befuddled me? » Google

ShopCodes Sitelinks Success

befuddle — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 12:29:55 +0000

ShopCodes has been rewarded with an extra eight links displayed when you perform a Google search.

ShopCodes.co.uk is the number one result for the search query ’shop codes’ that has over 3million results.

These additional links shown below only some sites in the Google search results are called sitelinks and are there to help users navigate.

Google systems have analyzed the link structure of ShopCodes to find shortcuts that will save users time and allow them to quickly find the information they’re looking for.

Google only show sitelinks for results when they think they’ll be useful to the user. If they don’t think that the sitelinks are relevant for the user’s query, they won’t show them.

The links are completely automated and you have to be in the first position for a search, for a chance to have this feature applied to your site.

I’ve ten links in total displayed when you include the second result on the page. Some sites only have five.

As well as linking to my voucher codes, exclusive codes and site map pages, the sitelinks list some high profile merchants too. Currys, Dixons, Figleaves, Debenhams and Tesco all feature.

Unfortunately at this time there are no affiliate released codes for Tesco and Debenhams, so I’ve included an RSS subscription form prominently on those pages.

Shop Codes California Dreamin

befuddle — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 14:44:29 +0000

Shop Codes visitors arrive from 96 different countries. So as well as promoting those in Great Britain I’ve trialled diversifying into other lucrative markets.

Outside of the UK and USA, my visitors are mainly from Europe, Canada and Australia. Germany and France make up most of the European market.

I contacted Webgains to see if they could help me find a few European merchants I could promote. Their German counterpart got in touch and was keen to send me lots of promotional coupons for merchants in that market.

So using Babelfish, I translated the offers and built a couple of pages. Now I had a dilemna. Was the wisest thing to try and translate the German into my own English version or paste verbatim the German text. I ended up with a mish mash and the page promoting a herrenausstatter.de Coupon Code is the 5th result in the German Google for the same search term.

I’ve been building pages in German yet the closest I’ve come to learning German is from episodes of ‘Auf Wiedersehen Pet‘ and those seventies movies with the American ‘actors’ with German voices and English subtitles. So I quickly realised that promoting European merchants may not be the wisest choice. Geographically I should expand there but I have to follow the quick wins. So USA was the next target.

This morning I noticed in my referrer logs that I had two visitors searching for “20% code classiccloseouts” and “coupon code classiccloseouts.com”. As this screen grab shows I am top result in Google.com for the term “classiccloseouts.com $10 code”. This is a US only merchant on the CJ network that always has coupons to promote.

Both visitors came from California but the stats also show that they didn’t stick around for more than a second, if that. All the same, World domination has started with that red speck to the left.

If Google UK decide to drop my site in the rankings in the coming weeks, I’ll be doing some ‘California dreamin on such a winter’s day’.

‘Save Befuddle’ group tops 50 members

befuddle — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:52:55 +0000

50 friends, colleagues and Internet marketeers have joined the ‘Save Befuddle’ group on Facebook. The group was created as a morale boosting exercise as my site Befuddle hit its lowest ever patch. I needed quick solutions and support to save my site within a self-imposed 10-day deadline.

As reported on Facebook, this blog and Affiliates4u, Befuddle had been punished by Google for distributing Malware. A search in Google for say “Victoria Beckham drunk”, returned “Warning – visiting this web site may harm your computer!”

Traffic has nose dived. Google organic was sending me approximately 1,000 unique visitors a day and now it’s just a handful.

The site is still receiving a few hundred visitors each day, down from just short of 2,000 visitors.

Not knowing where the problem came from I removed all US based third party advertising and counters. This left the pages looking terribly ugly so I deleted all celebrity pages. This drastic course of action also meant I didn’t have to single handedly have to manually check each one. Some celebrities had 100 pages in their own sections.

I’ve posted up some new drunk celebs pages in a different directory and used the opportunity to display larger size images along with some YouTube clips to make the site more sticky.

I’ve also added Google AdSense to the pages so that not all revenue is lost. AdSense is generating about $6 a day with the current levels of traffic, which is a lot more than the flashing advertising ever did.

On Sunday I submitted my site for review at StopBadware.org where the site is currently in the process of being reviewed.

Thanks for the support here, on Affiliates4u and Facebook.

