all that much when
you are getting started. They still cost you real money.

Jon understands this issue, and is offering the following three-part
deal (note that part 2 expires on July 10th):

1. Jon is now offering a $7 one-month trial for each his links
products. That means you can get in and kick the tires for $7.
This does not expire (as far as I know).

2. UNTIL JULY 10, Jon is offering all three networks for the
price of two. If you subscribe to 1-Way-Links, 3-Way-Links,
and My-Way-Links you only have to pay for two subscriptions.

3. Jon has given me a "discount link" for the 3-Way-Links product
that will save you $120 per year. You don't get the $7 first month
deal, but you get a $10/month discount on 3-Way-Links. It is much
cheaper in the long run -- but it is your choice.

As long as you remain a paying member the two of the networks that
you are paying for, you don't pay for the third one.

The bottom line --

Mark, I honestly think this is a great deal. Like I
said, I use and pay for these myself -- that is about as honest
an opinion as anyone can offer.

Here are the links you need to sign up and give it a try.

1-Way-Links -- Massive way links to any URL
http://www.masonworld.com/recommends/1wl

3-Way-Links -- 250 three way links to each site
$7 deal: http://www.masonworld.com/recommends/3wl
-- or --
$10/month discount: (only available via email)

My-Way-Links -- Links the way you want them
http://www.masonworld.com/recommends/mwl

So, here is my recommendation...

Check it out today, Mark. I can tell you that Jon
offers a rock-solid guarantee, so you have no reason not to
give it a try.

No pressure -- just an honest recommendation. If you need more
details about the deal, just drop me an email.

If you do sign up for two of the networks, send me an email and I
will give you some instructions about how to claim your
"third bonus network."

Have a great day!

Regards,
Mark

Update:  Looks like this was the foundation for GMail Autopilot.

Now that is more like it.

Is this Google's April Fools joke this year? Lame.

I like the old stuff better.

Last year, I wrote about the really funny time feature that Google added on April 1 in recognition of April Fool's day.  You may remember that one:

Big fun from Google on April Fools Day. Imagine my surprise when I went to read my mail just around midnight, only to find that Google had just released a new feature for GMail called GMail Custom Time.

With GMail Custom Time, you can date your email in the past. Just click "Set custom time" from the Compose view and Bingo! -- any email you send to the past appears in the proper chronological order in your recipient's inbox. You can opt for it to show up read or unread by selecting the appropriate option.

Well, while waiting on the new April Fools joke from Google, I decided to take a look at a blast from the past (Plus, this year's joke looks lame.)

Introducing Google Romance.

After all -- Romance is just another search problem.

You'll begin your Google Romance romance by uploading your profile.

Note: those who generally favor the “throw enough stuff at the wall” approach to online dating might find it useful to employ our Batch Profile Uploading option.

I have not written about SEO in a while, but it seems to me like everywhere I turn there is someone telling someone else how they should go look for niches with a low number of competing pages.  They use the logic that since there are relatively few people directly competing for the niche with content, it should be easy to win.

First of all, this makes no sense.  There are more than six billion people on the planet.  Just because there are relatively few people competing for the international power-lifting championship, that does not mean that I can win easily.  Why would I expect the number of competitors to be a direct measure of the strength of the competition on the internet?

Well, I wouldn't.  And you shouldn't either.

Engineering Secrets Revealed

Let me tell you something I have learned as an engineer.  Just because something is correlated to something else, that does not mean one thing is the cause of the other.  This construct is actually called the cum hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy.  Just because you notice that A occurs when B occurs, that does not mean that A causes B.

What am I talking about?  Well, just because you may notice that you can win some niches with low numbers of competing pages, that does not mean that you are winning them because there are a low number of competing pages.  You are wining them if and only if two things are true:

• SEO Thing 1: Your page is optimized for the keyword that you are trying to win (on-page SEO).
• SEO Thing 2: Your page has more authority than other pages that rank for that keyword (off-page SEO).

It is as simple as that.  It does not matter if there are 10 competing pages or 10 Million.  If you are optimized for the keyword and you have the most authority, you will win.   Of the two things, Thing 2 is by far the most important.

Adobe Knows About Authority

Don't believe me about this authority thing?  Google the term "click here" without the quotes.  You will find that the download page for Adobe Acrobat Reader is not optimized for "click here."  Read it if you like.  Take a moment to update your copy of Acrobat Reader.  While it is downloading, contemplate the fact that their download page has a TON of authority for that "click here" keyword because of the millions of pages linking there with the anchor text "click here."

God help anyone who ever introduces a product called "Click Here" - they have not got a prayer of ranking for that product name.

See, backlinks are the key to authority -- that is why products like Leger's 1 Way Links and 3 Way Links are so popular.  Backlinks are the key to authority.

But Why The Correlation Between Low Comp and SEO?

So, why is low competition often correlated with easy rankings?  Often it is because it is a crap keyword that no one wants and no one is talking about.  For example, I completely dominate the phrase "elvis aaron presley collectible necktie".   There are only 1700 pages in competition with me.  Why did I win?  Because of the low competition?  No.  I won because no other sites had pages with any authority for that keyword.  Simple as that.

So, when you are looking at the competition you need to look past the number of competing pages in Google.  Look at the authority including the backlinks.  If you want to learn all about how to win at that game, check out the Ultimate Link Building Report.  That will set you straight.

