Hi there.  I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend, and tomorrow is doom’s day for some and worry-week for others and no worries for most..  It’s the official FTC compliant day, and I just received this email from Michel Fortin. I thought it was too good NOT to share.. ENJOY!

Just a quick note to let you know that my friend, Jim Edwards, had the good fortune of interviewing an FTC director (in charge of advertising and claims), Richard Cleland.

If you’re an affiliate, a blogger, or an Internet marketer, and you’re worried or confused about the upcoming December 1st new laws coming into effect, then you NEED to watch this!

It’s totally pitch-free and information-packed. Watch it now…

Internet Marketers Become FTC Compliant

In a study conducted by seomoz.org, 37 leaders in search engine optimization voted on factors negatively and positively impacting organic search engine rankings. There is a lot of mention made of ways to increase search engine rankings, but far less written about things consciously or inadvertently done to negatively impact rankings.

According to the experts, here are the top five things that prevent higher rankings or send your current rankings into the tank.

1. Duplicate content: The jury is out as to the extent duplicate content affects site rankings, but it can range from simply not getting indexed to a huge problem. Duplicate content along, may not impact rankings, but it could signal other bad behavior. Unique, high quality should be your goal if you’re serious about conducting business on the Internet.
2. Low quality links: Experts agree that a slew of poor quality links can hurt your rankings. Many of the link farms have been cleaned up, some have gone legitimate, but the fact is fewer high quality links will enhance your rankings quicker than a laundry list of low quality links.
3. Duplicate Titles and Meta Tags: Duplicate titles and Meta tags on every page of your site will suppress organic rankings. It discourages crawlers from continuing deeper into your site to index more pages. With this simple fix, you may see a boost in rankings.
4. Server is down: A website down for 48 consecutive hours will suffer with the search engines. A site frequently down for sporadic periods may also suffer, but “frequent” is the operative word. If your site is frequently down, it’s time to get a new hosting company!
5. Overused keywords: Sites excessively using keywords will either be ignored or suffer with lower rankings. Trying to trick the crawlers to rank you higher by purposefully stuffing content with keywords is not a winning strategy. Use keywords as often as they make sense for the reader.

Learn more about search engine optimization and Internet marketing at www.strategywriter.com. Sign up for a free newsletter of proven tips and techniques to increase web traffic and reach prospects.

Top 10 Ways to Use Ad Tracking

Most companies have advertising and promotion budgets. It’s almost impossible to run a business without one!

But what if you could use a crystal ball that would give you almost immediate feedback on the success or failure of your promotional campaigns? Can you image the increased profits you might realize, if you could confidently eliminate those areas that underperformed, while concentrating on those that were overwhelmingly superior? Read More or Leave a Comment »

I can now safely say that Google Analytics may be doing more harm than good.  Google is using your Analytics data to increase or decrease your page rank.  Now, they want to give the most popular sites front page exposure by comparing who gets more traffic. Does that hurt the small guys – YES – when the big companies learn that they can throw money at links – then, they will dominate the search engines for any keyword..

The question comes up again:  How do you track your advertising?  How do you know what’s effective?

EASY – Do what the guru’s do?

In the last month, guess what Russell Brunson, Anik Singal, Mike Filsaime, Jeff Johnson and others have switched to:

HYPERTRACKER

SuperAffiliate Trial Offer: SuperAffiliate Readers can try out HyperTracker for 14 Days Free:

Click on Our Affiliate Link to Take Advantage: http://www.hypertracker.com/index/superaffiliate8290

Insightful analysis of your web traffic will help your search optimization efforts. But, don’t get bogged down with a multitude of stats. Pay attention to key metrics and, very importantly, take action based on your analysis.

Presumably, you have a statistical analysis package for your website or have loaded the script for Google Analytics. You can’t make improvements without knowing about the traffic coming to your site and what they do once they arrive.

Key metrics include:

•  Direct traffic: This is traffic arriving at your site by typing in your URL. Some analytics include bookmarks in this data and others show it separately. No matter, this visitor arrived directly without using a search engine or external link to get to your site. For the most part, these are not new visitors. If, however, your data shows you are getting new visitors as a result of direct traffic, then it means you are doing a good job branding your site offline. If your URL is easy to remember or is publicized through offline advertising, visitors will type in the address directly, having circumvented search engines.
• Referral traffic: This is traffic reaching your site from an external link on another site. Your data should show what link was used to arrive. Using this information, you’ll determine what’s working and what’s not and can adjust your search engine optimization strategy accordingly. Pay attention to bounce rates from these links as well. Do visitors come and stay for a while or realize they made a mistake and leave right away? If the bounce rate is high for some links, you may need to fine tune your external linking strategy.
• Organic traffic: This is the traffic people go crazy over trying to be the number one listing on Google or other search engines. Anyone arriving at your site based on search engine results will show up here and, depending on your analytics tool may include sponsored links. Ideally, organic and sponsored links should be measured separately so you can better assess the value you’re getting from paid links. A good analytics package will tell you what keywords were used to drive the visitor to your site. Use the keyword to revise your web content for even greater optimization. Keyword data the language your visitors speak to tell you how (and possibly why) they arrived at your site. Listen to them carefully and take action.
• Paid traffic: This is traffic generated from your pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. For effective analysis, this data must show up separately from the other traffic types. With this data, you’ll measure the effectiveness of your paid efforts, make budgetary decisions and find problem areas to improve. While click-through rate is important, when it comes to PPC traffic, you want as high a conversion rate as possible to make the expenditure pay off.

Don’t be fooled by the hundreds of vendors offering web analytics tools. Decide what metrics are important for you to measure and then go shopping for the best package to deliver the data you need in an easy-to-understand format.

Learn more about SEO and Internet marketing by signing up for a free monthly newsletter packed with proven tips and techniques at www.strategywriter.com.