Befuddle will be saved and will come out stronger.

It pays to sign-off properly

befuddle — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 13:27:55 +0000

On 16th April I started a thread on the affiliates4u site about the launch of Google checkout and how sales weren’t being tracked. The post included my signature which had a link to my Shop Codes site.

Later in the day ‘Qui Gon Jinn’ a moderator of the site moved the post to the ‘Affiliate Marketing – Moderators Choice’ section. As a result, the post was featured on the home page of the popular site.

It was a hot topic that got heated at times and the thread was viewed by members and guests over 2,300 times.

While the debate was in full flow, I stepped back, as I noticed another pressing matter – my site traffic was increasing exponentially. For more than a week, the site’s influential homepage was linking directly to my own.

I know this had a positive influence on how Google then looked at my site. Here’s a screengrab of how my traffic grew.

It’s no coincidence. I’ve mentioned in my own blog that May 2007 was a record month for my site and I have not looked back since.

Qui Gon Jinn, aka Moose, I’ll get you a drink if I have the time to attend an affiliates get together.

Meanwhile, if you write subtle page signatures, you never know what results it may bring.

Bye Bye Befuddle

befuddle — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 22:20:14 +0000

I’ve worryingly received an email from Google today saying my Befuddle drunk celebrity pages, “can cause users to be infected with malicious software.” As a result, “This site may harm your computer” message is printed on the search pages and the link goes to a warning page.

The email gives three example urls but it applies to many and to be honest I can’t see anything wrong. Google does say, “in many cases the webmaster is unaware because the site displays content from an ad network that has a malicious advertiser.”

My pages do contain advertising from a third party, Claxon media. I don’t know if they are to blame or not but they’ll be the first bit of code to be removed.

Now, firstly, I have to say that I have not updated Befuddle in a long long time. Seven times since 2005 in fact! Twice in March 2007, three times in January, once in December 2006 and then it was back in January 2006 before the last update.

Despite the low frequency of updates it still receives credible traffic as it receives up to 4,000 visitors each day. At its peak it had 125,000 visitors a day just as Paris Hilton became globally famous.

Now updating Befuddle is not going to be easy. It hasn’t moved with the times. It’s not written with a CMS or using server side scripting.

It’s flat HTML all crafted by hand. The site was launched in February 2000 and the code and design hasn’t progressed much since then.

Editing all my pages is going to be a painful manual chore. On top of that, I don’t even know what I need to remove. There’s no guarantee that if I remove all the advertising, that I have removed the problem.

I’ve just looked at my analytics stats and can quickly see that my Befuddle stats have halved overnight.

Now it’s a race against time. I’ve got exactly a week before my two week holiday abroad to save Befuddle.

It is an old site that I’ve grown out of. But I am fond of it and you always have to respect having thousands viewing something you’ve built.

If I don’t move quick, Google may drop the site for good. It could be a blessing in disguise but if the site is to close I want it to be my choice.

BedStar site in Google includes my tracking code

befuddle — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 13:55:33 +0000

If you perform a search for “BedStar” on Google, their www.bedstar.co.uk site is the number one result in the organic listings. The title, description is exactly as it is from their site. However, the display url is a webgains one and includes my affiliate tracking code.

Beds are expensive purchases and so I quickly noticed some high commissions being received and with Webgains statistics you can see the referring page for the sale.

The stats show that this has been present since 1st September which coincides with Shop Codes gaining a lot more respect in Google. My discount code site is currently receiving fantastic traffic at the moment and so it looks like the search engine is giving my links a bit more weight.

A quick search on Google shows that BedStar are not the only merchant to experience this issue. There’s a discussion at Google Webmaster help on “Affiliate Links in Natural Search Results“.

“Recently we’ve noticed that our affiliates’ links have replaced our site links in natural search engine results. However the Title and Description listed is not our affiliate’s but our own. It appears that Google is following links on affiliates’ sites to our site. Indexing our site based on our site optimization, but listing referring URL (affiliate’s) in their database.”

I don’t use paid search to advertise Shop Codes. It’s just too costly. Instead I optimise my pages so that they appear as high as possible in the organic search results pages, to attract shoppers searching for a merchants discount codes.

I also don’t use redirects, framing, popups or pulldown menus. I just link to merchants with standard text links and creatives supplied by the networks.

