Monday 23 April 2007

Amazon Context Links Boost Alexa Rankings and Google Adsense eCPM

Recently I introduced Amazon Context links on Klikhir.com and within a few weeks noticed a significant increase in rankings for pages that are regularly viewed. Secondly Klikhir’s Alexa rating has shot up 45000 places. Thirdly, Klikhir Adsense eCPM has increased by as much as 200%.

The only change to Klikhir.com in the past few weeks has been the addition of Amazon Context Links. In fact I have been very busy with other projects over the past four weeks and have done nothing else to Klikhir.com in that time.

Context links are causing Amazon to crawl Klikhir.com regularly. Perhaps this extra activity is causing the increase in Alexa rankings. As far as the Google increased page count I can only guess that the increased Amazon crawl traffic along with the cached return links from a top ranking site like Amazon has improved SEO and eCPM.

Amazon Context Links are a quick and convenient way to add text links to your website so you can monetize your content. Context Links automatically identify and link relevant phrases within your page content to Amazon products, unlocking new ad inventory and saving you the time from having to manually create the links yourself. You can add the links to your pages in minutes, and Amazon provides a wealth of options to customize how they are displayed.

After you embed one simple piece of code on your pages, Context Links will identify and link contextually relevant phrases within your content to Amazon.com products. If you enable the preview functionality your site visitors will see a preview of an Amazon.com product relevant to the phrase selected. Clicking on the link will send your site visitors to the product detail page on Amazon.com, and you will earn referral fees just as you would with any link you hand-picked.

Amazon's spider is notified each time the page is viewed. After the second or third view Amazon automatically inserts the Context links into the page. So each time a page is viewed Amazon’s spider is notified to crawl the page and log the number of views. I have noticed that the time taken for initial processing varies and in some cases it can take up to 3-4 hours until the Context Links systems figure out phrases to link on the page.

You must allow Amazon’s spider (Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; AMZNKAssocBot/4.0)) to crawl your Web site. The crawl is needed in order to identify the content of your Web site and determine appropriate phrases to link. If you do not allow Amazon’s spider to crawl your Web site(s), Context Links will not be able to link anything.

Here is an example of a page at Klikhir.com with the Amazon Context Links: http://www.klikhir.com/business/buying-buck-knives-means-buying-a-trusted-american-brand.html

Apart from enhancing Klikhir.com with Amazon Context Links, the unexpected increase in traffic rankings and eCPM appears to have been worthwhile from a rankings point of view. I have yet to monetize traffic from the clicks.

Do you use Amazon Context Links? If so, have you noticed similar results or increases in activity and rankings, or conversions?

Tuesday 10 April 2007

How Blogs May Increase Human Intelligence

After reading Rand Fishkin and Andy McBeal this week I am inspired by the reasons why people blog. As ever, curious by the meaning and impact of the Internet on the human race, I pondered how blogs may have increased human intelligence and came up with five factors: consciousness, knowledge, truth, taste and sociality.

Consciousness
Writing and reading is a powerful force for breathing life into humanity. By reducing our thoughts to letter, sharing our dispatches in a way that invites criticism, and reading and commenting in others people’s blogs, we elevate our consciousness in three ways:
  • Becoming acutely aware of other peoples intelligence
  • Being open to broad criticism while maintaining individual identity
  • Expanding our minds and thoughts to infinite possibilities
Knowledge
Blogs are about researching, thinking, compiling, formatting, and publishing knowledge. The process itself requires a great deal of learning and knowledge in order to be successful. Countless tasks are required by Bloggers, all the way from thinking about subject matter, to moderating comments, reviewing statistics, and being able to place links and ads on pages.

People who read blogs do so for entertainment, learning, interacting and networking. A greater way to share knowledge is through social blogging, a fundamental cornerstone of which is, openness to criticism and additional commenting.

Truth
Blogs worth reading seek the truth no matter the niche. Truth is central to the development of human intelligence. Without truth there is no knowledge. Every generation surpasses the next with more knowledge ever spiraling upward in seek of the truth of Everything.

Taste
Chris Anderson coined the phrase “We are the new creators of taste”. What he meant was that because of the new abundance of choices brought about by the Internet we now spend a great deal of time recommending, reviewing, commenting, filtering and voting on content in order to expose the good stuff. Great blogs, with a measure of traffic, are what we collectively think is tasteful. Openness to experience develops taste and character which are attributes of human intellect.

