Affiliate Marketing information

Supplementary Student Information

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(more to come)

How to use the All In One SEO Pack
Google search trick that will give you more accurate numbers
Hiding the blog title and description so you can use a custom header image
Determining custom header image size
How to "nofollow" a link
How to exclude pages from navigation tabs and sidebars
How to add text navigation to the footer
Using the WP-Sticky plugin
Benefits of the Thesis theme and how to use it
How to do a 301 redirect

How to use the All In One SEO Pack

This information replaces what is found in the first edition of the Affiliate Marketing Schoolbook starting on page 112.

Download All In One SEO Pack from this site:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

Install and activate it the way you normally would, as explained in the Schoolbook.

This screenshot will show you the settings to start with. Actually, you’ll notice when you pull it up on your own screen after you activate the plugin and go to Settings > All in One SEO that there are a few more items that my screenshot was unable to show. You don’t have to change anything in the bottom part anyway, other than to click Update Options when you’re done.

You can click on the name of each option to get more information about them, which is helpful.

The first thing it shows is whether it’s Enabled or Disabled. That’s pretty self-explanatory, but I mention it because apparently whenever you update this plugin, it becomes disabled again, presumably so you are forced to recheck the settings and make sure they’re what you want. Enable it now, and remember to come back and enable it again the next time you update the plugin.

Under Home Title and Home Description, now you can enter the overall site title and description you wrote for the previous lesson. You don’t need to enter any keywords, but I’m not saying you can’t if you want to throw in a small handful of your primary ones. Check both of the next two boxes.

Formatting your titles

This next section of options refers to what you see at the very top of a browser window. This is the meta title that the webmaster designated for that Page (again, remember that we’re not talking about the headline of your post or page). These define the Page to the search engines and can also help the visitor know where they are. We need to determine how those things display for the best search engine optimization.

Look at the screenshot again and notice what shows in the text field after Post Title Format:

%post_title% | %blog_title%

It’s similar under Page Title Format:

%page_title% | %blog_title%

When you see percent signs here, it indicates that what’s between them is code. So if you save the settings like this, when a visitor clicks on a post on your blog, WordPress sees the code and knows you want it to display your actual post title and blog title, separated by a pipe character. |

It pulls this information from a couple of places: the %blog_title% is what you entered in Settings > General, and the %post_title% is whatever you designate it as in the All in One SEO section under the post box when you publish your posts.

By the way, if the All in One section is way at the bottom of your page rather than directly under the post box, you can just grab its gray bar and drag it upwards to wherever you want it.

To see this code in action, go back to:

http://predictidol.com/how-does-this-work

Look at the very top of the browser, above the address bar where the URL shows. It says How does this work? | Predict Idol. Those two items are the specific Page title and the overall blog title, and the code that resulted in that display was, predictably, %page_title% | %blog_title%.

Where there are no % signs, it will use what’s actually typed there. So let’s say your blog title under Settings > General had to leave a few keywords out so it would fit well in the header. You could type something a little more keyword-rich directly into the All in One Post Title Format box, like this:

%post_title% | Vintage Weddings for the Old-Fashioned Bride

When your page is rendered, WordPress will pull replace the code with the name of that particular post followed by a pipe and the actual words “Vintage Weddings for the Old-Fashioned Bride.”

Just remember that if you type it in directly, it will stay that way unless you go in and change it again manually; it won’t reflect any changes you make to your blog title under Settings > General.

Generally, I would leave the rest of the options as they are by default. You can always change them later if you decide to.

Match the rest of the checkboxes to what’s shown on the screenshot, and click on Update Options. At this point, I think it will be just confusing and time-consuming to discuss every option. At some future point, it will all make more sense to you, but this will work for now.

Google search trick that will give you more accurate numbers

When you are doing an allintitle search as described on page 20 of the Affiliate Marketing Schoolbook, you might sometimes find that the number of results for an allintitle search is actually more than what shows for a quoted search. You're thinking, This doesn't make sense. And you're right, it doesn't. Whoever said that Google had to make sense?

Anyway, here's a tip I recently learned from the Warrior Forum that can help you really drill down to the actual number of allintitle results. Do your search and then scroll all the way to the bottom of the Google results page. Click on the last page of results (page 10). Go to the bottom of the page and click on the last page again, whatever it is. Keep doing that until there are no more pages showing.

Now check the number of results. It will probably be far, far less than at first. But to make sure that this is really the number you want, go to the bottom of the page again, and click on the link that says, "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the # already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."

When the SERPs come up again, repeat the first part of the trick, choosing the last page until there are no more pages. The number of results that shows at that point will be more accurate. It probably went up from the previous number but way, way down from the number you got before using this method.

Why does this happen? Who knows with Google? Something about their algorithm gives out conflicting numbers. So don't question, just go with the flow! :) Using this trick will help you gather keywords that you might have discarded before as having too much competition, although I must remind you that for any keyword, your actual bottom-line number of competitors is always just 10. See Lesson 5 for an explanation of why this is so.

