AbeBooks UK Affiliates Blog

Resources for buying Domains

Fraser over at affiliateblog.co.uk had a great post yesterday with many valuable resources for buying domain names.  If you are in the market check out some of his tools they are great.  I especially like the firefox extension, by Richard Kershaw.

International keyword Tool

Aaron Wall over at SEObook.com has put his invaluable International Keyword Tool back online, and even provided a zipped version for users to install on their own site.  This is a great tool and one of the few tools that focuses on markets here in Europe.  If you haven't already used it, I suggest trying it out.  As everyone knows finding the right keywords is critical to a sites success.  When you are at Aaron's site check out his SEO for Firefox extension it's another great tool.

Help with Large Datafeeds

Rob over at Monetisethis.net has recently posted a great article on using MS Query to help trim down large datafeeds.  Rob's hints and suggestions will work great with our Datafeeds.  If you are interested in giving it a go, let me know and I can direct you to our datafeed location.

SEOBook tools

For all affiliates interested in PPC or SEO I highly suggest you take a look at Arron Wall's SEObook.com he has a great blog that has some very insightful posts but on top of that he has a list of great tools for people who do PPC and SEO my personal favorite being the SEO for firefox, this extension provides an awesome amount of information in a nicely formatted box under the search listing.

Google Webmaster Tools

I am not sure how many of you know about Google Webmaster Tools.  This is a suite of tools Google has spent a lot of time improving on in the past year, and they seem to be continuing this trend.  There are three Standard tools they offer plus three information resource areas.  Please see links below.

Tools:

1. Site Status Wizzard
2. Webmaster Tools (including Sitemaps)
3. Submit your content to Google

Information Resources

1. Google's Webmaster Blog
2. Google Discussion Group
3. Webmaster Central Help

I encourage everyone to visit and explore these tools, there is an unbelievable amount of information that can help improve your search engine ranking.  As well Google employees monitor and answer questions in the discussion group which can be most helpful and provide great insights to some commonly held assumptions/ myths about Google.

PPC Landing Pages

As you know Google and the other search engines are placing a greater emphasis on the landing pages users are directing too.  To help our affiliates we have created two new landing pages for search affiliates for our target areas.  These pages are for Secondhand books and Antiquarian books.  We have spent a month or so optimizing the content and placement of the search boxes to help the visitors you send over convert at a better rate.  We plan on creating more of these pages as landing pages become more and more important, please let us know if there are any specific pages you would like to have for your campaigns.

Secondhand books

Antiquarian books

New O'ReillyGMT Blog

I don't know if anyone has seen this yet, however, the folks over at O'Reilly (the IT Book Publisher) have created a European blog O'ReillyGMT. I have enjoyed reading their other blog O'Reilly Radar for the couple of years, I am extremely excited they have created a blog with a focus on events happening over here in the UK and Europe markets.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

The Affiliate Challenge

I am not sure if you any of you have been following the post on the A4UForum about "The Affiliate Challenge", well now Steve has setup a blog that will follow the competition, I am keen to see where this goes and especially the outcomes in a few months.  Do you think AbeBooks should sponsor an event like this in the future?