EzSEO Newsletter # 23
Andy Williams ez SEO
ezseonews.com
Hi again
This week I have been spending a lot of time in bed with the flu. I had even thought about putting this newsletter off until I was feeling better, but then I can imagine the e-mails I would receive if I did that ;-). During the week I received numerous feedback on last weeks newsletter (if you missed it, you can read it in my marketing ezine archives)
Most of the feedback was asking me for a peek at what was in this issue - it seems many of you are worried about the effects anti-virus software and firewalls are having on your affiliate business. You are right to worry. This week we look at one technique you can use to protect your affiliate links against ad-blockers like this. It is an advanced technique though, so you use it at your own risk.
This week:
1. What can be done to protect your affiliate commissions from Anti-virus & firewall software?
2. Cloaking links
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1. What can be done to protect your affiliate commissions from Anti-virus & firewall software?
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Last week I mentioned that anti-virus software and firewalls are using ad-blocking technology to stop your ads from showing on YOUR web pages for anyone with this software installed.
Norton is the worst culprit since they see fit to make ad-blocking the default setting - whether someone wants it or not. McAfee have always had this feature turned off by default, but users can enable it. What that means is, if visitors to your site have Norton Anti-virus or Norton Firewall installed on their computer, they may not see YOUR affiliate links on YOUR web pages, which in turn means you cannot make a commission from those visitors. Read last weeks newsletter for a recap if you need to.
The way these programs seem to work is by looking at the URL used in the link part of your affiliate link HTML. e.g. typical links from Commission Junction looks like this:
Text Link:
Shop online for <a href="http://www.qksrv.net/click-1234567-9224595" target="_top" ><b>contact lenses</b></a>. Save up to 70%! <a href="http://www.qksrv.net/click-1234567-9224595" target="_top" >Click Here.</a><img src="http://www.qksrv.net/image-1234567-9224595" width="1" height="1" border="0">
The image reference above is for the tracking cookie.
Banner Link:
<a href="http://www.qksrv.net/click-1234567-9224595" target="_top" >
<img src="http://www.qksrv.net/image-1234567-10301095" width="234" height="60" alt="5% OFF" border="0"></a>
In both cases, the link will direct the visitor to:
http://www.qksrv.net/click-1234567-9224595
http://www.qksrv.net/ is the CJ domain used for redirecting visitors to the destination merchant page. It is also the domain that serves images (important when we discuss banner links below).
1234567 - Your affiliate ID embedded in the code so that you get commission should the visitor buy from that merchant.
9224595 - Information on the product page so that the visitor ends up at the right place.
The problem lies within the domain used by Commission Junction. The ad blocking features of Norton, McAfee and other anti-virus and firewall software have a black list of domains including CJ, BeFree, Linkshare etc. If a link on one of your pages points to one of those domains, the software blocks the link. What the visitor sees on your page varies from nothing (in the case of a banner ad), to just the text portion of the text link without it being an active link.
Obviously these anti-virus & firewall software programs are becoming more popular with the increase in malicious e-mails and hidden downloads. More and more people are therefore becoming non-commissionable visitors to your site i.e. you cannot earn money from them.
I personally have seen a big decline over the last year in affiliate commissions from the major networks from my sites that use unprotected links.
So how can you protect your links?
There are a couple of answers to this problem, and both involve hiding (or masking) the affiliate link so that the ad-blockers cannot see the black-listed domain bit (http://www.qksrv.net/ in the case of CJ). One solution is to use an affiliate link cloaker to mask the links. I will mention affiliate link cloakers later in this newsletter, but for now, let us look at a 100% free method of preventing these software programs from hiding your links.
Remember last week when I told you that individual product links take a lot more work (in terms of maintenance) than just writing some pre-sell and posting a link to the merchant (which takes longer to set up but can then be forgotten)?
Well, to mask or hide the links on your web site, you need to do every single link. If you have hundreds of affiliate links (typical for affiliates who use individual product links), this will be very time consuming.
If you use links to merchants instead of product links, and you represent 10 merchants on your site, you only need to change 10 links (if you have used SSI as described in earlier newsletters, this may be done in minutes).
The technique I use to hide my links involves a technique called a server side redirect. These redirects are used by some of the best known marketers like Michael Campbell. In fact I learnt it myself from a well-known online personality - Pamela Heywood. You can read that particular issue of her newsletter at:
http://www.pamela-heywood.com/articles/rankandfile.html
Incidentally, Pamela lives a few miles away from me here on the island of Tenerife.
To use a server-side redirect you need to have access to a file we have mentioned before - .htaccess
This file is found in the root directory of your domain space. If you cannot see it, either your web host has hidden it, or it does not already exist. On Pamela's web page she mentions using SmartFTP to see hidden files (see her page for download URL). My advice to you is to contact your Internet service provider and ask them about this file. In many cases it does not exist and you can just create it. However, if it does exist already, you must not delete anything from it (you can add to it though).
OK, I am going to assume that you have access to your .htaccess file. You can open this file in any text editor (Windows Notepad is good enough).
Let us take the CJ text link example above.
