Google Ad Planner for Link Ideas

Have Panda and Penguin shaken you up in regard to link building for your sites? While many affiliates did suffer devastating effects from the Google algorithm changes, and Google has changed the weighting on how they judge and value links, there is still tremendous SEO benefit to be had from building trusted and related links.

Going out to link farms and filling up comments on random non-related blogs could bring the hammer down, but a solid link from a content-related site still brings benefit. One of the best tools you can utilize to find solid content similar sites is provided by Google itself. Have you dipped into the Google Ad Planner yet? According to Google itself, the Ad Planner is:

DoubleClick Ad Planner is a free media planning tool that can help you identify websites your audience is likely to visit so you can make better-informed advertising decisions.

There's a wealth of information in the Ad Planner, but I want to focus on a method of finding related sites that you could approach and possibly gain links from that are related to your own content. The first thing you have to do is log into the Ad Planner). If you've never done this before, all it takes is a Google / Gmail ID.

One logged in, you'll see the green theme of the Google Doubleclick Ad Planner. You'll be in the research tab (which is exactly where you'll want to be). Don't be afraid to click around and get a feel and familiarity with this great tool. There's a wealth of traffic information for site, but I tend not to believe that in a literal sense. It's fairly good for relative traffic information, but as absolute I think Google under represents traffic. See the picture below:

What we're looking for are other domains you can approach for a link building campaign. The Ad Planner will provide a wealth of sites that have content similar to what you define (or even an audience as you define). Click on the "Search for Placements" tab under "Research" heading. Under this tab, you'll see 2 rows: Audience and Content. I prefer to focus on the Content row to define sites for links. There are several categories to make selections under: Site Language, Site Content, Topics, Exclude Topics and Target Sites.

In the picture below you'll see I've set language to English and I've entered several sites that I'd like similar sites for along with content keywords keywords.

With simply these few criteria defined, you'll get a significant list of domains/sites with related content to what is specified. You can further define your criteria and also add exclusions, targeted site domains (for example if you wanted UK specific domains you could target *.co.uk). Once you're happy with the list you've created, it's easy to export to Excel or CSV to begin plugging away at your outreach for link building. Check it out:

I hope you find this useful, and for other general and getting started affiliate marketing tips do check out our AMWSO Affiliate Marketing Help page. Also, if you have found this useful, please do throw us a Like via Facebook or a +1 via Google+ (widget below).

Videos for Building Traffic - Why?

You’ve probably already heard (via other blogs/sites/book) that videos can be great traffic building tools, and they that are wonderful at keeping visitors engaged to your site. One of the key factors that Google measures in ranking sites is the on-page time factor. The assumption is the longer people stay looking at a site, the better chance that site is relevant and important to the search they just conducted.

Also, there are tons of people out there that just don’t like reading a whole lot. They’d much rather sit and watch several minutes of video rather than take a minute or so to read a paragraph. If you mix in videos with your other content, you can reach and capture several different “types” of people. I want to really stress this point, without any videos you might not have any opportunity at all to reach a whole segment of potential buyers.

And of course, look at the traffic rankings for the biggest video sites. Youtube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, Flickr, Facebook just to name a few. BTW, Flickr is mostly a photo hosting service, but they also host videos. Not everyone takes advantage of Flickr for their videos (great domain authority linking strength).

You don’t have to be Steven Spielberg to make a great compelling video. You don’t even need a video camera. The video I created to advertise AMWSO Affiliate Program Management Services was done completely in Apple Keynote, and the music was a stock piece purchased for a few dollars. Not tot bad for my initial attempt at creating a video, right?

There are several types of videos you can make:

Talking Head Video
This is where you film yourself simply talking and explaining about a product or service (or better yet telling a story that relates to your product). If you’re aim is to build a real community with your site, and you are looking to have returning visitors, using a couple talking head videos can really help build a connection with your audience. If they can see you and hear you, it lends more credibility and trust for your proposition.

Powerpoint or Keynote Type of Video
This is what I did with our AMWSO video. Using Keynote (and I believe for Windows users Powerpoint has similar functions), I put together a presentation with animations and recorded it as a movie. I then found some compelling stock music and edited that in to the movie.

Screen Capture Video
Using screen capture software such as Camtasia or Screenflow (there are other options out there, Google and Bing are your friends), you can walk a viewer through an onscreen process or website. These are great for digital products!

Any Combination of the Three
Don’t limit yourself to one type! You can open up with yourself introducing the video, edit in a presentation/animation, and then close out with a screen capture to explain clearly how a visitor can order the product or service you’re promoting.

There are low cost options to outsource if you don’t feel confident to do the work yourself. Check out Fivver.com. There’s a whole section on Fivver dedicated to video. These jobs go for $5, so definitely manage your expectations, but you can find some real gems and segments that you can add in to your videos to really help convey your message or polish it up.

If you don’t want to take the time and effort to learn how to edit videos, check out Elance.com or Odesk.com to find someone to help out with editing. I’ve know people to get some really great editing work for as little as $15. Hey, if the video helps to drive a few more sales, and helps to generate more quality traffic to your site, that $15 is well worth it.

It’s important not to get too wrapped up into making a perfect video for your first try. Jump in and have a bit of fun with it. Two key points:

• Make sure your sound is the best it can be. People can sit through a glitchy video, but if the sound is bad, they will kill it instantly.
• If you’re demonstrating a product or talking, make sure you have good lighting and can be seen clearly in your video.

In a few days we’ll talk about some more specifics on making a video, post-processing and then promoting it once you have it all wrapped up.