All in all it’s a well opimised site and ethical site. So, open question to any readers out there, which may or may not include BedStar or Webgains themselves. Are the sales legitimate? Would BedStar have a right to cancel any sales? I personally think they’re legit as in theory having that link on Google is no different to having it on my own blog. It’s just that the volume of numbers and that it’s Google make it a unique case.

It’s worth pointing out that I’m not making many sales out of this. BedStar will be the losers, who may see a drop in traffic and therefore sales as visitors may not be happy with clicking an unrecognisable display url.

I predict that Google is going to change my own rankings on the 30th of this month. Assuming they’re spidering my pages daily I could help BedStar by removing all affiliate links and just linking straight to their site? If that would make a difference or not I don’t know. It would mean I miss out on any commissions though.

Anybody want a bed? I know of a great metal bed shop that could do with some link juice.

Google is keeping me in a job … for now

befuddle — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 12:31:55 +0000

Google appears to have a love/hate relationship with my site that changes at the end of each month.

Yesterday, Thursday 30th August, saw a positive move and my Shop Codes traffic increased by 400% compared to previous days.

If the last few months are anything to go by, it looks like I am going to have a very good September, followed by a reasonably good October, an excellent November enhanced with early Christmas shoppers, then a dip at December before a rise in time for the January sales.

May 2007 was an excellent month for me and as I’ve reported before the traffic abruptly disappeared from 1st June. June was still good but allowed me to measure May as the benchmark for being ‘excellent’.
Traffic later returned and substantially increased from 10th July and on 30th July it crashed back down to its June level. Exactly one month to the day later Google has done an update and my traffic has this time benefited.

When the traffic is good i.e with over 1000 visitors a day, the profits are excellent. Shop Codes has a very high conversion rate for turning discount code searchers into customers. I’ve already published top search terms for my site and the current number one is still the generic term “voucher codes”.

When the traffic is at its lowest, as in April, June and August, the profits are still very good. The only real cost I have to running my site is my time.

So, if profits are very good in the “bad months”, why do I continue to be a part-time affiliate and still have a day job?

The answer is consistency. My business profits are reliant on natural Google traffic and I am in and out of favour every other month. When I am flavour of the month, my site is often the number one result in the search results pages for merchants discount codes. When I am not flavour of the month, Google doesn’t spider my pages as often and my site is dropped a page or two. The traffic that comes and goes directly affects the level of income.

If Google were to consistently love my site for consecutive months I’d re-assess a lot of things (after having another holiday of course) but while the search engine is keeping me on my toes, it looks like I have to stick to updating my site at the times I should really be in bed.

Voucher Diary records first sale

befuddle — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 13:45:12 +0000

Voucher Diary has recorded its first known sale today. It was made via Google cache on a page that I’ve subsequently removed.

The sale was for Yes Asia on the Webgains network and the user had searched for “yes asia coupons”. I can see from StatCounter that the user was from Singapore and was using Google Singapore.

The reason the page was removed was because I put some draft copy on for the first two days of its soft launch. I then disabled the WordPress posts as I changed the tone of the copy being posted.

Voucher Diary currently only includes a dozen posts but I am impressed with its position in Google already for some decent search terms. One of the pages is number one for a search phrase that I’d love my other site Shop Codes to be in. As it is, it’s for a merchant where the code has just expired.

I’ve not yet thought of the best approach to handle these expired posts/pages. The nature of Voucher Diary is that the posts will expire as soon as the codes do. That’s the whole objective – highlight expiring voucher codes. So I’ll have a play with that over the weekend.

Good to see that a sale was made from abroad too and maybe Voucher Diary has opportunity to promote other International merchants.

Shop Codes top keywords

befuddle — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 13:23:08 +0000

Shop Codes is eighteen months old and below are the top search phrases that have attracted visitors to the site. This post was prompted as a search for “voucher codes” now returns Shop Codes in the middle of page one in Google. This is a promotion as the site has often been in eleventh place.

