Tiffany Washko

I have had a rough month being a WAHM this month. If you recall my blog was hacked and my search engine traffic was being redirected to a spammer site. I thought that was the end of it….but the saga continues. I have several blogs and of course they targeted my main blog (not this one)…my bread and butter blog so to speak. After I got rid of the anyresults.net hack I thought I was in the clear but I wasn’t.

A few days later a fellow blogger emailed me to let me know that his own blog had been hacked and spam was being injected into his blog invisibly. You could even look at the source code and not see a darn thing. He found the links by analyzing his blog with CURL and the links all went to my site…aka buy your viagra here and then a link to my blog…only there were 30+ plus links for all sorts of spammy products and drugs. Of course he went to my blog to see if I was the spammer who hacked his blog and of course found nothing..until he looked at my blog with CURL and saw I was hacked too. He was nice enough to email me and let me know.

I hoped he was wrong but since I didn’t know how to use CURL I couldn’t verify. Then I did two things to test. I went to Google’s Webmaster Tools and looked at the keywords they had indexed for my site and sprinkled throughout were the spammy keywords. Then I searched for “viagra and my URL” and TONS of links had been indexed. I was dangerously close to getting banned by Google for being a spammer and in fact I have met several people during this fiasco that didn’t catch this hack until they did get banned.

Also, via a tip to use CRON from a Mom Masterminds member (LOVE that group) I ran a CURL string:

curl –user-agent Googlebot + URL

This verified in a way easy for me to see, where the links where. I was still shocked when I saw them for the first time though. They all pointed back to my own site. The overall goal of this hack is get you banned from search engines…perhaps so the spammers can rank better for the SERPS you currently hold. They are knocking out the competition. Oh and they added new Adsense info at the bottom of the page, maybe even siphoning my Adsense commissions.

So…..the blogger who emailed me also gave me a link that helped resolve the hack. There is a lot of info there but only some of it applied to my situation. For instance some of these hacks involve code directly implanted into your theme files but my situation was a little different. My hack was disguised as a plugin and not one that you could see in the wordpress dashboard. Sprinkled all throughout my files I found what looked like image files or regular php files:

filenames “*_new.php” , “*_old.php”,. “*.jpgg”, “*_giff”

They were all coded hack files and there was over a dozen of them…back doors to keep open so the spammers could keep accessing my site. They would make a plugin run under the radar that would inject the spam links. I had to check wp_options in my database and see what was listed under active plugins…I found the culprit there, deleted the code and deleted what I thought was all the files. I also deleted all my users and there were a few suspicious ones there and I scrubbed the database. Case closed.

Or so I thought. A couple days ago I checked Webmaster tools again just for the heck of it and guess what…the hack was back. So I just cleaned it up AGAIN…and did an even more thorough search. I only found one file that I think I missed the first time but one is all it takes. Now I have CRON being run to check for spam injection links every hour on the hour and the results are emailed to me. It is a pain but I am not going to let this go unchecked again. Just today I think Google cleared out the last of the badly indexed files although some phantom keywords still show in Webmaster tools…I hope they go away soon.

Soemtimes it is not so fun to be a blogger and Internet Marketer…especially when you are being sabotaged.

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We hear a lot about traffic conversion…but what exactly is it? Well, the goal of any business site should be good traffic conversion. Your site doesn’t have to be about business either. You could have a site or blog that focuses on crafts but the goal is the same…you need to convert your traffic to make a profit. You need to be able to turn a site visitor into a customer or a subscriber. That is how your site will make money and keep your prospect coming back. If we don’t manage to convert our site visitors they will go away and they may never wander back our way again. Getting viewers who click and pass on is no more productive than window shoppers at the mall. You make money online when you capture that traffic and convert the “lookers” into “buyers.” So what can you do?

12 tips to increase your traffic conversion:

1. Refine your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). What makes your product or site different, special, better or more desirable than others? That’s your USP. Now get the answer to that question down to one or two concise sentences. If you have trouble figuring out what your USP is how can you possibly be telling your visitors why they should stick around?

2. Sound friendly, but not slick. Your sales copy needs to sound like one friend excited to tell another friend about a great buy. This is especially important in affiliate marketing. If you are recommending a product, your visitors will respond better to a friendly voice..not that of an oily salesman. Avoid sounding like a high-pressure infomercial.

3. Ask for help. Give the viewers a reason to interact with you by asking for their opinion on a survey or product rating. You get useful information and keep them thinking about your product longer. People love to have something to contribute.

4. Simplify the offering. If you have three different products to sell, use three websites. Don’t make the mistake of trying to offer too much at once and confuse your audience. This might work for major retailers, but they already have a brand and a following.

