Permalinks are a great way to optimize your blog post URLs.  If you read my article on Wordpress Permalinks,  you may be using the same permalink structure that I use, namely this one:

/%category%/%postname%/

With this type of permalink structure, your post URLs will look like this:

http://affiliate-minder.com/wordpresstutorials/install-wordpress-theme/

This is an actual URL from this site.  See that the %postname% is replaced with the name of the post, and the %category% is replaced with the name of the category.  I know, its fairly obvious, but bear with me.

What if you used nested categories?

Suppose you have a category called “blue-widgets”, that you setup to be a sub-category of the “widgets” category?

Well the post URL would now look like:

http://mydomain.com/widgets/blue-widgets/the-post-name/

See how Wordpress includes the full category path to your post?

That’s great for SEO, especially if you create your categories carefully to make sure that categories are grouped into “silos”, where you have the main category at the top, and all of the highly related categories as sub-categories of that main one.

However, there is one thing that you need to be aware of.

Wordpress sets up “category” pages, which all posts in that category are posted to. An example is the Wordpress Tutorials category on this site.  Click the Wordpress Tutorials link in the top nav bar.

You are taken to this page where you can see the most recent posts in the category:

http://affiliate-minder.com/category/wordpresstutorials/

Look at the URL.  Because this is a category page, the word “category” is used by default in the URL before the actual category name (“wordpresstutorials”).

Now there is a plugin you can use called “Top Level Categories” that will remove the “category” word from these “category page” URLs.

The above URL would then look like this:

http://affiliate-minder.com/wordpresstutorials/

Much better, right?

Well….. There are some limitations to this plugin, and one is that it wont work when your permalink structure is set to:

/%category%/%postname%/

Why?  I have no idea.  But if you use the same permalink structure I do, this plugin is no use.

You do have another option.  You can specify a word to be used instead of the word “category” in these category page URLs.

Login to your Wordpress Dashboard, and click on the Settings –> Permalink menu.

(Click to enlarge).

There is a box where you can enter the Category base.  If this is left empty, Wordpress will use the word “category” when displaying category pages.

My advice here is to insert a word that covers your main niche.  That way all of your category pages will have an extra keyword in them.

For example, it your site was one dogs, you could enter the word “dogs” (or maybe if your domain already had that word in it, you could enter “canine”, “mans-best-friend”, or something similar, but preferably a word or phrase that is searched for).

As with all things SEO, don’t overdo this optimization.  If you cannot think of a word to use, simply leave it blank.

There is a lot of planning and decision-making involved in starting an affiliate site. It is tempting to take short-cuts because everyone wants to see quick results. However, I cannot emphasize enough the need to take your time.

Follow each stage carefully, and don’t move on to the next until you are 100% happy with the previous step.

Let’s look at an overview of the complete process from start to finish, a kind of summary for the whole of this course.

2.1. Process of building a “FAT” Affiliate site

1. Identify a profitable niche (which includes checking for products that you can promote).
2. Carry out keyword research to find out what people are actually searching for at the search engines.
3. Analyze your keyword research and split your keywords into groups, according to their future use on your site.
4. Sign up with a web host, so that you can get your site on the web. This particular stage is very important since not all web hosts are equal and it is a pain to change over to a new host when you find your current one is not living up to your expectations. To confuse matters further, price is not a good indicator of quality.
5. Buy a domain name, and set up your host ready to upload your pages.
6. Create pages “pre-selling” the products you are promoting. It is important to create quality content that helps your visitors with their buying decisions, as this not only makes your site valuable, it also helps prevent being labelled as a thin affiliate.
7. Add tracking code to your pages, so that you can analyze where your visitors come from, how many, and how they found your pages in the first place.
8. Join affiliate programs that provide products related to your chosen niche. It is often better to have the basic site up an running before trying to sign up for affiliate programs, since many merchants will want to see the site you are going to promote them on.
9. Add affiliate links, and/or Adsense to your pages.
10. If you are selling your own product, create a sales page for the product, sign up with Paypal or another payment processor, and add a Buy button or link to your sales page. Also you need to create an eBook “cover image” for your product, and add this image to the pages of your site so that anyone visiting a page, can see your eBook and click through to the eBook sales page if they are interested in more information.
11. Link your pages together into a site, so that it helps your visitor, the search engines, and your rankings.
12. Upload what you have done so far so that it can be found and indexed by the search engines. Get a link to your site from another site that is already in Google so that the search engines can find your site.
13. Add quality content in the form of articles that are 100% relevant to your niche. These again should be quality articles, which are informative, and provide a genuine “value” to your site. Add these slowly over time, so that your site appears to grow in size naturally.
14. Get links to your site. This can be done in several ways, and not all of them are painful!