Shop online for <a href="http://www.qksrv.net/click-1234567-9224595" target="_top" ><b>contact lenses</b></a>. Save up to 70%! <a href="http://www.qksrv.net/click-1234567-9224595" target="_top" >Click Here.</a><img src="http://www.qksrv.net/image-1234567-9224595" width="1" height="1" border="0">
The important parts of this link are the link text and the destination URL. There is also a tracking cookie which is needed to report impressions to CJ (how many times the link is viewed by your visitors).
Let's reconstruct this link:
Link Text : Shop online for contact lenses. Save up to 70%!
We want the phrase contact lenses to be used as the link text.
Link URL: http://www.qksrv.net/click-1234567-9224595
Tracking Cookie: <img src="http://www.qksrv.net/image-1234567-9224595" width="1" height="1" border="0">
The idea of a re-direct is to change the black-listed CJ URL to a URL that will not be blocked.
Hang on. I can hear you scratching your head here. If we change the URL, it will not point to the right page. Right?
Well, that is where the re-direct comes in.
We create a new URL that points to a ficticious page on our site.
When a visitor tries to access that URL (by clicking on our re-constructed link), your website server will look at the link and think, "Hmmm, this does not exist. Let's see if there is a re-direct rule set up for this URL". The server checks the .htaccess file for any mention of this fictitious URL and sees a re-direct. You server then re-direct any traffic that is looking for your fictitious URL to another page - your CJ link URL.
Let us have a look at an example.
I am going to create a fictitious URL - one that does not exist for the contact lens link above.
http://ezseonews.com/contacts
Now, I add a line to my .htaccess file that tells my server to re-direct any requests for this page to my CJ affiliate link:
redirect http://ezseonews.com/contacts http://www.qksrv.net/click-1234567-9224595
With standard HTML syntax, this can be shortened to:
redirect /contacts http://www.qksrv.net/click-1234567-9224595
(redirect "from" "to")
This command means that whenever anyone looks for the http://ezseonews.com/contacts, the server will redirect them to the affiliate link.
Re-constructing my CJ affiliate link, I get:
Shop online for <a href="http://ezseonews.com/contacts">contact lenses</a>. Save up to 70%!
And adding the tracking image:
http://ezseonews.com/contacts">contact lenses</a>. Save up to 70%!
<img src="http://www.qksrv.net/image-1234567-9224595" width="1" height="1" border="0">
You can see a test page I put up with this link at:
http://ezseonews.com/newsletters/experiments/cj-redirect.htm
Move your mouse over the link. Do you see the URL of the link in the status bar? No mention of CJ's blacklisted domain, just my fictitious URL. Go on. Click the link on that page.
Your browser is re-directed to:
http://www.visiondirect.com/scripts/default.asp?AID=9224595&PID=1234567
Notice that my PID is in the URL? That means the visitor has been tagged with my tracking cookie.
Making sure your cookies are being set:
You should always test your redesigned links to make sure the cookies are set.
To do this, you need to force your web browser to prompt you when it encounters a cookie being written to your machine.
In the Tools/Internet Options of Internet Explorer, click the privacy tab. Then click the Advanced button. Check Override automatic cookie handling. Then select Prompt for both first and third party cookies.
Now when you click the link on my test page, you will be asked whether to allow the cookie or not. This is a way to test that cookies are being set from your re-directed links.
Simple huh?
Redesigning your links this way has other benefits too (see Pamela's newsletter referenced above).
For every re-direct you want to create, just add the redirect command to the end of you .htaccess file and upload it. Then, link to the fictitious URL and your link should remain active despite ad-blockers.
Banners - a special case
If you use links from CJ with images (banner and product links), the ad-blockers will block the images. This can mean an imageless product link, or worse still a hidden banner.
To cope with this, you need to save the banner image to your own server (so that the image URL is not a blacklisted one) and then re-construct the banners link using your copy of the image, and a re-direct as described above.
Wow. That is a lot of information. If I have confused you, please let me know and I will spend more time on this topic next week.
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2. Cloaking links
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OK, I really should leave this until next week, but so many of you have asked about link cloakers. Especially link cloakers that can prevent ID swapping at Clickbank. There are a lot of them about, and some are more expensive than others.
I have only tested two:
Both of these solutions create code you placve on a new web page. You simply link to this new web page and your commissions are protected.
Affiliate Armor:
Here is a link I set up using this software (copy it into your browser):
http://ezseonews.com/recommended/turn-words-into-traffic.htm
Disadvantage: redirects without showing affiliate ID, but then affiliate ID is shown on the landing page of the merchant. Click the link above and see.
Advantage: I have #3 at Google for this page (search Google for turn words into traffic). This page was built with affiliate armor. I did nothing to optimize it except link to it from my main site.
Affiliate Defender.
Example link set up:
http://ezseonews.com/p.html
Again this is a redirect but it has the big advantage of not showing the affiliate ID in the landing page. This is a safer link cloaker than Affiliate Armor.
Both of these are available for free when you buy the Free Software Forever package.
As an added bonus, you can also sell these and other products once you have bought into this package and keep all the money you make.
OK, that really is it for today. Send your comments as usual, and let me know if any of today's issue needs clarification next week.
Until next week....
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