Monetize Your Site

I have a couple of new observations on the Deep Link Engine.

There have been several updates along the way. The latest update seems to operate a bit faster than earlier versions. I noticed this after the last update, but have not written it up on this blog. It is only an incremental speed up that I perceive subjectively so I did not think that it was worth a whole post.

The observation that inspires this post is something that I have noticed without taking note of what was going on in the past. I was just looking at the referrer search results and the revelation came to me. What I have seen in the search description box is some seemingly unrelated text. These were things that I did not recall having in the post but were showing up in the search results.

This evening I was looking through the referrer results on one of the blogs on which I am using the Deep Link Engine. The search term included words that I did not recall from the post. Then the light bulb lite. Part of the Keyword phrase was in one of the links that the Deep Link Engine had appended to the post, and the rest was in the post title. Google is indexing those links as part of the post. I had seen this before but not made the connection.

This had put the post at #5 on the first page of results. It is an unexpected benefit of using the Deep Link Engine. I don’t know that this plus outweighs some of the minuses from the DLE, but it is one of the first positive things that I have been able to say about the plug-in. I do see the small bump in traffic from the curious blogmasters when I make a post, and there are a few, mostly no-follow, links that appear on blogs that either have a benevolent blogger or the setting allows all comments and trackbacks.

The other side of the coin, as I have previously mentioned, is that the server address will end up on the Akismet black list. In confirmation of that I had linked from one of my blogs to another earlier today. I was telling the story of a page that has been hit with a Google slap on my Hobby Webmaster Blog. When I checked in on the linked blog I found my own trackback in the spam comments folder. Now that I have linked it here I will have to sort out this trackback from the spam comment folder on that site.

So, in this case, a post showed up high on a search result page because of a link that was placed with the post by the Deep Link Engine. This is really an accidental side effect of the DLE, but I had a visitor because of it.

I had mentioned that I suspected that using the Deep Link Engine had landed my server IP address on the Akismet blacklist. I recently made a post on one blog and, since the topic was such that it fit with another of my blogs, I made the same post on a second blog. The second blog found my identical post and identified it as the most relevant. The Deep Link Engine sent a ping to my other blog. I found it in my spam queue the next time that I looked. This confirms the information from my server logs that indicated the pings from the Deep Link Engine were going into spam queues. A few people are either curious or conscientious about checking their spam queues, but I am sure that most of these trackbacks are flushed either manually or through inaction.

In this post:  http://raygen.info/blog/2010/03/24/deep-link-engine-the-new-wordpress-trackbackpingback-spam/ on the RayGen.info site the blogger says that the product of the Deep Link Engine is ping/trackback spam and recommends that people not use this product. With my experience with the DLE I agree with all of his points.

I only used the DLE engine on this blog briefly and then discontinued using it as I saw how it worked. I have not installed it on my real blogs that are at all important to me. I have used it on what are basically hoped to be WordPress sales pages. I will probably discontinue use even on those sites. Initially there was a bump in traffic with each post. Lately the traffic boost has been insignificant.

I have also seen complaints about the time involved with completely removing the DLE and its tracks from a blog. I may gain experience in this in the not too distant future. If so I will report on my experience for the benefit of my readers.

Have you discontinued use of the DLE? Did you remove all traces of the links that it produced? Tell us in a comment!

I had reported an incompatibility issue between DLE V 1.7.0 and the All-in-One SEO for WordPress yesterday. This is just a quick note to confirm that there was a quick follow-up update to the Deep Link Engine (V1.7.1) to apparently to fix the incompatibility issue with the All-in-One SEO for WordPress issue. I have installed the update on a couple of blogs and the errors appear to be gone. Stay tuned for further updates on the DLE update situation.

There has just been another update for the Deep Link Engine plug-in so I checked the site to see if there was more information. The page that the link takes you to is the download page, although I have no idea why someone clicking from the UI of the plug from within WordPress would want to go to the download page (actually it is a funnel page for their auto content cash system page, so that’s why they take you there). The claims of the download page are the same as they have been:

Before we start revealing the system to you, we wanted whet your appetite by giving you our exclusive “Deep Link Engine”, a custom WordPress Plug-in that puts blogs on steroids, automatically…

• Automatically get backlinks to every post you make – Tries to get backlinks with limited success.
• Get more traffic and higher rankings by just installing it once – There was an initial surge but then as the sites became a familiar face the traffic died down.
• Increase relevance and ranking power of each page with quality outbound links – It does put the links after the post, weather they are relevant or not. I have not tried with the later versions, but there was no way to control the generated links when I tried, and considering the real purpose of the plug that has probably not changed.
• Most links you get are “do follow” – I have software that detects if links are no follow and highlights them. I have looked for the links that have sent me traffic from the few blogs that approve the trackback. I think I have seen one or two that were do follow, but the bulk of those few links that the plug-in actually garnered are no follow links.
• Automatically increase the relevant content for each post – Here again the relevancy comes into question. If you could actually sort the returned URLs and eliminate those that are obviously irrelevant this statement would be more true.
• A $67 value, yours free today – A developer can assign any value to his software that he chooses. If the plug-in had ever been sold on the open market the value would have more meaning.

