EzSEO Newsletter # 30
Andy Williams ez SEO
ezseonews.com
Hi again.This week we are taking a rest from our article mini-series so that I can bring you up to date on a number of important things happening at the moment. We will return to the article mini-series next week. In part, my decision to take a week out of the mini-course is due to something that has made me very angry over the past few weeks. I will tell you about that in a minute. First, let's look at some important stuff.
This week:
1. Google Sandbox
2. Want your own products to promote?
3. Link exchange software - a quick overview
4. Chargeback Rant
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1. Google Sandbox
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There has been talk on forums about a new Google phenomenon called the Google Sandbox. Why it is called this I am not sure (maybe an American term?), but the basic idea is this:
You register a new domain and build a site
Google indexes the new site
Google does not allow the new site to rank well but does include the pages in the index
Google waits a couple of months
Google ranks your site properly
The suggested reasons for this sandbox have included to penalize the spammers who just put up a new site when an old one gets banned. This new procedure would mean that new sites put up to replace old ones would not do anything for several weeks and therefore discourage the spamming.
I am not convinced of this being the reason for whatever it is Google are doing right now. I am more inclined to think that Google may just be experiencing a hiccup (it has happened before and will happen again).
My advice is to stop worrying about what Google is up to and carry on building. If you have a new site that is not doing well in Google, just wait and let Google do its thing. Patience really is a virtue here. Keep adding new content to your site, get more link partners and stop worrying about what Google is up to. A lot of my own sites get far more traffic from Yahoo & MSN anyway.
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2. Want your own products to promote?
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Something that I have always been wary of is membership sites. Can a site that asks you to pay a subscription really be worth the cost? I have joined a fair few in my time and have cancelled a fair few subscriptions as well. Two days ago I joined another membership site - and it looks very exciting indeed. I am a big believer in having your own products to sell as it diversifies your business and can add dramatically to your pay cheque each month. With Clickbank you even have an army of affiliates that can sell your products for you (think about that!). Nicheology is a members site (from one of the biggest names in online marketing) that can help you. Every month, you get two new niche products (these are not old rehashed products, but written especially for the site by professional writers) that you can call your own and sell. You also get a professionally designed sales letter and a profile of the niche (research into profitability). You get to keep 100% of the profit for every product you sell.
If you ever had problems thinking of niches to target, this site can help by not only doing the niche research, but providing you with the products to promote.
As a side note for SEO Website Builder users, this could represent a phenomenal investment. Imagine building two sites a month to promote your two new products by using a site builder that has a track record of getting high search engine rankings.
There is more good news. If you sign up before June 15th (I think), you can lock in your membership at a big discount. That discounted price will be all you pay for the lifetime of your membership - even when the price increases later this year.
There is even more good news. The affiliate program offered is great. Only members of the site can join the affiliate program (which benefits you as a member since commission theft cannot happen like in so many Clickbank programs) and it is two-tiered. You get $10 a month for every referral (while that referral remains a member), and an additional $10 for every referral your referral makes. This has to be one of the best programs to join and promote.
You get a fabulous affiliate program to promote, as well as your own products. If you are wary of paying a monthly fee, rest assured that you can cancel at any time. However, I have downloaded all of the resources on the members site and already drawn up my own plans for promoting them. I have to say that these products are great and obviously written by professionals who have researched the topic fully. Don't take my word for it though, join Nicheology yourself.
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3. Link exchange software
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In the last few weeks I have been inundated with e-mails asking me about the best software to help with link exchanges. While I will be looking at how to link exchange in the very near future, I felt it was worth mentioning the software products I have been asked about and providing my own opinions on them.
Optilink - this software is not a link exchange manager. Optilink is aimed at the professional search engine optimizers and has a huge range of useful features. In fact, it does so many useful tasks that I must leave discussion of this software to a later newsletter. I could probably create a mini-series just on this software suite by itself. If you are looking for software to help manage your link exchange program, Optilink is not for you.
Power Linking 2 - this is an eBook, not software. It tells you lots of different ways to get links to your site. I don't believe that some of the techniques outlined in this book still work. The problem about publishing a book on your own secrets is that they cease being secrets. Search engines find out what you are up to and build a new filter to remove the effectiveness of those techniques. Having said that, this book offers a lot of useful information for those who want to push the links program to the max. Again, if you want software to manage your links program, this is not what you are looking for.