Thanks,
Mark

• @rondavis007 thanks Ron. #
• @gushin bread was fantastic! #
• @rondavis007 TWIT? #
• Listening to NLP based podcast. Wondering if NLP really works, or is it just nonsense. #
• In the ER with youngest daughter and possible broken foot. Ouch! #
• Eating homemade jalapeno beer bread straight from the oven. Yum. #
• Finally celebrating Christmas with my parents. Better late than never. #
• My friend just started a new blog, and his first post is up. Check it out! InkHammer.com Stumbles appreciated. http://inkhammer.com/?p=10 #
• @jarret Check this out http://tinyurl.com/2tdkkj in reply to jarret #
• @colligan Right. But twitter is the tech. You are using the tech to some end. The nature of that tech is shaping the end result. in reply to colligan #
• @jasonvo @colligan But you cannot separate tech from the product. eg. Twitter. Before twitter, we would not have a 140 char debate. in reply to jasonvo #
• @aaronabber I am thinking that an IM product might generate more interest for your purpose. Like a copy of some cool course or software. in reply to aaronabber #
• @colligan I heard those 5000 people were all trying to fix Vista. Apparently, they gave up. Beyond repair. in reply to colligan #
• - Are You Having Trouble With AdSense? http://aweber.com/b/10B5Z #
• @PatrikBerggren It is going well but slowly. It is not my top priority right now. I have 30 sites up, creating content, and seeing some $. in reply to PatrikBerggren #
• Up early this morning preparing for a meeting. Need more coffee. #
• Just entered the $497 Blog Mastermind contest. You can win by following @JohnChow and retweet. http://xr.com/master He follows back too! #
• @jasonvo Are NDAs needed for mastermind groups? in reply to jasonvo #
• @jasonvo Should there be free alcohol at mastermind meetings, and if so, how much. Who should be responsible for bringing the blender? in reply to jasonvo #
• @jasonvo Mastermind group. Should there be a business profit model for a mastermind group, or should the group be "not for profit?" in reply to jasonvo #
• Wondering how to integrate my Google AdSense/AdWords/Gmail and Docs accounts under one login. Won't let me associate the accounts. Help? #
• Calling my grandmother. Sadly, she does not have twitter or facebook. #
• Taking kids to school. Rocking out to the Jonas Brothers CD. Not bad for pop music. Well produced. #
• @jasonpotash I don't go to bed. I write blog posts. LOL in reply to jasonpotash #
• Yep. Thanks. On my way. #
• IPod interfaced to car video. Watching @jasonvo how to register domain name tutorial on my car video. Too cool. #

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Wow. I just finished looking at a couple of amazing videos from Brad Callen. This is going to cause a firestorm of controversy.

Brad has constructed a viral tool that manipulates Google rankings on computers on which it is installed.

That's right, this is basically a viral trojan horse turned into a legitimate product. Unfortunately, you have to sign up to see the controversial part.

I am not even sure what I think about this tool. I'll have a followup post soon with my thoughts.

If you check out the videos, let me know what you think.

Regards,
Mark

(Note that the above link was an affiliate link for a few minutes, but I pulled it). I am not sure that I want to support a product like this. Still thinking about it.

Internet Marketing Fortune Cookie #13

The Importance Of Backlinks and NoFollow

It's Wednesday, and you know what that means. It's time for another weekly Internet Business Fortune Cookie.

This week's Internet Business Fortune Cookie caused me to write about a SEO question that I get a lot. When I cracked open the cookie this week, I knew right away what it meant.

Hear the cookie speak:

"Your Friends Speak Kindly Of You"

Obviously, the cookie was refering to the importance of off-page SEO and backlinks.

I have talked about SEO before.  In this article, I'll talk mostly about Google, and I'll comment on what people believe to be true.  No one actually knows exactly what Google is doing in their search algorithms except Google.  If you have a contrary opinion, I would love to hear from you in the comments.

Getting On Google's First Page

When you do a search in Google for a keyword phrase, results are returned to you in order. Google tries to put the "best" results on the first page so that you get the most useful result from their engine. The better the results are, the more people use Google. So it is very important to Google to give users great search results.

To decide which pages to put on the first page of the results, Google considers at least two things what text is on the page and how "important" the page is for your phrase. The first thing is usually called "on-page SEO", and the second thing is usually called "off-page SEO." This last part (off-page SEO or "authority") is determined in part by how many incoming links (links from other pages) a particular page has and what the quality of those links are.

Back Links Make The Difference

Let's say there are 2 pages in the internet that are very similar about "sheep dog training" and you search for "sheep dog training". Which page will you see? All things being equal (similar on-page SEO), you will see the "sheep dog training" page that has more quality pages linking to it ranked above the one with fewer incoming links.

Google figures that if someone took the time to link to a page, it must have good stuff in it. If lots of people linked to that page, it must be really good (better than a page that no one is linking to).

See, the quality of the incoming links is determined (in part) by the authority of the page linking to it. So, if the dog training page has incoming links from CNN and Yahoo News, those links will carry more weight than a link from Bob's brand new blog.

Share The SEO Love

This means that once a page has some "authority" (like the CNN home page in the example above), it can pass that authority to other pages. It is thought that the authority you pass from a page is "split" between the pages that you pass to. So, if you have a page that links out to 5 other pages, you sort of send 1/5 of the authority of that page to each of the pages that you link to.

But, what if you don't want to do that?  What if you only want to send authority to 2 of the pages (maybe they are pages that you own) and send no authority to the other three?

You can do that by putting the rel = "nofollow" attribute in the link text.

This nofollow attribute "theoretically" makes the link pass no (or less) authority.  I say theoretically, because there are lots of good examples and studies that prove the nofollow links actually do impact your rankings in some cases.

So, I hope that helps clear things up on backlinks.  I'd love to hear your questions in the comments below.

As the cookie says, Your Friends Speak Kindly Of You.

Have a great day.
Mark

P.S.  For more on backlinks and SEO, be sure to check out The Ultimate Link Building Report.

Photo credit: Uploaded on July 17, 2006 by headcase

This is a little off topic for this blog, but I love cool tech stuff, and this is really cool.  I know a lot of you out there are geeks a heart, and we all love to get the best price when we shop.

If this describes you too, you gotta check this out.

Some graduates from my Alma Mater (Texas A&M University) are up for a neat award, and I was hoping some of you would take a minute to vote.

This guy (Rylan Barnes) started up a company that makes software for your mobile phone (think iPhone, Android/G1 etc).  Their first application is out, and it is a killer app!  Totally practical and useful (and really cool).

The app is called ShopSavvy and it uses the camera in your phone to scan the barcode of any product and finds the best prices online and at nearby, local stores!

