So recently I had cause to do a hell of a lot of research into Google penalties after my lingerie website got booted from the SERPS during the May update.

For one reason or another, it took me about 5 weeks to work out what the issue was and fix it. Actually, “penalty” is probably the wrong way to describe this issue. It’s more of a “filter” which is much less problematic to deal with!

So I thought it would be dashed nice to point out what I think went wrong for me, why, and how you can make your Wordpress blog duplicate content proof.

Wordpress Category Arrangements Are The Villans Of This Piece!

As I’m sure y’all know, the way that Wordpress stores your carefully crafted posts can be problematic. Often this leads to the same information being displayed under more than one URL. In my case, I created a category for each product brand and populated it with a single post. This meant the same post ended up being indexed twice thusly:-

SiteName.com/BrandName

SiteName.com/BrandName/BrandPost

Although this particular issue happened because of my particular site structure, it can happen to pretty much any Wordpress blog due to your content being indexed from many different directions.

Causes Of Wordpress Duplicate Content

• Monthly Archives
• Tags
• Posts By Author
• Trackback URLs
• Next / Previous Entries Links
• RSS Feed Content
• Wordpress Permalinks adding in A /category/ directory to URLS accessed from certain parts of your blog.

Lots of Potential Woes There Hey? And Google Might Not Like It AT ALL…

Phew, so as you can see… there are lots of opportunities for Google to see your site content twice. They quite specifically say they’re not too keen on this, although they do also say it shouldn’t be a problem if its non-malicious. BUT if you’re unlucky enough to be flagged up as having dupe content for less than pure reasons, this might happen to your organic traffic stats: -

Ouch.

But Fear Not, It Can Be Fixed - Even Better… There Are Plugins To Help You!

So here it is, your handy dandy guide to eliminating duplicate content in your Wordpress blog!

• First off, lets stop Google indexing all those pages from lots of different directions. I used Joost De Valk’s No Follow Plugin. I liked this because he’s very carefully explained why you might want to take some of the options within the interface. Whilst you’re on his site, grab his RSS Footer plugin. It means you can insert backlinks to your site within your RSS feed so that anyone reproducing your hard-earned content on their site rewards you with a backlink, and doesn’t claim credit for your work!
• If it’s an issue, get rid of that cumbersome /category/ in your permalinks with the Top Level Categories plugin.
• Sort out your Robots.txt file to make sure Google doesn’t index that RSS or other content in Wordpress that can cause dupe content horror for you and your blog. Shoemoney said it better than I can here.
• If like me, your category structure might cause something to be indexed twice but you still want your categories to be indexable - try a 301 redirect as Google suggests. Don’t know how to do that? Panic ye not - I found an amazingly simple to use Wordpress 301 Redirect Plugin. It’s got really cool stats on it too. It was this particular plugin that sorted my own issues right out. I’d already used most of what I’m chatting about above, it just wasn’t quite enough!
• Finally, just to be totally belt and braces about things, give your posts individual meta tags with this Great Meta Tag Plugin. I doubt you’d get a dupe content issue from these, but while we’re doing the 30,000 mile Wordpress service I think it’s a great addition for a whole lotta reasons.

Phew. Finished? Here’s The Effect Of My De-Duping Efforts…

Within about 3 days of applying these principals to my blog, the traffic began to return and is still steadily increasing every day as Google sorts its way through my site.

I think that’s a fairly good example of just what a massive effect duplicate content can have on a site, but also just how quickly the changes you make can improve things.

Finally…

Well, this has been a long guide but I hope really worthwhile in helping people deal with dupe content. If I have missed anything out or if anyone knows a good plugin for this type of issue, please do post it in the comments field and I’ll add any interesting ones to the bottom of this post.

Happy De-duping guys!!

Just a quickie by way of a follow up to my post on how to write content at the product level, and get some of that lovely longtail traffic arriving at your affiliate site.

I thought it might be useful for you guys to see some examples of the traffic I got through to the blog after writing that particular article. Now, bear in mind that I wrote about a certain type of swimsuit right in the middle of a page with an affiliate marketing article in it, and without a swimwear relevant page title.

