Getting ranked well in the natural listings is a dark art, right?

Well, that’s what they would like you to believe.

We’re gonna be posting up a series on hints and tips on here over the coming months as we tackle the sacred cow of SEO.

And here’s a little starter for ya.

To improve anything you first need to be able to measure it. And you don’t want to be trolling around the Search Engines all day to find out where you appear for certain keyword phrases.

Thad has come across a neat little free tool called ‘Rank Checker’ (or RONK checker to be more precise).

You can grab it yourself here. (Note: You will have to opt-in to get it… and at this point I’ve no idea as to the quality of the follow ups, etc. Whatever…small price to pay) Also note: It’s a Firefox plug-in so you’ll need to be using FF (which you should be anyway.)

Here’s what it looks like:-

So, you just add in your domain and the keyword phrases you want to check for. It checks Google, Yahoo & MSN. You can save a set of keywords so you check how you are doing over time. Neat!

In the example above I used the following keyword phrases:-

• wealthy affiliate trial offer
• affiliate niche club
• niche market research
• seo fast start by dan thies

You can see we’re at #1 for ‘affiliate niche club’. No surprises there.

At #8 for our ‘wealthy affiliate trial offer’ blog post which was higher when the trial was running. Sweet!

At #8 for yesterday’s blog post on ’seo fast start by dan thies’. WP blog posts get indexed fast when linked to an authority site like ANC.

But we’re at a very poor #50 for the more generic phrase ‘niche market research’. Must do better!

And we will!

Stay tuned for more hints and tips as we go along…

But in the meantime give Ronk Checker the once over yourself.

SEO Fast Start By Dan Thies – a great free SEO guide!

As you may know Thad and I are finally getting into SEO in a big way.

We’ll always be hardcore adwords nuts but the mini-sites we set up for adwords tend to rank highly in the naturals as well.

Great! Free traffic!

Now, we’re not experts by any means on SEO but we are learning all the time.

We’ll be popping some tips on here along the way and may eventually come up with an ‘SEO basics’ type of guide.

Early days…

In the meantime you might just want to get your hands on SEO Fast Start by Dan Thies.

I’ve mentioned it before but he’s just released an updated version.

If you are already on his list you will know about this already. If not, get on it. The guide is free and Dan doesn’t try to sell you anything.

So, if you want to check it out, follow the ‘nofollow’ link below. (And find out why it’s a ‘nofollow’ link. )

SEO Fast Start

Edit: That cryptic comment of mine about following the ‘nofollow’ link means you should follow it, if you follow me. You’ll find out when you get the guide.

Don’t mention the War! I did once but I think I got way with it…

This is the Big One…

England vs. Germany in the final of a major footie tournament.

It doesn’t get much bigger than this!

Just don’t mention the war, OK? LOL!

England have reached the semi-finals of the European Under 21 Championships and play Sweden this evening at 5.00pm UK time.

If they win we could face the Germans in the final. Now, that would be something.

Come on Ing-ger-land!!

I’m stunned and lost for words.

I actually used to have one of those red jackets… I actually used to be able to do the moonwalk.

He was an icon and pioneer. He was my hero (of dance) at the time.

THE world’s greatest dancer period.

MJ – Rip…

The way he made me feel?…

Good! What a thriller…

This month’s HOT niche report is now available so existing ANC members should head on over to the member’s area and check it out!

(Not already an ANC member? Sign Up Here)

Ya know every now and again the Thad man surpasses himself. Well, quite often actually.

See, Thad and I live in those really competitive niches, right? And to do that you need a bit of ‘healthy insurance’. Yep, and that’s exactly what we’ve got in Thad himself.

With this one, even if you have no interest in marketing this particular niche, the ideas and keyword analysis Thad provides can be used as a way to think about and understand how we dig down and participate in any highly competitive niche market.

Including one tip so hot that I only found about it after reading the report. (He doesn’t tell me everything, sneaky is he!)

Enjoy!

Something of interest to all of us who blog and potentially the wider affiliate marketing community was raised in the Wealthy Affilate forum today.

It’s a pretty complex issue and we’ve already touched upon it on this blog post.

Without repeating it all at length here, there are a couple of articles you might want to look at as well as the FTC draft regulations themselves.

From Yahoo Tech:-

FTC plans to monitor blogs for claims, payments

From cnet News:-

FTC to go after blogger freebies

And the draft FTC Regulations themselves can be found here:-

http://www.ftc.gov/os/2008/11/P034520endorsementguides.pdf

The one difference we see in all the examples the FTC give is when a merchant approaches a site owner and gives them perks to write about something. The way most affiliates approach it is WE pick out the products to promote….so we’re still being selective and trying to pick out the best products for the reader. Even though we get paid, we’re not writing it simply because a merchant approached us and asked us to make a blog post or write a review in exchange for a gift or freebie.

It’s possible though, that we may require a disclaimer on a privacy or terms page making full disclosure that we get compensated for purchases through our links.

It’s likely this one will rumble on for some time so we’ll be keeping an eye on it. Feel free to add your views and comments.

In the meantime I’ll just add that if you decide to join Wealthy Affilate via any of our links on this blog we do indeed receive a commission but I’d also point out that you can’t join through your ‘own’ link anyway and that you won’t get our great bonuses unless you use our links!

(Do you think that’s the kind of disclosure they have in mind?)

OK, well you should know the vid I’m gonna pop on the bottom of this one, right?

Anyway, there’s a huge fuss going down in the Wealthy Affilate forum and in loads of other IM forums and blogs about an upcoming Squidoo Policy Update.

More details here from the Squids themselves.