My comments are in bold blue above. Here are some other thoughts and observations. I suspect that the IP address of my server is now on the Akismet spam blacklist. It would explain to some extent the drop in those checking the posts. I think that most of the trackbacks end up directly in the spam folder on sites with Akismet activated. I also suspect that many blog operators do not even check the spam queue, just letting the comments be deleted automatically.

There is also a question in my mind as to the validity of my stats particularly on Commission Junction. CJ says that they trap for bot activity. I think that the activity from the DLE does not get trapped. My CTR has been through the roof on CJ since I started using the plug-in, but the sales do not add up. Even a one or two  percent conversion rate should have resulted in many more sales than I have seen.

At first I hoped that this was just that the bloggers that I could see from my traffic logs were not my target market. I began to be suspicious when the traffic died off but the click through rate remained about the same.  I then did some research on the CJ site and ran across the information that bots could disrupt the accuracy of the stats. This is the only sensible explanation of the CTRs and impression stats that I have seen.

I recently read a traffic building article that stated there was no real way to automate the job of getting backlinks. I could not argue with that statement based on what I have seen with the Deep Link Engine. Note: I am still running it on several blogs, but I think the content that I am adding is doing more for my traffic count than the DLE.

I have been using the Deep Link Engine on several blogs for several weeks. I have been observing the results and will share some of my thoughts here. This is an interesting concept but, as is often the case, it does not fully live up to the praise for its power given on the sales page.

The sales page (DLE is a free plug-in, so the page extols its virtue) says that you will get many links and most of them will be do follow. The reality of the situation is that most of these pingbacks will end up in the spam queue if anti-spam software is employed on the blogs receiving the pings. I have Akismet activated on all of my blogs, and since it comes in the WordPress bundle, I suspect that most blogs do activate it. I think that any blog that does not employ spam protection of some sort would quickly turn into an unsightly mess.

Much of the resultant traffic that I see in my server logs comes from blog admin pages. These are the conscientious blog operators. Some of them may approve the trackbacks if they are well targeted to the theme of the blog. Unfortunately, the targeting is not so good with DLE and the plug resists attempts to assist in the choices. (There has been a recent update and I have not tried to alter the results since the update, but I have no reason to suspect that the targeting issue would have been addressed.

This targeting issue is the main downside to this plug-in as well as all the free auto-content options that I have tried. The reason that the DLE plug-in was offered was to promote an auto-blogging package called Auto Content Cash. I suspect that users will see some early results that may generate some good press with the package but that the results will drop off after a short time. Long term these sites may generate some income, and with enough of them the income may become significant, but I also suspect that it would take great ‘good luck’ and a special case to come close to the sales page claims for this product.

The filtering is the problem with any of these systems that I have checked out. Google has spent years tweaking their algorithms to return the most relevant search results. You still see a percentage of results that have little relevance to your search on most result pages. In my experience this has been the problem with the software approach. If you choose by category there will be a broad range of topics involved, and some of the articles in the categories are likely to be categorized and irrelevant. And, even the best filtering software will error a percentage of the time.

I would consider trying Caffeinated Content if my economic situation would allow that course of action. As I understand it, and I have not researched extensively, this can be set up to obtain content but you still make the choice of weather to publish. This could help my workflow a bit, but there would still be some time involved in making meaningful posts to a blog.

Have you tried the Deep Link Engine? Do you have comments about its effectiveness or operation? Leave a comment!

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Many of my recent posts to this blog concern the Deep Link Engine. I am continuing my experiment with this plug-in, but I see a pattern forming, I think.

I did see a significant traffic boost when I first started using this plug-in. Of course, more than a couple of visitors a week is good for some of the blogs with which I am using the plug. It appears the the initial traffic boost falls off after a time. I can only see short term effects at this time, because I have not had the plug in service for a long enough period of time.

When the plug is first installed there is a bit of traffic. I suspect that most of this is blog owners checking on the pingbacks that they receive. This is validated by the traffic logs that I have followed. The surge of traffic on posting seems to have been dwindling as the age of the blog/plug increases. There is less immediate traffic to these blogs after posting.

