Let’s admit it. We aren’t all writers. And for a lot of us, the idea of sitting down and writing content for our websites is about as attractive a concept as working the rhino enclosure at the zoo… it is really smelly in there.

But we all need content for our sites, and if we aren’t outsourcing the content creation to writers more talented than ourselves, we are going to have to bite the bullet and write. But how do you create “great content” is the eyes of the search engines and visitors? What should the copy consist of? More importantly, how long should the content be?

Aaron to the Rescuse…

Thankfully, Aaron Wall (SEOBook) has taken the time to lay out some of his personal guidelines for creating content for good search rankings and conversion. In his post, Optimal Word Count & Web Page Copy Length, Aaron shares some overall copy considerations which include:

Optimize for user experience – don’t create pages that are built only for search engines – they won’t get links, they won’t get conversions.

Structure your ideas – don’t overwhelm your readers. People are more likely to read a page that has been broken into easily consumable chunks rather that an essay length article.

Variation is Good – Don’t limit your writing into constrained length. Search engines and readers expect variation in content length. If you are writing a landing page, you might aim to write something shorter. If you are writing something that is meant to be a resource, take the time and write something that is well researched and longer.

Indexing trends…

Aaron also points out some of the general search indexing trends that will affect copy creation in the future. In a nutshell, Google is looking for more natural writing styles, so hyper-focused keyword pages will not do as well going forward. Also, Google is not crawling as much of a site as they were before – so having awesome content on a few pages is better than having mediocre content on hundreds of pages.

This is interesting to me, especially when I think about the affiliates out there who could be negatively affected by these changes. Most of the forward-thinking affiliates that I work with have been aware of trends like this and have been striving to create worthwhile sites that look like a “real” site and not an affiliate site. When I look back three years and consider what was successful then and what is successful now in the Google results, it is increasingly clear that high-quality content sites are being indexed and low-quality sites are being left out of the mix.

With that said, a high-quality site is really just the cost for admission into highly competitive SEO verticals like insurance. Once you have a rockin’ site you still have to work on building the right links.

Content Guidelines for Lead-Gen Affiliates

Aaron gives suggestions on content based on your sites goals and publishing platforms. In the lead generation sector, Aaron suggests:

Focus your content on conversion, perhaps even using brief pages with little content, but ensure your content is unique. Get what legitimate links you can and add linkbait to your site to build up the authority of your site.

From our experience at InsureMe, I am not totally sure if I agree with this. Personally, I used to think that a short and sweet landing page was the way to go with lead generation…but Penny, our chief PPC copywriter, has proven that longer content oriented pages tend to convert better than conversion-only oriented landing pages. This may have to do with Penny’s writing skill (she is a professional writer) – but shorter doesn’t seem to be better in our case. Also, I think that a more in-depth, interesting and informational article has a better chance of getting free links from other sites and building trust with consumers.

With that said, I know it is easier to create short landing page content, and if you are outsourcing, it is also cheaper. Make your own decisions when it comes to content length in this area…but whatever you do, write content that is clean, well-written, and proofread.

Read the whole post…

As always, make sure you check out the full post over at SEOBook to get all the tasty morsels from Aaron’s post.

Posted by James Omdahl at 09:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Conversion—it's the golden pot at the end of the rainbow. It's that measurable quality we all strive for in
PPC. It lines our pockets when we get it right...and sometimes it just doesn't make sense.

Trying to get inside our customers' heads isn't easy. What we think should convert often doesn't—and vice-versa—leaving us shaking our heads and wondering if there's a magic formula no one has clued us in on yet.

But trust me, there is no magic formula. A lot of factors culminate to determine conversion, and any one of them can spell a campaign's success or failure.

Of course, your goal should be to keep visitors from "bouncing," or leaving your site on the first page so you can convert them to leads. But how can you increase conversions if you don't have a clue how to hold them there?

According to research, once visitors land on your site you have only a few seconds to convince them to stay. If you want to keep them there, it should be immediately obvious that they're in the right place, you have what they're looking for and they can trust you to deliver it to them safely.

How can they know this in such short order? When they see relevant content immediately available, glance at your "about us" section and contact information, find a search function where they can quickly find what they need, and are confronted with a strong marketing message that compels them to buy, you've hooked them in. But sometimes that isn't enough. Increasing conversion requires assessing your site's strengths and weaknesses, then making changes to everything from copy and design to linking and photography.

If your conversions just aren't up to par and you're not sure what to do about it, here are a few tips you can try. Keep in mind there are never any guarantees—but we've found many of these ideas helpful and hope you will, too!

1. Avoid sending traffic to your homepage or a multi-purpose landing page. Instead, create specific landing pages for each ad group. This creates consistency from keyword to ad to content. You may encounter more work up-front, but the payoff will be a lot of time saved making changes later. And your visitors will convert about three times more often!
2. Use large images on your landing pages—and include pictures of people. The bigger, clearer, more colorful and detailed your pictures, the more likely the consumer will turn into a lead. Pictures of people make your site more personable and enjoyable to consumers, and increases the likelihood they'll trust you with their business.
3. Gain their trust with third-party endorsements like the VeriSign or Better Business Bureau emblems. This helps counter their fears of giving you their personal information and boosts their confidence in the service you provide.
4. Keep your copy readable. Font sizes should be over 10 points, copy should be contained in one column and content should be informational in nature, yet to the point. Too long and you lose the reader; too short and you'll leave them wondering if you really know what you're talking about. Experiment to see what works best for you.
5. Test, test—and test again! Thousands of variables can affect conversion, so start with the most obvious items, like your headlines, images, promotions and marketing messages. Try making one small change at a time and, with time and careful monitoring of results, you'll find your own magic formula to increasing conversions!

