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This update is part and parcel of Google’s “caffeine” modification, which returns data that’s 50% fresher than what was yielded in past searches. This increase in the volume of fresh data rendered is now made possible by Google’s switch to processing data in “pieces” rather than in “layers”, which was standard practice prior to the update.

Schizophrenic Algorithms

It might not come as much of a shock, but each year Google changes its algorithm anywhere between 350 and 500 times. What often happens as a result of these changes is that people who get too focused on exact ranking factors see their site drop when Google releases these algorithmic tweaks.

Minor Quakes From The May Day Update

On the face of it, the May Day modification is simply a rankings change, not a crawling or indexing one. That said, it has still had its effects on some websites. For some it has resulted in a decrease in traffic volume, even though their pages are still getting indexed. After the update the pages seem to not rank as high as they did before, and this is where the stress comes from.

Google’s changes seem to be primarily affecting “long-tail” traffic stemming from the longer search terms that more sophisticated searchers use. When you calculate the net effect of those searchers per site, it adds up fairly quickly, given that long-tail searches convert at a higher rate.

The algorithm change also seems to be affecting very large sites with “item” pages, such as e-commerce sites. Pages of this nature usually don’t have many inbound links, and the links they do have are usually buried within the site. Chances are also very high that these types of sites don’t have substantial amounts of unique content.

The Importance Of Unique Product Descriptions

An important observation to make is that it’s beneficial to keep unique product descriptions for anything you’re selling on your site. To date, the sites that only use a manufacturer’s generic product copy could suffer the most from the May Day update, experiencing a heavy loss in direct traffic to their product pages.

Provide The Freshest Content Yet

Products aside, having relevant content that addresses the search terms that you’re trying to rank for is always a good idea, and the main search keyword is just the start; Google looks for synonyms, uniqueness and strength of the linking profile.
***Looking for original content? Check out our friends at www.constant-content.com

What Is Google Trying To Achieve with This Update?

The goal of the May Day update is to universally improve search quality and user experience. Google has openly stated its intent to ensure when you search for something, you’re provided with the highest quality content on a per search basis. Basically Google trying to make search more helpful and weed out any content duplication, as well as minimizing the impact of what it considers to be lower quality websites.

What Types Of Websites Are Being Affected By This Update?

The hardest hit by the Google Algorithm change are auto-generated pages and content farms. As already mentioned, the May Day update is basically engineered to improve search quality.

This is a good reminder for affiliates that you should always be providing the highest quality content for your consumers. A recommended tactic is to provide content not available anywhere else, and ensure that it’s helpful; also,  avoid scraped, generic and low quality content whenever you can.

How Can You Determine If Your Site Is Affected By This Update?

The best way is to check on your own around the time between April 28th-May 3rd. This is when a lot of sites notice a loss of 5-15% of their normal long-tail traffic. Furthermore, if you check your search referral traffic between April 28th and May 3rd you may have seen a drop in these statistics as well.

Check to see if the change is in the number of referrals, or the number of pages getting traffic. A drop in traffic to your bigger terms probably is not a May Day effect, but drops in search referrals could be. Also, if your index or crawl stats changed suddenly, this could indicate you were hit by the update.

To be certain, check any links to your child pages across the site; these pages may have suffered a May Day relevance drop. If you don’t have unique content, even on your less important pages, you may have seen a dip.

In part two of this five part series we will cover in more detail what factors cause the site to be affected, and in subsequent articles we will discuss what improvements can be made and what you can do to minimize the impact of this algorithm change.

***This article is the first in a five part series brought to you by our partners at Metamend, the Search Marketing Experts. Since 1998 Metamend has been widely recognized as one of the leading search engine optimization firms in the industry. Providing advanced organic search and Internet marketing searches to clients in over 60 countries, Metamend works to bring pre-qualified visitors to their clients’ websites and to convert those visitors into long-term commercial relationships. Metamend’s search and Internet marketing methods follow the best practices outlined by the major search engines, and its staff maintain strong personal relationships with others at all levels of the search marketing industry.

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Post a comment on this blog post by Friday, July 16th at noon and you could win an Affiliate Summit East Silver Pass (value $249)!

How To Enter: Receive an entry into our ASE Silver Pass draw by posting a comment to this blog post. Try to make it as interesting and entertaining as possible! Let us know what you’re most excited about for at Affiliate Summit East, or tell us about your wildest Affiliate Summit experience from the past. You can also get an extra entry into the draw by tweeting this contest!

