How Using Google’s Disavow Link Tool May Help Rid of Bad Backlinks

By / How To, SEO

Bad backlinks and the impact they will have on SEO has become a concerning factor among different webmasters and site owners.  With the introduction of the Penguin update which was set to penalize low value backlinks, the situation will worsen with the upcoming Penguin 2.0. Site owners may be justified for crying foul as they often don’t have control over links from external websites. A competitor could deliberately point thousands of spam links to your site to encourage penalties on your side, a practice known as bad SEO.

Even sites that are not targeted by such spam links may still be penalized for past link building practices as long as they don’t confirm to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, and if they fail to have such links removed.

Google-Disavow-Links-Tool-Graphic

Fortunately there is a way in which webmaster can resolve the matter, and that’s by using Google’s Disavow Link tool. Basically the Disavow link tool lets site owners submit files through the Google Webmaster Tool listing those links that should be valued and those to be devalued.

Say you have 5 good links pointing back and one bad one. With Disavow link tool you can let Google know of the 5 links you would like considered when your site’s links are valued.

This has actually come as a great solution to webmasters and site owners struggling to remove low value backlinks, and with Google’s Penguin 2.0 set to roll into motion it will be gravely important for site owners to remove poor quality links. However there are some things to bear in mind when using this feature.

Note that if you submit links incorrectly and choose to remove non malicious links your site could drop in search engine rankings. For example, if you choose eliminating links by domain name instead of by individual backlinks you risk removing links from good sites which may have actually contributed to your site being where it is.

Use Disavow Only In the Event of An Attack

With the potential of harming your search engine rankings, site owners should only use Disavow links once sure that they’ve fallen prey to negative SEO, or in the event that certain backlink issues are not resolved with other site owners.

Note that the process of separating negative backlinks from beneficial ones can be a hectic process and one that will devour your time and effort. Sites such as Majestic SEO charge $49.99 to retrieve your entire link profile. From then it will be up to you to determine which links are worth removing and which are not. Bear in mind that certain malicious looking links may actually be rated by search engines, and it will depend on how they are placed on the referring site.

Google hasn’t really given a solid explanation on how it uses data obtained from the Disavow Link Tool. Although it may remove reported links from your site’s profile, it also reserves the right to thoroughly and independently review your submission and decide on which links to value or dis-value.

Given that the links submitted may come useful as supporting evidence in the event that you want your business reconsidered by Google after penalization in search rankings. With the potential harm associated with using the tool incorrectly it will best to use the services of a qualified SEO professional instead of attempting to troubleshoot and repair damage from SEO attacks on your own.

If you want to know more about using Google Disavow tool in details read this.

Did I missed any point? Are you using this Google Disavow tool? Does it really work?

Show Me Your Blog Design and I’ll Show You Your Blog’s Future

By / Blogger Tips, Design

I won’t agree with you if you tell me that your blog design has nothing to do with your traffic and how you make money online.

If I should show you two houses, one with a beautiful design and the other with a rough design and voluntarily ask you to choose one out of it as a gift (I wish I could), you’ll definitely go for the one with a beautiful design.

Let’s draw this back to the aspect of blogging.

Your blog design has a great role to play; it’s the first thing to consider before thinking of writing quality content, generating traffic or making money online.

Definitely it can affect your blog in a positive way and also in a negative way, a good design attracts visitors while a bad design bids them farewell.

blog design

What are the blog designs that can affect your blog and how can you avoid them?

1. Use a simple theme

Too much of everything is bad, there’s this saying that goes thus “one man’s food is another man’s poison”. You might optimize your theme in a way that will look good to you but do you know if it looks good to your readers?

I have an idea, why not ask friends or other bloggers you’ve created connections with to check out your blog and tell you their opinion about your design.

If you get a negative answer from three different bloggers then you must make a change to your blog design. Make your blog design simple and avoid over optimization. It’ll not only make your blog look good but will also welcome visitors to your blog.