Check out the company here: biggu.com

Anyway, they've been nominated for the 2008 Crunchies! This is a big deal. It's like winning an Oscar but for a tech startup company. This is only a nomination, though, so they need your vote!

Vote here: http://crunchies2008.techcrunch.com/votes/?nominee_id=85&category_id=16

They are up against some big Silicon Valley competition (like Google) so please spread the word. Blog it, twitter it, tell your facebook friends! Vote every day! They'll take all the help they can get.

Thanks!

Regards,

Mark

Let's face it. When it comes to search, there is only one game in town -- Google. Another fact that you should face is that the built-in search in WordPress is not that great. Put those two ideas together and it's clear that what you need to do is integrate Google's Custom Search (GCS) into you blog. You get a better search, and some opportunity to generate AdSense revenue.

To be honest, I'd be surprised if you generate much in the way of revenue. The reason to do this integration is to improve your readers experience. Frankly, if you always use user experience as the reason that you do things to your blog, you will often come out ahead in the long run in any case.

Google Custom Search Overview

As you can see, I have successfully integrated GCS into my sidebar. To do this, you basically need 3 things.

1. You need a Google AdSense account
2. You need code for your sidebar
3. You need code for the results page

The way GCS works is that you first create a custom configuration in your Google AdSense account.  The result of that step is the generation of two pieces of JavaScript.  One piece of JavaScript goes in your sidebar (or wherever you want the search bar).  This first piece of JavaScript is the code that presents the search box and search button to the user.  That code includes information that points to your search configuration on the Google AdSense servers.

When a search is submitted by your visitor, the first JavaScript program runs and loads the a results page that you have specified in your AdSense configuration.  In our case, that results page is regular WordPress page that has some JavaScript in it.    The results page JavaScript is the second script provided by Google mentioned above.   That code interfaces with the Google AdSense servers to get and format the results and AdSense ads.

Best Ways To Implement Google Custom Search

There are at least two ways to implement this Google Custom Search integration.  You can do it manually by following the excellent documentation provided by on Maki's blog over at DoshDosh.com, or your can use the Google Custom Search plugin.

As part of my research for this article, I tried the plugin.  Unfortunately, my theme was not compatible with it (I think because of some customizations that I have done to the WordPress theme code and file locations).  I suspect that most simple themes will work just fine.

I like to understand how things work, so I used the instructions at DoshDosh.  If you try to implement this and have problems, please feel free to leave a comment and I will try to assist.

Parting thoughts about Google Custom Search

Some things to consider based on my experience with this.

1. Don't expect to make tons of money on AdSense for search ads.
2. Try the plugin first.  It's easier to implement if it works.
3. If you have a narrow page area like I do, ads to the right will not work.  I recommend that you use ads on the top and bottom (specified in the AdSense search setup interface).

Let me know if you try this and you get it to work, or if you need some help.

Thanks,
Mark

It's Wednesday, and you know what that means. It's time for another weekly Internet Business Fortune Cookie.

If you Google for "Chinese Food Restaurant" in my town (without the quotes), Pei Wei Asian diner is at the top of the list. So, I ate there this week. Pei Wei makes what I call "Americanized" Chinese food. Actually, they have Chinese, Korean, Thai, Japanese and other Asian influences present in their menu. It's not really authentic, but the quality is good.

I had their Lemon Pepper Chicken -- extra spicy -- and brown rice. It was pretty good. The fortune was good too.

"Life Always Gets Harder Near The Summit"

I have been trying (although not all that hard yet) to get a first position ranking in Google for "article directory list" (without the quotes) for my article directory list page. (Feel free to help me by linking to that page with the text "article directory list").

This is not a "perfect SEO situation" because I am targeting multiple phrases with that page.  However, it was easy to get to the 11th spot (first listing on page 2), and I am currently somewhere in the middle of page one as of this writing.

So, what will it take to get to position one on page one?  Check out this analysis from Market Samurai for my keyword phrase (you can click on the image to get a better view):

As you can see, Market Samurai is showing the top ten pages for the target keyword, and where they are showing SEO strengths.  Red is hard to attack (page is doing a good job) and green is easy to attack.  You can see that my page in the fourth position (varies from day to day) has one red item -- DA (masonworld.com has been around for a while).  I have 305 backlinks to my page and 7490 to my domain, and that is pretty good -- yellow.  You can see that the competition that is ranking above me has many more domain backlinks and good domain age.

What is a little frustrating is that my page tags are pretty well optimized (yellow) for the keywords that I am targeting, but a couple of sites above me are not optimized at all for "article directory list".

The bottom line is, sometimes it is hard to get to the top position for a keyword in Google, and sometimes it is even harder to understand why.

As the cookie says, Life Always Gets Harder Near The Summit.

Have a great day.
Mark

Photo credit: Uploaded on July 17, 2006 by headcase

I hope you had a great week, especially if you were somewhere in the world where you were able to celebrate Thanksgiving with your family. I am personally stuffed to the rim with turkey and other traditional holiday food -- it's back to the gym for me on Monday.

I just got off the phone with Internet guru Aaron Abber. He had to call me because I am at my parents house with no high speed internet access (yikes) -- so I am sending this through my laptop via cell phone (a neat trick).

I have been told again and again that it takes days for a new site to get noticed by the internet and that it takes weeks or even months to get a new site ranked well on Google. After that, many people will tell you that it takes months to make money on line. In many cases, that is all completely true.

But it's not true in every case... especially if you know what you are doing.

To prove it, I agreed to let Aaron guest post on my blog so you could see just how Aaron Abber and Joe Swopes have just blown these ideas out of the water, and made some serious cash in the process.

This is a guest post by Aaron Abber of http://www.ListedInstantly.com. Aaron is a niche marketing pioneer, having earned over $323,165.05 in niche marketing alone. Visit http://www.ListedInstantly.com for more tips and tricks to make your niche sites profitable.

