Vinny O'Hare

Learn What I am Up To.

Vinny O'Hare

Improve Your Website For Free

Vinny O'Hare Book coverStarting on August 10th until the 12th, my book “25 Ways To Improve Your Website” will be free. These dates coincide with Affiliate Summit East 2014 happening in New York City.

This book is especially good for newbies to Affiliate Marketing as it can be used as a step by step guide to help you get better search rankings.

The book contains 25 easy to follow steps that will improve your website and your traffic. Some topics covered in the book are: 

Your Website Now – Keywords – Free Tools – Colors – Title Tags – Meta Description Tag – Meta Keyword Tags – Search Box – Logo – About Us Page – Blogs – Contact Us Page – Privacy Policy – Trust – Email Newsletter – Navigation – Backlinks – Images – Videos – Landing Pages – Internal Linking – On Page Content – Site Speed – Blogs in Niche – and Using Forums. 

Click here on August 10th to get the book free

Affiliate Disclosure

Today I got an email from Lynn who bought “25 Ways To Improve Your Website” asking about putting a plugin on their site that puts in an affiliate disclosure. I am a big believer in running only the amount of plugins that you need. I think I run about 5-7 plugins that are essential. The more plugins you have

The plugins that you see that generate these affiliate disclosure pages are usually nothing but cookie setters or backlink builders for the affiliate that made the plugin (Those sneaky affiliates) I suggest making an affiliate disclosure page instead.

This is another great opportunity to build more trust with your website readers. You can fill the page with more things about you to get your readers more comfortable with taking out their credit card. Think of it as a second “About Us” page.

I suggest making it as personal as you can and keep any fancy lawyers words to a minimum. While I could go on all day I don't have to since Copyblogger already has a great page on affiliate disclosures. For more on this read Copybloggers thoughts.

25 Ways to Improve Your Website is Live

Vinny O'Hare Book coverSometime during the night my new book “25 Ways To Improve Your Website” went live on Amazon. Taking the steps I have outlined in the book you can vastly improve your website in about 2 or 3 hours. What I recommend is read a few chapters and make the changes to your website. In a few sittings you can help get your website up to speed and compete with others in your niche.

The book is currently priced at only $2.99 and if you are part of the new Kindle Unlimited program the book is free.

As you probably know getting book reviews is crucial when you are launching a new book and I would appreciate it if you are planning on getting the book.

You can grab a copy Here.

Finishing Up My Next Book

Vinny O'Hare Book cover I am finally putting the final touches on my next book titled “25 Ways To Improve Your Website”. I have been editing this book for what seems like forever and it is finally time to let it go out and help people.

The book is based on the session I did at Affiliate Summit a few years ago. The more I work on it the more I realized that this book needs to be in the hands of users so they can help fix their websites. The book is based on WordPress websites but the information applies to almost any website or blog.

It will probably go live tomorrow or the next day. I still have to do some quick formatting to make it work across all the ebook platforms. The print book will go live a few days after that. In the book I share a few secrets and some common sense tips that some people seem to forget when making a website.

If you are on my email newsletter list you will be getting an email on how to get the book for free once it goes live. If you are not on my email list what are you waiting for?

Want to help me spread the word about the upcoming book? Click Here To Send A Tweet About It.

What is the Best SEO?

There really is no best answer for the question of “What is the best SEO? That question has become harder and harder to answer since the search engines have become a moving target as of late. With Panda's, Penguins, and whatever animal Google wants to throw our way constantly changing things it has become harder and harder.

No one knows this more than the guys that run affiliate programs for gambling. As you can imagine SEO for that niche as well as the ones for medication are probably the two hardest nuts to crack.

To get better at SEO you have to watch what others are doing and pay attention. I am not saying copy these methods 100% but listen to the sound advice they give and adjust.  The article below is from Casinoaffiliateprograms.com. I suggest you sign up for their newsletter.

Survey Reveals, 'What is the Most Effective SEO Tactic?'

Survey Reveals, ‘What is the Most Effective SEO Tactic?'

What’s the most effective SEO tactic in 2014? The folks at MarketingProfs.com recently asked that question, along with a few follow-ups, of their readers and the results provide a clear picture of the challenges faced by web publishers every day.

Super Affiliate Newsletter

I have started a weekly “Affiliate News of the Week” over on Superaffiliatenewsletter.com. If you really want to keep up to date with what is happening in the affiliate marketing industry.