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2. Navigation counts

You’re building an empty desert on your blog if readers find it difficult to navigate through your blog.

I’ve received few messages from bloggers contacting me to check their blog if it’s eligible for google adsense and to my surprise, most of the blogs have no navigation at all. I managed to type “/contact” after the blog URL in order to get to the contact page, I know that’s a no-brainer.

If a visitor visits your blog, will they find it easy to contact you or know more about you? Those pages are very essential, you also need to group your blog posts into categories; this will make it easy for readers to access your blog. You can make navigations easier by placing your pages at the header and at the footer of your blog, it really counts.

3. Font types and size

Of course, you want to make your blog beautiful and attractive by using fancy fonts.

Before doing this, the question you should ask yourself is; will my readers be able to read my blog content?

If yes, then you’re safe but if no, there are two things involved. It’s either they put on a google glass for easy readability or they won’t bother stressing their eyes thereby leaving your blog. The size and type of your font matters a lot. There are fancy fonts that can slow down a blog and of course, you know we’re all in a hurry. If I should visit your blog and find out that it has a lazy load, I won’t hesitate to leave your blog. So try as much as possible and optimize your fonts for your readers and not for yourself.

blog design

4. Using multiple colors

The eyes naturally gets attracted to anything colorful but too much of it is a distraction to the eyes. The maximum number and range of color you can use on your blog is around 4 – 6 major colors, it depends on the theme of your blog. If you’re using a red theme then the background of your navigation bar and sidebar title must be red, your blog background color can be different and your footer color can be different too, making it a total of 4 colors on your blog. This makes your color a uniform and professional. Avoid multiple colors on your blog; it’s nothing but a color riot.

Conclusion

Go back and do some architectural work on your blog, I’m sure you know how it looks like. Try to make some amendment if you fall on any of the categories mentioned above.

Remember, a bad blog design welcomes a high bounce rate and a high bounce rate can get your blog de-ranked.

I’m sure these tips are definitely incomplete; I would love to hear your view.

Have you previously fall into any of these categories? How did they affect your blog?

Boost Your Affiliate Marketing Sales With Your Landing Pages

By / Affiliate Marketing

It’s always great to generate new leads for your affiliate marketing program, but every experienced business owner knows that it’s never easy (or cheap) to attract new customers. Instead of fretting over new marketing methods to grow your customer base, you should look towards your affiliates’ existing visitors and focus on increasing conversions from that group.

One important element that you should improve upon for conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the landing page. Before you do get started, you should get in touch with your affiliates. Brief them about your plans so that they can take the necessary steps in making their content and affiliate links consistent with your enhanced landing pages.

Once you’ve communicated your intentions clearly to your affiliate network, you can begin implementing the tips you’ll read below.

optimizing landing pages

 

Keep Visitors Focused

When people find their way onto your landing pages, you want their attention to be focused squarely on doing the one thing you want them to do on that page. If you want them to subscribe to a newsletter, don’t give them any links to other pages on your site or stuff a long article within the same page. Just place the form with easy-to-follow instructions.

By doing so, you place them in a mindset that has them concentrating on accomplishing one goal. They won’t be distracted by anything else that would lead them out of the page, thereby increasing your conversion rate.

Shoot Straight with Your Copy and Design

The very moment the page loads up, the visitors must know exactly what you can offer them. You have to capture their attention with a value proposition that’s both clear, useful, and of course, honest. There are many different ways of writing a compelling headline such as posing it as a question that your product/service can answer, and using the phrase “How to” in the beginning.

You can have a short summary of how your offer can help visitors. Include the biggest benefits to elaborate on your headline’s promise, keeping it to a concise bullet-points list of three to five items.

As for the overall design of the landing pages, it’s best to keep them as clutter-free as possible. Your layouts have to guide the visitor’s eyes in a way that directs them from reading the headline to the benefits and to the call-to-action button. Contrast your colors and the size of the copy with the button so that the latter stands out from the former.  Make the copy on the button specific so they know what will happen once they click on it.

