Affiliate Marketing For Dummies [IN PLAIN ENGLISH!]

Affiliate Marketing for beginners…

Pinterest Bans Affiliate Marketing Links

On February 12, 2015, Pinterest announced that it would “automatically remove all affiliate links, redirects and trackers on Pins.” This is important news because merchants with affiliate marketing programs could see a drop in revenue from that channel, depending on how many affiliates use Pinterest to drive traffic.

…merchants with affiliate marketing programs could see a drop in revenue from that channel, depending on how many affiliates use Pinterest to drive traffic.

Pinterest is a social media platform that enables users to curate collections of most any online content. For example, a fashion blogger can create a collection of links to her favorite denim jeans. These collections are known as “boards,” and each link is called a “pin.”

The fashion blogger has fans that she built up via her blog. Those fans could follow her to various social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. And whenever those fans see a product recommendation from her, no matter what platform it’s on, they may be inclined to click through and complete a purchase. Pinterest is simply another way for bloggers to interact with their followers.

This Pinterest board, managed by New York-based blogger The Glamourai, features 290 pins related to fashion, and has 17,374 followers.

So how is this related to affiliate marketing? Say that the fashion blogger monetizes her content through affiliate marketing. She has a blog post on her site that features a review of various denim jeans, and that post contains affiliate links that her followers can click through to purchase the jeans. This is traditional affiliate marketing.

Pinterest vs. Affiliate Marketing

However, with the advent of social media, the blogger can now post those same affiliate links on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other social sites. She is simply communicating her product recommendations across multiple channels in the hopes that her followers will click her affiliate link and complete a purchase, thus generating a commission to her.

But now, Pinterest is blocking all those affiliate links. The pins remain, but the links are blocked — the pin still appears on boards, and can be shared, but click-through functionality is removed. This is not a surprise to affiliate marketers, as Pinterest has blocked isolated affiliate links in the past. But this is the first time that the website has issued a comprehensive ban on all types of affiliate marketing.

Revenue for Pinterest

The ban comes at a time when four-year-old Pinterest is considering how to generate revenue from its 70 million users. In April 2014, Pinterest launched a test for “Promoted Pins” that enabled brand advertisers to pay for promotion on a cost-per-click basis. There is also industry speculation about Pinterest partnering with payments company Stripe to add its own “buy” button to user-generated content within the next three to four months. This move could place Pinterest in the role of the affiliate.

In fact, Pinterest experimented with the affiliate role in 2012, when it partnered up with Skimlinks (an affiliate marketing tool) to auto-convert pins into affiliate links. But the Pinterest abandoned that practice after it came under fire for not disclosing the practice to its users.

By banning affiliate links, Pinterest could be paving the way for another attempt at affiliate marketing, perhaps a transparent attempt at monetization.

Reliance on Pinterest?

There are still methods for affiliates to benefit from Pinterest. For example, the fashion blogger who curated a board featuring her top denim picks could link each pin to her own blog post, which could link to the retailer’s ecommerce site for affiliate commissions. While this approach could work in the interim, affiliates should not depend on Pinterest for that traffic. If Pinterest implements a “buy” button, the blogger’s traffic from Pinterest would likely reduce. If a retailer wants to benefit from a blogger’s Pinterest following, the retailer would likely need to work directly with the blogger, outside of an affiliate relationship. The retailer could compensate the blogger for curating a board, paying her a fixed amount instead of a commission.

In short, if a retailer’s affiliates use Pinterest as part of their marketing mix, that retailer will likely see a decline in affiliate revenue based on these changes. However, affiliates that depend mainly on Pinterest for their revenue may not be adding any value to your affiliate program anyway. These affiliate are building their success off a single site, instead of creating unique value — the heart of true affiliate marketing.

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/81802-Pinterest-Bans-Affiliate-Marketing-Links

3 Great Choices for a Winning Content-Marketing Strategy

Pratik Dholakiya  tips on Content Marketing Strategy

With companies planning to increase their digital marketing spending over the coming months, the spotlight is on online marketers to implement strategies that deliver high ROI. They need to take a hard look at their Internet marketing strategies, evaluate their efficacy and implement those they believe will help meet business objectives.

But the problem is all online marketers worth their salt are doing the same thing. They are putting every ounce of effort to ensure it is their brand that wins the battle for consumer mindshare. So, what is it that separates successful marketers from the ones that aren’t able to achieve tangible results?