Despite this, I have had around 30 search engine referrals for swimwear and Calvin Klein relalted search terms to AffiliateStuff in the last 30 days.

Some Other Examples I Found In My Stats: -

Halterneck swimsuit 50’s leg

Retro swimsuit

Low leg swimsuit

Retro Swimwear

So Some Surprisingly Good Rankings There!

This incomg traffic demonstrates exactly how you can build up a stream of highly relevant, lucrative traffic to your affiliate site without it being stupidly difficult. Yes, this blog probably has good incoming links and page rank… but it’s also not relevant at all to swimwear! I think any site with a few decent incoming links could rank similarly.

So Here’s Some Traffic Maths..

Think it’s too hard to create a good, free stream of SEO traffic? That article took me ten minutes to write. If you spend ten minutes per day for a whole month and get similar amounts of traffic from each of your carefully crafted articles you’re looking at 930 UV’s to your site. Do it every day for a year… 11,160 UVs per month for ten minutes work per day.

Now Lets Talk About The Money…

OK, what would that equate to in earnings? Lets take a really conservative example and say £8 per hundred clicks. £892.80 would be your bottom line.

Look, I know this isn’t a terribly scientific example, but what I am trying to demonstrate is that if you just spend a very small amount of consistent time each day putting something out there that will make you money…. that’s what will happen! You’ll build a successful income stream.

Would You Like £892.80 extra to spend every month?

Well, you know how to do it now don’t you.  So get into it and write that content! There’s loads of longtail traffic out there to be captured, you just have to step up and do the necessary to get it.

Easy eh?

Never mind all them hugely popular White Car posts by the UK’s very own Kieron Donoghue, those are so last week man! I mean come on… we’re educated worldly people, it’s time for affiliate land’s very own David Attenborough to tell you all about the fascinating, nay terrifying world of the white ant!

What On Earth Are You On About Kirsty?

Ah, well you see I’m now a world expert on “White Ants”. These demonic little buggers are otherwise known as Termites and are bewilderingly destructive.

Yes, OK Kirsts… Why Are YOU Going On About Them?

Well, I recently discovered my New House had a wee termite issue when it had its building inspection done. Very fortunately the termites had only been there for around 6 weeks. Even MORE fortunately, it was still the property’s current owners’ problem to get rid of them and fix the damage. In those 6 weeks though, the hungry wee beasties did a surprising amount of damage!

So I got interested in termites and now I’m telling you about them - ok?

Termites and Their Wily Ways… A 60 Second Guide

Termites get their nutrition by absorbing cellulose, a plant based material. What are houses made of? Wood. What are trees? Yep, you’ve guessed it - plants!

So this is where the conflict with these guys comes about. They love your house. They want to live in your house. They’ll also eat it from the inside out, and you quite likely won’t realise it until something in your house Ummm… disintegrates.

Termites totally wreck the superstructure of a house, indulging in a gourmet experience on ceiling joists and other important structural bits. It can cost thousands to repair if they’re missed.

So now you know why I took such an interest when I heard my new house had some unwelcome guests! Fortunately the house superstructure is made of Cypress Pine - which termites simply won’t touch (phew) so that’s why our damage was limited to two doorframes.

I’d have hated to have been doing some renovations and found behind a wall something like THIS

<< Arrghhh!!!

Termites will quite literally turn wood to dust. Is the dust termite poop I wonder? Talk about adding insult to injury!

Kirsty, Why Are You Buying A House With Bloody Termites In?

I know someone will ask me this. Well, because 1 in 3 houses in the suburb I’m buying in have termites. It’s a problem in this part of the world. If we’d passed on the house we might have simply bought another one that would have the same problem at some stage down the line (when we’d have to pay for it!).

Besides, they’re dead now. Our horrified house vendors dragged round their exterminator - the bloke who’d given the all clear to the house 4 WEEKS previously - and got them treated.

Finally…. a Termite Information Video

We should think ourselves lucky really. Apparently there’s a dreadful new breed of Termite in the States that will not only eat the wooden bits of your house - but will also sing at you during the process.

Only in America….

I had a great Ask Kirsty from Sam a couple of weeks back. He’s spent a whole load of time, created a really rather nice site with heaps of unique content and a nice clean look. The problem? No real sales and a dribble of traffic! Where’s he gone wrong then?