My theory is that since the pings are tied to the keywords used, and since the blogs are concerned with one general topic, the same keywords reappear and the same blogs get pinged on a regular basis. These blog owners begin to recognize the source and either consider the pings as spam or approve without rechecking. Most of them probably consider the pings as spam since the blogs are not as well targeted as they could be. Some of the pingbacks do get approved sometimes. I do see the links showing up occasionally, and I do see occasional traffic reported in my analytics  from links that do get posted. The pingbacks are much more likely to result in a link if the blog is somewhat on topic.

Much of the traffic that I see in analytics comes from blogs that have a recent comments box on the main page. Of course these comments fall out of the recent category when a few new comments trickle in to the blog. This does point to the fact that the plug-in would be better suited to an auto-blogging context where there was a high volume of diverse material posted to the blog.

The real problem with the auto-blogging idea is that monetization will not be as effective without a lot of work. I have had amazing results with my posts. My affiliate links are collecting clicks at a rate that has approached 50%. There have been no conversions, but the affiliate cookies are persistent and there may be a payoff over the next few weeks (I would not suggest holding your breath.

The high click through rates are due to the presentation that I have been using on these blogs. I match a text link and a banner to the content of the post in the main posting box. The banners seem to be the source of most of the clicks. This demonstrates the value of truly targeted traffic and the potential that is available to the Internet marketer. The key, as always is to get truly targeted traffic to your blog or website.

If nothing else the experience gained through this exercise has been worth the time invested. I have had under a one percent click through rate in the past and have seen an average of over ten percent over the past couple of weeks. I had almost suspected that there was a problem with the reporting on my primary affiliate program site, but then I looked at some of the other numbers and realized that there is a clear trend. This trend is not entirely due to the Deep Link Engine. While having the semi-targeted traffic helps the real story here, as far as the click through rate is concerned, is with the layout and add placement.

I now understand my job better and may be able to pursue a more profitable course of action. If I can convert some of this traffic into sales it will be a beautiful thing.

Last evening I had an interesting experience. One of the blogs to which DLE had linked was frustrated that someone out of their area had linked to their blog. They left a comment complaining about the link! Now, most blog owners would be pleased to have a gratuitous backlink, but not this one.

Now comes the adventure in this adventure story. Since I had a complaint I decided to act and delete the link. I opened the post in the editor and found the code in the html view. I deleted the code and hit the republish button. I had read on another blog in a comment to an article on the Deep Link Engine that removed links were replaced on update, so I opened the page and checked. Sure enough, the offending link had been reinstated. I tried the same course of action a couple of more times with the same result. Finally I deactivated the plug, removed the link and updated the post. I checked that the link had been successfully removed. Then I reactivated the plug-in. (I should go check to make sure that it didn’t go back and check its work.)

I do see a stream of traffic (maybe more like a trickle) whenever I post to one of the blogs where the plug is active. I even had some search traffic or recent posts that may indicate that the external links are of value. It may be too soon on those posts to explain in any other way. I will continue with the program for a reasonable length of time in order to evaluate the result properly.

Also of interest, one of the visitors to this blog yesterday was looking for instructions to uninstall the plug-in. There is the activate/deactivate link within the plug-ins list that will disable the plug-in. I suspect that to uninstall you would need to either FTP into the plug-ins folder or use the hosting service cPanel file manager to navigate to the plug-ins folder and delete the ‘pingback’ folder. The plug-ins folder is found within the wp-content folder. Deleting the ‘pingback’ folder should completely remove the plug I would think, but it may be an adventure waiting to happen. I have not tried this course of action, at this point.

I had initially installed the plug on this blog, but when I found that I could not control the output I disabled it. I use the Deep Link Engine on several blogs where I do not write most of the content. On any of my blogs where I do write most of the content I either did not install or disabled the plug-in.

There is an available update to the plug-in. The update offers the option to automatically update all of your old posts with the click of a button. Posting does take some time because of the pings sent when you hit the publish button. There have been several times when my server, set for 30 seconds (a long time for a cpu that is running around 2 Ghz) has timed out. This would indicate that the DLE is not particularly kind to your server. You may end up with an unhappy host if you turned the automated function loose on a few blogs, particularly if the plug-in does not pace itself.

And so, the saga continues. Have you any experience to add to the discussion? Leave a comment. Thanks!

I have had the Deep Link Engine in operation on a few of my blogs for about a week. I considered writing up a report in the form of a PDF and offering it for download from the parent site, Selling on Your Website. I could have combined parts of the several posts about the Deep Link Engine along with my latest observations into a reasonable report. I am not sure that I have enough to add at this point to make that worth while, but I can offer some useful advice on using the Deep Link Engine.

The Deep Link Engine currently available bares little resemblance to what is stated about it on the download page. From the download page:

So what is “Deep Link Engine” for WordPress?