5. Leave some open space. Prepare a sales page that’s easy to read with wide margins. You don’t have to fill every inch. That can get overwhelming! Leaving some white space helps the reader to better focus on the copy and feel as though reading it is a manageable task.

6. Strut your stuff. If your product has a good rating or endorsements from satisfied buyers, then let them brag about the product for you. This increases consumer confidence in YOU.

7. Cast with plenty of bait. In your sales letter and squeeze page, put out the “bait” for your offer over and over. Don’t skimp on bait. Better too many offers than not enough to convert that buyer who is still uncertain.

8. Find problems. Even after your sales page is complete, keep thinking about other problems that your product can solve. You might get a hint of new ways to promote your product by asking buyers how they use the product. Asking for feedback from your peers is another great way to get some insight. I recommend Mom Masterminds.

9. Use highlighting in moderation. Yes, highlights draw visual attention but too many highlights or excessive colors can frustrate online readers. Highlight the most important points only.

10. Package deals are increasingly popular. After presenting your USP, sweeten the offer with a package including several free items as part of the “Buy Now” deal. Limited time offers create a sense of urgency for the buyer to act. Make sure the offers are relevant to the product though.

11. Ask for the order. An old principle of sales that must never be ignored - ask for the order, ask again then ask again. Many people won’t act until the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th offer.

12. Say “Thank you.” Have a gracious, personal sounding, “Thank you” email with the order confirmation. It never hurts to show appreciation! Remember this isn’t the end of your relationship…just the beginning….so make a good impression.

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The recent anyresults.net hack to one of my blogs really made me evaluate a traffic strategy that does not include search engines, especially Google. Now honestly I NEVER want to be in that position. I get a TON of traffic from search engines but this experience has shown me exactly how crazy it would be to put all your eggs in a basket controlled by search engines like Google. Google can giveth and taketh away and what will you be left with?

After I was hacked and lost all search engine traffic I had a chance to evaluate how I was doing with traffic strategies that did not include SEs. Yes, I lost ALOT of traffic and I lost ALOT of money but I am encouraged nonetheless. Even without SE traffic I managed to bring in on average 550 people per day to that blog which is not to shabby if I do say so myself. If gave me ideas for the future too…I don’t want to sink if SE traffic were to go away tomorrow.

So what did I do to ensure a decent stream of blog traffic?

RSS Readers- Well, all the work I did to get RSS readers was helpful. With almost 1500 subsribers and 500 of those being kept on a list I can get in contact with my readers at any time. A do product reviews all the time so I still make a decent affiliate income.

Social Media - I am a big Stumbleupon user. I submit most of my posts to SU or I have someone do it for me. I also have accumulated quite a few SU friends and fans that are willing to help me stumble posts. In one day I can easily have 1 to 200 hits from Stumbleupon visitors and on REALLY good days it can be 5-600. I have a little SU symbol at the bottom of each post encouraging readers to use it.

I also submit to Digg and Kirtsy.

Another nice source of traffic is Twitter. I use Twitterfeed to automatically relay all my blog posts to Twitterville. I also post there regularly. Not only do I get Twitter visitors, I can also solicit Twitter friends for Stumbles and Diggs to help me move my way up the social media ladder. Twitter has been wonderful for traffic generation and for keeping up with trends in my niche as I follow the tweets of like minded bloggers.

Squidoo - This is old faithful here. I have only a few Squidoo lenses left after I sold several but those lenses are still bringing targeted traffic, they are a source of links, and I still make money off them every month via the Squidoo system and from independent affiliate links.

While evaluating my traffic stats I also found that Flickr was a decent source of traffic for me. I uploaded a series of pictures a few months back to use in the Flickr module on Squidoo and I put a link to my blog in the comments section. Those pictures have been bringing in consistent traffic. I am now going to be concentrating a lot more on what Flickr can do for traffic generation and so far I am really liking the results. There are MANY ways to take adavantage of Flickr that I was clueless about.

Incoming Links- This is my biggest source of traffic not dependent on search engines. I have lots of links from other web sites, blogs, forums, Flickr, Yahoo answers, etc. I put quite of bit of effort into building these links and that is not likely to stop. Here are some tips for getting incoming links:

1. Write reprint articles and submit to article directories.

2. Host contests on your web site or blog that require or encourage participants to link to you.

3. Participate in blog carnivals.

4. Create Squidoo lenses about topics related to your niche and link to various articles on your site using anchoring text and relevant keywords.

5. Comment on Yahoo Answers questions and leave links to places you discuss the “answer” on your web site or blog.

6. Write kick butt content that people will want to link to and tell their friends about.

So how would you fare if SE traffic stopped tomorrow?

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