Sociality
Blogs encourage sociality more than any other medium. By default they invite commenting and criticism. The Blogshpere is a virtual friend’s marketplace where people create relationships for sociality, fun, crowd voting, corroboration, and casual chat. This interactive behaviour makes people smarter by causing them to think more about what they are saying, and planning activities like their next post.

Human intelligence could have only been brought about through social behaviour. Try live in a world all by yourself. The human race is a team. Without each other we cannot exist. Together we create infinite intelligence by sharing knowledge through social mechanics. Investing in relationship building is a smart thing to do. With a network of friends you have untold leverage at your disposal.

Do you think blogging makes us smarter?

That’s what I have to say.
Here’s what 6 others are saying.
Rand Fishkin
Andy McBeal
Bud Caddell
Chris Rothwell
CiarĂ¡n
Michael Arrington

Wednesday 4 April 2007

Is Google is The New Testament?

In addition to Businessweek (April 2007) cover story titled “Is Google Too Powerful?” and with thanks to Bud_Caddell for his YOUmoz post titled “Google: Balancing an Elephant on Stilts”, I first posted this article in YOUmoz -Title: Google is the New Testament on 1 April 2007

The first part of this rant began with a post in SEOmoz - Title: SEOs Bubbling Influences Society, Culture and Values.

As an individual who benefits financially from Google’s Adsense program and who is concerned about privacy, corporate power, and objective access to information, I see Google as a forward thinking, transparent company, with roots firmly grounded in ‘doing the right thing’.

Google’s power lies in our collective perception of its "truthfulness": Not only is Google expected to provide meaningful results instantly on any subject, but they are under constant scrutiny by customers of their Web 2.0 services.

In my experience, Google is the first huge company to be accessible by the general public. They provide contact forms and forum boards for all services they provide. Their employees participate in Google and technology related forums, and are allowed to spend 20% of their time on their own sites. Unlike most traditional giants such as oil, insurance, Telcos, and media networks, Google is probably the most transparent.

It’s simple: Google transactions benefit ordinary people because the 12,000 people working at Google are some of the smartest (Internet) users you’ll find – and smart people, who have unfettered access to information and social communication, wouldn’t stand for anything less than the truth, open social discourse, and democratic freedom of speech. Also, Google’s new economy is enabling ordinary people, regardless of race, creed, or country, to engage in the New Economy through their Web 2.0 API’s and services. Never before - on such an unprecedented scale - has any individual anywhere been able to provide products and services to others. Not to mention the open access to scrutinize Google vigorously, through direct contact or social media platforms such as Digg.com, SEOmoz, and the myriad of Webmaster forums.

The gospel of ‘scarcity’ that traditional organisations have preached, and whose agendas have been that of secrecy of information and autocratic style, has been replaced with a world of abundance whose believers connect with a New Testament: Google.

Google is the New Testament because anyone can contribute to it and or make use of its resources of intelligence and economy on a global scale. Unlike the old book, I can ask Google a question and it will immediately answer with a variety of answers filtered by popularity of opinion on a grand scale. Those search results are what the rest of mankind thinks is relevant to my question, and I may visit one, 10, or hundreds of them to learn and clarify my new point of view.

Even in my role as an SEO, who specializes in achieving higher search engine rankings, my links are scrutinized by the general public and validated for link-worthiness, democratically.

Markets previously controlled by traditional giants of the last century are being eroded by us, the common man, because a new generation, who communicate through social media portals and blogs, provided by companies like Google, will never tolerate autocracy again. We have abundance of choice and we will never again suffer a Milli Vanilli, Pinochet, or Enron – because we don’t have to.

We, the people of the Internet, are watching Google, YouTube, Viacom, and every other corporate and individual participant of the 21st century, and while we allow them to collect our information, filter results, and aggregate information, we will continue vote on it, chat about it, bookmark it, and judge it for ourselves. We will find a way to eliminate spam and click fraud. We will evolve the Internet into an AI that feeds us, clothes us, helps save the environment, and connects us as globally as a ‘common human consciousness’ of shared opinion, collective ideas and intellectual fortitude.

I believe that had YouTube not been sold to Google, its rivals would never have sued it. The truth is the benefactors seek to limit our access because it is the only way they can survive. They are not users of the Internet and have missed the boat on what’s going on. We no longer need them. Social communications is more interactive, engaging, entertaining and meaningful than TV and it is here to stay, evolve, and lift global human consciousness at lighting speed.