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Payday Loan Blog - Tuesday, 19 December 2006
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What better way to be a true blogger than to blog about blogging? I can’t think of a single one…
(How embarrassing.)
We’ve been hammering home the importance of not using duplicate content on your cash advance site, but up until this point the assumption has been that “duplicate content” comes from copying other websites either verbatim or in chunks; what we haven’t talked about is sites that repost content in more than one location. A blog like ours is the perfect example of this, so the question is: will a site be penalized for owning pages with duplicate content throughout just because a blog tool slices the content differently?
What Might a Cash Advance Blog Look Like
Adam Lasnik of the Google Webmaster Central Blog offers a very thorough overview of what duplicate means to Google in a recent blog post, the gist of it being that Google’s algorithm can tackle the duplicate content and decide which page is the “best version” of the content you’re trying to present. So what does all this mean if you manage a blog for your cash advance clients? Well, let’s take the Payday Loan Affiliate Network Blog as an example – this post will be, at its maximum, located in five separate places:
- On the www.paydayloanaffiliate.com/blog page
- On the month listing for December
- On the day listing for December 19th
- On the category listing page for “content”
- At the article’s unique URL (probably the desired “home” of the unique content in most cases)
If that doesn’t scream duplicate content then I don’t know what does. When I got to thinking about this I began to sweat profusely, get the spins, and – I’m not gonna lie – I think I threw up in my mouth a little bit. Sometime between updating my résumé and thinking about the terrible irony of forcing the duplicate content issue on the very same blog that would later be penalized for duplicate content it occurred to me… surely Google has a device to deal with this!
If you have a cash advance blog and it posts similar to the way our does then yes, you do have duplicate content – but that’s not a bad thing necessarily. Google will sort out which page it thinks is the most relevant; an example of this can be seen by running a site command on paydayloanaffiliate.com, which will reveal the unique blog post URLs long before the month, day, and category assortments (they’ll be at the very end of the blog).
You can use cues such as internal/external links as a method to suggest which pages you favor to Google and the other search engines. Additionally, you can use redirects, .htaccess mods and other methods better explained by Jon (hint hint) to hammer the point home because, let’s face it, leaving Google to its own devices can spell SERP disaster.
The point? So long as you’re presenting relevant blog posts about topics of interest to cash advance consumers and you’re doing it in a manner that will help a search engine determine which is the most relevant then you are all set. Sweating, spins, and throwing up is all unnecessary – unless you’re Blumey, of course.
- Blumey
There were several excellent posts last week on closed-network communities like Webmasterworld regarding a possible OOP or Over-optimization penalty assessed on Dec 7th; if you lost an affiliate site recently to Google's ever-changing index, that might be why.
For this week though, I'm going to briefly cover the importance of education; I'm writing this post from the back row of the Elite Retreat conference.
No matter how good you think you are at affiliate marketing, search optimization, branding, etc...there's always a little more that you could know. Even if you find out how people are doing the wrong things, you'll have still learned something valuable. Everyone has a lesson to share, if you listen closely enough.
How are some ways you could continue on with your education? Read as many affiliate marketing blogs, forums, and newsletters that you can. Most will eventually contradict each other, in some form or fashion, and no one source should probably be taken as gospel. Instead, it is vital to gain multiple persepctives on what you believe will and will not work, and then put those perspectives to test.
Until next week!
JoeSinkwitz
Don't repeat your mistakes. If you create new sites by first copying your old ones, you need to make sure you don't copy the mistakes too. As Blumey and I work with site designs, we occasionally encounter problems. I then fix them, and expect that future designs won't have that problem. Of course, it doesn't always work that way. Since Blumey's a designer, he starts with a vague idea of how he wants a site to look and sometimes a past design fits that idea. He'll then copy that site's code to modify. That's a great way to speed up the site design process. Unfortunately, sometimes he'll copy old designs that have the problems that were already fixed, and then he'll tell me it's broken. A typical exchange:
Blumey: "Jooon, this payday loan site is broken."
Jon: "Are you using the current version of the code?"
Blumey: "… Yes."
So I take a look at the site, and it's an old version of the code. I'll fix it and shoot a rubber band at him.
When you copy your old designs for new cash advance sites, make sure you update them with all of the latest fixes, or you'll keep running into the same problems over and over again.
-Jon K.
To be fair to Blumey, when I do site designs, it ends up looking like Timmy from South Park did it.
We’ve talked a lot about the different ways you can bring traffic to your site, but if you’re like a number of our more successful affiliates you might have a hard time picking just one. That’s good – we applaud any and all efforts to service the growing demands of the cash advance clientele – but how are you supposed to know how well each of your campaigns is doing?
During my last blog post I talked about the use of the a form element to make a seamless transition from your payday loan site to our secure loan processing application; one of the elements from that basic form was the campaign ID field:
<input name="campaign" type="hidden" id="campaign" value="WEBSITENAME">
We’ve enabled the use of campaign IDs to help you track the number of clicks, sales, conversions, etc. from each of your efforts, and you may do this by altering the form on each page where you intend for a client to land. For example, if you tried Joe’s advice about Spotrunner.com’s low-priced television ad service, you could build a page on your site (or a new site altogether) specifically for this type of traffic. You could then change the campaign form element on this page to something like “spotrunner-ad-six” and then accurately track the amount of traffic you’re receiving from this particular campaign. This allows you to figure out which efforts fly and which ones flop so you can adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.
