This is definitely a plugin you must have for blog marketing and e-commerce. It provides one more way to monetize the traffic to your blog.

Using Amazon Build Links

Previously, whenever I want to add an Amazon link, I’ll need to log in to Amazon Affiliate Central and use the Build Links t to search for the product and generate the JavaScript. Then copy and paste the link into the Wordpress editor.

Now, WP-Amazon simplify the tedious process of Amazon Build Links and put what you need right at where you need it – within Wordpress editor. Check out the demo video here.

Here’s what I want for my trip to photo trip to Hokkaido:

Buy Now at Amazon – Leica V-LUX 1

The above image and link were inserted using WP-Amazon in less than 30 seconds.

Here’s what you need to take note when installing the WP-Amazon plugin:

1. You’re need an Amazon Affiliate ID.
2. Copy the WP-Amazon files to the plugins folder and activate it.
3. Go to Options and click Amazon tab.
4. You will need to enter your default country and Affiliate ID.
5. You need to use the visual editor for the drag-and-drop feature to work.

Now you are ready to recommend Amazon items and make a commission when your readers purchased the product. Good luck to marketing using your blog and making your blog, e-commerce capable.

Chris Richardson of WebProNews wrote a report on this session and title it “Important SEO Tips Every Should Know“. I received this report via email but cannot find it at WebProNews.com yet. Anyway, Google found me a similar list at another website – Webmasterscafe.info: “Some SEO advice after Las Vegas PubCon 2007“.

So I won’t repeat the list here. Rather, I will highlight some of the points which I find important and interesting. At the top of my interesting list is…

“No Link Exchanges” – Matt Cutts

Matt Cutts of Google is telling us not to bother with link exchange. But, isn’t the WWW built on the foundation of hyperlinks?

To many webmasters link exchange is the only quick way to get backlinks. (To find out other link building methods, read my post on How to Improve Your Pagerank.) And it is quite common to set up a link directory or resources page for your reciprocal linking campaign.

If we accept what Matt Cutts said, many webmasters, including myself will be in trouble. As you can see at the top of this page, there is a directory link to 2 link pages:

• SEO Services/Resources
• Web Directory Submission

And on the sidebar, I have an ad recommending LinkMachine – Link Exchange System. So should I removed all these links… maybe not yet. Here’s why.

Google Doesn’t Want Link Farms
[Wikipedia: Link Farm]

So Google doesn’t like quick way. Google wants you to grow your backlinks at a slow natural pace without resorting to creating hundreds of pages consist of nothing but links which constitute to a link farm.

Google wants you to build useful content so that they could list it in their search results. And it is ok to refer to another website by hyperlink, from within the content of the article.

However, I believe what Matt Cutts said refer to backlinks from link page, resources page and even many of the web directories – these are useless – so don’t bother to exchange link and have you URL ended up in someone else link page.

If your website already has link pages, do not just remove them yet unless all these links are totally unrelated to your website theme.

What you can do is to add value to these pages.

• Add more useful information beside just links. Write a short description on the web page that you link to.
• Categorize and group links of similar theme.
• You can pull and display RSS contents related to theme of the links to make the page content rich.
• The link page should be relevant and important enough to be linked directly from the homepage and not buried 3 or 4 level deep.

Forget Template-base Websites

“template-base websites may not ranked well because they appear alike to the crawlers…” – Tim Mayer(Yahoo) and Matt Cutts(Google)

I am sure both of these experts are talking about Adsense optimized template and not Joomla or Wordpress templates. So Yahoo and Google know about Adsense templates. Then there is no point spending hundred of dollars buying templates from Joel Comm since the search engine can recognize the and marked them as “search engine trash“.

As for the important points, at the top of my list is: Stop Using Javascript Menu!

I believe that all webmasters and web designers MUST NOT use Javascript menu. Not only does it obstruct efficient spidering for your website by the search engine robots, it can be irritating to your users if the menu was not designed and positioned properly.

If websites that have hundred of thousands of pages, such as eBay.com and CNN.com, do not use javascript menu, why should you?

Each Page of Your Site is an Entry Point

It is very important that each of your internal pages focus on just one topic and keep it between 400 and 800 words. If you have enough material to write more than 800 words, then you should split the article into 2 and target one more keyword.

When you optimize each of your internal pages in this way, you stand a good chance to be ranked well in the search engines for the keywords and each page becomes an entry point to your website. So, instead of just having people coming to your website via your homepage, you now have multiple entry points to your website hence increasing targeted traffic and revenue.

www.Zippy.co.uk

You are able to get a lot more information when want to find out who are the top ranking sites for the keywords that you are targeting. The user interface is AJAX driven, so what get a lot more information with seeing the page being refresh every time you click a link or button.

Now, let’s look at what are the various services that Zippy provides.

Meta Search Engine

• Recommended search terms from Google, Yahoo and MSN. Ask doesn’t seem to provide related search terms.
• Click at “Information” and you get the Age, IP, No. of sites sharing this IP, Google PR, backlinks, No. of indexed pages, DMOZ link, Alexa ranking and etc. That’s a lot of information from Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask and Alexa.

Get Information on Domain

• Server information such as IP address.
• Text information such as page title, words found in heading, words in bold, ratio of external links to internal links and domains it linked to.
• Analyzes text content and provides list of 2-word, 3-word and 4-word phrase.

Here’s the display when you Compare Two Sites:

At the time of review, the Compare Top 10 Results function was not working.

Overall, I think it is a great one-stop service for a quick analysis on keywords and related websites/URLs.

However, now that Google is using your Description meta tag it is important that you have a good description for each of your web page. A well written description will probably increase traffic to your site, especially since many other webmasters don’t give it much importance.

<meta name=”description” content=”A short paragraph to describe of your web page here”>

From now on think of your meta-tag description as a good headline on a well written article that gives the reader an incentive to read the article.