Posted by Penny Hagerman at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Last week there was a good amount of buzz surrounding Google’s algorithm change that would help eliminate Google Bombs in the search results. At the same time, many webmasters have seen fluctuations in our Google rankings, which gets us wondering, has the Google Bomb fix effected our rankings?

Matt Cutts, being the nice guy he is, took the time to analyze five webmasters’ sites to explain why their change in rankings had nothing to do with the Google Bomb algo change.

A couple key points from Matt:

I said to expect those (roughly monthly) updates to become more of a daily thing. That data refresh became more frequent (roughly daily instead of every 3-4 weeks or so) well over a month ago. My best guess is that any changes people are seeing are because that particular data is being refreshed more frequently. This fits what I am seeing. This morning I noticed that the total number of links to www.InsureMe.com had increased and that many of our rankings had shifted since last week. It will be interesting to see if our rankings move around on a daily or weekly basis.

Matt also said:

The advice I’d give site owners is to take a step back and take a fresh look at your site. In many cases, you want to make sure that you’re adding lots of value for users.

In his comments, Matt challenges webmasters to look at their sites and make sure that the site is truly adding value. He suggests having helpful content, a complete website (no empty or broken pages), and original content (not reused articles from other sites).

It might not be anything new, but by looking at Matt’s extensive comments, I think we can deduce that the algorithmically, Google search can identify (and penalize) websites that have empty and incomplete pages, and sites that reuse other site’s content. Also, it looks like sites primarily send traffic to other sites will not do so well in Google search.

Based on that information, I would suggest that InsureMe affiliates trying to do well in the natural rankings make sure your site has multiple pages of original content, and more importantly, you use one of the InsureMe quote boxes to drive traffic to us. Since the quote boxes are produced in JavaScript, Google’s spiders should have trouble seeing that your site send traffic to another site.

With that said, I have heard reports of Google’s spider being “seen” following JavaSript links on occasion. And also, if your site gets a manual review by a human editor, it will be fairly obvious that you are sending traffic to another site.

For Matt’s recent post on the topic, go here. To read his extensive comments where most of the information above comes from, go here.

Posted by James Omdahl at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Affiliating ain’t easy.

Sometimes, especially when you are fairly new to the affiliate business, you feel like you have bit off more than you can chew. And, like many work-from-home businesses, a majority of the people who become affiliates end up getting out of the business because they can’t make it work.

It can get a little depressing to think about, eh?

With that in mind, I want to share an inspiring affiliate success story with you from Revenue Magazine – the story of Jeremy Palmer. I saw Jeremy speak at the CJU conference this past year and I was very impressed with his knowledge, affiliate philosophy, and down-to-earth personality. Jeremy really seems to embody the story of most super-affiliates – got into the business somewhat by accident, went through some tough times, eventually made things work and had the work-ethic and network to remain successful long-term. Also, even though he sells e-books, he isn’t your average get-rich-quick huckster – which is refreshing.

So if you are feeling a little overwhelmed by the affiliate world today, why not take a few minutes and get inspired by Mr. Palmer’s story.

If you want to learn more about Jeremy, or if you want to buy any of the e-books mentioned in the article, you can check out his site QuitYourDayJob.com.

Posted by James Omdahl at 08:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April, Eric, Mike and I returned from the Affiliate Summit last night pretty close to midnight. We had a great trip and I think it was well worth our while. Big thanks to everyone who took the time to stop by our booth and talk to us. Also, thanks to everyone who took part in the “how many pictures” contest at our booth. We did get a first and second place winner and they will be contacted soon letting them know they won.

Since people like lists, I though I would put one together about the Affiliate Summit. First I thought it would be a 10 Lessons Learned at Affiliate Summit list, but that didn’t really fit the content I wrote. Then I thought I could make a Top 10 Things to Know from Affiliate Summit, but that didn’t really fit well either.

Eventually I decided I would simply call this list…

10 Things from Affiliate Summit:

1. Affiliate Summit is a wonderful place to network with other search marketers – I was really pleased to see how open most people were to talking to with us, even though we were working a booth. It was good to be around such a friendly and talented group of marketing professionals.
2. If you have to give away a bunch of gum, tell people it “might be German” – This is a little marketing trick that might scale to other markets. We told people that the promotional packs of gum we were giving away could potentially be of German origin… and doing so increased our gum conversion go way up. We refer to this phenomenon as the “Hasselhoff Effect” and it might also work in the insurance vertical…then again, maybe not.
3. Scott Jangro is a really nice guy – Scott was kind enough to stop by our booth to say hi. This is the first time I have met Scott face-to-face and I really enjoyed speaking with him – he’s one of the most down-to-earth well known people in this industry. It’s a darn shame about him not winning the award for best blogger. No worries though Scott, you’ll take home the statue next year.
4. The “greatest toy ever” is a ball with elastic attached to it – you might laugh, but it’ll change your life...
5. Payday loans and “sub-prime” offers are very popular these days – I couldn’t believe how many people I met that were in these markets. It seems there is a lot of money to be made in these spaces and from what I hear it is fairly cut-throat. I bet it is a lot like the insurance vertical, actually. (I also heard the same about screensavers and ringtones).
6. Ryan Zimmerman of Clickspeed had the best business card at the Affiliate Summit – Seriously, check it out…
   