How to do a 301 redirect

A 301 redirect is like the change-of-address form you fill out at the post office when you move. If you've moved a page on your site, it tells the server, "Hey, this page has moved; here's where it is now." It is also useful if you have two domains that go to the same site; the second one should be pointed to the site using a 301 redirect.
The best way to do this is by modifying the .htaccess file. Look in the "public_html" folder on your server. If there isn't an .htaccess file, you can create one by opening a plain text editor such as Notepad or TextEdit and saving it with the exact name .htaccess (period at the beginning, nothing at the end).
If you do find an .htaccess file, place your cursor at the very end and hit Return twice. Then add this code, replacing "old" and "new" with your actual file names.
For instance, if you are directing
redirect 301 /oldfolder/oldfile.html http://www.you.com/new.html
First of all, you'll need to download the .htaccess file in the root directory of where all your web pages are stored. If there is no .htaccess file there, you can create one with Notepad or a similar application. Make sure when you name the file that you remember to put the "." at the beginning of the file name. This file has no tail extension.

If there is a .htaccess file already in existence with lines of code present, be very careful not to change any existing line unless you are familiar with the functions of the file.

Scroll down past all the existing code, leave a line space, then create a new line that follows this example:

redirect 301 /old/old.html http://www.you.com/new.html

It's as easy as that. Save the file, upload it back into your web and test it out by typing in the old address to the page you've changed. You should be instantly and seamlessly transported to the new location.

Notes: Be sure not to add "http://www" to the first part of the statement - just put the path from the top level of your site to the page. Also ensure that you leave a single space between these elements:

redirect 301 (the instruction that the page has moved)

/old/old.htm (the original folder path and file name)

http://www.you.com/new.htm (new path and file name)

Hiding the blog title and description so you can use a custom header image

Most people like to create a custom header for their site, rather than the plain text title and description that show up by default. The problem is that the text will still be there "on top" of your header, which of course is not what we want. How do you get rid of it?

There are several ways to accomplish this. The title and description of your site shows up in the header of your site right now because you entered it in your WordPress dashboard under General > Settings. If you delete it there, it will go away, but you lose the advantage of having that text read by the search engines. It also will not appear at the top of the browser, which will make it more difficult for your visitors to identify your site if they have several tabs or windows open. Another disadvantage is that if you publish an RSS feed so people can read your content in their news aggregators, your feed will show up with a blank space where your title should be. So I do not recommend this option; it's not good SEO or even good common sense.

What you can do is go into your WordPress theme and put a value in the CSS that moves the blog title so far off the page no reader could see it, but the search engines still can. Alternatively, you could use the code display: none;, which would accomplish the same thing. There is an advantage to the negative indent method, though. Apparently, some newer text readers will not read "display: none;" so to be safe, I recommend the indent option.

Go into the Editor under Appearances in your dashboard and look for #header in the stylesheet. Add the line in bold below. (Note: #header may be named #masthead or something synonymous in some themes.)

Negative indent method:

#header h1 {
font-size: 4em;
text-align: center;
text-indent: -5000px;
}

Display none method:

#header h1 {
font-size: 4em;
text-align: center;
display: none;
}

The same can be done for the blog description under the title. Look for code like this:

#headerimg .description {
font-size: 4em;
text-indent: -5000px;
}

#headerimg .description {
font-size: 1.2em;
display: none;
}

Go back to your site and refresh the page to make sure it worked. If it didn't, double-check to make sure you added a semi-colon after -5000px or display: none. CSS needs that semicolon to work properly.

FYI: There is some debate as to how Google views the practice of hiding text, but they understand that people like to use custom headers, so if you keep the wording on your custom header the same as the wording that you're "hiding," you’ll be fine. They’ll be able to see that you’re not trying to fool the search engines.

Determining custom header image size

How do you know how big to make the custom image for your header? To find out the exact dimensions, look for this code in the style.css file:

#headerimg {
margin: 7px 9px 0;
height: 192px;
width: 740px;
}

In this example, you would design your image to be 740 pixels wide by 192 pixels high. If you are hiring a designer, give her these dimensions; she'll know what to do with them. If you're doing it yourself, check the help files for the software you are using to design the header.

Much more information about headers and how to customize them for WordPress, check out http://codex.wordpress.org/Designing_Headers

How to "nofollow" a link

The subject of dofollow vs. nofollow can be very confusing, especially when things keep changing. So a lot of Internet marketers are fuzzy on whether you should nofollow outgoing links or not. Google doesn't always clarify things too well, so we are sometimes left guessing.

Page 243 of the Affiliate Marketing Schoolbook says that you should nofollow internal links such as those to your privacy page, contact page, etc. Since the AMS was published, the consensus on this has shifted somewhat. I would no longer worry about doing that.

