Northie,
These are very good suggestions.

You're right, I do need to improve my business model. I started to do that already by referring homepage visitors to my Product Reviews page, where I have my affiliate stuff, but that is one extra step visitors have to take to get to the affiliate link. Fewest steps possible increases sales conversions.

What's an effective method for cloaking affiliate links that's ok with the search engines? In the past, I used a simple server redirect, but that no longer seems like a safe option.

Should I not use email signup forms at all? If I remove the existing signup forms and replace them with an alternative to achieve the same goal, the problem is still making it acceptable to the human editor who reviews the site and makes the decision. It's true SE bots can't read those things, but a human editor can still see it as an affiliate link. Is it acceptable to use the rel="nofollow" attribute in affiliate links?

What if I want to build a list? What is an acceptable method?

I have been adding my own articles and blogging, although I have a long ways to go with it.

When I make my site acceptable to Yahoo, the question is will they remove the penalty or even look at my site?

Thanks!

Hey Fred,

Lot of questions, hard to give a definitive answer, but I'll try.

Cloaking affiliate links:

I use an external js file that uses a document.write to display a table that looks similar to AdSense PPC ads.

the url in the link looks like

<a href='http://www.my-site.com/products/index.php?product=12345' target='_BANK'>Title</a>

On the page,'http://www.my-site.com/products/index.php' i look in my database for the id '12345' [, log the click and some other metrics] and form the url 'http://www.product-site.com'. I then use

header('http://www.product-site.com');

exit(); 

Some times I don't use js (in order to get some content on the page), in which case i use the rel='nofollow' attribute.

List Building

This is something I'm new to....but....

With all I've read I have come to the following conclusion - I have a discrete box in the top-left of my affiliate pages that have a 'keep me informed' title and a form with name and email fields. At the bottom of the page i state

This is a commercial email list with follow up emails

I also intend to put this on a 'confirmation' page with a agree/disagree option - yes this will cut down the number of people in my list but I also believe that it will seem more trust worthy; and as the big thing these days in about trust.....you get the idea.

Blogging / Articles

This depends on your time/budget. In an ideal world you could try this:

Every month get a ghost writer to write a few articles  - one on each topic. You can get a 400 word article for less than $6 if you shop around. Add these articles to your site.

At the same time set up a wordpress blog (hosted on a subdomain, perhaps?)  and post the first paragraph of each article to your blog with a link in the blog post to the article on your site. Look up some good ping services and add them to wordpress - this will help get the word out.

Blog Spam

'The Blog Solution' claims to be able to send 1000's of targeted visitors to your site. haven't used it but hope to try it out in a week or so. I expect it will do as it claims for a week and then the site will be dead in the eyes of SEs....would love to be wrong on this though!

Yahoo

As for Yahoo - I can't say. I've never got much traffic from them - I get most traffic from small, niche directories.

Doing the above may get the SEs interested but if an employee of Yahoo looks at your site then you'll just have to make your site look as far from an affiliate site as you can.

Hope this helps

Laurie,
Actually it wasn't a yahoo rep who said this. It was a fellow web business owner in the Yahoo Answers forum who's in the SEO consulting business.

The Yahoo reps just parrot back the same standard reply whenever I've gotten back a reply back from them.

Northie,
I have Wordpress installed on this site for my /blog. I have been using Wordpress since last year. I'm pinging on technorati and blogsearch.google.com. I am also using the Google sitemap plugin. My only problem is lack of new ideas to write about.

I have been writing and publishing my own articles, no ghostwriters, although it's a slow process.

Back when I was using rankingpower, which got 2 of my other sites banned from Yahoo and Google, Yahoo was delivering 90% of my traffic - up to 2500/day and sales converted very well, but I have never done well on Google. MSN is easy to rank well on, but it's still a bit too small to deliver much traffic. Losing Yahoo was a big loss for me. Google reincluded both of my banned sites a couple months after I got rid of the rankingpower stuff, and one of them is actually doing better on Google now than beyourowndetective.com which is puzzling.

On all my individual pages, instead of the signup boxes, if I were to have a highly visible link referring visitors to my "Products review" page, do you think that could work just as well and pass the Yahoo review? If I do that, then every page on my site would be pointing to my products review page instead of the affiliate site. If I put a cloaked affiliate link there, that to me seems guaranteed to flunk the Yahoo review.

For affiliate links on my products review page I am using this code in my affiliate links to hide it from the browser's status bar, although I don't what good it does.

rel="nofollow" onmouseover="window.status='Go to....'; return true" onmouseout="self.status='';return true"

G'day Fred,

I've read the beginning of theis thread (first 10 -12 posts) but don't have time to go thru all.

If this has been mentioned, just forget I exist:

I have heard that Yahoo are especially sensitive about links to "bad" sites. That is, sites that have been banned or penalised, sites that are using any kind of cheat methods in their SEO etc .

