Nofollow vs. Follow: How Google treats with Guest Blogging.

During the past month there has been a lot of news and talk on guest blogging. To be more exact, the talks and discussions have been on the penalties various guest blog networks have gotten from the Google spam team, most of them manually. For the average internet user it can be difficult to figure out what the outcry (both from Google and the guest blogging community) has been all about.

The center of all this has been nofollow links. Or the lack of them to be precise. In order to be able to explain what a nofollow link is, first we should understand what a follow link is.

When a website gets an inbound link, it gains a boost towards its Google ranking helping the site get higher up in the search results - also known as the SERP. The more inbound links a website gets and the more reputable the website posting the inbound link is, the bigger a boost the linked-to site gets in terms of Google ranking. A link of this kind, which is counted towards the Google ranking of the site, is called a follow link.

On the other hand, an inbound link which is NOT boosting a website’s Google ranking is called a nofollow link. Google simply ignores the link completely and it is seen as what it is; a link that gets the reader to a different website. The way a nofollow link is created is with a non follow HTML tag which looks like this:          

<a href="http://www.website.com/"rel="nofollow">Text</a>

Prior to the introduction of nofollow links, websites - (blackhat) SEO minded websites in particular - were spamming the internet with follow links which would artificially make them rank higher on Google to an extent that blog comments and forums almost solely consisted of self-promotions and a massive amount of links. In 2005 Matt Cutts from Google and Jason Shellon of Blogger realized that something had to be done to stop the madness of spam, so they introduced the nofollow attribute which has helped limiting the link spam on the internet a great deal. Many blogs and forums don’t post follow link, while reputable websites like Wordpress and Wikipedia automatically assigns the nofollow link to all user-submitted links.


This takes us back to the controversy which we have seen in regards to guest blogging. When Matt Cutts on March 19 announced that Google “today took action on a large guest blog network” it quickly became common knowledge that he referred to MyBlogGuest, a guest blog network which had more than 73,000 users in 2013, with an average of 256 articles posted per day. Despite being against paying for links, as Ann Smarty who runs the site pointed out confirming that MyBlogGuest had been hit, it should not have come as a surprise to the blogging world.

Already in 2012 Matt Cutts warned against spammy and low quality guest blogging, and continued to do so until january 2014 where he announced that guest blogging is done due to the fact that it’s too spammy. Truth is that this could probably have been avoided by MyBlogGuest if they didn’t insist that links cannot be nofollowed. Even if they did have a lot of quality content from the guest blogging, the potential of link building for SEO is still there, and even though it’s all speculations on why MyBlogGuest actually got punished, a few spammy blogs with nofollow links is all it takes for the whole network to be affected by it. On top of the penalty to the actual network, many users received warnings and penalties despite not being directly responsible. Although it can be argued that anyone blogging and adding a follow link is responsible of artificially boosting its Google ranking.

The best advice there is for guest blogger is simply to stay on the safe site and nofollow your links. Yes, its a shame i you are a legitimate blogger and don’t get the credit you deserve from Google, but a nofollow link is not completely useless either. If the content is good enough, the nofollow link can still create traffic, and hopefully conversions, to the website. As for other ways to do SEO, social media activity is definitely to some extend affecting the SERP, while it is a good idea to have a look at these 4 effective SEO techniques for 2014!

Calling to action! How to improve your conversion rates

An important aspect to any website whose importance is often overlooked is the call-to-action (CTA) button(s). Whether the aim of your website is to have people buy a product,  sign up for newsletters or downloading a product, the CTA button is vital for your conversion rate. All your hard work of getting visitors to your website and getting them interested in your product will have gone to waste if it is not followed up with an action by the visitors.

When you think about how easy it is to improve the CTA buttons on your website, and how big a difference it could make to your conversions, it is surprising how little attention it gets. There is plenty of focus on SEO and content (which granted are very important aspects too!), but if you want to see a vast improvement of conversions with little effort put in it, follow these 5 simple tips on how to improve your conversion rates by optimizing your CTA buttons.

Effective usage of negative space

In order to really have your CTA button stand out from the rest of your content and grab the attention of your visitors, you need to make use of negative space around the buttons. There is no exact measurement of how much blank space is needed for a certain size of button, but it is worth having principles like the Rule of Thirds of the Golden Ratio in mind when deciding the ratio.

Size and Color

You wouldn’t automatically suspect the two to be related, but in fact they are. When speaking about the size of the button, size definitely matters! If your button is too small it won’t get noticed enough, however, if your button is too big it may overpower everything around it. Somewhere in between will catch the attention of the visitors without overwhelming them.

The color can work as to balance the size of the button. For big buttons you don’t need a very dominant color but instead a color which flows with the design of the page while still standing out (as an example see VIP Affiliates’ CTA button). If you opt to go with a relatively smaller button you should consider using a much more impactful color to really catch the eyes of your visitors.