Hi Kirsty,

At 26 years old, I’ve been working in a company for nearly 4 years, and despite getting paid a good salary, and having plenty of office banter to get me through the day, I’m not really content.

My latest site: www.LawnmowerReview.co.uk took me a good few weeks of part-time work, and has shown little signs of success. It averages about 50 visits per day, from organic Google traffic. Last month it made about £45 profit, from Adsense and affiliate commission.

Nothing to write home about, I know it’s a classic, and you no doubt get asked this question many times per week, but could you share some of your experience with me, and have any immediate suggestions on how to improve traffic to my site? are there any obvious things I am doing wrong?

I think I need to create more backlinks as a priority, could you advise me on the best way to do this?

Another problem I seem to have - is that only about 50% of my site is indexed in Google, when I type ’site:www.lawnmowerreview.co.uk’ into the Google search field. It’s been there for a couple of months now, not sure why it’s not indexed yet.

Thanks for your time, Kirsty.

Hi Sam,

I have to say your site is a rather impressive effort with all that content and the comparison tables. I think it can do much better though, so here are some basic pointers: -

Your Indexing Issues
I’m not sure how many pages your site has. I’m seeing 113 at the moment, and I can also see you have a good sitemap linked to from every page of the site.

I think that leaves us with a couple of options as to the cause.

1 ) lack of incoming links. If you can get some decent incoming links not just to your home page, but also to your internal content pages and even your individual mower pages it will help Google to “find” your site from many different directions.
2) Site cross linkage. Google makes determinations of which pages are most relevant within a site in much the same way as it does via a search engine. If a page is linked to from many different places it must be key to the site content. If its not, then the big G-meister just can’t be assed and may not index your page!

Make Sure As Many Pages As Possible Link To Each Other…

To improve the cross linkage between all your pages, you could implement “previous” and “next” links between all the individual lawnmower pages. If you do this, make the lawnmower name the anchor text as Google will also use internal anchor text to determine what a page is actually about. i.e. if you use the anchor text “qualcast lawnmower” Google will know that’s what the page its pointing to is about and make it more likely to rank in the SERPS for that term. Simple, eh?

Your other option might be to alter your menu structure slightly so that every page has a full list of all menu items listed in the code, but use a drop down functionality so that users only see the sub menus they are interested in.

Alternatively, use both!

Improving Traffic To Your Site: Well, I must be starting to sound like a broken record to some people… the key to more traffic is generally more content targeting more search terms (and incoming links, but I’m getting to that!!).

Content, Content, Content..

If I were you I would look at your keywords at the product level. How are people searching for the lawnmower models? How could you build some additional, useful content around those search terms?

Page Titles

I also notice that your page titles are not as optimized as they could be. I would alter these and make them a wee bit stronger. i.e. here is one of your model pages: -

http://www.lawnmowerreview.co.uk/Qualcast/PowerTrak3400.html?pth=2

Currently the page title for this is “Qualcast Power-Trak 3400”

I would make it: -

“Buy Qualcast Power-Trak 3400 Lawnmower : Qualcast Lawnmower Reviews : Power Trak 3400”

That’s probably a wee bit too long for a really effective page title length, but you get the idea of how you should repeat things and include other terms around it to make as many search term combinations as you are able to in a relatively small area.

Make Better Use Of Your Traffic
You’ve not asked about this directly, but I think you should improve on page calls to action. Make the images into clickable links going through to your main merchant (the one with the cheapest price). People tend to browse pages on Auto Pilot and will often get frustrated if they don’t see links where they expect them. I would also make all the elements in your price comparison tables clickable for the same reason.

Finally, make a big text link at the bottom of your review saying something like: -

Check Out The Best Price On a Power Trak 3400>>

Possibly re-include your review table at the bottom to make your navigation out to your merchant accessible to those who scroll to the bottom of your page. Don’t miss a single sales opportunity!!

Get That Link Love Sorted…

Finally, the thorny issue of incoming links. I did a whole Ask Kirsty on this a while back, so I think I will simply round off by referring you to that!! There were some good suggestions from others in the comments of this post too, so don’t forget to read them.