Whole topics (like weight loss) are gonna get canned. Yep! No matter how good your lens is, no matter how non-spammy you might think it is. Come mid July they’ll be gone. Poof!

So, what to do?

Well, first check out that lens about the changes and think about how it applies to your own lenses. Do it before the clampdown… and if in doubt pull the lenses. You do NOT want your whole account locked!

Next… I don’t think people should abandon Squidoo, etc… just make sure you create good quality original non-spammy content (but not in the ‘banned’ topics).

And remember the bigger picture…

The thing is, if you are making any kind of sales with Squidoo, you should already have started thinking about branching off, having your own site, getting other traffic sources…

I mean, Squidoo has got to the point where it’s almost as complicated to build lenses and get them indexed as it is to build your own site and SEO it, so start thinking about that.

Squidoo is certainly good to use in some ways, but to build an entire business and income source around it, is probably NOT a good long time plan anyway.

These so called ’slaps’ have happened before… at Ezine, at Squidoo, at Hubpages… and they’ll happen again!

So start preparing now!

I have to say that you’re better off in the long run creating your own sites and blogs on your own domains.

It is NOT that hard to do. Even with something like Dreamweaver, if you can do the HTML stuff on a Squidoo lens you’ll soon get the hang of it.

Ditto Wordpress. But with WP make sure you host those on your own domain and use Themes. There are plenty of free ones and some really good paid ones (for a one off fee).

And before you dismiss the idea of investing in Dreamweaver or some of the better Wordpress Themes consider this…

How much would it cost you to set up an offline shop (or business)? An awful lot more than the cost of DW or a good WP Theme. And you can set up an unlimited supply of online ’shops’ with either.

Check out Affilate Theme for example. Couldn’t be easier to set up a really professional ‘review style’ landing page.

Building sites is just another learning curve…

And if I can do it, anyone can.

Hell, I’ve even got a lens on it.

Oh… before I forget the vid…

Don’t panic and blunder about blindfold…

Get a plan… stick to it… small steps… Into Action!

Flickr 'angel_caido'

I really HATE stock photos (at least the cheap ones). They just suck for the most part and I get nauseous every time I see those lame stock photos of a person with a laptop and their hands up in the air. I’m sure you know which ones I’m talking about, eh?

I also don’t like ripping off other images just to get better photos. So what’s a good solution for good photos for your website, blog, Squidoo lens, Hubpage?

Flickr!

Dig around on Flickr for a little while and you’ll see some really interesting, engaging, and captivating photos! It’s like night and day compared to free or $1 stock photos.

The question then is how, when, and where can you use them for your marketing website or page?

Flickr users can choose to offer their photos for use by others under a little something called creative commons license, which you can find on Flickr with a filter under their advanced search, or browse this page:

Flickr Creative Commons Photos

There’s several different licensing rules contributors can set, but as Internet Marketers you’ll need to mainly focus on 2 categories that allow for commercial use, which are:

This generally means you can use the photo and alter it into a derivate form, as long as you give proper credit.

This one basically means you can use the photo “as-is” with no alterations, and must give credit.

For giving credit, there’s multiple ways to do it and Creative Common’s language is kind of open to interpretation and subject to some specifications by each contributor. I’ve used my own interpretation for credit on this post, but there’s a good short thread on Metafilter for how to credit creative commons work with a comment by someone who says they used to work for CC.

A great example of a blog making extensive use of Flickr photos is the health blog called Disease Proof. Have a look on there and see how captivating and engaging it makes all the posts. And while you’re at it, read the excellent diet advice they have on there…good stuff.

If you think an issue like photos is trivial, think again! Dave and I have seen many split test results of our own, and seriously, things as simple as a good photo, a headline tweak, etc…can sometimes make all the difference in the world when it comes to getting visitors to stick around, click through, and ultimately making a sale. You don’t have to use Flickr of course, but be creative and interesting…it’ll go a long way.

Oh…and here’s another cool tool for finding Flickr photos based on color. Play around and check it out:

MultiColr Search Lab

By using Flickr, you too can add wonderful and interesting photos to your site just like this one (Doh!):

Flickr 'spaztacular'

Or wait…maybe this is a better example.

Flickr 'walkadog'

Thad

photos by angel_caid0, spaztacular, and walkadog via flickr under creative commons license.

LOL! Finally our friends over at Squidoo have cottoned to the fact that all those orange lenses were… well… a bit orange, YUK!

Well, they have finally got around to adding some themes, including a new default one.

There are 8 in all (including the default):-

• Default
• Gone Camping
• Purple People Eater
• Easy Street
• Moment of Zen
• Paintball
• Highlighter
• The Professor

So, which would our Grim Friend choose for The Reaper Lenses? Surely, Purple People Eater or Moment of Zen?

But no… he’s gone for Easy Street! Typical I suppose… I mean he just hangs around all day (and night) waiting for people to… well, you know what he does.

Anyway, check out the result here:-

Niche Marketing Reaper

Others that stand out are ‘Gone Camping’… no, it’s not pink… it’s green… good for ‘green issues’ or ‘Paintball’ if you want to make a splash!

Whichever one you pick, pick one! Don’t leave it as the default.

Just go into Edit mode and the Themes can be selected from the top right hand corner (above your Bio).

Tip: The new layouts have shortened what is actually on display in your visible Bio box. So if you have a ‘url’ in there (and you should have) make sure it’s visible.

Tip: The new Themes only work if your lenses are maxed.

Tip: Experiment with different Themes. I’m not sure if one will convert better than another yet but changing the Theme counts as an ‘update’ to your lenses and having an updated lens improves your ranking within Squidoo.

Just don’t overdo it.