Your Silver Pass Includes: Admission to ASE Affiliate Meet Market, the Exhibit Hall, Keynotes Speeches, and the Affiliate Summit Social Network. Affiliate Summit is the premiere affiliate marketing industry event, and a great place for you to meld minds with the best players on the circuit. Not to mention it’s being held in the greatest city in the world, NYC. Don’t miss out!

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Bobbi’s article focuses on how affiliate marketers can use video in their campaigns to improve the quality of their sales pitch and ultimately grow their revenue stream. Filled with practical insights and pointers, affiliates will be able to easily incorporate the article’s wisdom into their marketing mix.

Read the full article here: http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/27143.asp

Do you use video in your campaigns? What software and techniques do you use to create them? Have your videos produced conversions? Drop us a comment and let’s discuss!

Direct marketing, more than any other method, is all about testing and quantifying consumer responses. The advantage that online direct marketing has over its offline cousin is that the responses generated online (click-throughs, conversions, sign-ups, etc.) are likely to get measured, tested and improved upon more rapidly. The Internet is a giant data recording machine, so it has naturally taken David Ogilvy’s founding principles of “testing, testing, testing” to the next level of awesomeness.

Definition of Online Direct Response: The process of generating a lead, sale or other similar action directly from an Internet ad. Online direct response is measured through click through rates (CTR) and conversion rates (CR). Cookies and special tags are used to track which ads, landing pages and paths deliver the most conversions. This type of tracking is also used for cost-per-action (CPA), where the advertiser pays for a pre-specified action (e.g. sale, sign-up, etc.).

Probably one of the most underused online direct response techniques is email. This personalized, targeted and simple tool can boost average conversion rates into the stellar range (e.g., STOPzilla’s emails convert at an astonishing 10%), far higher than other affiliate methods such as PPC. Affiliates should definitely look into using email as part of their campaigns. (Stay tuned for more articles on this subject!)

Direct-response is a powerful strategic tool for affiliates. Do you actively use direct-response techniques in your affiliate campaigns? If so, which ones? How successful are they? We’d love to hear what you think!

If You Build For Quality, The Conversions Will Come.

This is probably the biggest topic in affiliate marketing today. Affiliates have to change the way they think about their business. Gone are the days where you could tack up a flimsy download button-crazy landing page stuffed with slimmer than trim content, and still make bang for your buck.

Nowadays, the game has changed. The role of the landing page has morphed. It’s become the final step in a much larger process watched over carefully by Google’s quality administrators, instead of the be-all and end-all of the online sales funnel that it used to be. The landing page is now just one critical component in a much larger structure that’s driven by the need to provide consumers real value.

Affiliate marketing’s new gold standard involves building out rich, relevant content sites around highly-targeted landing pages that are designed for the sole purpose of closing the sale. The new industry buzzword is “pre-sell”, rather than “hard-sell”. Today’ s affiliate has to do the legwork. They have to run as much value-selling up front through their site, so that when the consumer gets to the landing page they’ve already inspired them with an unmistakable commitment to the highest standard of customer service.

Build Topic-Related Sites With Authentic Content.

The art of the pre-sell is about loading up the front end of your sales funnel with original, useful content and trust building elements that aren’t directly related to the product you’re selling. The content you offer is directly related to the larger problem or need your customer has, and the product becomes the natural solution to that problem rather than the focus of your site. In other words the product becomes an adjunct or aside to the primary goal, which is to provide the consumer with the best solution, i.e., the perfect answer to their search query.<

Creating a site with a Home Page, Features Page, Contact Info, Testimonials, and an authentic Blog is necessary and best way to tackle this pre-sell method. It's also the key to staying alive in the affiliate game. The content on this type of site has to have true value. It has to be relevant to the solution your product provides, and give the customer precisely what they're looking for when they go from one of your PPC ads to your site or product landing page.

Say No To Black Hat.

Shady landing pages don’t last as long as they used to. The industry has definitely tightened its chops. And since Quality Score doesn’t allow you to start fresh with every new campaign or new content type – any bad history you’ve made follows you to your next destination. Having bad history also means you’ll pay a positioning and cost-per-click penalty foe stepping outside the lines.

So needless to say it literally pays to do it right from the very start. If your paid search advertising is opportunistic and inconsistent, or attempts to mislead or deceive users, you’re business will suffer in the end.

Build Your AdWords Accounts Sequentially.

When starting a brand new account, you should build sequentially. First add keywords and ad groups with a tight and narrow focus to your landing pages and give them enough time to earn a good Quality Score (6 at least) while giving the account some history of good performance.