However, I would still nofollow links to external pages that don't need your "link juice." If you do want to "spend" some Page Rank on the sites you link to, that's fine, meaning that you're allowing those sites to share the benefit of your Page Rank. No sense giving extra SEO benefit to huge news sites or shopping sites. They already have plenty.

You don't "lose" page rank by sharing; it's just that you're more or less vouching for the site in question and want it to benefit. And the more links you link out to, the less page rank each one gets, since you can only pass on about 85% of your own PR and it gets split evenly. Adding nofollow means you don't want to pass page rank on to the linked site.

In a nutshell, nofollowing a link is as simple as adding the code:

rel="nofollow"

right after the URL of a link, like this:

<a href="http://siteyourlinkingto.com" rel="nofollow">Anchor text</a>

It can be done even more easily with the HeadSpace2 plugin by designating nofollow underneath the post box before you publish.

More info on the nofollow tag can be found at http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=96569

How to exclude pages from navigation tabs and sidebars

In WordPress themes that are designed with navigation tabs or buttons above or below the header, any Pages you create in the WordPress administration panel will appear as tabs. Some people like to have the Pages listed only in the sidebar and not in the navigational tabs. Also, since some of the Pages you create are ones you probably won't want there, such as a privacy policy or a sitemap, here's how to remove them from the tabs if you need to.

Go to Appearance > Editor and choose header.php in the right column. Find the "wp_list_pages" code (bolded below):

add_action('wp_list_pages', 'art_list_pages_filter');

Note: This may appear in the functions.php file instead of header.php—you'll have to figure out where your particular theme puts this instruction.

Add this code on the next line (don't forget the semi-colon at the end):

wp_list_pages(exclude=1');

In place of the "1," put the ID numbers of the Pages you want excluded, separated by commas.

NOTE: If you're simply excluding Pages from the Pages widget in the sidebar, go to Appearance > Widgets and open the Pages widget on the right side of the screen by clicking on the little triangle. There should be a field that says "Exclude:" Put in the Page IDs, separated by commas. Make sure to Save.

To find out what the Page IDs are, go to Pages > Edit and hover your mouse over the Page title in question. While doing that, look at the bottom of your browser window. At the very end of the code that shows there will be that Page's number. For instance, if you see this:

http://yoursite.com/wp-admin/page.php?action=edit&post=5

...the number you want is 5.

If at some point you want to put a Page back as a tab or button, just reverse your change by deleting that Page's number from the wp_list_pages code.

How to add text navigation to the footer

I usually put my privacy policy link in the footer because it does not need to be prominent—it just has to be somewhere. First I make sure it's excluded from the navigation tabs, as shown above, and then I go to Appearance > Editor and open footer.php.

If there are already text links in your footer and you want to add the privacy policy at the end, go to the end of the link as shown below and put a space, a hyphen, or a pipe character like this | (the pipe is above the backslash on most keyboards). Put spaces on both sides of the symbol for easy readability, like this:

<a href=”http://yoursite.com/existing-link” title=”Existing Link”>Existing Link</a> |

Then add the code for the privacy policy link, like this:

<a href=”http://yoursite.com/existing-link” title=”Existing Link”>Existing Link</a> | <a href=”http://yoursite.com/privacy-policy” title=”Privacy Policy”>Privacy Policy</a>

Here's how it will look on your site:

Existing Link | Privacy Policy

Using the WP-Sticky plugin

Information coming soon

Benefits of the Thesis theme and how to use it

I've written a blog post about this here, so I'll just direct you to that.

How to do a 301 redirect

A 301 redirect is handy when you create a new page that replaces an old one on your site, but they are not named the same. You don't want to lose the search engine ranking the first one has achieved, so the way not to lose that is to do a 301 redirect.

It is also useful for directing more than one domain to the same site without creating duplicate content.

You may have an .htaccess file on your server already. If so, open it and add the necessary code at the end of whatever's there.

If you don't have an .htaccess file, you can create one by opening Notepad or TextEdit (any plain text editor) and pasting into it the code you need. Save it with this exact name into your root folder: .htaccess

This needs to be at the beginning, just once:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on

So, for scenario #1, to direct an old page to a new one, copy and paste this line into your .htaccess file:

Redirect 301 /oldpage.html http://www.you.com/newpage.html

Of course, you will insert your own info. For instance, if your old page is called aboutme.html and the new one is about.html, and the site is called computerdeals.com, the code would look like this:

Redirect 301 /aboutme.html http://www.computerdeals.com/about.html

Make sure you keep the spaces intact between "301" and the first address, and between the old and the new addresses.

For scenario #2, directing more than one domain to the same site, use this:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.additionaldomain1.com[NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.additionaldomain2.com[NC,OR]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.maindomain.com/$1 [R=301,NC]

Replace www.maindomain.com with your main domain, the one that you want indexed. Replace additionaldomain1.com and additionaldomain2.com with the secondary domains you want pointing to the first.

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