Language

The words you choose for you CTA button can make it or break it in terms of whether the visitor ends up clicking on it or not. The wording should be straight-forward and simple, but still with an urgency. Like for example: “Buy now!” or “Download now!”. The wording is simple yet with a clear message which is impossible to misunderstand.



Provide extra information

When needed, provide extra information to the CTA button. The extra information can be anything from the price if it’s a call for purchasing (preferably with an ‘only’ in front), the size of the file if it’s a call for downloading, or the length of time for a free trial. What these kinds of information have in common is that they add to the user experience. That being said, it’s important that the extra information text is not nearly as prominent as the text appealing to the visitor to act.

Click Triggers

Sometimes the call, even with the extra information, isn’t enough to get a conversion. Click triggers are basically extra boost you put close to the button to convince people to click it.
Examples of click triggers are:
- Guarantees
- Ratings
- Payment option
- Reviews
- Security message

Try out a few at the time and see what trigger works best for the CTA button on your website.


With a few adjustments there is no doubt that more visitor will take action on your website, and all the hard work you have put into bringing them in the first place will not have gone to waste!

The Best Backlinking Tips You Didn't Know About!

SEO strategy like outbound links, keywords and editing your title page, is very well known tactics to be recognized by Google’s search engine, but it is important to understand that being recognized will only get you that far in your quest of a high search engine ranking. What really matters to Google is how authoritative your website and content is. One of the most effective ways to show Google that your site is an authoritative source of reliable information is by having a lot of backlinks from other authoritative websites. Connecting to outer authoritative and reliable websites shows Google that your content is extraordinary and noteworthy. The reason for this is that authoritative content is exactly what Google wants to show up as high as possible on their search engine to make Google searches be as helpful and valuable as possible to its users.

Simply put, the more backlinks you have from other authoritative sources, the better Google will recognize that you have good content, and the higher your website will rank. Follow these five tips and your backlink profile will show that your website is the authority on the subjects you promote!

Content
To get enough backlinks to rank high in the search engine rankings, you need a link-building tactic. Some might say that simply having great content is enough, and we are agree 100% that the highest priority for any website is good content. However it is still very important website needs to get noticed, and for that there are some tricks which will make it more likely for people linking to your content:

 - Using relevant keywords which people are likely to search for
 - Being controversial in the title to catch the eyes of readers
 - Use phrases which are beneficial for the reader (“earn more money” or “reduce expenses”)

Asking for it
While using the above content tips help to have more linkable content, there are more direct tactics to ensure that you will get quality backlinks. The most direct one is the most obvious one; asking for it. This could be from friends, family, customers, partners, vendors or anyone else you have a relationship with. In most cases they will gladly help out, but be aware that they might want you to backlink to their website too.

Guest blogging
A different, but maybe more safe, way to build backlinks is by guest blogging. Guest bloggers usually get between 1-3 links to their own website. Assuming that you target relevant, authoritative blogs for your guest blogging, your backlinks from these posts will give your site a lot of credit.
Alternatively, you can write a blog on your own website reviewing another blog and link back to that blog. As a result of your review you can hope that they posts a reply and include a link back to your review-post of their blog.

Interview
Another way to get an authoritative blog or website to link back to your website, is by running an interview with someone from the website and post the interview on your own website. When the interview is up on your website, you can then send the link to the person you interviewed, thanking them. It is likely that the website will put the interview up on their own website to promote themselves, and by doing that you have earned yourself a backlink.


Contests
The last tip for having lots of backlinks is by having contests. Everyone loves contests on condition that there are good prizes on stake. You need to know who your audience is, and offer prizes in accordance to that. Once you have the right prizes, you need to spread the word of the contest as much as possible to optimize the amount of backlinks you will get from the contest. Having a contest on a regular basis will encourage a lot of continual link building, while on the other hand having a contest once a year enables you to hype it resulting in a lot of backlinking during a shorter period of time.

The issue when dealing with backlinks is that the definition of what is legal and illegal backlinking, according to Google, constantly changes. Something which is not punishable today could be punishable tomorrow which is why it is important always to be aware of Google updates and in touch with relevant forums. A good rule of thumb is everything in moderation. Too many guest posts or too many interviews can potentially hurt your SEO. The only thing you cannot have too much of is good content... there is no such thing as too much good content! So make use the above tips and write a alot of good content, and before you know it Google will rank you as the #1 authority on your subject!

Quality Score - Be Relevant

In internet marketing, it is vitally important to be relevant for the users. If you are not relevant, you will not have anyone visiting your website, and those who do end up visiting your website will not be very interested in the programs you are promoting. Quality Score, the system Google uses to measure the relevance of your website, will be low. To understand what that means, first we need to understand what a quality score actually is, and how it is calculated.

First of all, a quality score is given to every keyword individually, so while a score can be the highest (10) for some keywords, it can be the lowest (1) for other keywords. According to Google, there is a long list of factors which decides the quality score of each keyword. In short, the final score is determined by how relevant Google sees your keyword to your ads and to what a customer searches for, but additionally Google also takes general details about your website by looking at the quality of your landing page, how well your ads have been doing on a site, and how successful your accounts at Google have been in the regions you are targeting.