In one word -- choices!

Successful online marketers make the right strategic choices more often than not; and even if they do get things wrong sometimes, they recalibrate, restrategize and correct course. Here are three choices online marketers must make to ensure they don’t go wrong with marketing deliverables:

1. Value over marketing.

This is a tricky one. Internet marketers must focus on value addition rather than promoting the brand and its products and services. The idea is to use a collection of marketing tactics to provide useful, actionable information to target customers. It doesn’t have to be all about your brand.

Using the 80-20 rule helps. Ideally, just 20 percent of information should center on your brand, the remaining 80 percent should add value to the lives of your target audience at some level. Think of marketing in terms of customer engagement rather than selling. This will not only help you acquire customers but also retain them over a period of time.

2. Relationship building over link building.

The era of link building is fading. Don’t get me wrong. The importance of links in online marketing remains intact, but you need to stop making a conscious effort to build links; instead, you must choose to build meaningful relationships.

Link building will happen naturally as you forge long-term relationships with your customers, niche influencers and other important stakeholders. Quick Sprout’s link building guide has a chapter on “relationship based link building” that is a must read on this subject.

Why is relationship building important? It’s because Google frowns on anything that even remotely resembles a link building tactic. It wants you to earn links naturally. But, why would influencers in your niche choose to link back to a post you’ve written, or allow you to publish content on their site?

They will only do so if they know and trust you. This is why “relationships” matter. The more personal your relationship with authority figures in your niche, the better it is for your link building efforts.

3. Substance over activity on social media.

We’ve heard industry experts and thought leaders holding forth on the importance of active engagement with existing and potential customers on social media. Yes, it’s important to achieve a fair degree of frequency, when it comes to sharing content with your target audience on social media, but frequency or regularity alone won’t cut it for you.

Your activities must be backed by substance. For example, you might be sharing links, images and videos, but if they don’t benefit your brand or your target audience, it will be of little use to your marketing efforts.

Each and every piece of content you share on social media should be shareworthy.

If you are sharing a link to an article written by a thought leader in your niche, think very carefully if it’s something your target audience will love going through. If it’s a video you are sharing, check whether it’s something your followers will appreciate. Otherwise, it makes very little sense for you to share that piece of content. You will be wasting your time and also that of your audience.

Marketers who’re getting the most out of social media marketing know when and how to share, but most importantly know “why they are sharing what they are sharing”.

Let me be very clear -- the right choices do not “guarantee” the results you are looking for, but definitely put you on course for achieving your marketing objectives. In the end, you also need to make your choices count.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/242368

How to make free webinars using LeadPages & Google Hangouts

How to make money with Pinterest?

Looking for ways to make money with Pinterest? Rather than looking at Pinterest as a simple photo-sharing network, consider it your own global bulletin board. In November of 2013, Pinterest had 70 million users, 80 per cent of them women, and received 2.5 billion page views per month.

There are many ways to make money with Pinterest, and as the network continues to grow, your opportunities will grow too.

Let’s look at some effective ways in which you can make money with Pinterest.

1. Follow your passion, build an audience and sell to them.

What are you passionate about? If people are spending money in an area you love, you can make money.

Let’s say you’re a fitness junkie. You love being fit, and staying fit. You choose a target audience: women in their twenties who want to be fit and attractive. Create a Pinterest account and boards that attract this audience.

Get followers to your boards, and create a mailing list. Some keen Pinterest users have a million followers and more. You don’t need that many followers to your account to sell to your audience. If you don’t know what to sell, don’t worry. Once you have a few thousand followers, marketers will approach you with offers.

2. Choose a company to promote, and ask for sponsorship.

Target a group, and build your Pinterest followers as we discussed above. Then select companies offering products that appeal to your audience. Staying with our “fitness” audience, you could approach companies that sell gym machines, or sports drinks.

Share your Pinterest account’s statistics with the companies you approach, and ask for sponsorship. Offer them a deal: they can use their branding on your account for a year.

3. Promote affiliate products.

Many companies want affiliates who will promote their products for a small commission on the sales that result. Find companies that sell products you can promote, and sign up as an affiliate. Then promote the products on your boards, using your affiliate links.

