I tried several different ways to begin this post, but it seemed only fitting to be as blunt in this announcement as I have been during my entire SEO and affiliate career, thus the title of this entry.It's been an amazing ride In 1998, after my oldest son suffered a massive bilateral stroke, I …
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How to Make Your WordPress Website Secure (SSL) in 6 Steps
If you've looked into search engine optimization as a promotional technique for your website, you have likely come across the advice to make your website secure (having an https:// appear in front of your URLs instead of http://). Google has been very vocal in pushing for all websites to make the …
Google Search Console – a Beginner’s Guide to Finding Actionable SEO Tasks
Google Search Console (GSC) can be a helpful tool - providing you use it. This guide isn't meant for advanced users nor is it a comprehensive dive into every feature GSC has. I'm not looking to overwhelm you. Instead, we're going to go over eight simple GSC features that can provide you with …
27 Detailed Ways to Generate New Blog Post Ideas
Coming up with good topics for your blog posts can be a struggle, especially after you have been blogging for a while. When I get inspired, blogging is easy for me. When I have to sit down and write like it's homework because I need to publish two posts one week, I often sit there staring at my …
Understanding Affiliate Marketing Lingo (Glossary of Terms)
I get a lot of newer, aspiring affiliates on the Sugarrae site and when you've never done affiliate marketing before, all of the terms can get a little confusing. So I created this glossary of affiliate marketing terms to help newer affiliates and bloggers understand the terminology used within the …
How to Cloak Affiliate Links (& Why You Should)
I always run my affiliate links through redirects - also referred to as cloaking affiliate links - for several reasons:Running them through my redirects means I have a click count to match up to the one the merchant is reporting. Affiliate links are usually ugly and impossible to remember …
How Bloggers Can Fix a Manual Penalty Caused by Compensated Content & Reviews
This past weekend Google sent out a round of manual penalty notices citing "unnatural outbound links" - later confirmed to be targeting sites publishing compensated content and reviews where the blogger is linking out to the brand or site that compensated them. If your site received the notice, …
How to Create a Clickable Affiliate Ad as a Backup for an AdSense Unit
Sometimes an AdSense unit won't display an ad to a user for whatever reason. When an AdSense unit doesn't show an ad, it leaves an odd amount of space within the content, and reduces my ability to monetize those pages - and I find that unacceptable.This used to be a much more significant …
A Call for a Search Discussion – How Google Works
If you follow me on Twitter, then you know I sometimes complain about the current state of the industry - most notably centered around what passes for research and discussion these days. It feels like people want to be handed the fish - with little interest in learning how the person with the fish …