   
   
7. I think we should retire the term “merchant” from the Affiliate dictionary – The term merchant makes me think of a farmer’s market in 1802 or something. I always wondered why Commission Junction created their own terminology for members of their affiliate network – now I know why. I prefer to called an advertiser, not a merchant
8. You can throw a really impressive party when you own a nightclub – The Wynn party at Tryst nightclub was pretty amazing. Everyone who made it in had a great time and I know I wasn’t the only one impressed by the 70 foot high waterfall. (Although the strange fairy people in the red jumpsuits kinda freaked me out).
9. Saying your company is a “network” isn’t the best description – I spoke to so many people who, when asked what their company did, would reply “we’re a network.” This is a meaningless statement to me. There are so many different variations of the “network” concept (affiliate network, contextual network, CPA network, etc.) that people really need to be more specific about their network. Better yet, instead of saying you are a network, why don’t you tell me what you actually do and why I would want to do business with you?
10. Exhibiting at Affiliate Summit was a really good idea – While it was a fairly pricey venture, I think being an exhibitor at Affiliate Summit was beneficial for a company like ours. All for of us from InsureMe enjoyed meeting new affiliates and getting to know some of our current affiliates better.

Well, that's all I've got...any other "things" that you noticed at the Summit?

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Now this might not be a bad thing, but if you were counting on bidding the same way you used to in the old Yahoo platform and ranking for what you paid for-- you may have a rude awakening come February 5th.

I got a little note from Yahoo this morning telling me that starting February 5th, they are going to take into account a “quality score” when running ads.

This makes sense from a user’s point of view. When I read an ad, I want to click on something and go to a page that is relevant. From my point of view, (the one who has to now figure out how this new algorithm is going to work) it stinks!

What can we do…once one Yahoo headache is over, they find a good way of creating a new one!

Just wanted to give everyone a heads up of what’s going to begin February 5th. If you want to follow this link, it will explain in better detail how they are going to rank your ads and “other important things you need to know.”

Happy Searching!

Posted by Brittany Heidtke at 01:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you advertise on Google's content network (as discussed in last week's post), you know that sometimes your
ads show up on undesirable Web sites.

Why are some sites undesirable? Often it's a question of site quality and material ("content," for lack of a better word); other times it's more that particular sites just aren't appropriate for your target market. Either way, you don't want to waste your time and money in these areas when you could get much better return on ROI elsewhere.

That's where site exclusion comes in handy. Google's site exclusion tool is simply a means of excluding your ads from certain Web sites where you don't want them displayed.

For example, our PPC team recently discovered that some of our home insurance ads were showing up on a Florida home insurance information site. Since these leads aren't desirable for agents on our network right now, we can't make any money from them—and we certainly don't want to advertise in that area. By using the site exclusion tool, we were able to ban our ads from that site (and others like it) and limit our exposure to that particular market.

So how can you ban your ads from undesirable sites?

Once you know of particular Web sites you don't want your ads to appear on, excluding them from your campaigns is really easy. Just sign in to your account, click "tools" at the top of your campaign summary page, click "site exclusion" under the "Optimize your ads" header, and select the campaign you want to list exclusions for. Then just type in the site names, and click "Exclude Sites," and you're all set. You can go back to that same page at any time and add site names as you find your ads in inappropriate places.

One important note: Excluding sites can only be done on the campaign level; so if your account contains multiple campaigns, you'll need to create a list of excluded sites for each campaign to completely filter out unwanted traffic.

Can Google give you a list of all sites that are eligible to show your ads so you can filter them yourself? Unfortunately, no. (But it would be nice, wouldn't it?) Because the content network is continually growing, new sites are added continually. So it's up to you to make note when you see one that's undesirable for your purposes and add it to your list of exclusions.

Now even better news: Google has made one recent upgrade regarding site exclusions. You can now exclude an unlimited number of Web sites on each campaign's list to help you refine and filter your targeting across the content network. This is good news for those of you who find this tool especially helpful, as we have.

Posted by Penny Hagerman at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don’t know about you, but I am starting to get really excited about the Affiliate Summit. This will be my first time going to and Affiliate Summit and I am hoping to get the chance to meet…well… anyone who wants to meet. From what I have heard, the Affiliate Summit is amazing for networking – and since building a bigger network was one of my resolutions for 2007, I am hoping you all can help me out.

But yesterday I realized that my chances of meeting up with some of you is slightly diminished because I work for a “merchant” (P.S. – I hate that term). I think that stinks, but after meeting a number of affiliate managers in my career, I totally understand why. By nature, I try to avoid pushy, annoying people - and sadly a lot of (short-lived) affiliate managers are both pushy and annoying. No good.

So that brings me to my promise…

If you meet up with me at the Affiliate Summit I promise I will not try to sell you on the InsureMe affiliate program unless you want me to.*

Seriously. It might sound cheesy, but I would much rather build a solid relationships with a person than hunt down and pester super-affiliates for three days. I just want to meet some of great people at the Summit. Hopefully you will be one of them. So if you want to meet up, drop me a line at jomdahl(at)insureme(dot)com or stop by the InsureMe booth (#214).