Tip: use an URL-shortening service like Bitly to manage your links. You’ll be able to track your pins and boards for the number of clicks.

Regarding spamming. Periodically Pinterest takes action against affiliate marketing spammers. If you get caught up in this, link your pins to your own website, where you can use affiliate links.

4. Use search engine optimization (SEO) strategies to get found on Pinterest.

If you want to make money on Pinterest, people have to be able to find your pins and boards, so use SEO strategies. Not only will you be found on Pinterest, you’ll also be found via the major search engines, like Google.

Make the most of your “About” profile. You’ve got 200 characters (around 50 words.) Be clear and descriptive, using the keywords you expect searchers to use.

Also, use SEO strategies on your pins. Each pin allows you 500 characters (around 100 words) of description, so make the most of it by adding keywords and links. Include keywords naturally, rather than in a spammy way.

5. Create contests on Pinterest to sell your own products.

Perhaps you want to sell your own products on Pinterest. Consider creating contests. They’re popular, and can help you to make money.

However, keep Pinterest’s guidelines in mind:

Contests are a common tactic businesses use to get people to engage with their brand, and we’ve learned a lot about how they work on Pinterest. Done well, they can be a trigger to help people think about and talk about your brand. But they can also motivate people to add Pins they aren’t truly interested in, which is why Pins from contests can often feel irrelevant and even spammy.

Pinterest guards its users’ experience. This is wonderful because it ensures that the network will continue to grow.

6. Re-pin others’ pins to win an audience and make money.

Pinterest is a social network, so the easiest way to get people to re-pin your pins is to be active. Pin others’ pins, particularly those people in your target audience. They will notice you, and may even start following your boards.

7. Make money by teaching Pinterest strategies to others.

As Pinterest continues to grow, a small industry has developed around it, with people developing tools to help Pinterest users.

After you’ve been using Pinterest successfully for a while, consider making money by teaching your strategies to others. Create e-books and courses teaching what you’ve learned.

So there you have it: seven effective ways to make money with Pinterest. You’ll also develop further strategies of your own when you become active on the network.
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/money/7-effective-ways-make-money-with-pinterest.html

Backlinks :Why They Still Matter and How To Build them?

Links are still the backbone of Google’s algorithms, which determine where your site ranks in Google’s SERPs (search engine results pages). This is why having quality links pointing to your site can help you gain more visitors organically versus relying on paid efforts.

A backlink, also known as an inbound link or just a link, is an incoming link from another website or page that directs or points back to your own site or page. Unfortunately, too many bad backlinks can get your site in big trouble with Google in the form of a penalty. It can be hard to know what constitutes a good link versus a link that could spell trouble for your site. Google is the final judge of your backlinks and you have to play by their rules.

Today, we break down what natural backlinks are, why you need them, and how to gain them while staying within Google’s guidelines. Before we discuss natural backlinks, it’s a good idea to explain how links have evolved over the years. Here’s a brief history of links:

Wild West Times (pre 2012): This was a wild time for SEO, when nearly any tactic was fair game and Google didn’t enforce many of their regulations. Only the most flagrant of practices would get you penalized by Google. Reciprocal linking, directories, link farms and three-way linking were just some of the tactics used with reckless abandon and they worked.

Companies charged money to provide a link from their low ranking site, and people would pay for these types of links. It also was very common for sites to have a “reciprocal links” page where they would make trades with other sites for links. These linking relationships provided very little value to Google and searchers, so Google eventually stepped up their enforcement and changed their algorithms to provide a better search experience. Google’s biggest weapon in the battle against bad backlinks came in the form of the Penguin Algorithm in April of 2012.

Relationships & Quality Links (post Penguin): After the Penguin update leveled many sites that were playing cowboys in the “wild west days of SEO,” most people changed their way of thinking. The painful realization (for some) that these tactics were no longer beneficial for clients and companies provided a much needed reality check to the SEO industry. There has been a shift from trying to get as many links as possible, to getting higher quality links.

What is a natural link?

A natural link isn’t something you ask for, especially for SEO purposes. A natural link is earned because someone finds value in your site, page, products or content. Gone are the days of reaching out to webmasters asking for a link back because it’ll help your SEO efforts. If you think about the movie, Field of Dreams and the famous scene in which Kevin Costner is told “if you build it, he will come,” that’s how you should think about obtaining natural links. If you build it (content), he (links) will come. It’s a simple concept, but one that helps illustrate why you need quality links.

