Stem the Bleeding: A First Aid Kit for Amazon-direct PPC Affiliates

Image credit: Shari Green

What’s in this post? I’m going to explain potential reasons for Amazon’s decision to ban merchant-direct PPC, then I’m going to share steps you can take to help your affiliate business compete with challenges like this in the short term i.e. what to do now, and to avoid them altogether further into the long term.

I’ll start with the bitter pill.  You knew this was coming.  Deep down in the pit of your stomach you knew this day would come.  Like brand bidding it was only a matter of time till the affiliate gut punch, the decision to cut the erosion of margin.

Proof: Content spamming with javascript works

It would seem that things are tough at the top.  Of course I mean the top of the SERPs for terms like ‘SEO’, ‘Search engine optimis(z)ation’ and the like.  This is a seriously competitive space for vanity rankings – so I tend to have a nosey around now and then.  And whilst we all blog, talk and generally pontificate about writing content that’s worth linking to etc.  It seems to be the case that content literally still is king.

But not really in the way I’d hope.

Why SEOs should stop link-building

Because your PR team are probably doing something right now that could be more valuable.

Honestly, everytime I read an article on link building techniques or a link buidling tutorial I can’t help but think about the last time I spoke with our PR guru.  He’s a talented and animated chap with an excellent eye for a scoop, angle or generally a reason for people to talk about us.

Broadly, link-building for SEO is the same principal.  The methods by which one ensures a company has a positive footprint in the broader world, map almost precisely onto the best ways to ensure a website has the same.

SEO and PPC skillsets: A further fun-alysis

Image courtesy of Flickr - wwworks

I really enjoyed a post by Kate Morris on New Edge Media regarding the skillsets of PPC and SEO Managers, where they meet and where they differ.

I won’t go over that again but it did get me wistfully thinking about how much fun I’ve had acquiring these skills and sent me off on a jaunt along memory lane, reminiscing about the early days of search and being part (or sometimes all!) of a growing, learning search department.

Many of us’ll remember evolving from the small one-win-at-a-time initiatives, to the infusion

Pagination with javascript for SEO, elegant or wrong?

One of the challenges facing enterprise-level SEO is the general specification for large sites.

By that I mean rules to make sure we’re not wasting links by needlessly diluting the authority they bring; or contradicting the content focus that made our site and its structure profoundly relevant from the start.

One that cropped up recently was pagination of articles, I’ll cover search result pagination in a later post.

Contradictory opinions on how best to paginate articles are common, specifically with SEO in mind.  As we know there are loads of different approaches to how content websites manage pagination, but different business units have vastly discint best-case scenarios, meaning it’s normally a case of compromise. Usually between commercial, editorial and digital marketing/SEO.

Is there a way to consistently paginate that keeps all parties happy?

Free link from the BBC?

Okay, now I’m interested to see if this works.

Patrick over at BlogStorm has noticed that the BBC is no longer linking directly to those sweet sweet related links in the side bars of their stories. They in fact are passing through a redirection script.

Seems to me though, that I can easily link to my own site through this script like this Cardiff SEO

I’ll be watching my GWT to see if anything happens.