For local (or international) link building I advise you to use the search queries in your local search engine (e.g. Google.nl for the Netherlands). This will give you the most relevant results for your country. In case you want to know more about international link building, you can read my article on Search Engine Watch. It makes a great combination with the listed search queries.

The extensive list of queries offer for every niche a great possibility to find that valuable link (partner). Yes, even for your niche. The list is categorized in submission-based, relation-based and sponsored-based campaign.

Check out all 124 smart link building queries …

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124 E-Commerce Link Building Queries

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Things I look forward to:

• DAY2: Definitely attending Avinash Kaushik‘s keynote “Be Awesome: Ideas for Approaching Search Analytics Differently”. What a great way to start your day.
• DAY2: “Bringing SEO In-House: The Pros and Cons; since i’ve been an In-House SEO”, I wonder how they keep In-House SEO’s interesting.
• DAY2: Can’t help to only think of black hat stuff looking at the keynote “Automating Twitter”
• DAY2: Finally seeing Jim Boykin in action at “Link Building – Methods and Risks”.
• DAY2: “Real Time SEO: No More Yesterday’s News” looks very promising to me to get to know the facts for the (very) near future.
• DAY2: After this great day, what better than “White Hat Black Hat: Unconferenced” at the bar. Can’t wait!

As you can see day 2 looks very promising. But wait, there is more! Read on Mike!

• DAY3: “Eye Tracking Research Update” OR “Social Media 101″. Not sure if social media has any thing new and exciting while results of the Eye Tracking Research can really help me with some “assumptions” on CTR from the search results.
• DAY3: “21 Secrets of Top Converting Websites” is of course a mandatory keynote. Don’t worry, i’ll share the secrets with you.
• DAY3: You never can get enough of “Advanced Keyword Research”, at least in my case.

On thursday (day 4) my friend Peter van der Graaf will be the tutor of “Hands On Approach to Link Building” as the true link building guru he is. While he enrich the crowd with link building techniques, I will take the opportunity to explore NY! I got a great offer from Neel Pahlajani (whom I met at AHT International) to guide me since he is a NY resident. What an opportunity it is! So, in a few days from now i’ll be blogging (check out the great WordPress app for Android) and twittering from SES NY.

Expect more updates when i’m back…

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I will be attending SES New York 2010

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Your contribution prevents the spiders from reading the osCsid. Would I be able to use it to prevent spiders from seeing lets say: “ref=53&affiliate_banner_id=16″ from my affiliates? if so, what do I have to do to make it work?

In my last days to my wedding, it got me thinking and finding (another) quick and dirty solution, to redirect search engines to the right URL without the affiliate references. This way links from affiliate websites add up to your original (product) page!

The solution is simple: just add the affiliate references in the $search variable. As example, we would like to catch the “ref” and “affiliate_banner_id” affiliate references.

Original:

Edit this line to catch your affiliate references

That’s it! Now the canonical will redirect the search engines to your original (product) page. This will prevent duplicate content and will help you get more authority on your product page which has affiliates.

If you still have problems with the trailing slash and the canonical (i.e. URL is missing the last letter of your TLD), try this:

Original:

Remove the [, -1] from the code so it looks like this

Edit this line to have a proper trailing slash:

Get the original Canonical URL contribution

***** REMEMBER TO BACK UP files before making any changes ******

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Canonical URL Affiliate edition

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What’s keeping me busy is my new job (since february) as SEO consultant at Netsociety. Not only a great place to work with fantastic (and challenging) customers, but they are also kind enough to let me follow my dream: officially start Webshoptimizer as a business for my own.

There you have it, my excuse for my absence.

From now on you can hire me for optimizing your online business.

What’s next?

First, there will be some redesign (finally) to synchronise my corporate website and blog. During the redesign and launch of the corporate website I will blog about some new ideas I have. In fact it’s all part of the Webshoptimizer business. The first idea i’m going to execute is starting a real webshop and I will post the whole process. From the choice of webshop software to the first dollars made. Practice what you preach. From there I will blog about all pitfalls, oppertunities or any other problem that comes on the way.

I think it’ll be very interesting to read and to follow the whole process. Even for me it’s a challenge. I’ve been advising clients in the e-commerce for several years now, but I never actually started a webshop on my own. I’ve been heavenly involved with some webshops, but still.

It’s about you.