Why do you want links?

Backlinks still signal to Google that sites are relevant and are going to be useful for searchers. It was only a few months ago that Google’s Matt Cutts said “links still have many, many years left in them.” So for a long-term SEO strategy, link building is a good idea. The more good quality, natural links you have, the better your rankings in Google can be. Just keep in mind, if you’re going to build links, ensure they’re quality.

How to build quality links

As we outlined above, the “Wild West Times of SEO” are long gone, and link building is no longer fast and furious. The new buzz word/phrase to remember is “link earning,” which means earning links over time. Producing great content is a foolproof way to build natural links. Examples include in-depth, well researched blog posts, informative videos, which entice people to subscribe to your YouTube channel, and images that make people want to pin, tweet and Like their hearts out. You want to produce content that people will love to share and link back to.

Here are some small businesses that are nailing it on the link building front (and they probably don’t even realize it):

Stumptown: We really love coffee in San Francisco and Stumptown out of Portland, Oregon is among our favorites. Stumptown Coffee often writes blog posts and links back to various coffee shops that use their beans and cold brews – Talk about a link with some juice java! Here’s a perfect example below in which Stumpton writes about Ace Hotel in LA. Not only does Ace Hotel get a link from Stumptown, but they also gain exposure to a new audience.

Taylor Stitch: Looking like a million bucks isn’t hard with some handsome threads from Taylor Stitch. Their blog features stunning real world product photos, weekend plans, and even a weekly playlist. All of these features are ripe for linking, Pinning, Liking and more. Each new product they release gets its own blog post with 8-10 beautifully shot photos, which are always hot on Pinterest, and often get write ups on fashion blogs and even GQ – Now that’s a good looking link!

Off the Grid: This San Francisco food truck gathering is always the talk of the office come Monday morning. Maybe it’s the Bloody Mary cart, Mimosa bar or the tofu tacos, but Off the Grid is the place to be for Sunday Funday. You want a link from Off the Grid? Better fire up your food truck, because they are more than happy to link to your site, menus and everything else if you serve food or drinks at their events. They even include a link to book your truck for catering. Now wouldn’t that be a tasty link to get?

If you have some good examples of how you gain quality links, please share in the comments. We also recommend keeping up with Google’s ever-changing rules. Luckily, Google is kind enough to provide a rule book of sorts called Google Webmaster Guidelines, so keep it bookmarked.

http://www.business2community.com/seo/backlinks-still-matter-build-01002493

Mel Carson shares How to Write a Blog Post in Just 30 Minutes

When it comes to public relations, many small businesses and entrepreneurs balk at the cost of sending out traditional press releases. Why spend hundreds of dollars trying to reach journalists, bloggers and influencers through a press-release service when it's possible to create content on the company's site and disseminate it through search engines and social-media channels?

While press-release distribution companies like PR Newswire and PRWeb definitely have their place in the digital marketing ecosystem, using a blog to tell a story that you can control can be an effective way to have your news and views shared inexpensively and generate coverage in third-party publications. 

I’m often asked by businesspeople how much time should they dedicate to writing blog posts. Here are some ideas about how to keep the actual writing part short and sweet and make the whole process a good use of your time, whether you are at a growing startup or make up a one-man-band. 

1. Create a content calendar.

If you’re blogging once or twice a week, brainstorm and jot down some topics to write about and insert them into a calendar that extends into the next couple of months. Sound out trusted peers or customers about what they’d like to read about in your posts. The more choices you have in potential topics the better. 

2. Categorize your content. 

Within your calendar, define what each piece of content will be. Is it an event announcement or a new product release? Will it be a how-to piece or a customer interview? Listing each blog post as a genre with a reason for posting it will help you vary the content you’re posting and help you craft posts with different calls to action.

3. Start crafting a post a week in advance.

With seven days to go before the post is due to go live, start thinking about how it might start off and the way it might end.

You might want to sketch out some subheadings so your readers will have signposts as they work their way through the content. This will help you solidify the structure of what you'll say. 

4. Think about links and mentions.

An important part of any blogging initiative is linking to relevant content (both on the website and in outside sources) that readers will find helpful. This will aid with search engine optimization and your readers won’t reach the end of the post without a suggestion for further reading.