How To Build Effective Links

Good luck, and let us all know how you get on. I reckon if you can put together a site like that, you’re pretty close to getting things right

An interesting question from Rod that I’m sure I’ve touched upon before, but this is one of those topics that does bear regular revisitation - is PPC still the go for new affiliates?

Here’s his question: -

Hi Kirsty
I stumbled on your blog while doing some initial research into affiliate marketing and was very impressed the writing is refreshingly clear and actually pointing to one of your niches (the lingerie site) is generous - I haven’t found many people who actually give examples of their sites.

If you have time (I’m sure you get plenty of questions from latecomers to AM) I wonder if you could tell me if there is still any mileage in doing PPC campaigns
- I read so many different accounts on the web and it’s pretty hard to be sure of getting current information, any advise you could give to a struggling newcomer would be appreciated.

I’ve been following Jeremy Palmers Blackink seminars in the states
http://www.theblackinkproject.com which has a lot of good information but the course is aimed mainly at people developing affiliate sites and for me at the moment this seems like biting off more than I can chew - I thought running a some PPC campaigns might be a better way to get a feel for things - do you think this is realistic?

Hello Rod,

There’s Still Money In Them Thar Hills

PPC can still make you good money. Most of my income comes from this, although I’m using landing pages and diversifying into SEO again also. I guess what you are asking is “Does direct to merchant still work?”

I say… yes it is!! If I were you, I’d be looking to try out dipping a toe in with a few direct to merchant campaigns on Google and perhaps a few simple landing pages on Yahoo.

The good thing about direct to merchant activity is that it gives you the ability to test out a market before you go spending your precious time building a site around a particular merchant or niche. Although many merchants no longer want affiliates competing on their URL in Adwords in particular, that doesn’t always mean you can’t give MSN a whirl. Also, there are plenty of merchants still out there very happy to allow direct to merchant activity.

Don’t Take A Scattergun Approach…
I will caution you though. Please, please, please be careful what you bid on!! Think before you bid 50p on the word “chocolate” or something, lol. It’s sad but true that quite a few newbies chuck traffic at a merchant and hope for the best. This is not the way to go. Really sit down and have a good old think about what you might search for if you wanted to buy your target products… base your campaign on very tightly defined terms for very specific things, and make sure you send your traffic right to the spot on the merchant site where they will find what they seek. Therein lies the holy grail - conversions!!

My Best previous posts in the keyword research area were about Keyword Research Techniques and also a bit in a broader post about Where To Send PPC Traffic & Identify Keywords.

I Wouldn’t Dream Of Creating A Site In An Untested Market…

I have based every single site I’m developing this year on a direct to merchant PPC campaign. I use them to gather information about which merchants work in which sectors. Once I know a merchant or niche can cut it, I am safe to spend my time creating a good site around them… so I think your idea is a good one.

Let us know how you get on Rod, the next thing you need to do is… something! Get into it mate!!

I’ve been meaning to do this post for a very long time. I’ve now written so many “Ask Kirsty” and various “Affiliate How To” guides that when read together they’d make a damned fine overview of how to find your way through the maze that is affiliate marketing.

So get your looking gear around this guys and gals, it’s Kirsty’s handy dandy one-stop affiliate marketing learning shop!!

So Where Do You Start In Affiliate Marketing?

• First things first, you’ll need something to sell! Easier said than done however. So you’d best dash off right now and find out how to Find That First Affiliate Niche. Once you’ve focussed in on a niche, you’d best think a little bit more about how to identify product areas you will do well in and Get Some Information on What Works From Merchants.

See? That was easy wasn’t it?! OK, so now that you have your product area in mind

You’d Best Research Some Keywords

• Now, some people might be surprised that my next recommended step is finding your keywords as opposed to sorting out a site. But if you feed your keyword data into your site structure plan you will have a much stronger offering for the search engines. So first off, Have A Sit Down And Brainstorm Your Keywords.

Now You Can Start Thinking About Your Super-Duper Affiliate Site!

