I have a friend of a friend who has a website using the Vista Print web builder. She asked me to optimize her website for her. I’m doing it more as a favor.
While in the system, I noticed that I couldn’t create title tags for each page of the site, which of course is vital.
I called them to see if having that option would be open with an upgraded version, so I called up Vista Print customer support, who then forwarded me to the website department.
You know what they told me?
Be prepared to be shocked that a large company like Vista Print would have a customer service person offer this advice:
They said that they don’t do title tags, because it is too advanced for most of their clients. Instead, list the keywords in the keyword section. They also said to add all the keywords to the body of the site and match the text color to the background color so that it would be invisible to visitors, but not to search engines.
WHAT?!!
That is sooooo 10 years ago advice that has long been a taboo practice that will get you sandboxed in a heartbeat!
Can’t believe their web department is suggesting that.
As many of you know, I am a fired Amazon affiliate. All Amazon affiliates in Colorado were fired.
I have about 40 product sites that just aren’t going to make good Adsense sites. Because of that, I’ve had a heck of a time trying to figure out what to do with them.
I’ve been looking into Datafeeds, but too be honest, it gets pretty complex.
But now I’m doing the happy dance!
I just discovered Prosperent!
Prosperent is absolutely FREE to join.
They basically handle all the datafeeds for you, and you simply have a little javascript code that is much like Adsense, that you paste into your site. It works great with Peter’s theme.
What’s very cool is that Prosperent is a targeted behavioral ad network. What this means is that they are able to determine what your web site visitors are interested in, and display a relevant product and convert that into a sale. If your visitor searches for blue widgets with chrome, they will show ads that have blue widgets with chrome. Talk about giving your customers exactly what they are looking for!
All the ads have pictures on them, which again adds to the general visitor experience on your site.
The cookies last a lot longer than the 24 hour cookie that Amazon has. They basically work with companies on Shareasale, Commission Junction, Linkshare, etc. You’ll get paid on stuff that someone may have clicked weeks or months ago.
They earn revenue as a % of what you earn. They earn 30%.
From reading their forum, it sounds like members are making a ton more money than when they went with Adsense. That of course makes sense, since visitors are getting exactly what they hoped to get when they went to your website in the first place.
Anyhow… I’m thrilled. It’s the perfect solution to my Amazon dilemna. And frankly, I think it’s better than what I had with Amazon in the first place.
I’ll also say that their control panel is extremely easy to use and robust. You an get all kinds of statistical information and can easily create ads.
It is for product type of sites though. I wouldn’t use it on services or digital download type of sites.
I’ve had a lot of people ask me recently about EZArticlelink , and how it worked. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a very powerful article syndication and backlink method.
EZArticlelink is new, and still in the launch period. I joined about 3 weeks ago. Now that I’ve used it, I do understand the process more. In fact, I’m so excited about it, that I see that this will be one of my main daily dashboards.
I’ll try to explain how it works.
They have a silver membership program, which is free.
They have a gold membership, which is paid, but offers more perks.
Basically the process is:
1) You can spin and syndicate articles, that are posted to member article directories, which are article directories that other people have added to their website.
2) You can choose if you want to have an article directory on your site, or if you don’t want to. Here’s how that works:
For Silver ( free members )- for every domain that you put an article directory on, you get a domain in which you don’t have to include an article directory on. Those non-directory domains are called ‘post only’ domains. When your domain is approved, you can then start inputting articles for syndication on it, although your spun articles still need to be approved too.
For Gold members ( paid members)- the same rule applies, except that once you have 20 article directories on the system, you can have unlimited ‘post only’ domains, which again are sites that don’t have a member directory on them.
There are definately benefits to having directories on sites, which I will explain further down.
3) Because all websites are family friendly, they have to check every website that you can promote on the system to make sure it’s not porn, gambling, etc. They also want to check to make sure that articles are acceptable, and correctly spun. Basically quality control for their members. I can appreciate that.
4) Once your domain is accepted, you can post and syndicate an article. You can choose to have their staff spin the article if you want. I opt for that. The fee is just $3 for gold members, and $5 for silver members.
Can’t beat that price for spinning!
Once their team is finished spinning ( or you spin ), you send it for approval.
5) Once the article is approved, it begins syndication, but slowly, so as to look natural to the search engines.
The content is posted on these directories, which all look different, and are all SEO optimized.
- A silver member can get each article out to up to 200 sites
- A gold member can get each article out to up to 300 sites
You can keep submitting new articles for these same domains.
6) As your article gets posted to a member site, their system automatically creates a contextual backlink to that article, thus increasing the value of your backlink.
7) This of course also increases the value of a website that has a directory on it.
Placing a directory on your site is easy. You basically create a folder called something like ‘weblogs’ or ‘articles’ or something to that effect, and upload a file to that folder.
You can then make that directory look how you want it too. From their control panel (not from your site), you can then easily take on the existing look/feel of your website, or modifiy it. You can also monetize your article directory.
6) Because their system will automatically promote your article for you on other websites, the reverse is helpful to you too. Your site’s directory is being promoted by them… completely on autopilot. This automatically will promote your own site with more links to it.
For Gold members, there is an added benefit.
For every article that you put through the system that is approved for syndication, you get 100 bonus backlink points. These backlinks can be for any site you want, even if it is not in the system. Basically, you add the url you want to link to and what keyword phrase you want to use, and those backlinks will post on sidebars or under related content. These are contextual backlinks, and they too need approval.
So… not sure if that made it clear or more confusing. Here’s more information on it: EZArticlelink