Derrick and I had been friends online for about a year. We both owned internet businesses and were discussing our biggest triumphs and failures online. I guess I was feeling a little cocky and I made an offhand comment: “I'll bet I could start from scratch on a Friday morning and make $10,000.00 by Monday.”

As soon as I said it I knew it was a mistake. Derrick immediately called me on it: “Prove it! Prove that you can start from scratch—without using your email list or your existing site—and make $10,000.00 by Monday.”

So, with under Derrick's watchful eye, I started on the next Friday morning at 8am. To say I was nervous was an understatement.

I took all day Friday preparing a new website then launched it at 5pm. By Monday (evening—he hadn't given me a time so I stretched it out as far as I could) I had $8,516.25 in sales. Not $10,000.00, but a nice chunk of change.

(To see a screenshot of my merchant account, go to http://www.ListedInstantly.com )

Now I'm not trying to tell you that anyone can start out from zero and make $8,000.00 in a weekend. What I am telling you is this: You won't know how much you can make until you try. What if you only made $1,000 this weekend? Or $500.00? or even $100.00? Is that such a bed thing?

Yeah, that's what I thought.

To get a complete plan on how you can imitate my success, go to:

http://www.ListedInstantly.com

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving.

It's Free Stuff Friday again, and time for the Friday Freebie.

OK -- this is really cool.

I was cruising around on Mike Filsaime's Butterfly Reports site and I found a report called "How to Use Google to Find eBay Best Sellers."  I checked it out, and inside the report I learned about a guy that is scanning eBay looking for items with more than a certain number of bids (40 in his example).

Now as you know, I have a number of eBay sites running phpBay, so this is very interesting to me.

Anyway, the guy apparently gives away the lists of items and the software itself for free.  I plan to check this out in some detail in the near future -- but for now I have uploaded the report so you can see for yourself.

As always, opt in to my list to get access to all the free stuff (opt-in box in the right hand sidebar). As soon as you opt-in and confirm you subscription, you'll receive instructions on how to log into the members area.

Thanks,
Mark

It's Wednesday, and you know what that means. It's time for another weekly Internet Business Fortune Cookie.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I am actually at my parents home in Houston, TX at this very moment. I have a lot to be thankful for -- so much so that it is hard to make a list. I was thinking about that today and I suddenly realized that I have never had any turkey-based Chinese Food. Why is that?

A quick trip to Google to search for "turkey Chinese food" reveals information about Chinese food in the country of Turkey, but little information about Chinese food containing turkey. Naturally, my next thought was to dominate the "turkey Chinese food" niche, but I don't see any AdSense ads on that page. Guess I'll hold off on that site for the time being.

This week The Cookie has come out on the side of the value of Joint Ventures in Internet Marketing.

Hear The Cookie:

"Take a trip with a friend."

Of course, the fortune cookie is obviously referring to the fact that some of the most successful Internet businesses these days rely on joint ventures. Joint Ventures (or JVs as they are called) are business arrangements where two or more parties get together to deliver a product and share the profits.

Why Do Joint Ventures?

The best reason to do a joint venture is to leverage unique talents of individuals. Let's say you know how to write killer code, but you are not sure what to write. Another guy has a great idea but neither one of you has any marketing savvy. The two of you team up and find a marketing guru with a list of 100,000 hungry buyers. That's a joint venture. You share the profits according to some prearranged split.

The awesome thing about JVs is that you can often achieve something much greater than the sum of the contributions by leveraging each others talents. That can mean more profit all of the participants.

Three Tips For A Successful Joint Venture

Here are three things to keep in mind when doing a JV.

• Communicate clearly.  Everything from financial arrangements to schedule and quality expectations.  Misunderstands and arguments are a leading cause of JV failure and disappointment.
• Know the law.  I am not a lawyer, and I do not play one on TV.  However, I do know that you need to be very careful to understand the difference between a Joint Venture, a partnership and other business arrangements.  If you do it wrong, you could be held liable for goofy stuff that your JV partners do without your permission.  Consult your attorney.
• Be honest and fair.   Treat your JV partners the way you want to be treated.  Expect a long-term business relationship, and behave accordingly.  Care what they think, and listen to what they have to say.

Bottom line as always is listen to the cookie.  A JV can be a great way to jump-start your business.

Have a great day.
Mark

Be sure and check out our previous Internet Business Fortune Cookies.

Photo credit: Uploaded on July 17, 2006 by headcase

Jon Leger just moved his 1WayLinks tool from beta to full production.  As most people know, back links are incredibly important in Google (the Google search engine was initially called "back rub" for this reason).   In fact, you may recall a post I recently made about a site that I accidentally got to Page Rank 2 without content using only really weak back links.

Jon's 1WayLinks product promises to give subscribers hundreds of back links per month (750 or more) for a monthly fee.  As a subscriber, you can choose the anchor text and the URL.  It's a very cool service, and like all of Jon's products, superbly run.  I am a member, and if you are looking for back links, I recommend it.   It works great in conjunction with his 3WayLinks product.

However, it this OK?  Is it OK to buy back links like this?

Google Is Not The Law

OK -- so first things first.  There is nothing illegal about 1WayLinks. It is probably true, however, that if Google had a good way to identify the kind of links generated by programs like 1WayLinks, they would discount their weight and probably "slap" the site using them.  Why?

Google is all about money. Period.  End of statement.  Google has a board of directors that answers to shareholders.  Those shareholders invested in Google to make money.  Google's managers report to the Board, and the Board directs those managers to make money for shareholders.  Simple.  Google needs to make money on their search engine.

Luckily for users, Google management believes that the best way to make money on the search engine is to provide the best possible user experience.  The better the user experience, the more users come to the Google search engine and click on ads.

So, Google fights things like 1WayLinks because they know that people (people like me and you) are also trying to make money just like Google will try to use these tools to beat competition in their niche.  In some cases, tools like 1WayLinks can be used to cause inferior content to rank above superior content, degrading the "user experience."   As an aside, what you should realize is that having great content that users value is a good defense against actions by search engines like Google.