• You don’t have to be a technical genius to put together a really nice affiliate site these days, so don’t panic. My personal recommendation is to use a Wordpress Blog. It’s dead set easy. Panic ye not if you have never heard of it, for Auntie Kirsty put together a Basic Guide To Everything You Need To Create A Wordpress Site. Even better, she has also provided another Wordpress guide featuring Everything You Need To Create A More Advanced Site.
• Finally, you will need to create some compelling site content that will be good for SEO. Check out the following content guides which are available FREE from your local friendly affiliate guru: -
• Writing Content For SEO - It’s Not Rocket Science
• My Suggestion If You’re Rubbish At Writing
• How To Write SEO Friendly Posts At The Product Level

Gosh Darn It, You’re Racing Along Now!

• You’d best perform some basic SEO on your site. Building Links Effectively and carefully is very important - so give some of that a go.
• To gain an overview of how Search Engines look at websites and the basic bones of how they rank them check out my basic guide to SEO - Definitions and On Site Factors.

Confident Enough To Enhance Your SEO With Some PPC?

• Then you’ll need my Google Adwords Beginners Guide!
• …and here’s a handy wee overview should you find that you Can’t Make Your First PPC Attempt Pay.

So there it is. There’s a fair amount of reading there for you, but when you’ve finished I hope you’ll drop me a comment and tell me what you think. Are you further forward? Where are the gaps in your knowledge now? Feedback will help give me more ideas about what everyone wants me to talk about.

Oh, and if you like this article… please share it with others. Stumble it, Digg it, Sphinn It, darn it…. even just do it the old fashioned way. Tell people about it verbally!

Well guys and gals, another week as an expat affiliate is drawing to a close. I’d wanted to take the time to do a really good meaty affiliate article to round things off. But there’s a problem. I’m knackered!!

It’s 4pm, I’ve just cleaned the apartment (yes, international jetsetting affiliates do chores too), and I can hardly keep my eyes open. The thing is, this has been one of the most exciting weeks of my life. Not only are a lot of my wedding preparations starting to really come together - two other huge things have happened.

1. Kieron Gave Myself & Duncan A Holiday To Use As A Mini Moon.

What a guy! I’m pleased to confirm Duncan and I are all booked up to leave for a fabulous trip courtesy of Sunshine.co.uk - Chris Clarkson of “UK Affiliate Manager of The Year” fame has been great and made all the arrangements for us after 2 late night MSN travel consultations!

He has got us sorted for an all inclusive week’s holiday in the gorgeous Roca Nevaria Hotel, Tenerife.

The fact that we’re going to be spending the few days after we get married here just makes it all the more special.

I’ve never been on a holiday in a place like this before, so I am really looking forward to blimping out beside the pool and taking full advantage of all the free booze and snacks!

As if winning a great holiday weren’t distraction from work enough…

2. We Bought A House On Tuesday!

Woohoo!! Its a done deal, and its a dream home. We went and finalised our mortgage yesterday and gave the real estate agent a $25,000 deposit cheque. After a rather nailbiting day of negotiations between ourselves and the vendors on Tuesday we agreed our price and signed a contract.

We are now the proud owners of a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom Queenslander style house on a gorgeous rainforest block.

So yeah… we’re absolutely thrilled about that now, but boy did we get ourselves nice and wound up during the housebuying process. We’ve not been worth five minutes work this week and just feel absolutely wrung out. The various stresses, anticipations, and endorphin type highs have knackered us. We also can’t sit down to work for five minutes without one of us starting a conversation thusly: -

“Hey hun, do you know what would look cool in the new house?”

So I apologise for not having had time to look at some meaty affiliate issues. I also apologise to anyone who has e-mailed me with Ask Kirsty questions this month. I’ll get to them in the end - I promise, so please be patient with me, lol.

Perhaps next week will be more normal - I can’t see how we could top this

Apart from other nice surprises in my inbox recently, POR sent me an e-mail over the weekend that impresses the hell out of me! I’ve got an old site which I used to use to push through traffic to an adult toy shop they used to have on board. It gets negligable traffic these days, so I didn’t bother my backside updating when the merchant left.

I was delighted to get the following e-mail on Sunday: -

On the 06th June a visitor to your website clicked on an Affiliate URL for a Merchant who has closed its Affiliate Program with Paid On Results.