I don't know if you are, or have been, linked to such site/s but it's something to consider, if all else turns up a fat nothing...

Yahoo having changed their algorythm a week ago explains some things to me. Thanks for that info gypsy, I hadn't heard this time 'round.

Wiz 

Wizard,
Good suggestion. A few months ago, I did check some of my reciprocal links for banned sites for both Google and Yahoo, and I did remove a few along with some spam sites.

Some people in other forums have also claimed Yahoo doesn't like reciprocal links, but I don't see how this is possible since there are lots of sites doing them who are doing fine on Yahoo.

I think now the most likely problem is my signup boxes.

Fred,

As far as reciprocal links are concerned, I have a number of sites, they all do differently in the different SEs. The half dozen or so that I pay most attention to (as far as SEO is concerned) do well in Yahoo and MSN and a couple do quite well in Google - The rest do 'just OK' in all, depending the keyword or phrase, of course.

They all have a mixture of both incoming only and reciprocal links.

I must admit, I was using a 'Link Exchange called 'Linkmarket.net' for quite some time, but I never added more than about 4 or 5 links a week from that. Now I use it far less, maybe 1 or 2 a week (but they slowly build up) and of course, they are ALL (without exception) related to my content and have keyword rich backlinks and also their link text on m,y page is more often than not, keyword 'friendly'.

I don't think any SE has anythingb PARTICULARLY against recip links. I think it has more to do with a large number of recip links or any link for that matter, turning up over a short period (suggesting use of Link exchanges or buying links). I think if you use exchanges sparingly and ONLY EVER exchange relative links, you'll be left alone, as I have been.

For instance, the site for my ebook (the link below in my signature), is number 5 in Google for 'Affiliate Guide', a very competitive search term (and has been in the top 5 for over a year). That site has probably, 60% recip links out of hundreds.

Wiz 

Wizard of Oz wrote:

For instance, the site for my ebook (the link below in my signature), is number 5 in Google for 'Affiliate Guide', a very competitive search term (and has been in the top 5 for over a year). That site has probably, 60% recip links out of hundreds.

Wiz 

Well, I am too tired to rant ro even whimper about anything today, so it’s great that Wiz ‘has my back’

I can live with his post other than a tweak here;

                SEE ABOVE QUOTE

I would look to keep the ratio of One Way Back Links v Reciprocal Back Links down

The engines are actively fighting link spam and what today is grey will surely ‘fade to black’ soon enough. Keep the ratio as low as possible when building your ‘link profile’

Wizard,
ebooks.online-plus.biz and online-plus.biz? I see you're in the same boat as me in Yahoo. Only 2 of your pages - homepage and about.htm are cached. Your homepage is Google PR-4 (same as mine).

I would be a lot less concerned about Yahoo, if MSN and Google were delivering decent traffic to make up for the loss. I have never done well on Google.

Speaking of reciprocal links, my links directories on all my sites have been getting heavily spammed with Viagra & Cialis links for some time now. It's a good thing I have all new link submissions blocked, awaiting my approval. I will be deleting hundreds of spam links from my databases.

Fred wrote:

Wizard,
ebooks.online-plus.biz and online-plus.biz? I see you're in the same boat as me in Yahoo. Only 2 of your pages - homepage and about.htm are cached. Your homepage is Google PR-4 (same as mine).

I would be a lot less concerned about Yahoo, if MSN and Google were delivering decent traffic to make up for the loss. I have never done well on Google.

Speaking of reciprocal links, my links directories on all my sites have been getting heavily spammed with Viagra & Cialis links for some time now. It's a good thing I have all new link submissions blocked, awaiting my approval. I will be deleting hundreds of spam links from my databases.

The first thing you need to do is get rid of the 'Link Directory' program. Is you site a Directory? If it's not, why do you want it to be one. All those rotten programs do is turn your site into a mini-Directory, but not only that, they turn it into a Directory of spam sites and desperados whose sites can't hold up to getting genuine links, so they resort to sites that accept 'anyone and everyone' whose willing to supply a backlink, regardless of the content and topic.

ONLY RELATED LINKS are any good to you as far as SERPs are concerned. Forget your PR - They will improve that, but it means nothing unless the true PR value consists of RELATED sites, which will work for you in the algorythms for rankings.

As for the two sites of mine having only the Home page (and maybe another listed) - I noticed this a week ago. This is why I said "AHA" to gypsy when he advised that Yahoo had changed their algorythm last week. They have also begun a kind of "Sitemap" program not unlike Google's. I have since submitted sitemaps for a few of my sites (and am shortly doing the rest). With Yahoo, it's not so elaborate, they simply require a .txt file with a list of your pages named "/urllist.txt" and a 'validation' html page with a specific alpha-numeric file name.