You can sign up for that newsletter also and have these emailed to you weekly. Click below to see this weeks newsletter.

Affiliate News For The Week June 2nd

Affiliate News For The Week June 2nd

This week Pat Flynn talks about what a new visitor is doing just before they visit your site and how to optimize for their visit. He also talks about looking at your site on a mobile device. Something we always seem to forget about. SPI 111 : The Life of a Brand New Visitor The better …

When Was The Last Time You Went Out Of Your Comfort Zone

A few weeks ago we took a little vacation, ok a longer than expected vacation. For me a vacation is getting away for 2 or 3 days but Debbie likes longer vacations which as long as I have a computer handy is fine with me.

We headed up towards the mountains in Sedona Arizona which is really beautiful with trees and mountains and I really like it there. After the 3rd or 4th day I was ready to get back to work. The freedom of a few days off really did wonders for me. I had 25 new ideas of things I wanted to do.

Something I did though really made me think about things. I hiked up to the top of Cathedral Rock. This overweight city boy and any sort of hiking do not go hand and hand to say the least. While it wasn't exactly mountain climbing it was a tough hike that took me over an hour and a half to get to the top. They have a little trail and this was the easiest part.

Cathedral Rock Mountain Path

The views were amazing! Half of the trip I hiked with a wedding photographer from LA who kept wishing he could do a bridal shoot up on top of the mountain. He was out of shape like me so it was a battle to see if we could both make it. The video is a little rough since I tripped over a cactus while filming but you can see the view from both sides really well if you watch the whole thing.

While on the top of the mountain I didn't care about work, all the red-tape paperwork that has come with the flood. I was just able to take some time and do something that was out of my comfort zone.

While hiking the mountain I had a question in the back of my mind the whole time. “How was I going to get down?” Instead of listening to the little voice in my head telling me to stop I kept going. Today I am so glad I did otherwise I would be beating myself up for not going to the top.

Taking the hard road doesn't always work but you never know until you step out of your comfort zone and try something new.

Panda 4.0 and Metafilter

Updated 6/12/2014 – Googles Matt Cutts says at SMX yesterday that Metafilter was hit with an algo update and not a Panda or Penguin penalty.

For the past couple of days everyone and their grandmother has been talking about Metafilter and how a mainstream site that did nothing wrong was unfairly hit by the Google Panda update and caused their rankings to go down.

When I first heard of it I laughed and said to myself “Oh another company that had time to adjust after Panda 1.0 came out and did nothing.” Then I went to the site and alarm bells went off. Actually if I had just visited the site for the first time I would have clicked off it and went somewhere else. The 1990's design with white text on a brown background was very hard to read.

I then clicked on to another page and the site had a blue background with the same white text. I didn't even read the 50 lines of text that looked like gibberish to me to see why they would have a problem.

Besides the usability of the site there is pages and pages of thin user generated content like this. I ask you if you owned a search engine would you have pages that looked like this in it for your users?

“Everyone On Wall Street Is A Dick.” | MetaFilter

The two-day Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) graduate showcase at NYU was a madhouse, with some 100 projects on view, ranging from groundbreaking innovations to timely trinkets. But…

That article was the top one on the page that I clicked on from their homepage. A homepage full of articles where a Hashtag is the only word in the title. I'm sorry but if they didn't see this coming shame on them.

I wish them luck, I am sure they will clean it up a bit and maybe update the look of the site or something. What gets me though is their bounce rate had to be going up over the years. I spent a total of 8 seconds on the site the first time before I clicked off it because it hurt my eyes.

While Google doesn't say aesthetics isn't a ranking factor you can bet in this case the bounce rate going up consistently played a factor.

The article below sums it up in this paragraph.

Engagement and Usability Matter
While analyzing the fresh hits, it was hard to overlook the serious engagement issues I was coming across. For example, stimulus overload on the pages that were receiving a lot of Google organic traffic prior to the hit. There were ads that expanded into or over the content, double-serving of video ads, stacked “recommended articles” on the page, lack of white space, a long and confusing navigation, etc. All of this led to me wanting to bounce off the page faster than a superball on concrete. And again, high bounce rates and low dwell times can get you killed by Panda. Avoid that like the plague.”