It’s speculative to suggest the ‘right’ size or period of time, but a few weeks with keywords numbering in the dozens or low hundreds seems to work. Equally important is amassing click histories in the hundreds or even thousands – enough data for Google to truly evaluate your performance.

Conserve Your Top Performing URLs.

This one might seem a bit counter-intuitive, but after a little explaining you’ll see why it makes sense. While the precise impact of the historical CTR of a target URL is unknown, it makes sense that Google would give you the benefit of the doubt with any URL that produces consistently strong Quality results.

With this point in mind, you might want to lean on the conservative side with how you use those ‘big ticket’ target URLs. It’s a bit like what a coach goes through in sports when he has to decide how many minutes his star players should play. He doesn’t want to burn out his franchise go-to-guys before they get a chance to win the game, but at the same time he wants his best players on the floor as much as possible to give his team the greatest chance of winning. It’s a balancing act – and the same goes for your PPC campaigns.

Try to give your big URLs a rest in situations where you’re working with unknown performance variables, such as new PPC ads. Google tends to give less leeway with new niches and keywords i your text ads than with historically proven ads, so you don’t want any potentially poor performing campaigns hurting your QS on a landing page that is a proven winner. Try to use your best performing URLs as an anchor for your continued success.

What do you think about the way affiliate marketing is changing? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Post a comment and let’s get the discussion rolling!

Are you planning on attending? Got your tickets yet? ASE is bar-none the biggest industry event of the year, and it just so happens it’s being held in the coolest city on earth. RevenueWire also has a contest going on right now that could send you and a friend there for free (plus some incredible New York City adventures). Sign up for our killer Big Apple contest prizes here: http://www.revenuewire.com/newyorkcontest/

Affiliate Summit East 2010
http://www.affiliatesummit.com/

You can keep track of ASE news and updates on their blog: http://www.affiliatesummit.com/blog/

This three day conference includes an exhibit hall with affiliate merchants, vendors, and networks, as well as multiple tracks of educational sessions covering the latest trends and information from affiliate marketing experts.

The keynote speaker for Monday, August 16 will be Frank Luntz, Political Consultant, Pollster, and Author, and the keynote for Tuesday, August 17 will be Jim Kukral, CEO of JimKukral.com.

Where: Hilton New York
When: August 15-17, 2010
Pricing: Diamond Pass ($2,249), Platinum Pass ($1,249), Gold Pass ($549), Silver Pass ($249)

Start getting ready for the greatest affiliate marketing event on the planet, and we’ll see you there!

From a recipient’s point of view, the biggest problem is that none of these emails seem genuine, personalized, or targeted towards their individual needs. They’re simply blasted out in desperate hope that anyone with basic levels of brain activity will read them. In the end, however, their only lasting impression is to numb the reader’s mind and thoroughly annoy their sense of tranquility. So of course why would your target consumer open and read your emails when they’re so conditioned to receiving junk? It’s more than likely that they will quickly block the address and set any future sends to get automatically dropped into their junk folder. This is the kind of wall legitimate email marketers are up against.

The all-to-common, instinctive grudge against email marketing is unfortunate because it can actually be a very powerful business tool when used the right way. When implemented with skill and tact, it’s a valuable strategy for any online business.

Against The Odds – Challenges Facing Today’s Ethical Email Marketer

The first challenge today’s email marketer has to overcome is the unavoidable perception of webmasters and consumers that your email is spam. The way email has been (ab)used in the past means that at least some people and some machines will peg you as spam mafia right off the bat.

You’ll also have to deal with recipients that use the latest blocking and filtering software. The prevalence of this technology has gone off the charts since the recent spate of email viruses that brought several healthy corporations crumbling to their knees.

In terms of proving your legitimacy to the recipient and the webmasters, time is a limited commodity. Yahoo, AOL and others now enable users to report spam with a single click. That means proof of sound business practices and the ability to capture your consumer’s attention have to happen instantaneously for you to get through all the standard email roadblocks.

Successful email marketing strategies of the future will be determined by one factor: Intelligence. How much you know about your target recipient and what you do with that knowledge will determine whether or not your message hits its mark.

With so many countries now imposing massive penalties on spammers, and most of them keen to make examples of those who abuse the rules, affiliates need to be extra vigilant in all their email based marketing communications.

Throwing Down The Gauntlet – Using Email Marketing The Righteous Way

Even though there are definite obstacles to successful email marketing today, they are by no means insurmountable. A lot of it has to do with taking the time and care to build strong lists of qualified prospects, and creating email communications that offer a value proposition and message your target audience can easily and genuinely identify with.