Repeat steps 13 and 14.

That’s it. You may not be following every step (depending on whether you are going to offer your own products), but that list of points are the ones you will follow on the road to a fat affiliate site.

A word of warning, and I cannot stress this enough - You can spend weeks or months going through all these steps and create a large site that is well designed, but unless your content (the stuff you write on the pages) is quality, valuable and genuinely informative, your site will not do well. The most important part of any site is the content, so don’t skip on quality. Make sure that you would be proud to show your content to a Google engineer. If you can’t honestly say you would be happy to do this, don’t publish it on your site. You will be killing any potential your site had to do well.

In the “leaked” raters report mentioned earlier, Google goes on to highlight several common spam techniques.  Here they are:

Spam technique 1 - Sneaky redirects

Have you ever clicked on a search result in Google, but the URL you end up at is not the one listed in Google’s results? = SNEAKY REDIRECT.
Similarly, if you click on a link on a website and it takes you to a URL that is not the one referenced by the link = SNEAKY REDIRECT.

Not all redirects are sneaky.  Some are there for good reason and don’t try to deceive your visitors.  Examples of this might include using your .htaccess file to redirect to affiliate links.  This technique is widely used to hide affiliate links from visitors, or make URLs shorter and easier to remember.  I doubt Google would include this as a sneaky redirect.  Another safe type of redirect is a 301 redirect typically used to move a site from one domain to another.

If your redirect is not there to deceive your visitor, then it is probably OK.

Spam technique 2 - 100% Frame

This technique is a form of cloaking.  On clicking a link in Google’s search results, the page you are taken to has the URL of the page you expect, but a frame is used to show the contents of a completely different page.

The result is that Google’s spider indexes and ranks the original page, but the page shown to visitors is a different one.

This is considered spam.

Spam technique 3 - Hidden Text / Hidden Links

Invisible text is easily done.  Create the text or links in the same colour as the background colour.  To the visitor, that text is invisible.  To the search engine spiders that see only the raw HTML, they are there.

Often these can be spotted when you visit a web page by using the keyboard combination CTRL + A.  This selects all text on the page, and hidden text can then be seen as they are highlighted by the browser.

Another form of hiding links is to hyperlink to a page using punctuation.  e.g. linking a “.” to a webpage.  Its not invisible, but it is an attempt to hide a link from the visitor.

Another form of link hiding that I have seen is to have a phrase hyperlinked to several different documents.  To the visitor, the hyperlink looks like a normal link, but move your mouse cursor along the link and you will see the address in the status bar at the bottom of your browser change to reveal different URLs for different parts of the phrase.

Spam technique 4 - Porn on expired domains.

A technique often used by webmasters is to buy old domains with existing PR and backlinks and using that PR to get ranked well for an unrelated topic.

This relates to all niches, not just Porn.

Spam technique 5 - Secondary Search Results / PPC

These are pages set up purely to collect PPC revenue without providing much relevant content of their own.  e.g. Traffic Equalizer sites.  For those still arguing that TE is a good tool (you are in the minority), Google specifically mentions that the pages it wants marked as spam are those that contain search results feeds, and not much else.