Read further in the article below

Panda 4.0 Analysis | Nuclear Option Rewarded, Phantom Victims Recover, and Industry Experts Rise

Panda 4.0 Analysis | Nuclear Option Rewarded, Phantom Victims Recover, and Industry Experts Rise

On May 20th, 2014 Google’s Matt Cutts announced that Panda 4.0 was rolling out. Leading up to that tweet, there was a lot of chatter across the industry

Building a Newsletter As Soon As Possible

Newsletter subscribersI always get asked about email newsletters and I am always amazed at the most popular question. “When do I start a newsletter?” My answer is always the same “Now.”

Last month I started a new site and the first thing I did after adding a page of content was log in to Aweber and get a newsletter sign up form for the new site. I put it on the site and didn't think much about it as I was developing a content strategy and doing other things.

Today I log in and see the site has 28 subscribers. Not a large number by any means but it is a starting point to build from once I get the site going in a few weeks.

Since the email is loaded and the auto-responder is set to go out with content every 3 weeks for 9 weeks the people on the list are already interacting with it. I don't have to do anything and the site is getting traffic from the newsletter.

Building a newsletter list should be one of the main to-do's as you are building a site. In a world of “Not Provided” keywords disappearing from Google analytics and Facebook starting to show your page to less and less of your fans you have to get your slice of traffic any way you can.

Use Your Social Media Channels To Build Your List

I am a big fan of getting traffic from Facebook or any social site for that matter and getting them to my email list. Besides interacting with the interesting people on social media for future business I also consider social media to be the wide rim of the sales funnel. Once you get people on your newsletter list you control the way they interact with you. [Tweet “Once you get people on your newsletter list you control the way they interact with you.”]

You can sleep at night and you don't have to worry if Facebook is showing them your post. Actually you shouldn't be worrying about it because they are not showing it. You should be spending the time you are using worrying and build content on your site and build up your newsletter list.

Odds are if you are reading this post you came from a social media channel or my newsletter: )

What Ever Happened To Ben And Dave?

A few years back I did a story on two guys that were not doing the right thing by people. Ben and Dave came on my radar as I was doing affiliate approval applications and saw the same lousy site every day about 20 times. I would decline the affiliate and then send an email telling them what the scam was.

Here is a link to the original story about Ben and Dave and falling for affiliate scams.

I am thinking the FTC was already acting on complaints when I originally published the article. If you lost money to these guys you should Read the update on the FTC website. Maybe you can add your name to the list and get some money back.

From the release:

“According to an FTC complaint filed in November 2012, the defendants sold the “Six Figure Program” to consumers as a purportedly no-risk, money-back guaranteed opportunity to make money via their own website, falsely claiming that, for a $27 fee, they would enable consumers to affiliate with well-known companies’ websites and earn commissions. After purchasing the program, consumers learned that they had to pay $100 or more in additional costs just to set up their websites. The court subsequently halted the allegedly deceptive practices, froze the defendants’ assets, and put the companies into receivership pending a court hearing.

The settlement order announced today permanently prohibits The Online Entrepreneur Inc., Ben and Dave’s Consulting Associates, Inc., and David Clabeaux from selling business and work-at-home opportunities, misrepresenting that consumers are likely to earn money and misrepresenting any material fact about a product or service. They also are barred from failing to clearly disclose the terms of any offer before consumers provide billing information, and making a representation unless it is true and the defendants have competent and reliable evidence to substantiate the claim. In addition, the order prohibits these defendants from selling or otherwise benefitting from consumers’ personal information, and failing to properly dispose of customer information.

The order imposes a judgment of more than $2.9 million, which will be suspended when Clabeaux has surrendered real estate, personal property, and bank and investment accounts. The full judgment will become due immediately if the defendants are found to have misrepresented their financial condition. Litigation continues against the remaining defendant, Benjamin Moskel.”

You can read the whole release here 

Extend Facebook Reach With One Button

I was talking with a buddy online and he was telling me how his Facebook reach was going down and down and down. At first I gave him a few tips on how to increase it and then I told him why not put your Hootsuite tweet sheet in and push the same tweets to Facebook as you are putting on Twitter. I talked a little about this in my Twitter post last week.

