I had an interesting discussion recently which suggested that Spyware / Adware may be rearing its ugly head in the UK again, I know that the official stance is still zero tolerance however I was wondering if any of the networks would like to confirm that they are remain totally clean and are not again being subjected to unethical applications which are stealing the bread (or the cookies) from the mouths of the hard working affiliates.

Zango (formerly ePIPO, 180solutions and Hotbar) is the name that is being bandied about.Wikipedia has them down as Zangocash these days part of the Pinball corporation.

So nutshell I have these questions for the Affiliate Networks and merchants with independent programs:

1. Can you categorically confirm you are totally adware / spyware free?
2. Do you work with Zangocash / Zango (or any of its incarnations)?
3. Has the above named company approached you recently with a view to working with you?

I’m not looking for a witch hunt, just piece of mind, so help a paranoid old cynic out please.

Just a quick post of my schedule for next weeks a4uExpo in London. Purely for selfish reasons so I can print it off.

Monday 12th October

11.30 Taxi > Darlington Station

12.02pm – Train > London Kings Cross, not taking laptop so reading The Shadow in The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

2.44pm – Underground & Dlr > Custom House Excel

Hopefully Check in to Custom House Hotel by 4pm find a friend or 2 and possibly get food in upstairs bar at the Fox  5.30- 6pm ish

7pm  Ignite Pre-Show Networking Event at Novotel catch up time with lots of great people, plus most importantly pick up expo badge, this could mean an extra hour in bed on Tuesday Morning.

Tuesday 13th October

A great day in store ) Heres what I intend seeing any blanks I will decide on later

09:15 – 10:15 Platinum 5/6/7 SEO Strategies To Make A Splash! Dave Naylor

10:30 – 11:30 Platinum 5/6/7 Meet The Search Engines Q&A Matthew Trewhella, Google – Dan Cohen, Microsoft – TBA, Yahoo!

12:00 – 13:00 Platinum 4 The Affiliate Doctors Live! Kieron Donoghue – Chris Garrett – Duncan Jennings – Dixon Jones

14:30 – 15:30 Platinum 3 Beyond Link Bait: Getting Authoritative Mentions Online - Dixon Jones – Kelvin Newman – Jon Myers (Moderator)

16:00 – 17:00 Platinum 5/6/7 Advanced Site Architecture And Product Feed SEO Judith Lewis – at a4uExpo Europe I unfortunately missed Judith’s talk but heard some great feedback about it so if there is only one session I see at this years expo this is it. (Sorry Nadeem I’ll catch up with yours by video)

Evening at the o2 food first then Breakout Party at the Inc Club from 9pm

Wednesday 14th October

Another awesome day of education meetings and networking.

11:00 – 12:00 Platinum 5/6/7 Barriers to Conversion & Discovering Untapped Opportunities With Analytics – Joanna Butler – Will Critchlow Lisa Myers

12:15 – 13:15 Platinum 5/6/7 Beat Your Merchants At Their Own Game Ben Jesson & Dr Karl Blanks – I make no secret of the fact I admire the work of Ben and Karl of Conversion Rate Experts, so this is undoubtedly my must see session of day 2

13:30 – 14:15 Platinum 3 Regulation, Promotion and Education – What Can The IAB Affiliate Council Do For You? Matt Bailey, i-level – Daniel Powel, Commision Junction – Dan Thut, Qua Media -  Julia Stent, Vodafone

16:00 – 17:00 Platinum 5/6/7 Conversion is King! Gary Beal

17:15 – 18:00 Platinum 5/6/7 How to Build the Best Performing Email Database - Trine Buus – Email is an area that I have never managed to do anymore than scratch the surface hopefully this will open a whole new world for me.

Wednesday finishes with Fish n Chips at the Networking Drinks, Hot Buffet & Ice Party! in the Fox.

That wraps things up just need to remember to get back to Kings Cross for my 1pm Train on Thursday.