Zeus - this is an Internet robot which goes out and finds link partners. I looked at an earlier version of Zeus and decided it was not for me. I found that it made getting into trouble with the search engines, far too easy. Now, you might wonder what I mean by that. The version of Zeus I tried made it possible to request a link exchange with lots of sites at the touch of a button without ever having visited the sites I am e-mailing. It also made it very easy to build large links directories that were not tightly focused on the topic of my own site. Both of these things can spell disaster to your site, and get you penalized or banned. I am 100% convinced that Zeus can do a good job of managing your links exchange program, but only if you try really hard not to fall into the trap of greed (trying to get as many links as quickly as possible). Because of the temptations that come with Zeus, I do not recommend it.
Arelis - this is the best all-round links manager I have tried. You can easily visit all sites you request a link from, and you cannot send out bulk e-mail to lots of sites at once. Again this tool does need to be used correctly. Your link exchange must be focused on sites within your own niche and ignore any sites that are not related to your own. The only downside of Arelis that I can see is that the licensing has changed. When I purchased my own copy, I bought a 10 site license. That is no longer available. You either buy a 1-site license or a much more expensive multi-site license. This can work out expensive for those with only a couple of sites. Once you buy Arelis you get all updates for free.(I even got an upgrade from version 3 to version 4 without any extra cost) and it does update regularly. If you want software that helps you do everything required to build a successful link exchange, Arelis is my recommendation.
PageRank Prowler - This software is only a partial solution to your link exchange requirements. It helps you find high PR sites that are related toy our own site. It is very easy to use (although I did need to disable my firewall to get it to work properly) and works like a dream. Type in a keyword related to your own site, select a few options and then let PR Prowler do its thing and bring back high PR sites related to your search phrase. This software can do a lot more besides. If you are a James Martell student, this software can also take a list of keywords, and look up the PR & backwards links of the top 20 (or you can specify less - I use top 5) web pages in Google. Certainly speeds up decisions on which keywords are useful to target and which ones are not. While I have not finished my review of this software, it does get a big thumbs up from me.
Link Proctor - Again this software is not a complete suite like Arelis. Its function is to check that your link partners are still linking back to you (but can do more besides). This software impressed me a lot.
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4. Chargeback Rant
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Many of you may not even know what a chargeback is. Let me tell you. A chargeback is when you go to your bank and ask them to refund a purchase (for whatever reason). Let us look at a scenario here.
You purchase something today from a Clickbank merchant for $100 using your credit card online. When you get your credit card statement next month you see a transaction for $100 which has been paid to CLKBANK. You do not know who CLKBANK is or remember buying anything for $100. You ask your bank to charge back the amount as you believe this order to be fraudulent.
What happens next is this. The bank gets your money back, and in doing so they charge a fee for the reversal of the "fraudulent" transaction. Who pays? The merchant you purchased the product from of course. This fee can be up to $50. So not only does the merchant lose the $100 sale amount, but they are also fined $50 for allowing a "fraudulent" transaction. Is this fair? I guess you can see why I am angry about this. In the last 2 months I have had three chargebacks for my own products. On asking the customer why they went to their bank and requested a chargeback, one said it was a mistake and that they had just not remembered purchasing my product. A second chargeback was a month after the 3 month guarantee ran out so I assume that this customer just did not find 3 months long enough to evaluate my product. The third chargeback was within a month of the purchase and that customer did not reply to my e-mail. The fact that they did not reply makes me think that for whatever reason, they were too embarrassed to ask me for a refund and felt better about going to their bank and saying that the transaction was fraudulent (thereby costing me $50).
OK, rant over. Now my request.
Merchants offer guarantees for a reason. If you buy a product and are not completely satisfied with it (and let's face it there are a lot of bad products out there), ask the merchant for a refund within the guarantee period. Merchants want you to do this rather than go to your bank. As long as you have tried the product and decided that it is just not for you, there will not usually be any hard feelings. If a merchant does give you a hard time, it is their reputation that suffers when you mention your experiences on forums ;o).
OK, that is it for this week. I hope you found it useful. Next week we return to the mini-series on using articles for better rankings and bigger profits.
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