* A quick warning, I will be working at the InsureMe booth and things might be a bit more “salesy” in the expo hall – but don’t worry, I’m not much of a salesman anyway :)

Posted by James Omdahl at 04:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Let me start this one off by saying that while I am a big proponent of linkbait, I can’t admit to ever having successfully produced any linkbait – so what I am sharing today comes from my research (read: reading blog posts) on the topic, not from hands-on experience. With that in mind, let’s do this…

The more I think about yesterday’s post on affiliates and linkbait, the more I think I am on to something. The way I look at it, linkbait is more about talent than about money…and since search marketing is being starting to be dominated by big marketing dollars (BusinessWeek just reported as such), affiliates need to rely on their talent to defeat the giant bank accounts of big advertisers. Real David and Goliath stuff, eh?

So you might ask, if linkbait is the key to a successful affiliate SEO strategy, how do we start cranking it out? Great question…and hopefully I can at least point you in the right direction to find some answers.

Linkbait Tactics

First off, let’s talk about the common tactics to draw in links. For this advice I turn to Todd Malicoat, a.k.a Stuntdubl, a staple player in the search community. In January 12th he posted an article called The Linkbaiting Playbook: Hooks Revised. Todd identified the seven common linkbait “hooks” that have been known to work quite well. These hooks are:

The News Hook – break important and interesting news and provide expert commentary

The Contrary Hook – start lively debate with bloggers, industry experts, etc.

The Attack Hook – go for the jugular and attack someone’s character (effective but bad!)

The Resource Hook – create a unique, helpful resource for your community

The Humor Hook – people like to laugh…make them laugh

The Ego Hook – write about other people and they might link to you

The Incentive Hook – have a contest, give away awards, give people a reason to talk about and link to you

(Todd does a great job breaking all of these down in his original post…make sure you read the whole thing.)

Tips for Effective Linkbait

Another well know search marketer, Aaron Wall, a.k.a. SEOBook, also gave some great advice about link baiting in his article Linkbaiting or Link Baiting? Aaron gives the following tips for creating effective linkbait:

Talk about a specific community
Give people a way to feel important about themselves, someone they care about, or something they feel should be important
Take recent events and scale them out to others in your community
Be provocative or controversial
Be thorough

Aaron, like others who have succeeded with linkbaiting, says that the headline of a linkbait blog post is KEY to getting your linkbait to catch on. His suggestion is to make sure you write headlines that are going to spread. This might mean writing headlines for the “WOW” factor and not for SEO keywords.

Aaron also suggests taking the time to “seed” your linkbait by placing your bait on social news sites like Digg.

(Aaron also gives a ton of helpful advice in the post - read it all here.)

But Where Do I Get The IDEAS?!

But at this point you might be thinking, “Great! That helps me understand what types of things work and some of the tactics of linkbaiting – but that still doesn’t help me think of any great linkbait ideas.”

Well, that is true. And I can’t really help you with coming up with ideas, but luckily Scott over at SEOMoz recently posted his suggestions for brainstorming linkbait. SEOMoz is one of the premier linkbait builders out there, so I can attest that whatever process they are using over there is working. The SEOMoz approach for linkbait brainstorms includes four steps:

Write Down Everything – basically, barf out every idea you could ever possibly have

Breakdown You Ideas – separate and classify the ideas based on concept and content
Evaluate Content – prioritize the ideas you had
Mix and Match – connect content with concept

(Again, I highly suggest reading the full post.)

Conclusion

Well, that’s all I’ve got for today. Hopefully this post and the links herein were helpful. I know that linkbait seems hard to do…and that is because it is. But I would imagine that the most successful SEO affiliates in the future will be the highly competent linkbaiters.

Oh yeah! If you start cranking out the linkbait and you want a little link love from our humble little blog, let us know where to look!

Posted by James Omdahl at 01:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I don't know about you, but I have yet to achieve consistent success using Google's content advertising network.
About a year ago when I first started dabbling in PPC, I naively decided to give it a try—having absolutely no clue what I was doing. Once I figured out I needed to drastically lower my bids as compared to search, I did have short-term success.

At the time, I chalked it all up to good content (as any good writer would do); but when the bottom fell out several months later and I found myself deleting content bids entirely, I decided I really had no idea what the content network was all about, and I stopped trying altogether. Sound familiar?

Since that time, things have improved. I think I'm getting the gist of it now, as are some of my fellow employees using content bidding. Maybe it really is about good content; maybe it's about minimizing bids; but then again, maybe Google is just improving its site matching process and boosting conversions along with it. (I tend to believe the latter, but then again, who knows?)

There really is an art to getting it right though, I'm convinced about that. And I'm determined to figure it all out—Google will not get the better of me!

Some advertisers believe the content network is the wave of the future for successful PPC. Others, like me, just hope we can keep up and make the most of what contextual targeting has to offer. Meanwhile, Google has released the Google Content Network Guide to answer our questions, explain how content advertising differs from search, and how we can use it to draw in customers on major news and smaller niche sites the content network tends to target.

This 7-minute guide is "hot off the presses," according to Google. So if you just don't "get" contextual advertising, watch it. You just might find the answers you need—and increase your profits along the way!

One last note: If you've been able to achieve success using content advertising and you're willing to share, please pass along any helpful tips or tricks! None of us has all the answers, and we'll all appreciate the helping hand. :)

Posted by Penny Hagerman at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Admit it. Being an affiliate can get a little lonely. You spend hours in front of your computer, creating websites, building PPC campaigns, trying to get links to your site…and you usually do it alone. But now you might not need to feel so alone after all.

One of the more visible affiliates experts out there, Scott Jangro, just created an impressive affiliate networking site called Bumpzee. The site lets you sign up, set up a profile, send messages to other Bumpzee contacts and manage those relationships. It also allows you to add your affiliate blog to the system and allows you to track and rate affiliate related stories a-la Digg.