Of course I would not do this all the time but for the sake of testing I did it myself with one of my sites. I pulled out my monthly Twitter sheet I have set up for Hootsuite and deleted the first 9 rows and saved it and uploaded it using the bulk upload tool in Hootsuite. As you can see below I expanded my reach with no problem. This was only posting 2 more times a day.

Expand Facebook Reach

Now if I was to do this seriously I would have a longer Tweet sheet than having the normal 140 characters. Maybe take a snippet of content out of a page and link it back to that page. Odds are the image for the post would get pulled automatically from the page?

If you are using Hootsuite and the bulk uploader why not give this a try! For people that are familiar with the tool already this could be set up in a matter of 1 minute pushing one button.

[Tweet “My Facebook reach has been off the charts since doing this.”]

What Twitter Has Become To Me

This past week I have seen a ton of people going back and seeing their first tweet since it was Twitter's 8th anniversary. Twitter set up a special url for you to go see what your tweet was. If you are curious about it you can check yours out here.

As I was looking through my account I started to think about how much my opinion of Twitter has changed. I was very vocal when it came to them putting “Paid Tweets” on the site. I was even mentioned on the NY Times website. My thoughts have changed since I think Twitter has so many users that have given up on the service that it has just become a broadcast platform to a degree.

Scheduled Tweets

Schedule tweets in bulkPeople get so upset over scheduled tweets it cracks me up. Sure sometimes breaking news happens and a scheduled tweet goes out. Does anyone notice? Does anyone care? Isn't there much bigger things in life to worry about? I just got finished scheduling about 2000 tweets. Some are evergreen, some are funny, some are interactive, some are informative, and some are tweets to landing pages that are designed for sales.

I break them up and most go out in the early morning so when I get up I already have interaction to respond to. I also schedule some for my European audience, which has been some of the best interaction I get. Guess being a night owl helps with that.

I am guessing that the 140 characters are too limiting to have a meaningful conversation especially if you are using Twitter on the web. I use Hootsuite where I can filter people into a list. I don't have to see tweets from everyone I follow. I keep a few private list set up and keep track and respond to my @ messages. Between that and the RavenTools social monitor I can keep up and track everything in all the social media accounts I am responsible for.

Hootsuite has a bulk upload tool that is simple to use. A simple csv file with 3 rows and hit what social media accounts you want to post to and you are done. I recommend using Google docs to set up the CSV file, for some reason it doesn't play nice in excel.

I use the bulk upload tool to upload to Twitter and also to Facebook and G+. Sometimes I set up different files for each but you can blast the same message out to all 3 if you want. If you hook up some apps in Hootsuite you can blast out to even more places. I concentrate on the big 3 social networks for the most part.

Using the schedule in bulk tool in Hootsuite makes life so much easier. You can sign up for a free account but I use the pro account for the features.  It is well worth it for me.

Affiliate Summit East: Why Am I Speaking Again

I know I said I would never do public speaking again. I made it well aware that I was retiring from public speaking after my Affiliate Summit West 2012 session. Well a topic has been bothering me for a few months and I have to flush it out. While I could do an hour (or three) on the topic I decided to do a roundtable instead. I felt it was the best way to be able to field more questions by more people.

My topic is about publishing blog posts. Every day I get someone who tells me they have no time to blog. Every time I hear it I want to scream! In case you didn't know 2013 was one hell of a year for us.

In October 2012 Hurricane Sandy decided she was going to put 6 to 8 feet of water in our single story home. Trying to get back on our feet from Hurricane Sandy was no easy feat and it still isn't over actually. What most people don't know is while there were nights I didn't have walls or a floor or even heat I was still publishing blog posts. In a way I think it was what kept me sane at times.

officeOne site that I started a few weeks before the storm hit decided it was going to take off and become a major site for me. Just what I needed since we had no electric, clothes, food or good shelter for that matter. In the days that followed I had Debbie's daughter Liz publish the blog post from Arizona until I could find a computer that worked.

The first few days after the storm for me was like the movie “Groundhog Day” I don't remember much which is a good thing. It was the same thing over and over. Wake up under a cold blanket as soon as the sun rises, throw away whatever we owned, find food, and go back to sleep under the same cold blanket.

Anyway while Debbie and our cats went out to Arizona near Liz I stayed back and destroyed the house some more before building it back. My schedule consisted of building the house by day, publish blog post at night. It was exhausting! The picture was taken after I returned from Affiliate Summit West 2013. The milk was in the window because there was no fridge yet. It was the best I could do to keep it cold.