Simplify the Process

The forms that you require visitors to fill out should be as simple as possible. You don’t have to get all the information from those signing-up at once. In fact, you run the risk of people not completing the conversion if you ask for every single detail in one long form. The name, the email address, and probably one phone number should suffice.

Make the labels for the input boxes clear, and they have to be aligned correctly for no confusion. Provide an example for tricky data like phone and credit card numbers, or limit the characters that can be typed in. If you really need a lot of information from the visitors, break up the form into multiple pages with a progress bar indicating where they are in the form-filling process.

It also helps if you allow them to go to previous pages without having them start over an entire page if they leave it.

Include Real Recommendations

To help overcome any worries your prospects might have about the quality of your product, ask those who’ve already tried out your offer to vouch for you through testimonials. People are more likely to trust a human face than your own marketing, so make use of your happy customers to be your brand evangelists.

Just don’t settle for generic phrases that sound phony. Get them to write a more detailed testimonial that outlines how exactly your product benefited them, and include their business titles if possible. It would also greatly help if your business has been mentioned by mass media channels or if you’ve partnered with well-known companies. Request their permission to use their logos. Above all else, don’t be tempted to get fake reviews on your site, as that can lead to a PR disaster if you’re exposed.

avoid fake reviews

Match the Message

Quite possibly the most important thing to keep in mind when updating your landing pages is that it has to make a connection with the page where the visitors came from. It’s only logical that when you click on a link that tells you how you can make money online, the page you end up on has to provide you the way. If you get anything other than what you’re expecting, you probably wouldn’t even bother sticking around to read anything on the page.

Talk to your affiliates about where they place the affiliate links. You have to know if the content on the page linking to your landing pages prepare visitors properly for what you’ll be selling them. If you want to target specific audiences to take specific actions, start creating more landing pages that are customized to their expectations.

Conclusion

Optimizing landing pages never quite ends, as you can always find one element of your landing pages that can be tweaked to bump up your conversions. Introduce changes bit by bit so you see which parts work and which don’t, and keep on testing.

Did I missed any points? Which method you’re using to boost your affiliate marketing sales?

Images by AdAge| Formstack

6 Reasons Your Guest Posts Will Be Rejected For Sure

By / Blogger Tips, Guest Blogging

Probloggers and authority sites don’t hate guest posts like you may want to believe. But there are reasons your guest posts are sure to be rejected on their websites or blogs. These guys are human; they have catalogs of issues to attend – they need to attend to their teeming readers, customers, family, other businesses, and also attend social functions. So sometimes they are overworked and need time to rest.

Your guest post would go a long way at enabling these bloggers observe their siesta. They don’t have all the time in the world to do everything including writing daily posts for their blogs.

That is where you as a guest poster come in. They need rest, yet they also need to update their blogs. So who should update the blog at that time of need? It is you of course! So why think they don’t love your offer?

There are certainly some reasons your guest posts are sure to be rejected even at such time of intense need. We shall find that out later in this post.

guest posts

Why blogs accept guest posts

Blogs accepts guest posts for various reasons. They are not accepted just for the fun of it; they have a void to fill, they have a role to play, and they have needs to meet. Like I mentioned earlier, guest bloggers have workloads to take care of, hence there is need to accept guest posts on their sites. So the reasons include:

  1. Maintain regular update for their readers
  2. Provide their audience with new experience
  3. Give new bloggers opportunity to express themselves
  4. Have time to rest and attend to other pressing issues
  5. Get more traffic to their blogs

Now the question is, does it mean your post does not meet any of the afore-mentioned needs? There is certainly a reason why the blogger would gladly accept your offer because there are at least 5 needs I have identified, one of which your article should take care of.

Unfortunately, there are reasons your guest post are sure to be rejected even in the midst of problems begging to be taken care of by a guest blogger. Once we can identify these reasons, your dream of having your guest posts approved with speed on any website would come true.