Here is a bucket list of things you can do to get your email marketing campaigns up to snuff:

Be Real

Don’t send email to people who have no idea who you are or what you want. It’s simple. When you do send an email, make sure its relevant to your reader, and develop a writing personality that is as authentic and accessible as possible. Why? Email is essentially a private and personal medium. It’s used primarily to communicate with people you know and trust. Marketers should respect that fact. Engage your reader’s sense of individual self, rather than talking at them like a typical nondescript advertising pylon.

One way to develop this personal style is by not developing a style at all. Just write like you’re yourself. (Even if you aren’t). Use plain text – it is astoundingly more real looking than graphically designed emails. Frank Kern and Andy Jenkins are masters of writing the “regular guy” type marketing email, and those dudes make a killing.

Also, try using humor and anecdotes to establish a friendly rapport. Write like you would talk if you were there in the flesh, not as if you have a bionic arm that types out 8 gazzilion pre-programmed words per second. Get your mind out of hiding behind that cubicle barricade buried deep in the geiser of Happy Valley Tech Park. Listen to AC/DC’s Thunderstruck in your garage, rock some air guitar, then write your masterpiece. Obviously you still want to be polite and personable, but whatever you do don’t be mechanical. BE REAL.

Get Wise With The Double Opt-In

Speaking of mechanical… It’s time to get technical. We’re gonna preach this science now. The science of the double-opt in. Always use it and you will be free!!!

Seriously. It works in two steps. First you convince them to opt-in to providing their email address via subscription. After subscribing to you send them an email asking them to confirm their intent to subscribe. In this letter of confirmation, include information about the nature of the list they’re about to join, reassure them they haven’t sold their soul to the Devil, and be up front about how their personal details will be used once they’ve signed up. Your confirmation should also explain why they’re receiving this letter and tell them that if they don’t confirm, they will not receive any further communication from you. In this way the double opt-in method provides a simple means for people to unsubscribe from your list.

While this method requires a little more effort on the part of the user, it significantly decreases the threat of spam accusations and also increases the dollar value of your mailing list as part of your overall business portfolio.

Communications Transparency

Nothing to hide means nothing to get angry about later. That’s why any subscription form you use to harvest email addresses and other important info should link to a separate ‘Details Page’ where people can review information on what types of communication you’ll be sending to them. Be up front and transparent and it will pay off in the long run.

Mind Your Ps and Freebies

There are a lot of spam filters available today, and they’re becoming more and more popular among online users. One of the major criteria these applications use to determine what is and what isn’t spam is your email body copy.

Using pulp words like ‘free’, ‘bonus’, ’special’, ‘discount’ too often in your body copy can cause your emails to get banished to the dungeon of spam folders. That’s why you should test your copy first.

A simple way of testing copy is to open an email account with a free provider like Yahoo!, send your marketing emails and newsletters to that dummy address, and see if your mail gets pushed to the bulk mail folder or lands square in the Inbox. Yahoo and other services have spam filters that are active by default when you open an account so this is a great way to test your mettle.

Beef Up Your List Security

At the very least your subscriber list should be password protected. Even better? Keep your list on a system that isn’t connected to the network. This will stop hackers from getting their mitts on your list, and reduce the chance of email viruses scanning your drive for addresses and inadvertently sending infected email to subscribers without your knowledge.

Make Sure Your Lists Are Independent

This tip is for marketers that are managing multiple lists. It’s critical that these names and addresses don’t get mingled and mashed. Keep them discrete. Your subscribers should only ever receive communications from the email list they subscribed to.

Keep Your Records Current

Keep detailed records. That way if you’re accused of spamming you’ve got the information to prove them wrong.

Don’t Forget Virus Protection

This one is obvious but needs to be said. It’s crucial that you run up-to-date anti-virus software at all times. If you don’t – well the consequence could be disastrous.

Ok so that’s a good arsenal of things to look out for. Try them out and let us know what you think. Did any of them work? Do you know of any tips we didn’t mention? Let fly!

No matter how you look at it, it’s inexorable. The thirst for MORE is always THERE, looming, chomping away silently at the back of your brain. And it’s the skilled marketer’s profession to tap into that state of mind and set your conversion neurons on fire.