The visitor was shown our Expired Links page, and given several other related Merchants they may be interested in. This visitor followed one of our related links and went onto make a purchase with Sex Shop 365.

Normally the commission due would just be added to your account, however in this case you are currently not an Affiliate of Sex Shop 365. In order for us to pass the commission onto you we first need you to join the Sex Shop 365 Affiliate Program

You can do this as normal though your Affiliate Control Panel, once you have joined and been approved for this Merchant we will add the commission due to you into your account.

If you have any questions please let us know.

So I duly joined the programme as they suggested, and whaddya know? £3.64 magically appeared in my affiliate account a day or so later. I’ve probably not been paying attention, but I’d no idea POR had this functionality. I think it’s a great thing for affiliates such as myself who have hordes of old, unloved, and out of date sites.

Not a huge commission, but definately one of the sweetest i’ve had in recent times. So a belated “well done” to Paid On Results, and yet another reason why I should be doing more with them to add to my list!

Well, as many blog entries and forum posts will attest the A4U Awards was (literally) a blinding night with many a sore head and tuxedo-clad work appearance the following day! I was thrilled to discover that I had gotten a “highly commended” in the Blog section (Kieron won as per last year).

As The Dust Settled…

Imagine my surprise when I was sat in my jim jams this morning and I got a mysterious cloak and dagger MSN message from the winner himself, suggesting that I might like to just read his latest blog post as there was something there about me.

Hmmm… What’s Kieron Been Blogging About?

“Cool!” I thought, and jauntily took off to read the latest goss. I knew it wasn’t bad, as I’d not been at the awards to disgrace myself! I thought it was perhaps a nice word for the runner up. I was delighted and overwhelmed when I realised Kieron had kindly arranged for me to have the prize that went with the award!

Sunshine.co.uk provided a week’s all inclusive holiday in Spain for the lucky winner of the top prize. They have very kindly agreed that we can use the prize immediately after our wedding as a “mini moon” whilst we are waiting around for the A4UExpo.

Cheshire Cat Put To Shame

I’ve not been able to wipe the smile off my face all day. What we were going to do immediately after our wedding was turning into a bit of a headache for us. We’d already sorted a great honeymoon, but we simply couldn’t just go back to the spare room at my parents house the day after we got married.

So Thanks Kieron & Sunshine.co.uk, we are thrilled, greatful and right now we genuinely love you for doing this for us.

The Only Downside…

Is that my jokey post about second prize being an autographed picture of Kieron and a weekend in Butlins at Bognor Regis has now been cancelled!!

So a couple of weeks ago I was happily performing my morning routine. Tea, Jim Jams, and Stats (Oh what bliss!). I was starting my day with a quick potter around Google Analytics.

“I’ll just check yesterdays traffic on my lingerie site” I muttered.

I was confronted with this: -

“Goodness.” I remarked. “Where the hell has that come from?” This site usually gets 800 to 1100 UV’s a day, of which 600 to 700 is from PPC so I wondered what had ocurred.

“F***!!” I remarked.

“F***!! F***!! F***!!” Shouted my friends three year old son from the spot where he’d sneakily concealed himself in one of my oversized beanbags *oops*

After a short bout of de-programming for the child I was back at my computer. It transpired that it was not in fact paid traffic (thank god) but that I’d gotten a bit of a namecheck and link from a really huge Finnish site for one of my pages.

MTV3.fi

As you’ll see, my link was at the bottom of the page and they’d linked to the Adwords click ID also. (If anyone can tell me what the hell this site is about I’d appreciate it - I gathered the page was about Miraclesuit swimwear!)

“Ohhhh!!” I thought. “Wrong language, but maybe I’ll have hundreds of sales. Woo hoo!!”

My head full of dreams about riches beyond my wildest avarice, I off trot to check my sales stats. And guess what the massive figure was? NADA!! ZIP. HEE HAW! In total I got about 4,500 visitors through that link over the next 2 to 3 days. Not a sale in sight. I was SO disappointed!

*sigh* I suppose the moral of the story is that high traffic volume doesn’t always mean huge sales. It has to be relevant traffic, right market etc. Oh well, maybe one day I’ll get that link from a major UK site and score thousands of sales. Until then…. back to the internet coalface to do it the hard way!