Apologies in advance to anyone I know who is doing at talk at the same time as the sessions I have planned but if you doing one when I’m free give me a shout and if I dont have a meeting scheduled I’ll pop along.

If you my dear reader is planning to attend the expo please stop me and say hi.

Continuing on from my post of September 14th I move on to the second search engine secret from that document of 1999, the year when Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace was the highest grossing film.

Secret #2 The little known secret to getting better positioning than your competition even they have the same identical keyword.

List your important keywords more than once on your site!!

Some of the major search engines will rank your website based on the relevancy of the key words used in the search engine. For example if your site sells Ray Ban sunglasses and the words “Ray Ban” are keywords listed on your page, your site will come up when a user searches on “Ray Ban”. And the same for a competitor site with the same sequence of keywords. However if you list Ray Ban not once but several times throughout the page, your site will usually get better positioning than the site who has it listed less times than you.

Many savvy web professionals list their relevant keywords as many times as they possibly can throughout their site because of this. You can also achieve this by listing your keywords several times at the bottom of your webpage, away from your main page, hidden and out of site. Maybe you have seen this for yourself on other websites. It may take a little longer for your page to load, but the extra attention your site receives because of the higher search engine positioning should outweigh the couple of seconds of extra downloading this causes.

So how can we use Search Engine Secret #2 in 2009?

First of all totally disregard the paragraph in italics, this today is considered keyword stuffing, when the article was written Alta Vista was the main search engine and that sort of thing worked pretty well, today if you are discovered using the technique you are probably looking at a Google ban.

As for the first part, still very wise advise in my opinion, but make sure you include relevant content too, include the keywords in key phrases in your title tags and heading tags, and mention them a couple of times in the body text too, keep the surrounding text relevant and contextual and as unique as you can possibly make it.

Hopefully that will help you move up a few places in the serps, but the Google algorithm is an enigma and there is more to getting good ranking than a few well positioned key words (and I’m certainly no SEO guru), but this is a better tactic than simply listing Ray Ban a few dozen times in your footer.

Last week I mentioned how I like affiliate incentives which give everyone a chance to win well here is another from fashion merchant Blue Inc, (aff link) so if you are an affiliate no matter who you are, big or small, get a banner up, get creative and make some sales, you gotta be in it to win it.

INCENTIVE

Blue Inc Clothing have announced an Autumn 2009 affiliate incentive which gives everyone a chance. There are two chances to win – each with £100 prizes.

Prize 1

You very simply have to run some Blue Inc creative on the homepage of your site or review one of our products.

All you have to do is e-mail them (alex.h (@) p-media.co.uk) a screen grab and the url. Each e-mail they receive will get 1 entry into prize draw 1.

Prize 2

Drive over 4 sales across the months of October and November to gain entry into prize draw 2.

ABOUT BLUE INC

They are a fast growing fashion retailer – they have gone from 50 stores to just under 80 over the course of the year.

They have a full womenswear range being launched online during October 2009 and are evaluating stock market floatation in 2010.

Their affiliate programme is managed by Perception Media and available through Linkshare (aff link).

Filed away on this blog under good practices DFDS Seaways have recently launched an affiliate incentive which gives everyone a chance.

The first part is DOUBLE COMMISSION for all DFDS sales between now and 1st November 2009.

Secondly to add icing on the cake there is also an opportunity to win a fabulous Supercar experience day, where you petrol heads get the opportunity to drive Aston Martins, Ferraris, Lamborghinis and more.

Whats more its a competition that anyone can win not just the super affiliates (what ever one of them is).

How to win:
Position 1 – Affiliate that generates the most revenue during the incentive period
Position 2 – Every 1 sale = 1 Entry into draw to win
Position 3 – Best Content on 241 Mini Cruises (Follow Link Below to Submit URL)
Position 4 – 1 Place will be given away at a4uexpo on 14 October 2009

>> Click here for full details…