Hopefully you, the readers, will have some suggestions or ideas on the development of my webshop experience. Do you have cart software tips (other then OSCommerce) you want me to test, special product tips or just a great idea what to actually sell. I’m open for suggestions.

Start!

I will! Keep an eye on my site or subscribe to my RSS. ‘Between the redesigns I will keep you posted on the progress of my very own webshop.

This is a post from: Webshoptimizer

It’s been a while

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Manual installation (for modified osCommerce shops):

1. Open the file /catalog/includes/functions/general.php
2. Add the following lines to general.php just before the php closing tag ( ?> ) at the bottom // starts canonical tag function - www.webshoptimizer.com function CanonicalUrl() { $domain = substr((($request_type == 'SSL') ? HTTPS_SERVER : HTTP_SERVER), 0, -1); // gets the base URL minus the trailing slash $string = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']; // gets the url $search = '\&osCsid.*|\?osCsid.*'; // searches for the session id in the url $replace = ''; // replaces with nothing i.e. deletes echo $domain . ereg_replace( $search, $replace, $string ); // merges the variables and echoing them } // eof - canonical tag
3. Open from your catalog directory index.php and product_info.php
4. Add within your <head> section the following code to generate the correct URL:
   
   <link rel="canonical" href="<?php CanonicalUrl(); ?>" />

   /li>

5. Save your files and check your store. Done!

To test if the contribution is installed correctly, open a productpage and compare the URL in your address bar (of your browser) with the one in the source. If you look in the source the canonical tag should show the same URL as in the address bar minus the session ID.

You can also add the function (step 4) to other files if the content is of any value to your site. Files where the function (step 4) can be added:

• product_reviews.php
• shipping.php
• privacy.php
• conditions.php
• contact_us.php

Add the function to other contributions whom add pages to your website too (e.g. newsdesk, faq, etc).

Easy installation: (only for new osCommerce v2.2RC2a installations)

1. Upload and replace “general.php” with the one located in /catalog/inlcudes/functions/
2. Upload and replace “index.php” and “product_info.php” with the ones located in /catalog/
3. Done!

***** REMEMBER TO BACK UP files before making any changes ******

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Canonical URL links – osCommerce Contribution

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The syntax is pretty simple: An ugly url such as http://www.example.com/page.html?sid=asdf314159265 can specify in the HEAD part of the document the following:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/page.html" />

That tells search engines that the preferred location of this url (the “canonical” location, in search engine speak) is http://example.com/page.html instead of http://www.example.com/page.html?sid=asdf314159265.

What can it do for my webshop?

If search engines find the same content on irregular/different URL, the page/content will be marked as “duplicate content”. This is a common mistake which you want to avoid since you want to have all your pages indexed properly. However, there are some factors that can lead to several URL’s for one page.

In osCommerce there URL’s displays the category ID, the product ID and a session ID. Every new visit(or) has a unique session. Here lies the problem: the unique session ID creates an irregular URL for the same page! This can create duplicate content.

You want to tell the search engines that the product page is found here

and not here

(where osCsid is unique for every new visit(or))

How to implement the canonical tag in your webshop

I must warn you, this is just a quick and dirty test. The contribution with optimized code and (probably) more compatibility will follow very soon.

You only have to adjust two files: index.php and product_info.php.

1. Open both files and add before require(‘includes/application_top.php’); the following code: $string = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']; $search = '&osCsid.*|?osCsid.*'; $replace = '';
2. Add within your <head> section the following code to generate the correct URL: <link rel="canonical" href="<?php echo 'http://www.yourdomain.com' . ereg_replace( $search, $replace, $string ); ?>" />
3. Don’t forget to replace yourdomain.com with your actual domain name.
4. Done!

As I said, this is just a quick and dirty test. Compatible with and without search engine friendly URL’s. Although I tested it on three different osCommerce setups, it might not work for your installation. Please wait till the stable contribution.

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Canonical links for osCommerce beta

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If you have your own shop, you are on top of numbers. In order to serve your customers better you give them as much as you possibly can in terms like service, product information and product suggestions. Since the most valuable numbers can be collected in Google Analytics (like amount of visitors, keywords and general e-commerce tracking) this contribution adds even more valuable information to Analytics.

Collect what your visitors search for
To spot trends early it’s a good idea to track the search queries of your visitors. This allows you to catch misspellings or related items with an high demand. With this information you can e.g. put common misspellings in the description of an item or start selling related products to items you already sell.

