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[BinaryHaiku]

A Good Test of The Affilorama Free Lessons (A Site Review Request)

I looked into affiliate marketing about a year ago and decided not to pursue it at that time. It wasn't the right point in my life to commit the time necessary. Now is that time. Of all the training products on the market, the one that stuck out in my mind was AffiloBluprint. One problem. I don't have $197. So, instead of delving into a hot mess of whining and self pity, I decided to put the free lessons at Affilorama to the test and see if I can come up with the dough.

I've run the free lessons through their paces and come up with the following website:

http://www.zerotofamily.com

As you can see, it is a review site. I have completed phase 1 and have the site together with the product reviews. Before I get into phase 2, which will be article marketing, I wanted to touch base in this forum and see if you folks have suggestions for improving the work I've done so far. I did run it through Traffic Travis and ranked B on the home page (due to a difficulty I'm having with All-in-one SEO pack) and A+ on all the subsequent pages. If you want to run it through Traffic Travis yourself, the sitemap is here:

http://www.zerotofamily.com/sitemap.xml

Have a fantastic day!
Todd Wallace

 

[joshuas]

Hey, congratulations on getting your site up. I had a quick look and I think it looks good. :)

What problems are you having with All in One SEO?

I'm glad you've got your keywords in H1 and H3 tags. One other thing you can do in terms of on-page SEO is to bold and italicize your keywords.

Barring other suggestions for forum members, I think you're just about ready to start your link building! Excited for you. All the best!

Joshua

 

[BinaryHaiku]

Thank you Joshua.

I set the Title and Description field for the home page in the All-in-one SEO plugin and it's not editing them when the page displays. I think it has something to do with the fact that I'm using the page as the home page and WordPress is redirecting the URL to make it the root. I never really intended to send people to that page, but I figured I'd make some attempt at having it rank for something.

I've been working on the site non-stop in my spare time for the last two weeks. I'm taking today off to be with my family before I launch back into link-building. As soon as I'm back on the horse I'll implement your suggestion to bold and italicize the keywords. Thanks for the tip!

Have a great day!
Todd Wallace

 

[Cecille L]

Hi Todd,

Give yourself a tap in the back for a job well done! I went to your site and it looks awesome! What is more amazing is that you built it from scratch following the free lessons here in Affilorama.

All the best to you and your future endeavors! Have a great day! =)

 

[BinaryHaiku]

Thank you Cecille. To clarify, I do have some experience with building websites. That's the one skill I brought to the table with me. However, the website itself is only a canvas. The free lessons at Affilorama told me what to put on the canvas. I am just hoping there are no glaring holes in the content, styling, or structure so far.

In case anyone becomes interested, I did figure out what I was getting wrong with the All-in-one SEO plugin. In the plugin configuration settings there are fields for title, description, and keywords specifically for your home page. The page editor plugin doesn't work on whichever page you use for the home page. The plugin configuration settings fields override them. Apparently, when left blank it uses WordPress default values.

So, tomorrow I start writing articles. In the mean time, if you're taking a look at the review pages and you find yourself saying, "Oh my! What was that guy thinking?!?!?" ...yeah, that's the kind of thing I would love to hear about.

 

[jmpruitt]

the site looks good. I just have a few things...

rather than having a link that says "product site" you want your anchor text to include a compelling call to action, so try something like "Get your guide to becoming a happier mother today" or whatever it is for the guide.

Also, I personally think your titles are too long.

For example, on your home page you have : Discover How To Immediately Get Help With Your Child Problems. Reviews Of The Best Parenting Advice.

I would change that to
Title: Reviews Of The Best Parenting Advice
Subheading (h2) : Discover How To Immediately Get Help With Your Child Problems

Also, for your internal linking you want to use the keyword for the page you are linking to, and again use a call to action, so instead of "full review" as your anchor text I would use "Read My 'Save My Marriage Today' Review Here" make sure it includes the product name keyword phrase for your in site SEO.

Finally, since you are using wordpress, I would recommend using a plugin to redirect your affiliate links, since they look spammy. I recommend either Pretty LInks plugin or Go Codes plugin. eithero one will work so that your links will look more professional and clean.

Over all your reviews look good. I would also start looking to add some articles to the site. the simple review pages will work, but they don't do so much to build trust with people. by adding some articles, you can build trust and brand yourself as someone people can turn to for advice. then when you recommend a product, you are speaking from a postition of a recommendation from an authority on the topic.

 

[BinaryHaiku]

Thanks for the tips James. I implemented your internal linking advice and will be adding Pretty Link shortly. I'm also working on some keyword research to apply towards writing some articles.

I do have a question about your advice on titles. I used the All-in-one SEO plugin to reduce the page titles while still keeping the longer H1 text on the page. Was your suggestion to reduce the page titles from an SEO perspective or from a readability perspective?

 

[jmpruitt]

both really. It reads better to have a short title, then a subheading, and it is better for seo.

Reallym when it comes to SEO what google wants is something that the average web browser will want to read, so optimize for readers, keep it relevant to your keywords, and everything will fall into place naturally. look at everything that you do from the perspective of a reader on your site, from image placement to titles and links. how will they view what you are doing? is this something that is so valuable that they feel like they need to share it with their friends? I try to do at least one or two good Link Bait pieces, even on my static sites. that viral traffic flow works no matter what style of sites you are using, although I generally talk about it in blogging because bloggers do it more regularly than static sites do.