In 2013 there were over 15,000 blog post made either at the house or when I went to Arizona to take breaks from breathing in mold. The point is if I found time to publish 15,000 blog post and build a house you can find time to put blog post on your site. I will be showing the methods that I used and a few new ones that I have discovered.

Looking forward to sharing some of the things that I did last year and continue to do today.

Getting Kids Going In The World of Entrepreneurship

vinny rocksThe other day I was riding my bike to the store when I turned the corner and there was a kid standing there with a sign. The sign wasn't well written for me to see as it was in pencil and it was a sunny day. I was on the other side of the street so I couldn't stop without darting into traffic. On my way back I purposely went back on that side of the street to see what the sign said.

As I approached I still couldn't see the sign so I yelled to the kid. “What does your sign say?” He ran towards me like I was the first person to stop and take an interest.

He says “I am selling Crystals!” With that I see a little table set up in the driveway of next house with a few kids sitting around a bunch of rocks. I pull up to the table wondering where these kids parents are since I think they are a little young to be by themselves.

I ask the kid how much and he had them set up in rows of 25 cents, 50 cents or 75 cents, as he is pointing to the “Crystals” which are really rocks from his front yard. I tell him to pick out the prettiest ones because my girlfriend likes “Crystals”.  All of a sudden I have 3 kids picking and choosing the best ones to sell me. They pick out 3 of the 25 cent ones. I whip out a dollar and tell them I will take 4 since they are so helpful.

You would of thought I gave them a million dollars! They all had huge smiles on their face. I could tell I was their first sale and probably their only sale. I tell the kid with the sign that he needs a better one. I almost fell over when he told me “We don't have the resources to go to Staples”.

If you see kids selling rocks or lemonade or whatever give them a little boost. For all we know that kid will be the next president of a rock mine or the president of Staples.

I came home and gave Debbie the rocks and told her the story.  The look on her face was priceless when I came in announcing I bought something for her and took rocks out of my pocket.

Getting G+ Authorship Working

Some people like myself have been struggling to get G+ authorship working. My frustration is from having to sign up for a new gmail address when G+ first started because I was a Google apps customer. When they finally fixed it I was into G+ so much I didn't want to switch to a new account. Hundreds if not thousands of pictures up and all my circles filled up exactly the way I wanted them. I am sure I am not the only person with this problem. While G+ says my account is ok I am still waiting for the correct G+ account to show in the search results. If you are having problems with your G+ account Search Engine Land put together a nice info-graphic to help you.

How To Troubleshoot Authorship Issues: Step by Step Flowchart

Beyonce is The Ultimate Email Marketer

Every once in a while something happens across the entertainment industry that makes me think. Yesterday was that kind of day as Beyonce, out of nowhere released a new album. Usually there is a press tour and press releases before an artist drops an album but not this time. As it was reported in USA Today Beyonce just dropped the album without any of that. Most people that follow the music industry didn't even know she was making an album or 17 videos to go along with it. I am sure there were some serious NDA disclosures going on.

knowles1
Photo from Beyonce on Facebook

The lesson that I took from it was that Beyonce will have millions of downloads this weekend because she has an extensive email list and a huge social media following. From what I have read she uses email and Tumblr very well to keep her fan base up to date with what she is doing. Her fan base is extremely loyal and it shows. Without her asking her fans Beyonce fans generated more than 1.2 million Tweets in just 12 hours. I am sure it would have been more if she had tweeted out to her 13 million followers on Twitter what she was doing. She didn't have to as her fans saw a video for the album on Facebook from Beyonce and it just took a life of it's own across all social media channels.

How To Make Millions With Email

Needless to say her album shot to the top of iTunes within hours on Friday the 13th. The lack of publicity made the press eat up the story even more than if she would of did a press tour and talked about the album. Saturday morning in my inbox was the email from iTunes which I am sure generated a few million more in downloads.

As I am writing this it is late Saturday night and Billboard magazine has said that she has sold 430,000 albums at $15.99. If my math is correct that is about 6.8 million dollars in sales without spending a penny on advertising.  Whoever said the money is in the list wasn't kidding!

Another thing she did by accident is create such a buzz I am sure all the people at the morning television shows would kill to have her on. At this point she can stay home and have them come to her, on her time schedule.