I believe this will ensure that the rest of my pages will be indexed and back where they were two weeks ago. Having read your earlier posts. I still can't see how you can be banned and still have your Home page indexed. I think someone is having a lend of you... (if you don't mind my saying).

I had similar experience, with most of my pages from a couple of sites disappearing from the Google index when they last changed their Algorythm (about 6 months ago I think it was). I have since re-submitted the siemaps and was very shortly after, re-indexed - However, ny PRs for these sites were wiped clean (Home Pages still Indexed though). I imagine, the PRs will return when they finally update the toolbar displays (Hence my curiosity with that issue the other day.

Wiz 

A quick update on the YaH world; TARFU

While it’s settling down there are still plenty of grumblings. To me they have moved closer to the Google model as far as how they are handling links as well as raising the ‘authority’ (aging/links) filter.

Of note is that US DCs (data centers) seem to be returning worse results than international (UK,Canada) DCs from what I have read today.

I echo the whole ‘banned’ part because you ARE indexed. Banned is usually just that, banned. A lack of indexing seems to be more a function of a new site or a lack of trust from YaH. As always, if you have one or more affiliate programs YaH van be tough on ya.

thegyspsy wrote:

A quick update on the YaH world; TARFU

While it’s settling down there are still plenty of grumblings. To me they have moved closer to the Google model as far as how they are handling links as well as raising the ‘authority’ (aging/links) filter.

Of note is that US DCs (data centers) seem to be returning worse results than international (UK,Canada) DCs from what I have read today.

I echo the whole ‘banned’ part because you ARE indexed. Banned is usually just that, banned. A lack of indexing seems to be more a function of a new site or a lack of trust from YaH. As always, if you have one or more affiliate programs YaH van be tough on ya.

What exactly are you referring to when you say "Affiliate programs". Are you talking about 'Affiliate links' going out to merchants, on the page?? Or are you talking about actually having an Affiliate program and 'running it' from the site.

In the first instance, you're basically saying that having say... a link to a Clickbank product, as a revenue earner is going to count against websites? For that matter, Google Adsense is nothing more than a vast Affiliate Program - Websites using their visibility to send visitors to merchants!!

he he... you're catching on huh?

That is merely a conspiracy theory among YaH watchers. Sorry. I had put it in that context before and forgot to this time...

My Bad....

I have seen many grumblings and some interesting 'evidence' to suggest, for one reason or another, YaH dislikes heavy affiliate stuff. It would, under this theory, be more of a case that WHY index an Amazon affiliate when Amazon already has the product. A duplicate content thing of sorts.
I earlier mentioned to add VALUE to any page with affiliate stuff to ensure it does not run into this problem.

Being an aggregator of deals and information is fine. Just be sure to add value on top of the product/service being 'pushed' on the affiliate page...

man I wish there were 'stickies' to post stuff like that.... lol
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
wake me when I am dead...thanks......

Having read your earlier posts. I still can't see how you can be banned and still have your Home page indexed. I think someone is having a lend of you...

Wizard,
My site isn't fully "banned," it's just severely penalized, to where I cannot rank for any keywords on Yahoo, nor get any traffic from there, so it might as well be a ban. A site:www search for my domain shows a total of 47 pages indexed, but only my homepage is "cached" indicating a penalty. With a normal site, all pages should be cached. Also most of the 47 pages are dead links that are over a year old. I removed a large number of "rankingpower" pages from my site, but Yahoo has still not yet removed all of them from their index. On several different occasions when I inquired to Yahoo, somebody there gave me the standard reply "it has been determined your site may not comply with our quality content guidelines." I was not aware they even looked at it beyond my homepage, at least according to my webstats.

I have a small reciprocal links directory found in /resources/ but it's very small, mostly related links and was built up manually over a long period of time. It's nothing like Zeus or LinksManager. I recently cleaned up house and removed a bunch of junk links, and I even eliminated entire unrelated categories, including gambling links. I am no longer accepting link exchanges. I am building one-way links by publishing articles and adding my site to various free directories.

"Affiliate site" can mean a couple different things. To me, it's a website that's promoting somebody else's products for a sales commission Ie: clickbank, as opposed to promoting your own product.

Fred,

Re your earlier post regarding my website http://www.online-plus.biz. Since submitting the Yahoo Sitemap, actually since yesterday, I now have 39 pages indexed from that site and 409 incoming links acknowledged (no biggy), but it seems that I was correct when I suggested that Yahoo's recent algorythm change affected some sites and the level of indexing. Admittedly the pages are not as yet, cached, which you seem to feel is important, but of course, that will happen when they are first crawled, as they have been scheduled to be.

The fact that they were indexed within a week of my submitting the sitemap, proves, to me anyway, that Yahoo has no prob with my site.