Why your guest posts are always rejected?

Your offers are rejected not because the host blogger hates your face, or because you offended him sometime in the past. It is simply because they do not meet certain criteria. So note these points and fix them, and then see what happens next time you make an offer

write article

Not playing by the rules

Every blog has set rules for anybody who wishes to submit a guest article to it. The rules for blog A are different from the rules for blog B. Every guest author is expected to abide to the rules.

Why?

It is because they are the ones who are desperately in need of help. The host blogger owns the blog, pays the bills, drives traffic, built the blog reputation, etc. You are just looking for a ready-made place to help improve your blog reputation and increase traffic. So you are to play by the rules, not the other way round.

So what rules do you violate? You hardly have time to read the rules set on the blog; as such when you present your guest post, it flouts some sections of the blog’s rules. Why? You never read the rules, so there was no way to keep the rules you didn’t know of. Some bloggers don’t have the time to point this out to you. The best thing they think they should do is to dump your article in the recycle bin

Poor content

Remember the site you are approaching already has reputation. It has maintained a quality that kept its readers visiting on regular basis. The fact the site owner is busy doesn’t mean he should accept junk for his readers. It is better his site is not updated for weeks than to provide poor quality that would drive away his readers.

When you present a hastily assembled article that is laden with grammatical blunders, incoherent sentences, etc, what should you expect? That the site owner should accept it out of pity?

Of course, you should know better. To avoid this trouble, find time to write quality piece, with extensive research and reference links, and something highly informative. No blogger would ever reject quality content that should benefit his audience.

Duplicate content

There is nothing as embarrassing to a blogger than a situation where he discovers that the content submitted as a guest post on his blog has already been published elsewhere before it was submitted to him. One may find oneself hooked in this web if one doesn’t have the time to do a copyscape check on an article before publishing.

Some smart guest bloggers (so they thought) had submitted articles to me, only for me to later discover they had been published elsewhere. So one reason your guest posts are sure to be rejected is because they are duplicates. Google frowns at duplicate content; webmasters/blog owners frown at it, and even readers also frown at it.

Deception

Do you ever submit a sponsored post to a blog owner and tell him the post belongs to you? Somebody submitted one to me recently and told me to provide a link back in the body of the article to a particular website.

He said he was a content writer without a website. But I couldn’t just understand why the insistence of providing a link in the content when he said he didn’t have a website. He only tried to make me believe he was writing as a content writer on that site and that he needed exposure.

In that case, I felt a link in the Bio should do; but he insisted and I had no choice but to let him go with his article. It was obvious he was writing for an SEO site because I did a whois check on that.

If you try to lie to a blogger in order to get your sponsored post published, he would do his little research and discover the truth about the site owner and every other information he wants. The next thing is to throw away your article for trying to present a deceptive front. So try to be plain to the website owner if you are writing on behalf of a third party and leave him to make his decision. Chances are that he might publish your work if it is good enough.

Some people want to see guest post as a way of promoting their affiliate links. So, they just add links to their affiliate products or to affiliate sites they are promoting. I

f you were the blogger, what would you do?

Leave the links or bring this to his attention? Unfortunately, these are spelt out in the guest blogging rules on the “write for us” page of many of the sites. This automatically disqualifies your post.

Poor formatting

Like I mentioned at the beginning of this post, bloggers are very busy; so most of them don’t have the time to proof read your article over and over again. They don’t have the patience to begin to try to reformat the content you formatted poorly. To save their time, they just dump the article in the bin.

You can see it is not the fault of the blogger that your posts are not accepted; it is actually your fault. If you avoid those pitfalls, the blog owner would jump at your offer because it has something useful for him and his readers. But poor formatting is one of the reasons your guest posts are sure to be rejected.

  • Why You Can’t Achieve Success in Blogging Career?

Conclusion

Provide the quality a blogger wants in your content, follow the set rules, be sincere while presenting your offer and you are sure to get your guest posts published on even the best of blogs and websites.