Simply it’s a WP plugin that automatically, and systematically get more links to each and every blog post you create. Either manually, or automatically.

It was designed to be used with stand-alone wordpress.org blogs. So you would need to have wordpress hosted on your server, or hosting account.
How it works…

For each post you create Deep Link Engine will analyze the content of your post, determine 5-10 keywords, then go out and find relevant blogs related to those keywords. Once it is done finding blogs, you select which blogs you would like to link to.

By linking to these other blogs we send a “pingback” notifying their blog’s software that we referrenced them on our website. Leading to deep relevant links to all our blog posts. Over time this will greatly enhance your ranking power for internal pages. The best part is easy.

Deep Link Engine for wordpress is really “push button” link building at it’s finest, and you get access to it absolutely free.

The text in red requires further comment. My guess is that the plug-in was originally designed in this way, but was changed to accommodate use with auto-blogging software. There appears to be little, if any manual control.

The plug conducts its final search when you hit the publish button. I thought that perhaps you could gain some control by adding to the automatically produced keyword list. Even this has proved to be a false hope. I produced a post that included a video with little supporting text. There were no keywords generated by the plug so I added several keywords and hit the publish function. When the post was published I glanced at the keyword box only to find that my added keywords had been lost for the most part.

My advice would be that if you choose to use the Deep Link Engine just install it and set it up in settings. Don’t bother trying to control anything in the way of output, for the most part it will be a waste of time.

Now for a little better news I will speak about results. I don’t consider that the time is adequate to fully evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy, but I can give some observations of early results. You will likely see a traffic spike when you first begin to use the plug-in. I suspect that most of this early traffic is from blog owners who have been pinged. They are not likely to be the targeted traffic that you would hope for, but they will improve your traffic count for the short term.

I have gone into my traffic log on the server and seen the activity there. I have also followed some of the referrer links in Google Analytics. I have seen several places where the trackbacks were listed to my blogs. Most of these are nofollow but a couple have been dofollow. Even as no follow other blog visitors can click on the link if they have the interest.

For the most part I am using this with an article distribution service provided by iSnare, an article directory. I will maintain the regimen for some time until I can give a more definitive opinion as to the value of the strategy.

If you have an opinion please share it in a comment. Thanks!

I have been fussing with the Deep Link Engine for about a week. It is not everything that I hoped that it would be, but it does collect links and add them to your posts.

I have all but quite fussing with the interface except in the rare instance that the generated keyword list is too short. I had tried deleting various keywords. It now appears that the only control left over the plug-in is to add some keywords to the list produced by DLE.

This software was developed as an introduction to a product, auto content cash, that the team has just launched. While the plug does gather links there is no manual control as was mentioned on the download page. I suspect that the intention when developing the plug was to give the manual control as stated. The plug-in needed to be fully automatic for use with the various auto-blogging packages including their new offering. This means that the meaningful search is done after the publish button is clicked. What is really needed is a manual/automatic switch in the options. This could default to automatic, but give us the option to manually select the blogs to which we wish to link.

In using the plug-in I have seen some immediate results. Most of the immediate results that you will see are the better blog operators visiting your blog to see who the heck linked to their blog. This is low quality traffic, but it is a traffic boost. I have seen the trackback on a few blogs and they have all been nofollow. Anyone interested can still click on the link, so there will be some incremental traffic produced. With enough of these scattered around there could be a long term traffic boost. How targeted that traffic is remains to be seen, but could be improved with the ability to hand pick the links. It is too bad that is not currently possible.

I discontinued using the plug on this blog and any of my blogs where I am producing most of the content. If I could hand pick the links I would use the plug-in here. I do have it installed on several blogs where I am populating a good bit of the content with iSnare articles. I have found that they have a good automated content distribution system, and most of the articles are of reasonably good quality. The resolution of the articles sent is not as good as it could be because of the limited number of categories, but they do not auto-post, so you do have control of what you print. This is the best distribution system that I have found to date, but I have not searched long and hard. If they could set it up with some keyword filters it could be significantly improved. I intend to set up two more blogs using this system this evening.

Do you know of other content distribution systems? Please tell us in a comment.

I am beginning to see articles trickle in to other sites on which I have installed the scripts. It does appear that this will work as I had hoped. When I saw that I was actually getting some articles I signed up two more blogs. I will keep you updated on the progress and results.

I expect that I will see some curiosity seeker traffic as I do have the Deep Link Engine active on all of these sites. There will be a percentage of those sites that are pinged that will check on the site sending the ping. I did see one trackback resulting from a ping by the DLE. It was set as nofollow, but the search engines don’t always follow that rule. I will be watching traffic and SERP to see if this strategy has value. To some extent more traffic means more clicks, but it is really targeted traffic that is needed to make money.