Google also mentions sites that have directories setup to include DMOZ listings.  However, it only specifies that these should be penalised if they contain PPC advertising e.g. Adsense.  Those setup without Adsense are obviously providing the visitors with a service and should be ignored (links to relevant sites in your directory is value added for your visitor).

Think about the motives for setting up a directory like this.  Is it for revenue, or for visitors? If the former, Google want it marked as spam.  If it is the latter, you are OK for now.

Spam technique 6 - Thin Affiliate Doorway pages

To cut through this section and give you a summary, Google considers affiliate pages that don’t provide useful content to the visitor as spam.  e.g. a page setup purely for ushering visitors to an affiliate program is considered spam, if that page does not provide the visitor with useful information or a useful service.

Pages that add value, and are useful to the visitors even if the affiliate links were removed are OK.

What this means is that you need to provide interesting, unique content on your pages.  Create a page that will really interest your visitor, and then affiliate links are OK.

Again, ask yourself this question.

“If I removed all advertising from this page, would it be useful and/or interesting to a visitor?”

If yes, your page is safe.  If not, it would be marked as spam by a rater.

The report continues with the same sort of guidelines, but nothing new.

To Summarize this report:  To keep your affiliate sites safe:

1. Create every single page for the visitor.
2. Give the visitor a useful service.

For Example

• Review something, then provide an affiliate link.  That is fine.
• Do surveys on the site and provide the survey results, and your affiliate links are probably fine.
• Create a page that compares prices from different sources and your page is fine.
• Create a page that reviews different merchants, and helps your visitor make the correct buying decision and you are fine.
• Create unique, relevant and interesting/entertaining content on your site, and the affiliate links will be fine.
• Don’t use any technique that is only there for the search engine spider.

For your affiliate site to be safe, create a site that provides “a service” to your visitors.

Google say:

“Do not call a page affiliate spam when an affiliation is only incidental to the message and purpose of the website”

and

“Would this site remain a coherent whole if the pages leading to the affiliate were taken away?”

Is this last point an indication that you should have pages without affiliate links on them?

In my opinion, probably 99% of affiliate sites being built today are “thin”, and won’t do well in Google.

If a thin site gets spotted, it gets penalised.

OK, so how can you make sure your site is not labelled as thin?

This Course is intended to guide you towards building profitable affiliate sites that offer the visitor good value, and won’t be penalised by Google.

In all of your site building activity, “provide something no other site does.”

For example

Think about an affiliate site on Scrapbooking.  There is a range of products you could sell from Amazon or other stationery merchants, but you do run the risk of becoming a thin affiliate, unless you help your visitor in some way, or provide your visitor with something valuable or different that no other site does.

Well, what if you had your own eBook on scrapbooking?  You could put links to it from every page of your site in one of the margins.  You could also promote and sell a range of scrapbooking products from different merchants.  In this way, not only are you providing something unique (your own eBook on the subject), you are also helping your visitors find sources of materials for their hobby.

Incidentally, one of the very first eProducts given to Nicheology members was an eBook on Scrapbooking (in fact, I believe that product is still available for new members).

Nicheology is a membership site that gives its members two eBooks a month that they can edit and call their own.  The site is capped, so new members often have to go on waiting lists to join.  If you are interested, you can join the waiting list at the Nicheology site.

The way this works is that you take the Scrapbooking “Product in the Rough” (as Nicheology calls it), edit it, and compile it into your own eBook.  This can be sold via Paypal, Clickbank or Paydotcom (Clickbank and Paydotcom make it easy for you to get affiliates of your own to sell your book for you).

Your site has just avoided being labelled as thin (assuming you put a little effort into the building of your site and add some quality content).

NOTE: The best format for an eBook is Adobe’s PDF format.  It can be read on PCs and Macs, and avoids the potential virus threats that EXE eBooks can harbour.