Examples of Different Campaign ID Usage
You can have as many or as few campaign ID listings as you’d like, so the real question is how anal are you as an affiliate marketer? We have some affiliates that have a different campaign ID for every page on their site because they’re interested in knowing what page has the highest conversion rate. On the flipside, we also have affiliates that only create a new campaign ID when they launch a new website, so the ID effectively measures which site is pulling down more money. The campaign ID system can be as specific or as general as you’d like it to be – all you have to do is outline your system and make the appropriate changes in your HTML.
NOTE: Never change your Payday Loan Affiliate ID number! The commission associated with this five-digit number is what we use to determine how to pay you, so editing it will cause problems when we calculate our monthly payouts.
- Blumey
We've touched upon keyword research in the past for payday loans, but we wanted to give a couple examples of processes that have worked in the past. The problem, dear reader, is that trying to rank for "payday loan" is really tough, especially over a long period of time. However, ranking for "Indianapolis Payday Loan" isn't quite as difficult - the more niche the phrase is, the easier it gets to rank for. Additionally, if your content is tailored to that specific phrase, the conversions on your traffic are likely to benefit as well.
One of the golden oldies I like to use for quickie research is a script developed by Shawn at Digitalpoint. Plugging in our "payday loan" phrase, we're given a host of other phrases that could be relevant in our payday loan keyword research. The results shown are both from Wordtracker and Overture, but since Overture can be odd in the way it displays data sometimes, coupled with a nasty habit of combining singular and plural usage of keywords together, we'll just use
Wordtracker: payday loans payday loan instant payday loan no fax payday loans no fax payday loan advance cash loan payday quick online payday loan service faxless payday loans payday loans online bad credit payday loan payday cash loan savings account payday loan cash advance payday loan no teletrack payday loans
That smattering of phrases looks promising, but is there anything else we could do? If only there was something that could tell us similar phrases…something, like a thesaurus!
It is surprising how many SEOs don't consult the thesaurus when it comes to keyword research; more commissions for you I hope!
Since we're lazy around here, I typed in "loan" to my handy tool and was given a few results that might work. "Advance" sounds promising - substituting that word in the Digitalpoint tool I'm given a slightly different result set of lovely payday loan related phrases (this time selecting the Overture data): payday advance cash advance payday loan payday advance loan payday cash advance advance cash loan online payday online payday advance fast cash advance payday loan no fax payday advance advance cash loan payday quick fast payday advance payday loan cash advance loan quick payday advance loan advance til payday faxless payday advance cash advance until payday fast cash payday advance no faxing payday advance 1000 advance payday loan cash advance loan payday internet no fax payday cash advance check advance payday loan no fax payday advance loan cheap payday advance advance till payday advance loan online payday payday advance service 1000 payday advance cash advance payday loan software payday advance california online payday cash advance instant cash online payday advance payday advance loan texas payday advance services payday advance cash faxless loan payday cash advance texas payday advance loan new mexico get payday cash advance payday advance illinois payday in advance advance loan military payday payday advance loan washington payday cash advance new york payday advance utah payday advance michigan payday cash advance today payday cash advance washington faxless advance payday loan advance cash from loan online payday quick toda payday check advance payday cash advance personal loan
Now, if you were to build a site around "payday cash advance today" and followed the other marketing advice given on this blog, the chances of your ranking aren't too shabby.
Good luck!
JoeSinkwitz
How to build a short version of the cash advance application form is one of the most common questions we get from affiliates old and new. We’ve finally standardized the form code needed to transfer data from your site to our secure cash advance processing application, so here you go:
<form action="https://www.paydayloanaffiliate.com/Affiliate/App/apply.aspx" method="post" name="frmApply" id="frmApply">
<input name="campaign" type="hidden" id="campaign" value="WEBSITENAME">
<input name="affl_id" type="hidden" id="affl_id" value="12345">
First Name: <input name="q1" type="text" size="15" />
Last Name: <input name="q3" type="text" size="15" />
E-Mail: <input name="q4" type="text" size="15" />
I have a regular source of income.
<input type="checkbox" value="Y" name="q5" checked="checked" />
I receive at least $1000/month.
<input type="checkbox" value="Y" name="q6" checked="checked" />
I have an active bank account.
<input type="checkbox" value="Y" name="q38" checked="checked" />
<input name="Submit" type="Submit">
</form>
This is the most basic form of the code of course, but you may choose to spice it up like some of our affiliates. Here’s an example of two sites that have used the form in different ways:
*special thanks to the folks at Power Payday Loans and Urgent Cash Advance Loans for letting me use them as an example
The form on the right is in use at Power Payday Loans, and as you can see they’ve chosen to make use of more graphical elements such as a fancy submit button and some shaded table elements to make their form pop out; Urgent Cash Advance Loans opted for some CSS mouseover functionality to call attention to their form when the user interacts with their page (I'd recommend visiting each site to get the full effect). Both sites used the same basic code to do something completely different, so I challenge every member of our program to take the code and do their own thing!
Modifying the Code for Your Needs
The only fields that really need to be changed are the two hidden fields up top. Swap out the id=”campaign” with the name of a sub-tracking variable you want to associate with your site and then change the id=”affil_id” to your affiliate ID as provided to you in your initial sign up email. (If you don’t have your ID handy email me and I’ll track it down for you.)
Apart from that you should be good to go – happy lead hunting!
- Blumey
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