A few contributions already allowed you to track search queries, but most of them collected them in the administrator panel. To keep the administrator as clean as possible, you want to collect information in a environment capable and designed for tracking information. Google Analytics suits this job. Therefor you can find your visitors search queries from your shop back in your Analytics account.

What this contribution does is adding a fake page request (the search keywords) to your statistics. This way, it looks like an ordinary page view but it is in fact a search query from a visitor. Valuable information for you, the shop owner!

Only one file needs to be modified which takes you less then a minute. And again: the effect is amazing.

Installation:
Needless to say: you got to have a Google Analytics account already collecting data. This is based on the new Google Analytics tracking code. If you use the lagacy tracking code (check for urchin.js in your code) please use the installation guide included in the contribution.

Add the following code before </body></html> to your /catalog/includes/footer.php file OR (if you collect data in the header) place the code before </head> in /catalog/includes/header.php. Where UA-XXXXXXX-X is your personal Google Analytics code (e.g. UA-1234567-1).

1. Upload modified file “advanced_search_result.php” to your /catalog/
2. Try a few noticeable search queries on your website e.g. “TEST”.
3. Your search query will show up in Analytics within a few hours (takes a while for Analytics to process the statistics). You can find your search query under: “Content -> Top Content”.

The result (under Content -> Top content) should look like this:

Download:
The contribution is available from the osCommerce Add-ons page: Track search queries

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Track search queries

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With this modification you leave out the “Welcome, please sign in” page. If you have 99,9% new customers (like most of my webshops) ordering in from your shop, you can imagine that the “please sign in” step is pretty redundant. With this page left out customers can complete their order faster, without the nagging “please sign in” page. This makes your web shop slightly more user friendly and the funnel to your goal shorter.

Don’t worry: returning customers can still login to their account using the “login” reference at the top of the registration form or “My Account” button top right.Only one file needs to be modified which takes you less then a minute. The effect however, is amazing.

How to install this contribution (it is explained in the contribution package as well):

1. Open the file /catalog/checkout_shipping.php and search for (line 19):
   tep_redirect(tep_href_link(FILENAME_LOGIN, ”, ‘SSL’));
2. Replace the line with the following:
   tep_redirect(tep_href_link(FILENAME_CREATE_ACCOUNT, ”, ‘SSL’));
3. Save your file. You are done!

The file “checkout_shipping.php” checks if the customer is already signed in, if not: the customer will be redirected to the “please sign in” page. In my case(s) 99,9% of my customers are new customers. Therefor I wanted them to immediately redirect them to the registration form. This makes the barrier to complete the order smaller because there is a choice and step less in the order process.

I truly could notice the gain in orders. Less hesitation from the customers side to complete an order in my shop. Hopefully this contribution will do the same for you!

This is a post from: Webshoptimizer

Skip login page – new osC contribution

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We came up with the concept while whistling and singing (like we usually do) at work. Peter called me afterwards even more excited as he normally is: “Matt, I have a great idea. We are going to record a song!”. With absolutely no idea of the intention we worked out the concept the next day. We were going to record a song with alternative lyrics to the all time disco hit song “D-I-S-C-O”. The alternative lyric we came up with: “WE-LIKE-S-E-O“. Rhyme technically completely correct. Now we just had to convince the “board” for some budget to shoot a video. The website and recording of the track would be completely volunteered by us (in return of a link ofcourse /evilgrin). The result of a few weeks hard work:

As you can see, we had great fun while recording the video and the song (my colleagues). Feel free to leave a comment. I will not discuss critism on the singing tho ;-)

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Where have I gotten myself into…

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I really miss my PageRank 3 and all my subscribers but on the other hand it gave me the oppertunity to start with a much better name, because seo-for-osc was kind of hard to spell and explain. Together with my good friend Peter van der Graaf we came up with the name:

webshoptimizer

Do you get it? Optimizing web shops is what I do so the name could’nt be better. Ofcourse the blog still offers the same. There will be optimizing tricks for your web shop, must have contributions and more!

Everything is getting in place. Expect the first post within a few days. You can subscribe by email or RSS if you want to get notified of new posts. You can also push my button below. Hope to see you back soon!

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SEO-FOR-OSC.com got hijacked; but we’re back!

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