How could I forget about this method of working out what to write about. If your site has a search, and with most affiliates now using WordPress then this is a great one for them.

Simply turn on the “site search” option in Google Analytics – find out here.

Then, when its been running a while, nip into Content > Site Search > Search Terms and see what keywords are using to refine what they’re looking for. This is particularly good if you’ve got some good action going on on the head terms but often struggle to write about niche products. And definitely make sure you monitor the “trending” report!

And whilst we’re at it. Keep an eye on “Time After Search” to see if as you extend the scale and scope of your content that more and more of the traffic you get goes direct to the most relevant pages.

As affiliates and website owners we all struggle at some stage or another to come up with ideas for content that we hope will catch the attention of the t’interweb and drive sales and/or links. So here’s a quick few:

1. Backtweets – whack in your competitors’ domains and see what content of theirs people are tweeting.
2. Open Site Explorer Top Pages – this lists the most linked to pages on your competitor’s site. Be aware that the competitor may have other sites and they’re in-linking a lot from their own properties, so sort the column in the csv by “number of linking root domains” – this will give you a better idea of what is most popular.
3. Digg – do site:digg.com KW – Google will obviously rank it by their own importance factors which would be much more objective than my subjective views.
4. Stumbleupon – do the same with this site, sure it’s still gamed by site owners, but try it.
5. RSS – use your favourite RSS reader and add in the Google news feed from it, and from your favourite blogs and then use it to try out different keywords and see what comes up. The point here is that Google just doesn’t list “news” in the conventional sense, but loads of lower class content too.
6. Facebook – see what pages are popular which will give you ideas of what people are “in to”. Often they’ll be sharing content they like – improve upon it then share it back.
7. Flickr – see what people are discussing on Flickr in your target niche.
8. Youtube - see what’s popular this week and make sure that you reflect it on your site.
9. Yahoo! Buzz – do the same there – there’s loads of ideas.
10. Offline – not everything is online. Watch people away from your desk, in the pub, out shopping and see if you can leverage for your own site.

So I’m going to do a bigger post on the process of moving from Blogger to WordPress and all the bits and bobs, stresses and headaches that go with it. But here’s just a quick one for those people that block out category, tag and search pages due to the fear of duplication.

Well there’s no need to!

What you can do is add content to these pages on a page by page basis. I want to show a unique head paragraph for specific category pages so that’s what I’ve done on my Ganache and guest reviews category pages with the code within the archive.php template:

<?php if (is_category(‘guest-reviews’)) { ?>

<p>The reviews below are from Guest Reviewers. Having just one reviewer may give a slanted perception of chocolate, so offering the site up to others to add their thoughts should give a more balanced scope of reviews.</p><p>Reviewers are chosen for their lack of bias or favouritism for a particular brand, but they may prefer certain types of chocolate so feel free to give them your feedback</p>

<?php } elseif (is_category(‘Ganaches’)) { ?>

<p>Ganache is a smooth mixture of chocolate, cream, and butter. Generally, it is dipped in tempered chocolate and rolled in powdered cocoa, sweetener, or other coatings to create a truffle, though it is also frequently used as the centre of a bonbon. &raquo; Read more in the <a href=”http://www.chocolatereviews.co.uk/chocolate-glossary/”>Glossary</a>. &laquo;</p>

<?php } else { ?>

<p>Below you can see a list of reviews about <?php single_cat_title(); ?> – we hope you enjoy! </p>

<?php } ?>

It’s not rocket science really. I’m crap at php but am learning the odd bit here and there. I’ve even started to put conditional EasyContentUnits in dependent in the category at the bottom – although I need to sort the formatting out. The code I used was similar:

<?php if (is_category(‘ganaches’)) { ?>

[Your ECU php unit code]

<?php } else { ?>

<p>That’s all for: <?php single_cat_title(); ?> – we hope you enjoy! </p>

<?php } ?>

Now I’m working on changing the sidebar navigation dependent on what category the individual posts are in. Everything is possible if you put your mind to it.

I've always believed in this tactic but never knew the name for it. My view has always been that as an affiliate blogger that you should focus on a small niche such as "trainers for one-legged pygmies" (no offence to people with one leg or pygmies of course!) and then you should gradually roll out of that niche as you gain a level respect and coverage of that is sufficient to sustain it.

So reading Matt Cutt's presentation: “Straight from Google: What You Need to Know” from WordCamp San Francisco and in particular slide 33 and then searching on it I found Andrew's description of the Katamari Philosophy:



I know that I missed this presentation, but I can't be aware of EVERY piece of SEO dialogue :-(.

Other things that Matt said was that you shouldn't obssess about links and page range. And I completely agree with that. If I'm in a niche that I'm totally confident about then I spend about 0.5% on overtly thinking of links, 95% thinking of content and 4.5% thinking of (and implementing) the on page SEO.

There's many affiliate blogs that have worked well at gaining a reputation that in term generate inbound links and it doesn't take me how to do it, every second tweet seems to be about it these days, but just try and be original and don't fall in to the trap of having a formulaic approach to building reputation by thinking that if a post has A,B and C that it will DEFINITELY work.

I'm currently implementing the Katamari Philosophy on the small niche (relatively) that I bang on about into a less small niche and its a fascinating process. What's more interesting and satisfying is when you work in only slightly related niches and as you imply the Katamari Philosophy they're consumed by the new site:



An example of this would be my Easter Eggs site linking towards my generic chocolate site - relevant and fair to link.

But then you can also use other, generally non-related sites but which has a slightly related post to help gain support (links and traffic) to both your other niches and the Katamari site. This may be a post about a chocolate football on my old Euro 2008 site linking to both the chocolate site for that product or the Easter eggs site via a link to a general post about football Easter eggs.

Again, as you dominate the micro-niches and then the larger niche then you can use those to spawn new micro-niches and start the process again.

Am I the only one that finds affiliate site evolution interesting? :-(