Don’t forget to mention relevant brands or individuals by name, too. If people have set up a Google or social-media alert to tracking their name, they will pick up that you’ve been writing about them and perhaps drop by your blog to see what you’ve been saying, good or bad. 

5. Set aside time to write. 

A couple of days before your post is due to go live, block off time when there will be no distractions and just start writing. Since you’ve already thought about your piece and how things will fit together, you'll find it way easier to put down the words. If you’re aiming for 700 or so words, then 30 minutes should be enough time for you to whittle down your thoughts into a first draft, providing there are no interruptions. 

Obviously if the information you're trying to express needs accompanying screen shots, quotes from others or some research, the process will become more involved. But if you use spare time in the day, during the commute, while waiting for your coffee to brew or before you drop off to sleep at night, the actual writing part need not seem as daunting as some fear. 

Like tackling any new initiative, writing relevant and engaging blog posts does take practice. Google’s digital-marketing evangelist, Avinash Kaushik, shared in my book, Pioneers of Digital, how he practiced for weeks writing content for his web analytics blog Occam’s Razor before publishing anything publicly. He asked his wife and colleagues to critique the content and style before he embarke on what has become one of the most widely read digital-marketing blogs out there. 

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/240372

3 Easy Ways To Drive Traffic From YouTube To Your Website

Tip #1: How Does Linking from YouTube to Your Website Affect Your Watch Time and Session Time - Why is That Important?

Tim Schmoyer says the session time is how YouTube grades your video's influence on how long a viewer stays on YouTube. For instance, if someone watches your video, do they spend another 10, 15 or 30 minutes watching other videos. Conversely, is your session time low, meaning are you really good at sending people away from YouTube to your website or other call to action, and thus you're ending the viewer's session time on YouTube.
YouTube places a higher value on the videos that contribute to viewers watching YouTube longer, with more ads, etc. So videos and channels that keep people on YouTube will get higher rankings in search results. Those that get people to stop watching YouTube and visit another website, are ranked lower.
So it's important to consider this factor when thinking about how you send people off of YouTube to your website or Facebook page or wherever you send them. Tim (and YouTube) recommend that you only send people off of YouTube when it makes good business sense for you to do so. Tim sends people off YouTube to join his email list, and that email drives people to his products and services, rather than having people go from YouTube to the various other destinations.
Matt Ballek says you can't just link via annotations to any website. It's a bad practice to do it every time, and it can also annoy your viewers. But there are some ways to approach it which we'll see later in the podcast.

Tip #2: How Do You Link from YouTube to Your Website Using Description Links and Call-To-Action Overlays?

Links in the YouTube Description

Dane Golden says that for linking off of YouTube, description links are the easiest links to add. You just edit the description area of a video using the edit icon, also known as a pencil, also known as "info and settings." Since three lines of description are visible without clicking the "Show More" button, Dane likes to put the link to a website on the second line. He uses the first line for some messaging like: "Click here to find out more about ABC:" Then on the second line he puts the link. Remember to add the "http://" before the URL or it won't link. That's all you have to do.
Other pointers include tracking these links via a Google Analytics UTM code. Also, you may not want to put in too many links, like all your social media links, if you really just want viewers to go to one place (such as an email list, like Tim says). Here's a video explaining how to put a link in the description:

Links in Call-To-Action Overlays

A Call-To-Action overlay is that thing that sometimes appears in the bottom left of a video in a little "shutterbox." The overlay appears once the video begins playing, and can be closed by the user. You get these when you promote your YouTube video using AdWords for Video/TrueView.
But here's the key: what a lot of people don't know is that you can put a video in the queue to be part of an ad campaign and just never activate it. But your Call-To-Action overlay will still run, even though the ad is permanently in the pause mode. So it ends up being a "free ad" for your website, your Facebook page, or whatever URL you want to send people to. These can also appear on mobile devices.
This feature has changed a bit recently so the YouTube help files might not be quite up to date since it was redesigned earlier this year. Here's the AdWords video on how to set up the Call-To-Actions:

To create a Call-To-Action overlay (CTA)

1. Set up a paused Adwords for Video campaign that promotes the video.
2. Go the Videos tab.
3. Click the "+" box next to "Add call-to-action overlay"

You can enter:

1. A headline of up to 25 characters.
2. A destination URL of any length.
3. A display URL: This is the short version of the destination URL.
4. An image: 74 x 74 pixels (optional).
5. You can also enable this for mobile.