While I am not a huge social networking site user, I am really excited about using Bumpzee. I see it as a way to build my network with other people in the search business and as a way to get more exposure for this blog and the InsureMe affiliate program.

For affiliates, I think it can be a great way to get in contact with other people in the industry that can help you learn and succeed. The one thing that is fairly consistent with the top individuals in the search and affiliate field is that they have a robust network of contacts and colleagues. I think there is something to that, and I think Bumpzee will be a great catalyst for network development in the affiliate world.

So if you have a couple minutes today, pop on over to Bumpzee and get signed up. Maybe your day won’t feel so lonely anymore…

Posted by James Omdahl at 08:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Links. Links. Links.

That’s really what all the SEO stuff is all about, right? I mean, yes, there are on-page factors that you must optimize, and yes, your content must be decent…but if you know what you are doing you should have that all under control.

But links…that’s the hard part.

Let me be the first to admit that the thought of doing traditional link building (link begging, directory spamming, reciprocal linking, etc.) is about as attractive to me as a job with the department of sanitation’s port-a-potty division. This is partially because these types of link development schemes are going the way of the dinosaur, and partially because this stuff seems (and is) tedious…and tedium and James are rarely friends.

But linkbait…now that is sexy.

For those who haven’t heard, link baiting is the act of creating a piece of content or some type of utility that will generate inbound links to your website from other quality websites.

Let me tell you, I love the thought of creating things that people want to (and do) link to…and it is always my hope that the content we are producing here at InsureMe will be linkworthy. However, making linkworthy content that actually gets links isn’t easy – but as someone who does SEO, I realize how important highly linkable content is to an optimization strategy.

But the question I was pondering today (yes, I ponder) is how important link baiting skills are to today’s affiliate marketer. Is link baiting an attainable and sustainable organic optimization strategy for affiliates or is it something best left to big companies and big name bloggers?

I would argue that in the long run, being a proficient linkbaiter (read: quality content creator) will be essential to the success of an affiliate marketer who relies on natural traffic for income. Lately, I have seen a lot of anecdotal evidence that brings me to this conclusion. For example:

The number of indexed links (at least for our site) is going down in both Google and (especially) Yahoo!. This shows me that both search engines are doing a better job of finding and discounting “bad” links like site-wide paid links and two-way reciprocal links.

Fewer and fewer affiliates are showing up on the first page of the search results. I have a feeling this has to do somewhat with bias on the search engines’ part and somewhat with the fact that larger companies are getting a clue about SEO – and that big companies get a lot of good links for free.

Paid text link “ads” are becoming even sketchier than before. Search engineers really hate paid links and I think they are putting a lot of effort in identifying sites that sell links and are taking away their “link juice.” As a link buyer, you have to face the fact that your paid links’ juice might not last forever…and if that’s all you got you might be in trouble.

If you operate in a vertical with a lot of people who are successfully creating linkbait, you will rapidly fall behind in the search engine rankings. On the flip side, if you are successfully generating hundreds of quality links through link baiting when your competitors aren’t, you will be in a very good long term position for optimization success.

I think that last point is key, especially in verticals that are not yet in the link baiting mindset (I would include insurance as one of those verticals). As an affiliate, you have a unique opportunity to set yourself apart by creating amazing content that will not only draw a number of links but will also help establish your credibility in that vertical. In turn, this will not only help your site and your link building, but it also might open new doors when it comes to your business.

So I guess my main point is this – if you are an affiliate, and SEO is your primary method of income, now is the time to start learning about linkbait and producing linkbait of your own.

But how do you do that you ask? Great question…more on that tomorrow…

But a parting question for today. Am I full of it? Is linkbait really all that important to affiliates or is it best left to companies that can afford to experiment with the fickle taste of today’s consumers? Let me know your thoughts…

Posted by James Omdahl at 03:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Last quarter, InsureMe's CEO Tim McTavish, bet his employees that 90% of them wouldn't participate in InsureMe’s United Way charitable giving campaign. Much to Tim’s chagrin, we made it to 90%. This is a video of Tim paying the price for betting his full head of hair …

Giving to the less fortunate feels good. Giving the big boss man a mohawk feels even better. Happy Friday!

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So if you are like me, taking on the new Yahoo search marketing platform was not only challenging, but painful. After talking to all the yahoo’s over at Yahoo for days on end (I think my record was 14 times in one day), I feel as though I can give some advice to those of you going through what I went though; and trust me I feel your pain.

First, when you log into your old Yahoo account (Overture), push the preview button! Don’t even think about upgrading until you have seen what Yahoo will do to your account. I think the hardest part of this preview is seeing how much Yahoo will mess up your account and realizing how much work you have ahead of you.

But I digress. Once you have seen what they are going to do to your account, you can do one of two things; call Yahoo and start yelling (which is fun but not very productive), or download your entire pre-upgraded Yahoo account (so you have a back up in case you mess up).

Now for the super easy way to fix your new and messed up Yahoo account (this is what I recommend if at all possible). If you have a Google Adwords account that parallels your old Overture account, download that entire account using Adword Editor. (To download, just search Google for Adwords Editor. You should be able to find it. If not, call Google—they are very helpful!)

Once you have downloaded your Google Account, you will want to open it up in Excel and make sure that theColumns have the correct headings. (Mine didn’t, and this cost me two days on the phone with the yahoo’s…) But, the headings that you need are supposed to look exactly like this Download file. If you have even a single letter missing, it won’t work… (Don’t you love Yahoo?)