Shop Codes does not rely on advertising via Pay-Per-Click to generate traffic. Of the eighteen months, the site has been advertised on either Google or Yahoo for parts of nine of those months. The last PPC activity was two months ago on 5th June 2007.
Number one keyword

Feb-Mar 06 – discount codes

Apr-July 06 – tesco+voucher+codes

Aug-Oct 06 – discount codes

Nov-Dec 06 – merchant brand name X

Jan-Mar 07 – discount codes

Apr 07 – voucher codes

May 07- merchant brand name Z

June-Aug 07- voucher codes

Number one keyword discounting any PPC activity

Feb-Jul 06 tesco+voucher+codes

Aug 06 tesco voucher codes

Sep 06 microdirect voucher

Oct 06 tesco voucher codes

Nov-Dec 06 merchant brand name X

Jan 07 – merchant brand name Y

Feb 07 – voucher codes

Mar-May 07- merchant brand name Z

June-Aug 07- voucher codes

You’ll see that I’ve mentioned ‘Tesco’ and ‘MicroDirect’ but elsewhere I’ve listed “merchant brand name” “X,Y and Z”. I can’t really tell you what merchants they are, as they still feature very highly in the search results and are profitable to me.
I generated over £100,000 sales for ‘Merchant brand name X’ alone during the two Christmas months.

What can I tell from this picture?

Well, when I first launched the site I set out to rank highly for the term “voucher codes”. That has been achieved. It’s only been in more recent months that I’ve focussed on other related keywords and three word phrases.

Also, the four months where merchant X, Y and Z are listed were my most profitable. And this is one of the reasons why I suspended PPC activity. Rather than chasing visitors that typed in “voucher codes” into Google, I opted to be more direct and find those visitors who actually had a shop or product in mind too.

If you find that one of your sites merchant pages is the number one result in Google for a keyword or phrase, I recommend you avoid playing about with that content or page too much.

My “Merchant Brand Name Y” is highly featured as I put some original copy into my pages. If I remove that phrase now, then the page will no longer feature when it’s next indexed.

So, like me, keep a close eye on what keywords are being used to find your site. You may find some gems.

And if your top keyword phrase is “tesco voucher codes”. Well done. You can keep it

Voucher Diary starts to receive Google traffic

befuddle — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 10:47:44 +0000

Voucher Diary, the discount code site I soft launched on FaceBook last week has started receiving traffic after being indexed in Google.

Voucher Diary is the third (but not final) stage of my WordPress experiment.

Experiment 1 – 1234 Codes

In January I launched 1234codes as a back-up to my Shop Codes content. It was effectively the same content but on another domain. I wanted to see how Google compared both sites and in particular the pages. Google preferred 1234codes and the Shop Codes pages were often in the Supplemental index.

Experiment 2 – Shop Codes – bite size

I then upgraded WordPress but in the process lost my content so I implemented a WordPress blog within the Shop Codes site. Calling it ‘Shop Codes – bite size‘ it was the same content but with a different navigation structure and a lot less graphic intensive. Again I could compare how Google treated the same content within the same domain.

During July, Google listed both pages together in the SERPS. If you performed a search for ‘Comet’ say, the first result for my site would be the original Shop Codes page and the second indented result would be the ‘bite size’ version.

I then went away on holiday for three weeks and didn’t perform any site updates. I came back to find that Google had again changed the way it displayed my site in the results. This was at the same time they removed their Supplemental Index.

This time around the ‘bite size’ pages were getting top billing but the original Shop Codes merchants pages were hidden a little deeper.

So in both cases it was clear that Google preferred the cleaner build of the WordPress pages rather than my hand crafted own.

With ‘bite size’ I am having template issues, in that it always reverts back to the original design, so I have spent a few evenings searching for the best free designs available, looking for one that will stick.

Experiment 3 – Voucher Diary

Whilst browsing WordPress themes I found two designs that were designed to look like a diary. I’m sat on several domain names that I’ve not touched since I’ve purchased them and so I thought it would be an appropriate time to have a play with ‘Voucher Diary’.

The focus of ‘Voucher Diary’ will be to display codes that are new or about to expire. I’d not launched this sooner as I don’t have a CMS but Word Press has a plug-in or two you can use to handle expired posts.

I launched it with duplicate content to begin with, allowing me time to find a design and category structure I was comfortable with.

I then looked at the tone of the content and thought best it should be written in a diary style. So I am currently playing with having a male and female guest characters updating the content.

And that’s where I am today. I’ve still got design and content to modify until I’m satisfied with the final product but it’s good to see that it is being indexed by Google already.