Matt Ballek says that you can track the click-through rate in AdWords/TrueView but he has not seen a terribly good click-through rate on these, but in some cases it might be good to have it there either way.
Tim Schmoyer points out that your call to action messaging (not to be confused with the Call-To-Action feature) should appear at the end of the video rather than the beginning, where the Call-To-Action feature starts - it runs throughout the video unless people close it. So it can be less effective because you're calling them to action before the messaging.

Tip #3: How To Drive Traffic to Your Website from YouTube Using Associated Website Annotations

Matt Ballek says anyone can set up linking from YouTube to your website. But you just can't link out to any domain name. There's a process of verifying that you have ownership of the domain that you're going to be driving people to. This is an anti-spam tactic from YouTube so videos don't all become affiliate sales and spam-link generators.
Here's how you do it:

1. Get your YouTube account verified (at YouTube.com/verify) by sending a confirmation to your cell phone.
2. Go to your Advanced channel settings. Add your website under "Associated website." It goes into a pending status until you verify it.
3. To verify your website, you need to either add a tag to your site, or a blank HTML file, or through Google Analytics or several other methods. This is a very similar process as when you add analytics tracking for Google Analytics or verified your website for Google's Webmaster Tools.
4. Once it's verified, you'll see in Advanced channel settings that it has a green dot next to it.

Now that your website is verified, you'll see an dropdown option with your normal annotations that says "Associated website," which lets you link to any URL on that domain. Some accounts can also add additional associated websites, but it's unclear why some accounts have this functionality and other don't. However you cannot link to Twitter or Facebook, since you don't own those domains.
Tim Schmoyer says that while some people set up redirects on their websites, YouTube says this is strictly forbidden and that they may lock-down your account and/or limit your YouTube account if they catch you. Tim does not recommend redirects on your website to get around YouTube's guidelines.


Dane Golden says that some affiliate marketing companies use redirects and they say it's legit. But Tim says that's against YouTube policies. In fact Tim did an entire video about the nuances of which ways affiliate marketing was allowed or forbidden by YouTube (and he even asked his lawyer to look at it). Here's more info on Associated Website Annotations. And here's a ReelSEO video below that shows how that annotation works.


http://www.reelseo.com/tube-talk-49/

5 Questions That Will Save Your Business from an Online Disaster

If you are the owner of a business, you are certainly bombarded with online marketing propositions. These could be coming through your LinkedIn profile, Gmail, or social networks.

If you’ve taken the time to listen to the sales spiels, the message is usually just about the same: “If you give us four to six months, we will have your website ranking for all the strategic keywords in your vertical.” Often business owners fall for this pitch and perhaps even initially see great progress at first, only to then be disappointed with a massive drop in performance.

If you’ve had this experience, you’re no different from millions of other business owners. The truth is the Internet has turned into the most powerful and important marketing channel of our time.

This demand for increased online visibility has bred a massive industry of subpar marketing companies that sell you on promises, but fail to deliver. Before 2012, there wasn’t much harm that could come from these low quality outfits. The worst they could do was never get your site the visibility it needed to turn a big return. However, after Google released the first Penguin update, that all changed.

We want to give you a few tips on how you can evaluate whether the inbound marketing agency you’re considering is a wise choice. Asking the following questions will give you direct insight as to what you’re purchasing and whether you are getting bang for your buck.

1. Is Incorrect Link Building Damaging Your Brand? 4 Warning Signs

Link building is hands down the tactic that can cause the most damage to your brand in the least amount of time. This is the item 99% of SEO companies build their product around.

This can be really tricky because having a strong linking profile is still extremely important for ranking in Google. Anything that can give a website a boost in the organic results will be exploited by online marketing agencies for the foreseeable future. That means you’re going to need to protect yourself.
Below are the 4 warning signs you’re in with the wrong outfit.
– Company Not Showing You Exact URLs of Work

– Only Targeting Narrow Set of Terms

– Ratio of Exact Match Anchor Text

– Posting Content to Junk Websites

2. Are you Getting Bad Advice about Your Content? 4 Differentiators to Consider

The copy your brand publishes on its own blog is the single most important thing you can do for an effective online marketing strategy. The thing to remember here is quality is definitely more valuable than quantity.

