Comments on: Ask Kirsty – Why Isn’t My Affiliate Site Ranking?

By: Custom Website Design

Custom Website Design — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:37:03 +0000

I reckon that you need to be targeting the long tail. Clearly your site does a good job of pre-converting if a good proportion of your visitors that actually got through to the merchant made a sale.

By: BLOGERCISE

BLOGERCISE — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 12:06:38 +0000

It might be worth mentioning that Man U is trademarked and you might not want to invest too much into building a site that could land you with an unwelcome legal battle. Up to the site owner of course, but at least know the risks

Check on the Gov’s site:
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/ohim?ohimnum=E935486

By: Ali

Ali — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 10:08:24 +0000

Thanks for your replies Steven and Kirsty – I have been registering hyphenated domains for PPC for the reason of being easier to read in the ad’s, so great to see that this logic is sound!
It’s really great to get such quick feedback from experienced affiliates, it makes such a difference in a field that changes so quickly – so thanks for your help,

Ali

By: Kirsty

Kirsty — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 23:30:23 +0000

@Dan – I usually just look at my PPC as a whole and work out how much of it has gotten through to the merchant via network stats.

@Iain – good point, and thanks for adding it for others.

@Ali yes we did thanks! Ebay provided. As Steven says above that’s now quite an old article. I should probably update that a little as hyphenated domains did used to be very strong in Google. That has changed though but as Steven says they can still be very useful for PPC.

Actually, I should update that list of popular posts… it’s outdated as well. Forgive me readers I am terribly slack sometimes!!!

By: Steven Marwick

Steven Marwick — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 23:02:22 +0000

Hi Ali

The post you refer to was actually a guest post by myself rather than one by Kirsty. It was written a couple of years ago so some of the info may be slightly out of date now due to search engine changes etc. I still use a lot of hyphenated domains personally, particularly for Pay Per Click campaigns as (in my experience) they can make the words in the domain name appear easier to read and increase click through rate.

Best wishes.

Steven

By: Ali

Ali — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:51:32 +0000

Thanks for another really useful article Kirsty – your site is a gem! (on another note, I hope you and Duncan found the Canon camera you were after for your dive housing?)

Just a quick question about your experience of hyphenated domains – in your “Creating Affiliate Websites For Newbies” you said that it can be preferable to have hyphenated domains, but above it says that non-hyphenated can perform better. I don’t yet have enough experience to know for myself (only about 6 domains so far! though they are a mixture) – so was just wondering if you had changed your mind after recent experience?

Thanks again for all the great info!

Ali

By: Ian

Ian — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:46:03 +0000

Just to add… If you want to rank for the phrase “Michael Owen Manchester United Shirt”, then create a page specifically to target that phrase.

By: Dan Harrison

Dan Harrison — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 09:42:27 +0000

Interesting article Kirsty… the point about laser-targeting visitors and matching them to relevant products was received loud and clear.

How exactly do you track what percentage of visitors hits the merchant?

Thanks
Dan