Go Play In That Traffic

Our innate desire to acquire also applies to the analysis of your website traffic. It’s The Third Law Of The Dynamic Internets. Online marketers are constantly striving to drive more traffic to their sites. You might call it an obsession. Make no bones about it, driving more and more web traffic is definitely an awesome obsession to have. It’s also a necessary one if you want to attain any measure of online success. To prosper online, you straight up have to be able to draw the big crowds.

Get Your Full Monty On

The other half of the money equation is Quality. The traffic that hits your site or sales page has to be grade-A targeted in order to max out the odds of clinching each sale. Actually getting people to your site is the job of your emails, videos, and PPC and content network ads. Once they arrive, however, your site has to deliver on the message you’ve supplied.

You can create this “site stickiness” with streamlined design, succinct and compelling copy, and an efficient site architecture that divinely radiates trust and quality. To get his site luster, it should be planned out and executed to the hilt from day one, not just thrown together pell mell. Why? When it comes to making money on the Web, you simply can’t afford to leave your visitors in the dark.

Mind The Conversion Gap

Think of it this way. Say you get a thousand visitors to your site per day. Not bad, right? But how many of them found what they were looking for? Was the site and product/service what they wanted? Did it inspire them to take action? Did they buy something or leave you an email address for lead generation? Or did they just drop into the abyss of cyberspace, never to be seen or heard from again?

Aye, that’s the crux. You have to drive the traffic AND close the sale. If you only do the former, you’ll walk away vacant handed pushing a cart full of broken dreams.

“Hey Man, You Got a Drizzle In Your Speed Boat”

If a boat has a hole in it, it takes on water. More and more water. Until it sinks. The bigger the hole, the faster it goes down. If your site has holes in it, your business goes under. It’s elementary. It might not fail right away, but eventually it will tank L-A-R-G-E. Solution? It’s not rocket surgery. Fill the holes already.

This brand of fix is easier than you think. First identify where the ship is taking on H2O. Where should you look? One of the most common places to find leaks is in the disconnect between the ad the visitor clicked on, and what they actually found when they landed all boggle-eyed onto your site. Tons of affiliate sites serve up campaigns like this, where the ad message and the offer or site content don’t match. They’re conversion path is riddled with gaps in the sales funnel, like someone took a Tommy Gun and shot up the hull. (Leaking money like a tanker).

The affiliates who own these type of sites typically build their ship for No.1 rankings on a favorite-flavor keyword, then, when they actually lock up the number one spot, they panic because it’s not earning the money they expected. In a wild knee-jerk response, they start chasing more search terms to grab more and more traffic. They’ve missed the point. What they should’ve done first and foremost is find the leaks before its too late.

YO YO! SHARK ALERT!!!

While sales might increase by continuing to drive larger volumes of traffic, it’s totally unsustainable for individual affiliates in the long term. Competition for top page rank combined with rising bid prices make it difficult to maintain as a viable strategy. To solve the problem, you should really be focused on improving bounce and abandonment rates and then worry about any secondary tweaks you want to make.

A Full Shock Of Downloads

The best way to increase sales is to audit your site and test to see how it actually works. Scout where the gaps are at, then close them up good and tight. Along with some spinal-tapping SEO work (meta-tags, title tags, keyword selection and density), you should also scan your entire site with the following points in mind:

• Make the navigation clear
• Include prominent, can’t-miss, compelling calls-to-action
• Include a company profile page
• Make the checkout process easy to navigate
• Make the offers clear and prominent
• Provide and promote SAFE online transactions
• Offer added benefits such as subscriptions to newsletters

Let’s go back to our previous example for a minute. Say you have a 1000 visitors a day and out of those you make 10 sales. Just by fixing the gaps in your site you can easily add 10-20 sales a day, depending how much like Swiss Cheese your sales process is, all without dropping a red penny on bids.

How Many Mistakes Can a Marketer Make?

Here’s a list of the most common mistakes affiliates make when they create their websites and sales pages:

• No profile or bio page (this offers the visitor reassurance)
• Site doesn’t display correctly in Internet Explorer or Firefox (always check your site in both browsers)
• No privacy page
• No testimonials or reviews
• No trust badges or security seals
• No customer service contact info
• Confusing terms of service
• A lack of call to action
• Underwhelming sales copy
• Badly designed contact forms
• Poorly designed landing pages
• Unrelated or inappropriate images or stock photos
• Lack of a subscription strategy

Fixing any one of the above listed glitches will help you cut down on your bounce and abandonment rates, and immediately juice up your online revenue. If you have the mettle to repair them all, you’ll come out of it all with a rawkin’ e-com juggernaut and a bank account stacked to the brim.