In any case, Google is not the law.  These are just two competing business practices

Is 1WayLinks Ethical To Use?

So, the big question (in my mind at least) is -- is 1WayLinks ethical to use?

Let's start with an assumption that Article Marketing is a valid and ethical marketing strategy.  After all, eZineArticles.com is a respected business, and content on that site is highly favored by Google.  You will recall the when you submit an article to eZineArticles.com, you are afforded 2 backlinks in the footer that must be maintained by people that syndicate (copy) your content across the web.

To my knowledge, no few people complain about the ethics of article marketing

So, how is 1WayLinks like article marketing?

• User created content. Both article marketing and 1WayLinks accept user generated content.
• Back links. Both article marketing and 1WayLinks allow back links
• Syndication. Both article marketing and 1WayLinks articles get syndicated.  In the case of 1WayLinks, the syndication is automatic.
• Human review. At both eZineArtices.com and 1WayLinks.net human review is required.

I am sure there are other ways to compare the two services, but for now I'll leave it at that.  From a web surfer's experience, the two are substantially the same.

My conclusion is that 1WayLinks.net is not that much different than article marketing.  Since article marketing is a commonly accepted business practice, I conclude that 1WayLinks is OK and should be accepted by people (and Google) in the same way as article marketing.

Have you checked out the 1WayLinks tool?  Read the sales page and tell me what you think.

Thanks,
Mark

I have written a lot recently about the importance of mailing lists. Last Friday, in fact, I explained about how I had been working on a lightbox solution for optins using the You Can't Block This script. The only problem is that I have been worried about bugging my normal readers and tarnishing my brand.

Sure enough, I got this thoughtful comment from a loyal reader (Alex The Big Blogger):

I’m not a fan of Popups, I consider them a little bit spammy, although I’ve tested them out on my own blog and I too have seen good results. I’ve made them with Aweber and set a delay to the apparence. On this way the visitor fisrt starts reading the post and then he gets the popup. Getting a popup as the first thing when i come to a site sets me up and makes me walk away.

That is exactly what I am worried about -- but I like the idea of a delay.

Then it occurred to me that I could just put some php code around the JavaScript based on the referrer to determine if the lightbox appeared.  For my initial experiment, I am only showing the opt-in box to users from StumbleUpon, Google search, Yahoo search and MSN search.  That way, I should not be offending my regular readers. (I know I am not the first person to have this idea, by the way).

In addition to that, I have the popup set to display once per browser session. That should allow for minimum annoyance.

I will let you know how it goes. I have added some Google Analytics code to the popup box html, so I should be able to get some decent stats on the performance.

One issue -- not all browsers are configured to report the referring website. For our current experiment, those visitors will not see the box. I may change this behavior later.

In case you are interested, here is the trivial php code to manage who sees the popup:

(Special thanks to Josh Spaulding for help with troubleshooting)

Have a great day!
Mark

I have been working with niche sites with Firepow a lot over the last month, and many of my niche sites are monetized with AdSense.  So, I have had AdSense on the brain lately.  As it happens, a valued customer of Niche AdSense Themes contacted me this weekend.  He may choose to reveal himself in the comments, but in case he doesn't, let's just call him George.  George had just gotten a generic email from Google, and wanted some help figuring out what he had done wrong.  Here is an excerpt:

Hello,

While reviewing your account, we noticed that you are currently
displaying Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our
policies. For instance, we found violations of AdSense policies
on pages such as mycustomerswebsite.com.

Publishers may not place Google ads on pages that violate
Google’s webmaster quality guidelines
(http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35
769#quality). While we've included the following excerpts from
these guidelines, we recommend that you take the time to review
them in their entirety.

The problem is, this email went on to discuss the webmaster guidelines generically, but never indicated what George had done wrong.  His site was not on a forbidden topic, and was not "black hat site."  It was mostly legitimately republished content -- but that content was republished with permission.

Now, getting ads pulled from your site is not the same as getting banned from AdSense.  George's other sites are OK at the moment.  Oddly, the site was de-indexed by Google at the same time.  This is a more severe action, and suggests that the search engine people are talking directly to the AdSense people.

Anyway, the bottom line is, we are not sure what happened exactly.

Usually, AdSense advice is blunt -- "don't click on your own ads".  In my research this weekend, I was reminded of five more subtle things that you need to keep in mind when building sites for AdSense.  Here they are, in no particular order.

Make It About Google's Customer

Ultimately, Google search cares about getting the user a great search result so that the next time the user needs a search engine, they will choose Google.  It is all about Google's market share.  If they put spam at the top of their search results, people will eventually look for a better search engine.

So, if you do something to trick Google to rank your content so that you can make a buck -- that is OK.  Have fun.  Lots of "black hat" guys make a lot more money on the internet than I do.  Business is business.  As long as what you do is legal, you can make your own decisions.  Google is not the law.  But, don't ever forget that they do own the search engine and they answer to Google share holders.  So don't be upset if they yank your listings.  It is their search engine, after all.

Same goes for AdSense.  Always remember that the customer for AdSense is the advertiser -- not you, and not the person who clicks on the ad.  If your content does not generate clicks, or if clicks coming from your site do not increase revenue for the advertiser (Google's customer), you should expect Google to address that.  They do that by paying per click, smart pricing, and banning some sites from AdSense.

Create Some Unique Content

As I mentioned above, Google Search is about the searching user.  If your content is 100% duplicated content from elsewhere on the web, why would Google want to show it?  If they can figure out where it is, they will prefer to show the original content (all things being equal).   However, it is not clear to me that AdSense should care about duplicate content.  There is some hard-to-understand language in the Webmaster Guidelines about duplicate content, but I personally believe that passage refers to mirror sites and not PLR and other "duplicate content."

As I mentioned above, George had a lot of duplicate content.  While it is possible that this got his site banned from AdSense, I really don't think that was the reason.  Still, good unique content is a valuable defense against getting your site banned.

Be Careful About Competing Ads

While it is not clear what ads are OK, be careful about putting ads on your site that "look like" Google Ads.  Google is sensitive about protecting their brand, and will ban your site.