The simplest method of compiling an eBook is to use a tool like Docuprinter LT from Neevia.  This tool installs on your computer and allows you to Print to PDF format from your word processor.  E.g. I write my Reports in Microsoft Word, then print them, selecting the Neevia Plugin as my printer.  It creates a flawless PDF document, with contents entries linked to the appropriate section of the document.

I use Docuprinter LT for all eBooks and reports, and it is simple, reliable, and does not have problems with hyperlinks that so many free tools do.  All you do is create your document in your Word Processor, and save it as a PDF.

Above I wrote in brackets ” assuming you put a little effort into the building of your site and add some quality content”.

What does this mean, and how can you avoid potential problems?

Follow this course, and by the end, you will have a site that you would be proud to show a Google representative, or one of their spam-busting, thin affiliate tell-tale raters.

OK, so what’s all this about thin affiliates?

In a “leaked” document reportedly coming from Google, the big G gave guidelines to human spam-busters on how to classify affiliate sites as thin or not.

A “thin affiliate” is basically one that creates pages with the sole intention of ranking well and directing traffic to an affiliated merchant site, without adding anything unique to the World Wide Web.

It seems that the algorithms at Google HQ are no longer the only ranking factors involved in where your pages end up in the search results.  Now, human beings are scouring the Internet looking for sites to penalise.

Here is the report:

http://www.searchbistro.com/spamguide.doc

(If you get asked for a username and password, just cancel twice, and the document should show up).

When we look at affiliate programs to include in this directory, they must pass stringent criteria. These are designed to protect your affiliate commissions and make sure that you get paid for sales generated from your referral link.

These 4 criteria are essential to get listed in this directory:

1. No link to the merchant’s affiliate program on the sales page.

2. If a toll-free number is located on the sales page, there must be a way of tracking phone orders to the referring affiliate.

3. If there are demo versions of the product, there must be tracking in place to make sure that sales are assigned to the correct affiliate.

4. No Affiliate banners on the merchants own sales page, or other links that can take your referral off the merchant site without making a commission.

In addition, we will be looking at ways in which the merchants goes above and beyond to ensure affiliates are well looked after. This can include things like:

1. Using special scripts like Adrian Ling’s Easy Click Mate to prevent affiliates from merely substituting their own affiliate ID in a link on your page.

2. Providing marketing material - banners, promotional materials etc.

3. Having a two-tiered affiliate program structure - i.e. you make money on your referrals, but also on referrals of your referrals.

4. Recurring commissions on your referrals (more typical with some membership sites or web hosting companies that give you a commission every month for the lifetime of the customer you referred)

Are you tired of losing affiliate commissions because a merchant doesn’t do enough to protect your cookie?

How many times have you seen affiliate sales pages that have a prominent link to their affiliate sign-up page? This is a regular occurrence especially amongst Clickbank affiliate programs. Have you ever wondered why these programs don’t have great conversion rates (for you!).

Well, they may very well convert much better than you think. If you send a visitor to Merchant X’s sales page via your affiliate link (thereby setting your cookie on that visitors machine), but the visitor sees a link to join the Merchant X’s affiliate program on the sales page, a large number of visitors will simply sign up for the affiliate program themselves and buy through their own link instead.

The outcome of this is you are sending your hard won visitors to a site that makes you little or no money. What about the merchant? Well he or she is fine. They make the sale anyway and don’t really care which affiliate gets the commission as long as they make the sale. You keep sending Merchant X free traffic and lining his or her pocket, while you wonder why you don’t make any commissions.

Here is the scenario:

1. You do your keyword research
2. You build your sites
3. You pay for your hosting
4. You get good rankings
5. You send your traffic to merchant X
6. Merchant X makes it easy for the visitor to steal your commission
7. Merchant makes his or her percentage so is happy
8. Visitor buys at a discount so is happy

You make NOTHING and are very unhappy

The above situation is just one way that your commission is being leaked by merchants that really don’t care enough about YOU. There are other ways that we discuss on our affiliate commission leakage page.