If you are lucky and the spreadsheet that you downloaded has those same headers, then read ahead a bit. But for those of you (like me) whose download didn’t look like this, there are some simple but time consuming things you can do to make yours look and work nice.

Begin by copying and pasting everything you can match up in your Google account spreadsheet to this spreadsheet. Everything should match up. (But remember not to change any of headers!) You should see an extra column (column D) with the header “Report Type” on it. You need to type “Ad Text” or “Keyword” into each row under “Report Type.”

To determine which phrase you need to use in each box, expand your spreadsheet so you can see column I –“Keyword” If the box is empty under column I, type “Ad Text” in the same row’s Column D box. If the box has one of your keywords in it, type “Keyword” in the same row’s Column D box.

Here comes the labor intensive part—you have to do this for each box in Column D. If you accidentally put “Keyword” where there isn’t a keyword in Column I, your account won’t upload correctly. I would suggest you double check this before you try to upload everything into Yahoo. This is an example of how the column should look. Download file

Now for the fun part! It’s time to push that lovely Upgrade button in your Overture account. Once you have done this, you have to wait eight hours for Yahoo to upgrade your account. So go get a good nights’ rest, dream about happy things, and forget about the messy account you will have to deal with in the morning.

After those eight hours, you should be able to go into your newly upgraded Yahoo account and see the mess that you saw with the preview button yesterday…oh joy! I have found it works best to pause all the campaigns that Yahoo has created for you, because you won’t be using those anyways. And move the spreadsheet you made/downloaded the day before into your account to start making you money!

To do this, click the “Campaigns” tab. Just below it you should see the “Import” button. Click that. In the middle of the page you should see a tab that says “Convert Third Party Campaigns”. Click that.

Now you need to save your account in CSV or Zip format. To do this, go into Excel, bring up your spreadsheet, go to “Save As” and save it in “Unicode text.” Name it whatever you want with .CSV at the end. Once you have saved it like this, you should be able to browse for that file name, select it and press convert.

Now cross your fingers, close your eyes, rub your lucky rabbit’s foot, and if the stars are aligned, you should see your download at the bottom!

Download the newly converted file and save. Go back to the “Import Campaigns” tab. Find your newly converted file and upload it. Once you have done this, everything should be ready to go. Another tip: make sure that once you have uploaded everything correctly, you go into each campaign/adgroup and make sure everything looks ok.

Because you used your Google account, if Yahoo didn’t bring something with your upload (let’s say, some keywords didn’t transfer), all you have to do is copy and paste them from your Google account.

If you are still having problems the phone number to Yahoo Search Marketing is 1-866-Yahoo-01 (this is the direct number to the people who messed up your account in the first place, so they try hard to help. But sometimes they just don’t know what they are doing). You will need your account number and the e-mail address you have listed on the account when you talk to these people. They respond better when you are nice to them…I know, they don’t like it when you yell at them…imagine that!

But when you are finished with this headache, Yahoo has really improved the usability of their search marketing product. You don’t have to wait for days on end for things to be approved anymore. The reports come up almost immediately, and our ROI has gone up dramatically because we are able to change things much easier. Now that I don’t have to talk to the yahoo’s ten times a day, I really enjoy working within our account and realize that what they say is true--No Pain, No Gain!

Happy Searching!

Posted by Brittany Heidtke at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Matt Cutts has released a Google weather report (an announced change to the index or algorithm of Google) – and the search engine community is all abuzz. Overall the changes are generally cosmetic (toolbar and backlink updates). Still, it is always interesting to hear what is up at Google.

Here is a quick summary of the report:

• The update is primarily a PageRank update and will also update data for link: and info: queries on Google.


• All of the changes were already incorporated in their page scoring, so the effects on the rankings should be minimal.


• There has been a change so that the site: operator will display regular results ahead of supplemental results. Matt also reminds people that supplemental results aren’t a bad thing and that the best way to get a page out of the supplemental results is by getting quality links to the supplemental page.


• The freshness of supplemental results should continue to improve, since Google will be indexing those pages more often.


• Google is pushing out data ever 1-2 days now, instead of every 3-4 weeks. This means we should see more variance in our rankings. I can attest that this is true, since I noticed that our rankings changes quite a bit on Sunday and Monday of this week.

Posted by James Omdahl at 09:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I wanted to give everyone a heads-up that a few of us InsureMerians will be heading out the Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas on January 21st. We are hoping to get a chance to meet up with anyone who wants to meet with us while we are out there. If you want to get together, give me a call at 720-548-6190 or email me at jomdahl(at)insureme(dot)com.

The InsureMe posse will consist of Mike Sajdak (a.k.a. Big Bossman, a.k.a. CF Oh My Goodness), April Hartmeister (a.k.a. Apes), Eric Baliruno (a.k.a. The Man Who Cuts Checks) and James Omdahl (a.k.a. me).

From what I have heard, the Affiliate Summit is a great event and a great place for affiliate marketers to meet up and keep up with the latest and greatest trends in online marketing.

Also, we are pretty excited because we will have a booth in the Expo hall at the Affiliate Summit this year. Please make sure you stop by and check it out. We just designed the booth and it looks pretty darn cool.

Posted by James Omdahl at 09:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our affiliate manager April has been asking me to write this post for a while, so I figured today was as good a day as any.

One of the most common questions we get from affiliates is “who can I hire to do search engine optimization (SEO) for me?” This is a great question, since there are relatively few people out there who can take the time to learn about the art/science that is SEO. Like any field, SEO is something a person has to have a passion for in order to be successful. So if you don’t have the passion, outsourcing seems like the right thing to do.