George did have competing ads on that site, and those ads had a footer encouraging people to refresh to get"fresh ads."  We are not sure if this matters to Google or not, but I think it might.  This is my best guess as to why George's site got banned.

Be Careful About Ad Placement

The AdSense ads on George's site are highly optimized to maximize click-through.  One concern we had is that Google gets upset if you try to "trick" the user and make them think that they are clicking on something other than an ad.

Because of this, one thing that people debate a lot is how close ads can be to page titles.  For example, let's say you have a page with the title "Used Cars For Sale" and right below that title you have an AdSense block that makes it seem that the AdSense ads are actually cars for sale on your site.

You can interpret Google's guidelines in such a way as to conclude this violates their TOS.   While I am sure you can violate their TOS this way, I don't think this is an issue with George's site.  However, it is something to keep in mind.

Make Sure You Have A Privacy Policy (and Disclaimers)

As of about last April, Google started requiring a privacy policy.  Make sure you have one on every page that serves AdSense Ads.  I also recommend a disclaimer, although this is not required by Google.  Fortunately, this was not an issue for George -- he did a bang-up job here.

The Bottom Line

Here is the real bottom line -- Google can pull your site for any reason or no reason at all.  So, my strong recommendation is that you do not put all of your eggs in one basket here.  Diversify with other affiliate offers and your own products.  You'll be glad you did.

Regards,
Mark

P.S. -- I know the title said three tips -- I got carried away and inclided five or six.  Sorry about that.

One thing I know for sure about Google search engine rankings is that it is just about impossible to know anything for sure about Google search engine rankings.   Sometimes, it's good to know what you don't know.

How Google decides what websites appear on the front page for any particular search term is like the formula for Coke or the recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken -- it's a secret.  We know Coke has caramel in it, but the exact recipe is classified.  The difference between Coke and Google is that the formula for Coke never changes (they tried that once -- what a disaster).  In fact, the formula for Google SERPs is changing periodically as Google works to improve the experience for end users.

Of course, what you hear all the time on blogs just like this one are "stories" about what people did on their web site for their keywords that resulted in page one rankings.  I call this anecdotal evidence. It's usually very interesting, but it is almost never conclusive.  Just because someone got a page one ranking by including their keywords in the footer of their pages in flashing pink with a blue background, does not mean that you will get the same result.

So, let me tell you an anecdote about Google page rank.

Backlinks Do Seem To Be Important

However, some themes keep coming out.  For example, we are pretty sure that Google pays attention to backlinks when determining ranking.  We believe this for at least four reasons:

• The Google search engine was originally called "BackRub" (a reference to the use of backlinks in their algorithm).
• Google Page Rank patents discuss backlinks
• Matt Cutts talks about certain backlinks being important in various blog posts and forums
• We see anecdotal evidence of the importance of backlinks

So it's that last point that I want to talk about today.  I have some anecdotal evidence I want to share.

My PR2 Website

Last January I created a site for my wife called PalsLoft.com.  My wife was going to blog about our new baby and review various baby products.  I got the site up with some bad graphics and posted two sample affilaite landing pages complete with eBay affiliate links and some text.  The home page (where the weekly blog posts were going to live) was basically empty.

Note -- I plan to work on this site some soon, so by the time you read this, it may have changed.  Here is a screen shot of what the site looked line for about nine months between February and October 2008.

To get the site going, I submitted the URL to a directory link submission service.  This particular service submitted links to "brand new directories" as they were announced in Digital Point Forums.   So the backlinks that were created from this service were pretty crummy.  They came from link directories (bad) that had no authority (worse) and were brand spankin' new (terrible).  Basically, they were junk links.

After about a month of that, I forgot about the site.  I ended up with about 70 backlinks.  I literally never touched the site after January of 2008.   Earlier this month, I checked the site and found that the empty home page was PR2 (toolbar PR), and both of the two pages linked from the home page are PR1.  Go figure.  Here is a site that has little real content and Google is ranking it as PR2.  So much for content is King.

So What?  Who Cares About A Toolbar PR2 Ranking

So, what is that worth?  Who cares about a toolbar PR2 site with no content?  Well, as I stated before, it is only anecdotal evidence.  But, it suggests that tools like Firepow, 1WayLinks and 3WayLinks that provide quality links might be worth the investment -- at least in terms of getting page rank.  The problem is, page rank does not convert directly to sales.  Traffic converts to sales.  Is this page rank converting?

Well, I am embarrassed to say that I never finished adding Google Analytics to the site, or properly set up the Commission Junction ID to track clicks and sales.  But, the AWStats seem to suggest that there is some traffic there, and that it has been growing over time.

The Bottom Line on Backlinks

The bottom line -- Build Backlinks.  But you knew that already.  If you are working on sites, your promotion strategy needs to include a backlink plan.   Based on this traffic data, I conclude that tools like Firepow, 1WayLinks and 3WayLinks that provide backlinks links might be worth the investment -- but you need to evaluate this for yourself on your own site.  As I mentioned before, the above evidence is anecdotal, and your mileage may vary.

It's time for another weekly Internet Business Fortune Cookie.  Last night I had General Tso's chicken.  It's funny, because a Chinese guy at a restaurant told me once all about General Zuo Zongtang, who was a Qing dynasty General.  He explained how the dish was prepared for the General by his wife and served for him and his staff.  Sources I can find on the internet suggest that the dish was actually invented in New York City in the 1970s. Go figure. I like the Qing dynasty version of the story, but I am thinking the NYC version is probably right.

The Cookie Speaks The Truth

As you know, everything you need to know about running an internet business can be learned from fortune cookies. This week's cookie actually hits right at the heart of Google rankings -- "The thing that you lost will be found this month."

Of course, that fortune cookie is obviously referring to the fact that one of my newer eBay sites using phpbay was "sand boxed" this month. I was ranking on the first page for my terms and making some nice sales. Suddenly, the site is nowhere to be found.