 

[BinaryHaiku]

Ok, I've been researching 15 articles that I'm about to post on the website and then spin to start submitting. Before I put them all on the site, I'd appreciate your feedback again. I worked in some of the previous feedback on my review pages into this article like Joshua's tips on bolding and italicizing keywords as well as James' tips on headings and using Pretty Link.

For this article, I placed a text link in the first and last paragraphs to the affiliate product squeeze page as well as a banner ad right above the last paragraph. I think this flows well and leaves obvious exit points for the reader. I would be interested in your take on the affiliate links and anything else you care to comment on.

Here's the article:
http://www.zerotofamily.com/getting-a-b ... the-night/

 

[jmpruitt]

hey Todd,

looking at your site, the one thing I would work on is your link text. right now you have "here is a site to..." wich really doesn't do anything.
you need to include a call to action in your text. instead, change it to something like "CLick here to ...." this tells people the action that you want them to take, and you will get a higher clickthrough rate.

 

[biswatch]

Hi Todd,

I really like your site. I'm also just delving into affiliate marketing. So great to see you've pulled this off with the free resources at your disposal. Congratulations to you.

I am curious about your site design. I am playing with site design too. I wonder, is that a wordpress theme or a site you made yourself?

Thank you!
Steve

 

[BinaryHaiku]

Hi Steve,

It is a Wordpress theme I created using software called Artisteer that I happen to own a copy of. I'm sure you could use a free Wordpress theme if you're not in a position to put out money for a custom template. However, if you're looking for software that could by used by a layman to create a professional quality Wordpress theme I would highly recommend Artisteer. It also creates Drupal and Joomla themes as well as static HTML.

 

[biswatch]

Thanks a lot Todd. I don't think I will make a Wordpress theme at this time. Too many other things to learn first!

 

[BinaryHaiku]

Hi James,

I implemented your "call to action" suggestion with the text links in the articles. Thank you for the tip.

 

[BinaryHaiku]

OK, so it's about 37 days in and I have my first sale. I know you've all seen these stuffed full of $100's if not $1000's per day. But you know what? I'm ecstatic about my $31.63 sale. It's proof that I've done something that can be duplicated so that it can become $316.30 per day and maybe even $3163.00 someday.



Thanks Mark for sharing quality content for free. Thanks to the staff and forum members for your help and advice.

More to do. More to do. Talk with you all later.

 

[joshuas]

Congratulations on your first sale! I remember my first sale clear as day and I went out immediately to celebrate. Haha. We got to keep ourselves motivated right? ;)

Looking forward to you making more sales!

Joshua

 

[jmpruitt]

Thats great. just keep it going, and you will get there. it takes time to learn and build but it all does work.

 

[Cecille L]

Congratulations Todd! You are an inspiration to all our other members! :)

Goes to show that if you have passion, commitment and faith in what you do, then success will surely follow. Keep us posted with your progress!

Have a good day!

 

[willbfree]

Hi Guys

recently Mark had a " Super Affiliate Millionaire Secrets Webinar " but sadly I was out of town and missed it , is there a link where I could listen /watch the seminar .

Thank you

 

[Cecille L]

Hi Will,

You can watch the video webinar again here. Enjoy!

Have a good day!

 

[BinaryHaiku]

Ok, quick update and a question.

I've got about 10 keywords that are ranging from positions 6-25 on Google. I've made a few more sales since the last update. Things are moving along nicely.

I made a mistake on one of the keywords. I've followed the exact article submission process of the other keywords. Instead of being in the range of position 6-25 it ended up on page 22. It's medical keyword that though other indicators I used to select it as a good keyword with low competition, I overlooked some things and it's just a dud.

So, to anyone who's been in this boat...

Since the page on my site is pretty much worthless, what do you think about modifying the existing page for a new keyword, going back through my submitted articles and modifying them for the new keyword, and let Google re-crawl them? Is that doable? Will there be some sort of negative repercussion for doing that?

 

[Cecille L]

Hi Todd,

Glad to hear your sites are doing well. :)

I don't think there will be any negative repercussions in doing that as that would be updating or re-writing an existing original article.

 

[BinaryHaiku]

Thank you Cecille. I think I'm going to do that to salvage all the link building I've done for that page so far.

 

[michellerana]

Maybe you optimize that page on a problem/crisis keyword since it's a medical keyword (ie cure "medical keyword" fast) :)

 

[BinaryHaiku]

Interesting thought Michellerana. Thank you.

 

[BinaryHaiku]

So...about the time that I'm realizing that my growth is stagnant and isn't going to improve without paying for submissions to blog networks, and being close but not quite up to the Clickbank CDR requirement due to some refunds, and trying to find some way to come up with the $67 dollars I need for a subscription to UAW in the hopes that within a month I'd turn over enough money to pay for the second month...yes, about that time...

Google sandboxes my site.

Bummer.

 

[justonce94]

Great job binary!!! That's definitely gotta help many other people struggling to make their first sale!

 

[shalisha42]

How is your site doing? It looks amazing! I'd definitely buy if I were a mommy:)