Do you promote affiliate programs on your blog?  If you do, I have a tip for you today on Wordpress link management.

As I read blogs, I see a lot of people linking from their content straight through to the product they are promoting, via their affiliate link.

If you have a small blog with little content, that’s okay.   But, if you are linking through to affiliate products on multiple blog posts, especially the same product on multiple blog posts, you are potentially setting yourself up for a lot of work.

What happens if the product you are promoting changes?  What if the affiliate program, or link changes?  What if the website shuts down?  You could be left with a lot of outgoing affiliate links that are worthless.

It’s happened to me.  I had links to a product I was promoting in several blog posts.  By following one of those links one day, I discovered the site was now being directed to a totally different and unrelated product.  I found a similar product to replace the original product, but had to review each blog post, find each link and change each link – what a pain that was!

I decided I would never do that again, and had to find a way to better manage my Wordpress links.

I knew I could create files on my domain that contained redirect code with my affiliate link.  Then, if I needed to make a product change I could just change the affiliate link in that redirect page.  I could just make one change in that file and not have to change each post.

But, since I was using Wordpress it seemed to make sense to find a solution within Wordpress instead of creating numerous redirect files.

I needed a good Wordpress link management plugin.  The great thing about Wordpress is you can find plugins for about anything you need to do.  I found a great, simple to use link management plugin – GoCodes.

Once the GoCodes plugin is installed, you give the link a name, and the URL you want it directed to.  Following is an example of a GoCodes link.

http://followlist.com/blog/go/bloggingtothebank

That link takes you to a how to make money blogging product.  If that product disappears, becomes obsolete, or if I just feel like promoting a different product, I change the URL in the GoCodes settings and those links point to the new product.

The GoCodes Wordpress link management plugin is slightly difficult to install because you have to add some code to your .htaccess file.  The GoCodes plugin ReadMe file explains how to make that change, and it’s not difficult.

The GoCodes Wordpress link manager also allows you to track clicks on your redirected links.  This can help you determine which products are converting well, and which products are not.  If a product is not converting, simply replace it with a new product in GoCodes.

There may also be another benefit to using a link management plugin like GoCodes.  Instead of the outgoing links in your content going to an outside affiliate site, the links are actually pointing back to your domain.  It would seem that this would benefit your blog in the eyes of the search engines.  I don’t have any evidence to support this, but I am sure it hasn’t hurt my search engine ranking.

I now use GoCodes on all of my outgoing links in my blog posts.  I have learned the hard way to manage my Wordpress links so that I can make link changes in one place within Wordpress instead of having to make changes in several blog posts.

I suggest you start using GoCodes, or some similar Wordpress link management plugin, today – before you create a ton of time consuming work for yourself somewhere do the road.

I recently obtained a number one listing in Google, and a Wordpress plugin helped me obtain that number one position.

A few days ago, one of my visitors who left a comment let me know that I had the number one spot in Google for “this site uses keywordluv”.

Now, that is not exactly a competitive keyword that many people are going to be searching for. But, having the number one position for that keyword phrase brought me a number of visitors.

People looking for that phrase are either looking for the keywordluv plugin, or they are looking for blogs that are using that plugin.

Since keywordluv is a dofollow blog plugin, I’m sure people were searching on that term to find dofollow blogs.

So, I wrote this keywordluv related blog post.

If you go to that post, you will notice the title contains the keywords “this site uses keywordluv”, and if you read through the post, you will see the same phrase mentioned a couple of times.

Have you asked yourself what would ever make me think to write and optimize a post containing such a strange keyword phrase?

Well, I never would have thought of it myself. It’s all due to the Wordpress “Psychic Search” plugin.

The Psychic Search plugin tracks keyword phrases that people searched on to get to your blog.

I noticed people got to my blog by searching on the keywordluv phrase. I don’t know where my blog was rated in Google for that phrase, when I noticed that phrase in my Psychic Search logs.

But, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t number one in Google since this blog had not been a keywordluv blog for very long.

So, I created a blog post, and optimized it, to give the search engines the phrase they were already finding me for. And, a few weeks later (maybe less) I found myself in the number one position for that phrase.

Once you know what visitors are searching for to find your blog, you can optimize on the terms they are using to search – when appropriate. Not all search terms will relate to your blog.

I have seen some strange search terms that lead to visitors coming to my blog. But, many search terms are related to my blog content and I will write posts related to those search phrases.

Psychic Search is a free plugin, you only have to give an email address to activate it.

So, go get your Psychic Search plugin today and find out what search terms are leading visitors to your blog.

Mike

Want to save this post to your computer for later reference? Download the Google Number One Spot Report.

What? You might think that is a strange title – this site uses keywordluv.

KeywordLuv is a Wordpress plugin, that I think is a must for do-follow blogs, and I use it on all of my dofollow blogs.

Those who post valid comments on do-follow blogs know that it’s important to use the right keyword link text on their comments.

For example, when I post comments on other do-follow blogs and point them to my Do-Follow Blog Directory, I don’t use the actual link in the comments name field – http://followlist.com .

Instead I want to use something like:

Notice I use the Name “Mike Do-Follow Directory”. Ideally I would like to use just “Do-Follow Directory”, but some blog owners don’t like you to use just your keywords. If you use your name and then your keywords blog owners will be more forgiving.

Since most who comment on do-follow blogs don’t know this, there is a way you can help them use the correct Name – KeywordLuv.

I use KeywordLuv on all of my do-follow blogs because it encourages comments since they do get to use their keyword in the link, and I like the way it looks.

The KeywordLuv syntax is “YourName@YourKeywords” like below.

That’s why this site uses keywordluv, it’s perfect for Do-Follow Blogs!

The KeywordLuv plugin also automatically sets your blog comments to be Do-Follow. However, it doesn’t seem to work for setting do-follow on my blog, so I use the DoFollow Plugin.

Mike