Why you NEED to use OffTo.net to cloak your affiliate links.

April 15, 2009

The other day I made a couple of minor changes to my free affiliate link cloaking service (OffTo.net). I hadn't looked at the site in quite some time, since it was running smooth and I had no reason to "pop the hood", so to speak.

But since I was making a few changes, I decided to take a peak at my web stats to see how it was doing.

To say I was floored is the understatement of the year!

The site has cloaked over 4,500 new links in the last 30 days, and has delivered 9,616,267 raw clicks in the last year and a half. It's averaging 200,000-300,000 unique visitors per month, and has built my email list by more than 4,600 opted-in users.

That's all great, but how does it help you? I'm getting to that part.

You see, more than 20,000 of those visitors each month are coming from Google, Yahoo and MSN Live. At first I was scratching my head about this, asking myself why on earth the site was getting so much love from the search engines (not that I was complaining, mind you!)

So I started taking a look at the keywords the site was ranking for, and it only astounded me even more. Only about 10% of that traffic was coming from keywords relating to the name of the site — people just looking for OffTo.

MOST of the traffic was coming from keywords ranging everywhere from "free tee shirts" to "hypoglycemia diet".

That's when it hit me — the thing about OffTo that should motivate you to use it when cloaking all of your links.

You see, ol' OffTo has racked up a HUGE number of links to its pages (76,259 according to Yahoo! Site Explorer). That massive number of in-bound links has given OffTo a lot of authority in Google's eyes, and so its pages are ranking very well for the
keywords the engines are finding on those pages.

It's the same kind of effect that causes the pages of Wikipedia to rank for so many different keywords. Tons of links means the pages will rank for just about anything.

How does this benefit you?

In case it's not clear yet, this benefits YOU because when you cloak your links using OffTo, your cloaked links will often end up ranking for the keywords on the cloaked page (especially if you choose a link name that has your keywords in it). That means EXTRA traffic from the search engines, for free!

In order to benefit from this extra traffic, you want to be sure the "Hide links to affiliate program on landing page" box is checked when you create the cloaked link, since that's what causes the page to get cached and ranked in the engines.

So the next time you need to use a link cloaker, I strongly recommend you do yourself a favor and get some f.ree traffic by using OffTo.net.

Here's the link:

http://offto.net/

Posted by Jonathan Leger | Filed Under Traffic, Search Engine Optimization, Internet Marketing, Blog | 79 Comments

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How to get a 45% click-through rate for your ad.

April 4, 2009

Whether you're monetizing a site with AdSense or with affiliate links, the click-through rate (CTR) is your bread and butter. The higher your CTR, the more money you earn. This is especially true with affiliate programs, since there is no Smart Pricing involved.

Here's a method that I use to great effect when I'm sending traffic through to an affiliate program. The example I'm going to give actually gets a 45% click-through rate. That means that about half of my visitors actually click-through to visit the product page.

1. Put a large, contrasting ad at the top of the page.

The ad colors should be strikingly different than the color of the rest of the site, and it needs to be above the content of the page. This makes it almost impossible for a visitor to miss.

Also, keep the ad copy short, sweet, and in a large font (again, so it doesn't get missed), and put a graphic to the right of the text — the graphic should preferably be a picture of the product you're trying to sell. Here's an example ad that I use on a site whose background color is brown:

The above ad gets about a 17% click-through rate. Not bad at all! But I don't stop there.

2. Follow the ad with a very useful (but short) review or informative article.

People don't typically want to take an hour to read your 6,000 word essay on the wonders of green widgets — at least, not on the web they don't. People surfing the web are looking for short, easily digestible (but very useful) information. So keep it short and sweet, and informative.

After giving the visitor who didn't click on your first ad some great information about the product, point them where to go to get a great product that fulfills all of the previously mentioned facts. Here's an example of the last paragraph I use at the bottom of my article on the porch swings site:

"Of course, I have a very strong preference in porch swings. There is one particular artisan who builds beautiful, durable porch swings from Cypress. His name is Ted Leger (pronounced Lay-shay), and he’s based in Louisiana (where a lot of cypress trees grow). All of his swings are hand made, and he can ship anywhere in the USA.