I expect that the ebooks.online-plus.... will show up far more indexed pages in the next few days also.

I really would, if I were you, go to Yahoo and follow their "How To Suugest A Site" link at the bootom of the page and submit a sitemap (actually simply a txt file of your pages).

Wiz...

Wizard,
2 days ago I did notice that Yahoo cached my blog page
http://www.beyourowndetective.com/blog so I now have 2 pages cached instead of just my homepage, but it did this once before 2 months ago.

It's currently stuck on 48 site links, 2 cached. Most are still dead links.

Homepage cached only is a sure sign of a penalty. Not getting any traffic from Yahoo given my backlinks is a dead giveaway.

I would like to build both html and txt sitemaps, but for some reason unknown, the phpsitemapNG script I was using quit working last month, I assume due to incompatibility issues with the webhost's Apache upgrade. Not even my webhost support has an answer. Every other free sitemap generator I looked at requires Python, which I don't have. Do you know of a non-Python sitemap generator you could recommend?

This is the Google Sitemap Generator I use - It does HTML, TXT and XML maps and there's nothing on the page (that I can see) that indicates a need for Python - http://www.sitemapdoc.com/

However, why do you need an xml map? Yahoo only require a txt map (on notepad), named .urllist.txt
and a validation file (.txt also) with the file name they give you and a small line of code insiode (that they also give you - In fact you just download the whole file and pop it into your sites top level.
This is a very easy process, especially with Frontpage AS YOU CAN "DRAG AND DROP" with FP (another advantage that I enjoy when publishing etc)

Wiz 

P.S - Another 11 of the pages from my "ebooks. online-plus... site that you mentioned earlier, have been indexed. Again, I imagine they will be indexed when they are crawled (as the 'status' indicates soemthing like.... "Crawl Status - Pending".

You also say that all the other pages you have indexed (apart from your Home page are old, defunct pages. You can't expect that they will ever be crawled, as they don't exist. Obviously Yahoo NEED the info of a Sitemap. Maybe they are not so willing to go crawling websites that have so many pages that no longer exist???

Wiz 

Wizard,
This is an online sitemap generator, so there's nothing to install on my site. It has a 750 page limit, but my site is well below that. The sitemap generators I was looking for are scripts I would install on my site. Most of those seem to require Python.

I just executed sitemapdoc for my site and it returned errors, for no descriptions on many of my pages and it's counting all of my Wordpress blog pages as duplicate content, due to the way Wordpress is layed out. I will need to have meta descriptions for all my pages including the blog.

Lots of people have told me a sitemap is unnecessary for Google.

I am already running a separate Google XML sitemap plugin for my Wordpress blog and it appears to be working ok.

Thanks,
Fred

Wizard,
sitemapdoc is proving too problematic to use. It keeps hanging up and going to a blank page part way through the scanning process, or else gives "Service Unavailable" errors. Besides that it's limited to 750 entries.

What I need is a php sitemap generator script that I can install on my site, that will generate the yahoo txt sitemap. Most I looked at are either in Python or work on Windows servers only. I might have no choice buy to bug my webserver to install Python for me.

I'm sorry Fred. I've obviously misunderstood your need. Never mind.... I try

How many pages do you have, that makes it problematic to simply make a txt list of your page's URLs?

Even if its 100's the sitemapdoc will give you a txt list of your pages. Even if you have the errors that you mentioned (and are happy that they're not a prob) you can still click the box adjacent to that page and it will include it. You have full control over which pages you include or not.

Anyway, I've never heard of a 'sitemap' program that's installed within your website. I've only ever needed to include the three sitemaps that are needed to cover all purposes (in my little Internet world):

XML for Google SE
TXT for Yahoo (and some other SEs that also use it)
HTML for peoplebodies (and also the SEs that count same as a necessary 'user friendly' necessity), which I believe is most, especially Google. I recall reading at some point, a list of pages that Google considered a MUST for any 'user friendly' website. They were:

Sitemap (HTML for user use)
Privacy Policy
Terms & Conditions
Contact Us

Maybe it's becase my largest site has 83 pages. maybe I've never had a need to seek out an easier way to generate maps.

Wiz 

I found a different online sitemap generator that works, and created a urllist.txt sitemap, and submitted it to Yahoo. If more than one page of your site is "cached" even just 2, is that an indication of no penalty? Both my homepage and main blog page are currently "cached."

Validation file? Where do I get one of these?

Wizard, at first I assumed I probably used sitemapdoc at a bad time, when their server was overloaded or having other  trouble, but it's still timing out then going to a blank white page this morning. I am having the same problem with both browsers - MSIE and Mozilla.

enarion.net/google/phpsitemapng is a very good PHP-based freeware/open source tool, but for reasons unknown, it no longer works on my site.