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Hi Joni I was also going to recommend setting up events/goals as Chris mentioned. The goal gets tracked as a metric, so you can view metrics for any traffic source. You would basically do it in one of two ways; either have an event trigger when the "submit" button on the form is clicked or use the "thank you" or "confirmation" landing page URL and set the event as a URL destination. Then, once you have an event, you can turn any event into a Goal. While it is true you can get this data for Organic Search traffic in one bucket, unfortunately due to "not provided" you won't be able to get accurate data by keyword. -Dan

Tom, You can use the Disavow Links tool to do this for existing links, though I would advise updating the way your affiliate program works so as to avoid the issue going forward. For example, when providing the link code to affiliates include the rel nofollow tag, as mentioned above. Most affiliate programs will send the user through an internal redirect, which can pass on the unique identifying parameter for the affiliate so they get credit for the conversions. I understand you may not want to go that route due to the work involved, but this is really the standard for affiliate programs these days. It allows you complete control on your end without having to bother the affiliates to update their links. Good luck!

Hi, It's difficult to answer this question without some understanding of the client, their industry and what you are trying to improve (e.g. brand awareness or sales - Product or Saas). I've found there are very few "quick wins" unless your client isn't an established internet player in which case you can focus on getting the basics sorted - such as performing an SEO Audit (e.g. Moz) and set up an Analytics package (e.g. Google Analytics) so that you can measure campaigns effectively. If they are established online then assessing their Social Media strategy, Backlinks and optimising their PPC campaigns would be a good place to start, though these are both going to take a fair bit of work. If there's a substantial client email list then you could run segmented / split tested email campaigns to drive sales or brand awareness. I would definitely advise against paying for fake followers/likes/+1s on their Social Media profiles, or running any large campaigns without understanding your client, their industry, customers and competitors first. Good luck, George

Ashley & Kerri. Thanks for getting back to me and for the great resource links. I'll dive into those.

All the methods you mention are valid as long as you nofollow them. And if having one domain to redirect simplifies your work, then go for it. Remember to always nofollow those links.

Ltsmz, You don't necessarily need to put the keyword "ProductName Review" several times on each page. However, if what you're showing on that page is indeed a review of that product, then I don't see why "ProductName Review" wouldn't be included in the copy, or header tag of the page. Once or twice should be plenty in most cases if you are repeating the words "ProductName" and "Review" each separately elsewhere on the page. I would optimize for both, as outlined in my answer above. Yes it makes a difference. Having the word "review" appear in a sitewide sidebar or footer is going to have much less of an impact than having it within the body of the content on the page. Interview industry experts and ask what their favorite products are for a specific need. Email the winner of a comparison, possibly giving them a badge (e.g. "Editor's Pick") to display on their site. Create high-quality, useful comparison charts that compare the price and features of each product within that niche. Generally just have a really useful, well-designed, regularly updated website.

Any update on this so far Daria?

I know PRWEB is nofollow now. If you're using some of the free resources for PR, some of these are still dofollow. The problem is that some of these PR sites link systems don't allow you to use the nofollow tag (no HTML manipulation). So, it's probably best to just disavow these. I would love to dive deeper into a discussion about how Google is treating the nofollow tag now... it appears from my research that much more citation and trust is being passed now? Anyway.. different topic : ).

1. Website - When developing your site, be sure to check how it looks in Internet Explorer, Safari, Google Chrome and Firefox. For mobile IPAD, Iphone and Android. If you have issues, it's probably with your CSS. Many websites use what they call responsive designs. They adapt to the type of device you are using. Even with responsive designs, they require tweaks here and there to get things looking right. 2. Website Tanking - Just to rule out a few items, take a look at your Google Webmaster Tools and see if there are any manual actions (messages) done on your site. Also check Webmaster Tools under section Google Index->Index Status to make sure all your pages are indexed. 3. Local Directories - At a minimum, make sure you are listed in these key directories: Axiom, Infogroup and Localeze. After that, claim/add your information in Citysearch/Citygrid, Local.com, Manta, Primeplace Nokia, Yellowbook, Yellowbot, Yellowee,Yellowpages,Insiderpages,Kudzu, Merchant Circle,Supermedia. There are more but this should keep you busy for a while. 4. Claim your Google Plus, Yahoo Local and Bing Listings 5. Know your competitors. How well does your website look against theirs? Does your site look trustworthy?  Use <cite>www.opensiteexplorer.org/</cite> ‎to check your backlinks against theirs. Unfortunately, trying to rank isn't a set it and forget it operation. Keep updating your website, post to your Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter, Website Blog with engaging content.