I strongly recommend you
Click here to view the variety of porch swings he has available."

Notice again that it's short, but gives a strong recommendation of where I think the visitor should go to get a good deal. Following a well-written, informative article with a recommendation is a great way to get a high click-through rate to an affiliate product.

In this case, I'm adding an additional 28% CTR (I know because I track both links separately–the one in the ad above the article and the one in the link at the end of the article). It's important to track both separately so you can see how changes in the ad and/or article text affect the CTR of each independent ad.

Again, keep the article short. The article I use on the porch swings site is only 275 words long, including that last paragraph above. A short article encourages reading, since the visitor knows they won't have to invest a lot of time into it, and it also leaves them with time to click-through and see what you're offering right now.

The best of both worlds.

So 17% CTR for the first ad plus an additional 28% CTR for the second ad equals a 45% click-through rate altogether.

It's important to have both kinds of ads on an affiliate page, because it appeals to two separate groups of people: the ad on top appeals to people who are looking for the product right now — it just sends them directly to where they can get it. In the case of the porch swings, that's 17% of the visitors.

The second ad appeals to folks who need to know they can trust you first. A well-written article helps establish that trust and your own expertise in the subject. Once that's established, the strong recommendation gets them to follow the advice and click-through. In the case of the porch swings ad, another 28% end up doing so.

3. Get targeted traffic

It doesn't matter how well your green widgets page is designed to drive traffic to an affiliate program if all of your traffic is expecting a page about blue doodads. While it's unlikely your traffic will be expecting something completely different than your page offers (especially if your traffic is coming from the search engines), it behooves you to research what kind of traffic will convert the best before putting a lot of energy into ranking for those keywords.

So how do you find out what keywords will convert into sales before you're ranking for those keywords in the search engines? There's two ways — one is free, the other presumes you can afford to spend a bit of money ahead of the game (but if you can, it's worth it).

Step 1: Test your keywords' commercial intent.

I hope I don't sound like I'm harping on this, since my last couple of blog posts have made it clear that this is important, but I really think it bears repeating again. Be sure to test the commercial intent of your keywords before you put out all of the time, energy and expense it takes to rank for those keywords. Simply put, the commercial intent of the keywords is how likely the searcher is to be wanting to buy something.

Step 2: Create an AdWords campaign.

You should always do step one, but if you can afford to spend a few dollars in advance, creating an AdWords campaign can actually be an investment that will save you untold amounts of time and money down the road.

You see, before you try to rank for a set of keywords, you can put up an AdWords ad for each of the sets of keywords you've selected that have strong commercial intent. Spend enough to get a few hundred visitors for each keyword, and track your conversion rates for each keyword.

Once you've done that, focus on the three sets of keywords that convert the best and work to rank for those. If your budget for this is small, then set your AdWords bids lower and be patient (because if you bid lower, your ad won't show as prominently and it will take longer for you to get the traffic needed to properly test your conversion rates). But if you're patient, or have the money to spend, you will find out which keywords are razor-targeted for what you're trying to sell, and that means a lot of saved time, effort and money from trying to rank for keywords that don't convert into sales.

Summary

So to sum up all of the above, you can dramatically improve your click-through rates for affiliate pages by:

Putting a large, noticeable ad on the top of your affiliate page.
Having a short (but informative) article that is followed by a strong recommendation.
Getting razor-targeted traffic to your page, testing each keyword's commercial intent and, if you can afford it, testing the conversion rate with an AdWords campaign.

Following these few simple guidelines will make sure that none of your efforts are wasted, and that as many visitors as possible end up going to the product page and purchasing the product that you're working to sell them.

Please post your thoughts and questions in a comment below.

Posted by Jonathan Leger | Filed Under Traffic, Internet Marketing, Blog | 89 Comments

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