We’ve seen that consistently adding content to your root domain balances out any link acquisition efforts you may be doing. If you think about it, this principle makes complete sense:

If you have a site that’s been static for 5 years, then all of a sudden it starts getting tons of inbound links, it looks like you engaged with an SEO company. However, if you have a site that starts producing a bunch of awesome content, which is getting shared in the social media networks, it makes sense that there are a bunch of new links.

Below are a few differentiators to watch out for:
Quantity vs. Quality:
If you’re being told that the search engines are looking for websites that publish as much content as possible and that quality of the writing isn’t really that important, you aren’t working with the right people. Reliable and helpful content is a must.

– Links vs. Content on Your Own Domain:

If you’re being sold on the idea that it’s not really that important to publish the content on your own domain, if the content is being linked to your site, then you need to watch out.
- Copyright Infringement vs. Original Work:
Some companies cut corners by copying content from other websites to publish to your blog. Not only is this typically copyright infringement, which carries with it legal risks, but also copied content is not likely to add value to your site.

– Raw Content vs. Organized Design:

Inexperienced marketers may say, “Don’t worry about the design or format of the blog posts. These are really only meant for the search engines.” Industry experts will tell you that planned, thoughtfully organized design will be pleasing to your visitors in both appearance and content, and keep them coming back to your site.

3. Is The Marketing Agency Hiding Poor Quality Work? 3 Red Herrings to Watch for

Since the dawn of online marketing there has been a customer complaint about the level of transparency. There are some classic lines I’ve heard for years that are a direct tipoff of something wrong:

– Proprietary:

“Our fulfillment is proprietary, so we can’t show you any specifics.”

– Exact URLs Unavailable:

“We’re more than happy to show you the kinds of work, but we’re not allowed to show the exact URLs.”

– Non-Disclosure:

“We’re under contract to not show any live work from current clients.”

Whether you are in a pre- or post- sales situation, you should demand to see exact URLs of finished work. If the agency gives you any kind of pushback on this requirement, you should run the other way.

Any company worth their salt will be more than happy to show you specific examples of all their work items. They will also be proactive for showing you all of the exact URLs from all of the completed action items in your fulfillment package.

4. Are You Committing to An Inferior Marketing Company? 3 Excuses Inferior Companies Hide Behind

 SEO companies have been trying to bully clients into signing long contracts for years. I think this is an automatic sign that the company isn’t confident they are going to get results for your campaign. Below are a few things you might hear when talking to a sales rep.

– Upfront Cost Excuse:

“The only reason we put a contract in place is there are a lot of upfront costs with our fulfillment.”
- Time Justification
“We only put a contract in place so the campaign has the time needed to see any significant improvement.”
- Loss Leader Pitch
“This contract is a way to protect ourselves. We actually lose money on the campaign till the start of the 4th month.”

Service companies shouldn’t have contracts. If they provide value, customers will want to stick with their brand. These kinds of agreements are ways businesses with low quality offerings are able to stay in business.

5. How Do I Find Great Marketing Companies? Look for Those Who Practice What They Preach

This is the hands down most important way you can judge the quality of the online marketing agency. If you really look at the Internet marketing industry, you will find 80% to 90% of the websites don’t practice the majority of what they preach.

Here are the most important things you need to evaluate and the tools you’ll use to get it done.

• How well are they doing their own content marketing?
• How often do they post to their blog?
• How well is the blog content written?
• Do the topics of the blog post look engaging and relevant?
• How impressive is their website’s design and other corporate marketing material?
• Does it look modern and up-to-date?
• Are they giving away eBooks and other downloadable material?
• How does their website rank for strategic terms within their vertical?
• How powerful is their linking profile?
• Does the website have a high amount of domain authority?
• Does the website have a good ratio of anchor text?
• Is the website consistently adding new backlinks?
• How active is the company in relevant social media networks?
• Do they have an active social media following?
• Does it look like their website content is being shared in strategic networks?
• Do the profiles look professional and up-to-date?

In conclusion, having a high level of online visibility has ever been more important to both large and small businesses alike. Online marketing has become a lucrative industry that takes advantage of billions of website owners a year. You need to educate yourself so you don’t become another company exploited by the next SEO agency
http://tech.co/5-questions-online-marketing-disaster-2014-11