So, I am adding the site into Firepow to see if I can add some content and back links to it to get it back in play.  Firepow has a new very cool "blog import" feature that I am testing. There are still some bugs, but it is working well for a couple of my niche blogs. I plan to use the Firepow "BNet" to get some back links and some of the other Firepow promotional tools. It will be interesting to see if that helps the site or makes things worse. It's really hard to tell, because you never know what Google is doing in the first place.

Stay The Course

I've had this Google Dance happen before. The sites impacted by a sudden loss in ranking usually come back stronger than when they left -- which is what the fortune cookie is trying to tell me.

This is another really good reason to have 60 sites making $100/month and not 3 sites making $2000/month. If you are at the mercy of Google for your traffic, you are hosed if they slap your site or otherwise impact your rankings.

So, the message for you today is, don't freak out if your site moves in the rankings (especially if it is still indexed). Generally speaking, it will come back. Keep working on the site while it is in the sandbox and watch it come back even stronger in many cases.  Use good fundamentals (keyword targeting, on page SEO, white hat linking techniques, etc) and you should be fine.

Have a great day.
Mark

Photo credit:  Uploaded on July 17, 2006 by headcase

Greetings;

I just got off an email exchange with James Jones of Micro Niche Finder.

As you know from reading my blog, Micro Niche Finder was the first keyword tool that I ever bought, and I still use it today.  To be fair, I use some other tools now too -- mostly because of some missing advanced features that Micro Niche Finder 3.0 is lacking.

So, about that email.

James sent out a mailer about six weeks ago indicating that he was about to release Micro Niche Finder version 4.0 (with plans for version 5.0 in the works).  I was excited then, because once you are a Micro Niche Finder customer, you get free updates for life.  He is adding the features I was looking for, and I will get them for free.

When I spoke with him today, he indicated the price will be going up next week.  James said:

Yes, as soon as we release this we'll give the tire kickers a day or
so to get the old price but then it's going to $97.00.

There will also be a price increase with version 5.0 and it may be significantly higher.  In fact, I may even have to go to a monthly fee with 5.0 since we'll be accessing data from other websites that have to be maintained and this adds an ongoing cost.

It will still be a great deal at the new price ($97).  However, if you buy it today you can effectively get a $30 discount because you will get the updates when they are released (for life).   There is no risk as James offers a 60 day return policy.

Some off the new features rumored for Version 4.0 are described by James:

The first release will add some basic functionality such as showing you the Commercial Intent for a particular keyword phrase, LSI keywords, the number of Google Ads for a keyword phrase and a bunch of other minor features that you may find useful.

But the really cool stuff will be in Version 5.0:

Version 5.0 will take keyword research to a whole new level. I can't tell you much about it just yet except to say we're going to take all the guesswork out of selecting profitable niche markets and basically give you an "Easy Button."

I don't have a release date just yet for version 5.0 but it will be before the end of the year.

That's all I can say about 5.0 for now.

Just thought you might want to know.

I don't know what an "Easy Button" is, but is sure sounds great.

I've made money with Micro Niche Finder, but I hope you don't feel any pressure to buy this tool.  There are lots of keyword tools on the market, and some really good free ones.  If you have questions about keyword research or the Micro Niche Finder tool, please let me know.

Regards,
Mark

Several weeks ago, I announced my new Article Directory Ranking List. It that time, I had a few dozen directories listed -- and I was focused on the directories that I personally considered to be the best.

Now, the Article Directory List has been expanded to include over 400 Article Directories -- all ranked by Alexa and Google PR using my "special algorithm." The ranking algorithm takes the log of the Google Page Rank +2 and multiplies it times 10,000 over the Alexa score, then adds an offset. This results in a number that ranges from about zero to around 100.

Anyway, check it out and let me know what you think.

Note that I have focused on directories that work with Article Post Robot -- almost all (but not quite all) of the directories listed can be posted to automatically using that software. Because of that, the special discount offer for Article Post Robot is still available for MasonWorld.com readers.

My goal is to have the best article directory listing on the internet, so comments, diggs and stumbles are appreciated!

Finally, note the the list is still in beta. If there is something you would like to see (that can be automated) please let me know in the comments below.

Tell me what you think!

Thanks!
Mark

OK -- so now I sound like that reverse funnel guy or Jeffery Lant. After all, the great promise of something for nothing is what fuels a lot of the scam artists out there. I am not really interested in talking about "something for nothing." Rather, I want to do some math. Those that know me know that I am an engineer. I do more math before breakfast than most people do all day. So, let's do some AdSense math.

$5000 A Month Is Really Cool

Honestly, I just picked that number because it sounds cool.  Who wouldn't want an extra $5000 per month?  I mean, if I told you that you could make $5000 a month working only an hour a day, would you do it?  Well, that is what I am going to tell you.  Of course, there are no guarantees.  Your ability to make money on the internet has to do with your abilities and your personal situation.  I am not able to promise that you will make money online.  You mileage may vary.  Not valid in Nevada.  You get the idea.

I'll also tell you that the hard part is the traffic.  You can trade off click through rate for traffic, so if you think my traffic assumptions are too high, you should know that my CTR is low.  If you assume a higher CTR you can use less traffic.  You can also use less traffic if you assume higher earnings per click (EPC).

I've been thinking about this because I have been looking at FirePow (which is even cooler than I imagined).  It is so easy to make sites with that system, you can easily imagine making a ton of them.  FirePow also has some automatic traffic stuff -- so it looks really appealing for the creation of AdSense Sites.

Let's Do Some Math About Making Money Online

The vision is about passive income.  By passive income, I specifically mean websites that are set up for generating income via AdSense revenue.  As you probably know, AdSense are those little ads that show up on sites and say "Ads by Google".  If you own a site with those ads and visitors click them, you get paid.  How much you get paid depends on the following factors.