One factor which really makes a difference to whether your quality score is high or low is your click-through rate (CTR). As a lot of testing has shown, the higher CTR, the higher your quality score.

There are great benefits of having high quality scores:

• It’s easier for your ad to show on the first page of search results 
• It makes it easier for your ad to show towards the top of the page 
• Your ad will show up higher on the page 
• You pay less per click (lower CPC) 

It is all about being relevant to the group of people you are targeting, and if you keep having relevant keywords and landing page, and increase your CTR, you will be rewarded with a high quality score. It takes lots of hard work to improve your quality scores, but when you see what that improvement will do to your ad campaign, it will be more than worth it.

Little Known New AdWords Feature that you Can't Afford to Miss!

When dealing with Google AdWords bidding in the past, the choice would be between three different bid strategies; CPC (cost-per-click) bidding, CPM/CPI (cost-per-impression) bidding or CPA (cost-per-acquisition) bidding. The strategy suitable for a campaign would depend on what type of goal you had with your website. For people wanting to a lot generate traffic, CPC bidding would be the best choice, to increase brand awareness, CPM bidding would be fitting, while websites with the main focus on conversions would be likely to choose CPA bidding.

Recently Google announced a whole new way of bidding in AdWords called Target ROAS (return on Ad Spend) as a part of the ongoing flexible bidding strategies initiative to improve real-time bidding in AdWords.

Before we explain this new bidding strategy in deeper terms, let’s quickly remind ourselves what ROAS is in the first place. In simple terms, it is the total revenue generated for a specific marketing channel divided by the total spend on that vertical. Basically the percentage total of your profit vs advertising cost

As a formula it looks like this: Ad revenue/Ad Spend * 100. As an example, if you spend $500 on advertising and your revenue is $1000, your ROAS is 200%.

Fairly simple, but how does this apply to AdWords bidding? Google's new automatic bidding algorithm looks at the reported conversion values you report to them through Conversion Tracking, and by looking at those values, AdWords predicts future conversion and associated return or profit. In accordance to these values and conversion you will be able to set your personal ROAS % goal of how much revenue you want to make for each ad-dollar spent. From there your job in technically done. In accordance to this goal, AdWords' automatic bidding will set a maximum CPC bid to maximize your total conversion value, at the same time as trying to produce an average ROAS equal to your set goal.

The reason why I say your job is 'technically' done is that even though this is an automatic bidding service, you do not want to just leave it assuming it will take care of itself. As with all automatic bidding strategies, you need to check-in now and then to make sure that you are achieving the results you strive for. Since it is automated, there are factors like seasonal trends, problems with tracking etc. that will not be taken into considerations, which you will need to adjust manually. The feedback from this new bidding strategy has been very positive, and it is something which should be considered or at least be studied more in order to decide if it can be profitable for your campaign.

At VIP Affiliates we encourage everyone to be cautious with automatic bidding. If you do not have a great deal of experience with AdWords or bidding, or don't have a deep insight in how it works, it would be better to take advice from experts and run your bidding manually. We are happy to share with you our experience, and give you the right tools to succeed with your biddings, so contact us today!

Bitcoin or Bust! Trading Bitcoin as Binary Options.

Lately the trading market has seen a huge interest, or hype if you like, on a crypto-currency called Bitcoin. What is so different and interesting about Bitcoin is that it is a virtual currency which is decentralized, meaning that it is not backed by any government or regulated by any central authority. The way the value of Bitcoin is determined is by the acceptance of the users who uses it. Back when it was starting to become popular in 2009, the value of one Bitcoin was $230, while now, 4-5 years later, the value lies around $1000 for a single Bitcoin.


The big issue is, what if you don’t HAVE $1000 to trade Bitcoin? Since there is no sign of Bitcoin becoming less prominent, the value of a bitcoin is likely to keep rising, and so it will not help to sit and wait until you can afford it.

Many Binary Options brokers have provided a solution to this problem by offering Bitcoin amongst its currencies. As you don’t actually ‘buy’ or ‘sell’ in Binary Options, but only speculate the value of whatever you are trading, it does not require $1000 to trade Bitcoin. All it requires is the minimum deposit of the broker you choose to trade with, and then you can spend whatever amount you feel like trading Bitcoin. 

Amongst of the bigger brokers who offer Bitcoin trading are CapitalOption, GOptions, AnyOption and TradeRush (all of whom VIP Affiliates have great offers at) and will show up in the “Currencies” list of assets between 6:00 and 20:00 GMT time. So if Bitcoin is something which interest you, we recommend trying it out at one of these brokers. Even if you do have $1000 lying around, trading Bitcoin with binary options is a good way of getting a feel on the currency before spending them.

Don't waist anytime on Facebook until you see this!

This infographic was brought to you by Neil Patel from Quicksprout.