Unfortunately, the SEO landscape is a dangerous one. While there are many people out there who know what they are doing, there are many, many more that don’t. For that reason, we don’t recommend anyone to do SEO for our affiliates. Sorry, I admit we are partially just covering our backsides on this one, but the truth is, you just never know who will be able to optimize your site.

Still, that doesn’t mean that you can’t hire an awesome SEO, it just means that we aren’t going to tell you who that awesome SEO is (although I will give you a list of some of the more respected SEOs at the end of this post). So in an attempt to avoid being totally unhelpful, I figured I would give you some things to consider when trying to hire an SEO. Here they are…

The SEO Industry is Notoriously Shady

Believe me on this one…I know from experience. I figure the best way to illustrate this is with a story, so here we go.

A few years back, before I knew anything about SEO, we hired a company to optimize our website. I did a good amount of research (not enough it seems), talked to numerous companies, and in the end decided to go with what was, at the time, the world’s largest SEO company. We ended up in a year-long contract that cost us somewhere in the mid five-figure range.

Once the contract was signed, I decided that, as an experiment, I would build a website of my own, read up on SEO, and try to optimize my site over the same time period. Within the first few months of our contract with the big SEO company we were not seeing much as far as results and we were getting every excuse in the book about why things weren’t working. On the other hand, my site was doing fairly well and ranking on the first page for many of our targeted terms.

By the end of the year contract, the site that I optimized was doing fairly well and our main site had barely budged in the rankings. Needless to say, we didn’t renew the contract.

Now I am not telling you this to try to show you how awesome I am, because believe me, I am not that awesome. I am telling you this to illustrate that, even when working with the biggest company in the SEO industry, you can still get completely hosed. And getting hosed for five figures is never fun.

So like I said, the SEO business is shady…don’t forget that.

There are Many Experts…but Not That Many Experts

Yes, I know that doesn’t make much sense, but stick with me here.

Expert is a relative term. I would guess that there are thousands of SEO “experts” that became “experts” by ranking well for their company’s name. I have interviewed a handful of people lately who are these types of SEO experts – and there is no doubt in their mind that they know SEO inside in out. But usually these kinds of experts have been able to rank for fairly uncompetitive terms – and would struggle to rank for a highly competitive term.

On the other hand there are the other (real) SEO experts. These people who have proven their ability to rank for highly competitive terms and are able to maintain those rankings. These are also “SEO experts” – but these are the experts you want to hire. The problem is these experts are fewer in number, harder to track down, and usually already have plenty of work.

And this brings us to the big dilemma when it comes to experts - both groups of “experts” call themselves (and consider themselves) experts…so it is your job to find out which type of expert they really are.

Ask for examples, ask for references, hunt for proof. It might take time, but doing so will save you from a lot of heartburn in the future. And when you do find a legitimate “expert,” try to get on as a client. Which brings me to my next point…

[Disclaimer: Please note that I am not calling the first group of experts liars, or saying they are unethical – from talking to these people I can tell you that they really think that ranking #1 for their company’s name is the same as ranking for a term like “auto insurance.” They usually have no idea that the two are wildly different.]

The Real (Ethical) SEOs Usually Only Will Take One Client Per Vertical

From my experience, this point is key…here’s why.

If you are hiring an SEO company, you are doing so to hopefully rank #1 for the most profitable search terms in your vertical, right? And as we all know, just like in Highlander, there can be only one #1 for each keyword.

So would it make any sense if an SEO company were to take on two clients that were trying to rank #1 for the exact same keyword on the same search engines? Sounds like a bit of a conflict of interest, no?

From my own experience, it seems that some of the most respected SEOs will only take on one client per vertical, and I think it is the right thing to do. Sadly, this also means that many of the best SEO companies will not work with you because they already have a client in your vertical. This is especially visible in the insurance space, where almost every respected company already has an insurance client.

But even if you find a good, ethical, proven SEO expert that will take you on as a client (it can still happen), there is still one more thing you need to do…

Make Sure You Have Reasonable Expectations

There is nothing more frustrating for SEO companies than a client who has unreasonable expectations. The process of SEO takes months, and in many cases more than a year. You are not going to be #1 in Google overnight, and if someone is telling you they can make you #1 overnight, RUN.

SEO is also in a state of constant flux – and change is the only guarantee. Be prepared for the good times and the bad. If do start rank well for a term, awesome, but don’t let that be your only source of income. Sites fall out of the rankings much faster than they move up – and we are all at the mercy of the search engines.

If you are working with an SEO, tell them what you expect and ask them to honestly tell you if your expectations are realistic or not. Honesty and openness in this area are a must.

The SEO A-List

After doing SEO for about three years now, I have been to a lot of conferences and heard a lot of SEO speakers. From my experience, the following people are respected SEO experts with whom you might want to discuss your SEO options with:

Aaron Wall
Bruce Clay
Greg Boser
Jill Whalen
Rand Fishkin

Chances are that none of these people will work with you (they have or won’t take on insurance affiliates) – so this isn’t really a recommendation - but they would be good people to talk to for referrals to someone else. All of the people listed above have reputations to protect, and steering you in the wrong direction might come back to bite them.

By the way, I am sure there are many more to list, but those are the ones I can think of off of the top of my head.