• How many sites do you have? For the purpose of this analysis, I am assuming that you have 30 sites.  I choose 30 because I will recommend that you get to the point where you can work on one site per day each day of the month for about an hour.  So, for site #13, you will work on it for about an hour on the 13th of every month posting new content, doing promotion, etc.  You may want to outsource the generation of 4 or 5 articles per month per site so you can post them on that day.  Of course, you'll probably want to work more at first to set the sites up.  I am currently working in October to get my 30 sites set up.  But once they are set up, you should be able to "invest" 1 hour a day to continuously improve the sites.  This is really cool for people that have a "day job" like me.
• How many people will search for the terms that your site is ranking for each day? I am going to assume that you have set up your sites to optimize around 5 or so keyword phrases, and that those phrases have a total search volume of about 1500 searches per day.  That's 1500 people searching for your keywords, not 1500 people visiting your site.  Maybe your site is targeting 5 keywords with 300 daily searches each.  This is pretty conservative.
• How many of the people that search will click on your link? I am assuming that you will choose keywords and do search engine optimization that will allow you to rank on the first page of Google for each of your keywords.  If you can get in the first 5-6 listings and you write a great page description for page, you should be able to capture 10-15% of that search traffic.  If you are in the #1 position, you might get as much as 40% of the traffic.  For this analysis, we will assume that you only capture 6% of the search traffic.  This will get you about 90 visitors per day.
• How much traffic can you get from Article Marketing? I am personally a fan of article marketing.  It works well with AdSense because it complements organic traffic and provides backlinks which improve search engine performance.  For this analysis, I am assuming that you can get 10 visitors a day from article marketing from 4 or 5 articles published to 15 directories each.  If you want to know more about Article Marketing, check out my blog post on that topic.
• Just 100 visitors total per day. So, I am assuming that you can create a 5 or 6 page site that can get 100 visitors per day using search engines and article marketing (social media traffic not included).  Think you can do that?  I think you can.
• How many people will click your ads? I have assumed for this analysis that 8 out of every 100 visitors that visit your site will click an ad.  For an AdSense site, that would be pathetic.  I have see conversions using my Niche AdSense Themes for WordPress between %10 and %20 (your mileage may vary).
• How much will clicks pay? For this analysis, I have assumed that clicks only pay a measly $0.55 per click.  That is terrible.  You can easily find higher paying niches on SpyFu.com.  When I look at SpyFu, I assume that I can get 20% of the average that the report.  So, for "home mortgage" where the average is around $10.00, I would expect to get about $2.00 per click.  That is just an estimate, but $0.55 is a very conservative number in this game if you are careful about keyword selection.

So, the bottom line is that if you do some search engine and article marketing so that you get 100 visitors per day, you can get 8 AdSense clicks.  Those 8 clicks could be worth $5.60 for each site that you have.  If you have 30 sites, you can make $168/day or about $5000 per month.

30 sites not the right number for you?  Here are the numbers for 1, 10, 20, 30 and 50 sites.

Once you are up and running, you can maintain the rankings an traffic with a little content and link building each month -- maybe one hour every month.

Don't like AdSense or have a site with traffic but low EPC?  Consider converting that traffic to affiliate sales using something like phpBay.  I am actually doing that with a couple of sites that have a low AdSense EPC.

What do you think?  Can you do it?  I am off to build a couple of these sites in FirePow and see what happens.

Regards,

Mark

A few months ago, I wrote about how to cloak an affiliate link and why you might want to cloak links for affiliate products that you promote. Since that time I have gotten a lot of questions and requests for help regarding that post. That's great because it means that people read the article and decided to give cloaking a try. I love that.  Helping people is the best part of this gig.

The Next Level Of Cloaking

Today I wanted to mention a more aggressive technique for cloaking - cloak an entire page. I was re-reading the Secret Affiliate Code (note the cool cloaked affiliate link) on the airplane on the way home from Singapore, and I was reminded about this method. This is a nice trick of the trade that I forgot about until I re-read this excellent eBook.

Let's say that you want to promote an affiliate product that is available on a service like ClickBank. Let's use Secret Affiliate Code as mentioned above as a great example for this case. It has a great landing page that converts really well. Let's also say that you want to link to the landing page as you promote the product as part of your promotion strategy. Now you could use a cloaked link like I taught in my previous post on cloaking (just like I did above). That would take the user away from your site to the sales page of the affiliate product. That's a perfectly normal and fine thing to do, and you can make money doing that.

Keep The Prospect "On Your Site"

But what if you want the visitor to have a more seamless experience, and you want the landing page to look like it lives on your domain, not the domain of the seller. Deciding to do this could help reinforce the message to the buyer that you are fully endorsing the product, not just slinging traffic to an affiliate link. Here is an example of the Secret Affiliate Code sales page showing up as if it were on MasonWorld.com.

So, How Can You Cloak A Page?

The answer is by creating a simple HTML file on your site that places the sales page inside a frame. The code shown below, but I recommend you download it from the attached zip file.

Save the zip file to your disk, edit the four things mentioned below, and ftp it to your site. To make the file work, you need to change the following:

WEB PAGE TITLE: Give the page a title that matches your keyword strategy for the promotion. This is especially important for a good quality score if you are driving Adwords to the page.

KEYWORDS: Put your keywords in here. You want to have these there, but it is not as critical as it used to be. Google pays very little attention to these.

DESCRIPTION: This will show up in your listing on Google. Make sure your keywords are here as well as a call to action for the Googler that makes them want to click on your search engine listing.

GA CODE: Be sure to turn on Google Analytics for the page. This is another major advantage of this technique. You can get Google Analytic data for the visitors that you send to the sales page.

Be sure and save your "cloaking file" file with a file name that includes your keywords and ends with the .html extension (like secret-affiliate-code-discount.html or whatever).  Alternatively, you can rename this file index.html and put it in a directory called secret-affiliate-code under the public_html directory.  That gives you a URL like this:

http://www.masonworld.com/secret-affiliate-code-discount.

I hope that you find this cloaking method useful. Thanks to Craig Beckta of Secret Affiliate Code for reminding me about it.

Best regards,
Mark

P.S. Here is the code (see also the zip file):

<body>

GA CODE GOES HERE

</body>