Cool, I sort of thought that would be the case.  I was just concerned because I didnt have dedicated time to develop my niche site, so even thought its been online for 8 years... The penguin penalty was rather severe, and took a full year of cleaning just to be re included.  Meaning I want no association between the two site. That being said, I can't see how natural social sharing for a few weeks could be damaging to my primary website but I just wanted to check to see if anyone had experience with this specifically.  By that I mean, how social metrics and sharing may impact a website... I know anytime I get a re tweet or share from a large outlet, I see substantial traffic, and sometimes ranking increases... However have never seen, talked about or noticed the impact of a share from a website like my niche site.  Which has a pristine service record, strong social following but yeah was kicked for a reason. thx

Rae Hoffman is one of the notable people in the field of Affiliate Marketing. She has some resources on her site at http://sugarrae.com/ that can help you get started.

SEO is not about only backlinks. If those website don't have a backlink, it doesn't mean that they shouldn't be ranking. There are number of factors to get ranking, including URL, domain age,  your hosting, speed of the website, on page optimisation and social networks etc.. You need to take those website as a competitive website and analyse what they have or do different than your website.  Also, when you check the results, make sure you use private window on your browser so you don't see personalized results. Personalized results can give incorrect information. I wouldn't spend too much time on backlinks unless you are trying to recover from Penguin update. Any thing you try to get links will have negative impact on your SEO.

Ezami. Great input. Skin care industry has some awesome numbers for online sales. And again my point is to get customers " that already purchase " our products in our stores to go online , without marketing to them directly from our retail stores " cannot do so because of code of conduct with our wholesalers"

Here's a quick couple of ideas to help jog your thinking: An off-site article/blog post for a web design community that discusses examples of various looks for "review pages" An off-site article/blog post on a humor or other hosting review site that points out some of "The funniest hosting reviews ever written" An off-site article/blog post on a career site about how a faceless systems admin decided to step up into the limelight and interact publicly with his customers online by becoming a web host.

Bhupesh, I agree with Lynn, in that those links are not what's helping that site rank well. Besides the variety of factors that may be helping those thin pages rank better than you, you may also consider what may be holding your page back.  Last week, Rand did a whiteboard Friday where he went over reasons why you may get outranked by a page that seems to be of lower quality than your own. He pointed to these possible reasons: Poor search result snippet Perceived lower value brand Lower design/user experience value Citations: (links, social shares, mentions) lower quality lower quantity lower variety lower acceleration rate Usefulness or quality of content searcher intent not fully addressed unique value of content not apparent Results Biasing due to local results due to mobile results due to specific verticals

It could be spammy, but I like to think that Google doesn't punish infographics as severely as say trash-written articles by English-as-a-second-language "SEOs." Reason being is it makes sense for infographics to sit in many places as some people want to share infographics that may not be entirely relevant to their niche/site/whatever. That said I'd still be skeptical and if it were me I'd skip the distribution part and handle that on my own. If you want them to create your infographic, that's one thing.. but there are also tons of great ways you can create your own if you have your own facts/data to present. infogr.am, visua.ly, infoactive.co, easel.ly - - check all these out first. Good luck!

tradedoubler is the widest affiliation database in the net. you only have to set up your banners and the commission, that easy. However when it comes to affiliation I'd prefer to spot the best sites and contact them directly. Also you may consider google GDN, in that way you'll easily spot good performing website to contact them directly or just to achieve more traffic, Using banners you should be able to pass the gambling filter.

Hell Joni, Although Thomas seems to be answering someone else's question here (replied in the wrong window?) Mihai has done a great job of providing you with actionable advice related to your question. Yes, those kinds of links can be a problem IF you do not use a rel canonical tag. However, it is not uncommon for websites to use tracking parameters in the URL. This is fine as long as you use a rel canonical tag and/or tell Google and Bing to ignore those parameters. Most likely Google already knows to ignore them anyway. Please read these articles and let us know if you still need help with this... Article by Dr. Pete on Rel Canonical Tags http://moz.com/blog/rel-confused-answers-to-your-rel-canonical-questions Setting up campaign tracking URLs If you use Google Analytics: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en About Rel Canonical Tag Support by Google: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139394?hl=en About URL Parameters: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1235687?hl=en

When I go into Twitter I dont go there to look for something specifically normally however anything I see that catches my eye I might click on and as I dont follow huge amounts of people I keep my feed more filtered to what im interested in. I'm not surprised Tweets dont convert so well from this person as thinking as a normal person I would be more likely to click on someone doing a review. Could she or someone she works with do a review on your products and tweet that. Maybe that will give a bit more authority and more chance to convert.

You can give the affiliates code with nofollow in there but if they remove it you have no control over that. However, 99.99% of the time they'll leave it in there. Affiliates don't want to help you outrank them anyway. As Wesley said above, have them use rel nofollow on the links and you should be fine.