Conclusion

Hiring an SEO isn’t fun, isn’t easy, and isn’t guaranteed to make you succeed. Truth be told, many of the fundamentals of SEO can be learned by reading blogs, ebooks, and attending conferences. Still, if you are looking to hire someone to do SEO for you, do your research, make sure you set realistic expectations, and at least know enough about SEO to recognize a bad one when you see him (or her).

Also, if you are an InsureMe affiliate and you want a second opinion on an SEO company before you hire them, drop me a line. I would be happy to talk to the SEO and give you my opinion.

Posted by James Omdahl at 03:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

One of the questions that we get a lot from affiliates is “what is a good place to do pay-per-click (PPC) advertising that isn’t Google, Yahoo or MSN?” It’s a great question – surely there has to be some untapped alternatives to the big three, right? Well, I hate to say it, but in my experience, not really.

When writing for this blog I almost always leave out any discussion of advertising on second-tier search engines (search engines that are not the big three) – and I do this intentionally. While I admit that I have heard one or two positive comments about most of the second-tier engines, I usually hear horror stories. In my opinion (aside from a rare exception), the traffic coming from second-tier search engines tends to be pretty awful.

But why is that?

Well, I though about it for a while and here are some of the reasons that I can think of:

Second-tier Search Engine Aren’t Really Search Engines

When was the last time you went to a second-tier search engine to so a search online? Chances are you can’t remember – and for good reason – second-tier search engines’ results are usually pretty bad. And bad results tend to drive users away. If you think about it, it takes a lot of time, talent and money to come up with a good search algorithm. If you don’t believe me, ask Microsoft, who is still struggling to make their search results presentable to users.

Because building a good search engine is so difficult, second-tier “search engines” tend to be contextual advertising platforms – and there are some inherent problems with contextual advertising. This brings me to my second reason…

Second-Tier Search Engines Drive Lower Quality (Contextual) Clicks

As anyone who does PPC traffic can tell you, there is a big difference in traffic that comes from a search engine and traffic that comes from contextual advertising. Search engine traffic consists of people who are directly searching for relevant content and who come directly from the search engine to your website. Since the person is searching for what you are offering, they tend to be a better customer and their chance of converting is relatively high.

Contextual advertising, on the other hand, consists of individuals who are on a website (not a search engine) who are looking at content that is somehow related (but often not directly related) to what you are advertising. This means the searcher may see your ad and click on it, but it is rare that they are actively looking for what you are offering. A contextual click is therefore more of a casual click – and the clicker is less likely to convert for you.

If that isn’t bad enough, second-tier engines’ contextual partners are usually not that great, which brings me to my next point…

Second-Tier Contextual Partners Can’t Be As Good as First-Tier

All of the major search engines are investing a lot of time and effort into their contextual advertising programs, and for good reason. Search industry analysts know that the real growth in PPC advertising will happen in the contextual advertising, not search engine space. If you think about it, there is a large but finite number of searchers out there, and whenever they go to a search engine, they are likely to be served up a PPC ad. In the contextual market however, there are billions of websites out there that have yet to put up a contextual advertisement (like an AdSense ad). This, in the eyes of the search engines is untapped real estate for PPC ads, and the major search engines are aggressively aiming to get their contextual ads onto any willing website of good quality.

Generally, any site that wants to have contextual advertisements on it can have them. If you are a site owner who is going to put contextual ads on your site, chances are you are going to go with the company that can pay you the most. Like it or not, the first-tier engines have dramatically higher costs-per-click - and therefore higher payouts to their contextual partners.

So using simple logic, everyone who is doing contextual advertising in order to make the most money possible should be doing so with a first-tier engine. And it is my guess that a vast majority of contextual sites do so. However, there are a number of sites that the first-tier engines refuse to do business with, usually due to content or past issues with the contextual partner. It is my theory that these shunned contextual partners are what make up the contextual networks of most second-tier engines. Thus, the second-tier engines’ contextual partners can’t be as good as the first-tier engines.

By having lower quality partners, the smaller players open themselves up for the biggest problem with second-tier engines…

Second-Tier Engines have a Larger than Average Amount of Click Fraud

After my click fraud related Sausage Manifesto post on Thursday, Magnus Wester (one of our top 40 affiliates) made this observation:

I believe it's unfair to target only Google, Yahoo and MSN in this discussion. In my experience, the REAL fraud centers are the second-tier "search engines" - Enhance, ePilot (worst of them all), Looksmart, Lycos, Miva, Search123...

Conclusion
While I hear the occasional second-tier success story from affiliates, success seems to be the exception, not the rule. In the world of pay-per-click marketing, second-tier search engines are operating at a virtually insurmountable disadvantage – and their traffic reflects this.

While diversification of traffic sources is a good idea, it is difficult to find quality partners outside of the first-tier space. I know this is a tough pill to swallow, especially if you have been plugging away at AdWords and can’t seem to make a profit. My advice to you in that case is to keep trying, keep learning, and eventually you should turn the corner to profitability.

Now this is all opinion on my part, and I know that some of you aren’t going to agree with this analysis, which is fine. But if you are not totally deterred from throwing money at second-tier engines yet, I will leave you with this final bit of advice – to be successful in PPC it is essential that you work smart. Working smart means taking advantage of your biggest opportunities first. So, before you spend a minute doing anything on a second-tier search engine, make sure you are spent a considerable amount of time mastering (and profiting from) Google, Yahoo and MSN. Putting one hour of work into a first-tier engine lets you tap into a dramatically larger market than any second-tier can provide.

Alright, I hope that helps. Please let me know your second-tier search engine thoughts and experiences…