I have been using DataFeedFile for quiet some time now and today I would like to share with my readers some practical steps in creating “Merchant Search Engine”. The reason I chose this tool over other available is that this one tool that makes DataFeedFile a little different from GoldenCan. Some web-masters think that either websites do not provide enough flexibility, but for some one like myself, without programing skills, these two website offer wonderful opportunity to create a website quickly and easy.

What kind of editor should you use?

If you can afford either Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe Macromedia Dreamweaver, these are wonderful tools to create websites. If you are serious about affiliate business one of these softwares will be a good business investment, a tax deductible one I should add.

If you can not afford these editors, any HTML editor will do, including simple notepad that is on every computer. I never use notepad, since writing a website in notepad requires knowledge of HTML and being able to write HTML code some what quickly. I have started my first pages by using Nvu, a web editor that allows you to switch quickly from visual editing to HTML code. Nvu is a wonderful free tool, probably the best there is, among free software that is. It was my first web editor therefore I will use it as an example.

How to create a “Merchant Search Engine” with DataFeedFile?

First of all you should register at http://www.datafeedfile.com/ (free) and set up all the necessary affiliate ids and apply to few merchants.

In this example I will show you how to create this a small website using only two pages and two java script codes which you will copy and paste from your account at DataFeedFile. I will not use any styling for this example so the finished product may not look so appealing, but hopefully it will give you an idea of how to use DataFeedFile.

Step 1: Create “store.html” and “products.html”

Create two HTML files with Novu naming them “store.html” and “products.html”. You will need both of this files in order for your site to function.

Step 2: Edit “store.html”

You will need to login to your DataFeedFile account, go to Get HTML>Menus>Merchat Menus.
Chose any template (I have chosen Standard template), if you wish the text to show in bold you may select that option, but I generally leave “Show product in new window” unchecked. Define font size (I use fonts no bigger that 12pt). Define number of columns and rows ( I opted for 3 columns and 4 rows). Select view mode (I selected Gird), next to it you can also define the size of the merchants logo (I leave it blank for due to the image quality. In the field of Target URL you will need to provide URL of file named “products.url” in my case it will be http://sageblogger.com/products.html. Then click “Generate HTML Code”, from the first window titled “JavaScript” copy and paste the code anywhere inside the “body” tags of “store.html” file. Save the file and then upload it to your server, in my example I placed the file to http://sageblogger.com/store.html .

Step 3. Edit the “products.html” file.

Going back to your DataFeedFile account go to Get HTML>Shopping Tools>Price Search Engine. Select a template style. The rest of the options you may leave untouched (at least for now). Click Generate HTML code then copy and paste JavaScript code anywhere inside the “body” tags in your “products.html” file, save and upload the file to the location you have specified in step 2 for Target URL, in my case it is http://sageblogger.com/products.html. That’s it, your website is ready. It should look something like this:

http://sageblogger.com/store.html 

Using the JavaScript code does not give you SEO benefits. In odrder to have the data of your site indexed you will need to use PHP code. To do that you will also need to save files “store” and “products” with a php extension: store.php and products.php

DataFeedFile is another website, similar to GoldenCan, that provides data feed solutions to affiliates. There is no charge for using their services, nevertheless most of the merchants participate on a “4^th click” basis. What it means that a link for every forth lick produced from your website is being replace with their own affiliate links. It is important to keep in this in mind when running and comparing your reports, especially if you are using pay per click advertising to promote your website. I have used extensively this website and I would like to share with you what are the benefits of using their website.

Both GoldenCan and DataFeedFile is a good solution for affiliates that would like to create their own websites but do not have necessary programing skills to integrate large amounts of data into their websites. DataFeedFile actually has some solutions for advance users who would like to use XML data feeds for their websites. One of the great benefit of using DataFeedFile is that they update their data from participating merchants on a daily basis, and if you choose for example to download data as a CSV file, DataFeedFile sends you an e-mail notificatio every time data is updated. But I have no experience on using raw data files so I will share with you only about the “the shopping tools” that are require less than five minutes to install on your website.

On of the features called “Shopping Comparison” Tool of DataFeedFile stands out and is not yet available at GoldenCan. It allows you to create a “mini” shopping search engine that allows users to compare price of a particular product across several different merchants. I am currently working an a post/tutorial on how to create this kind of search engine.

Recently I have read few articles on how to make sure that your website will be listed quickly on the major search engines. There are of course countless articles on the subject and even e-books you can buy. But here I am putting in my few cents.

In the past in order to list my websites I extensively used “submission” form specifically provided for that purpose. The one after you use to submit your website, you receive a thank you note for submitting your site and a statement that indexing takes a long time some times up to several weeks. I also made sure to submit a sitemap via Google Sitemaps as soon as my websites went live.

Most of the articles that I have read discouraged very much from using the form, saying that it is much better for your site to be discovered by the search engines on their own. So I have decided to let them discover one website on their own. For this purpose I have written an article at Ezine Articles as well as using Digg.com and Bluedot.us to share the content from my website. I should mention that I have not created sitemap for Google yet for this website, and now I even hesitant to do so, and this is why.

The above mentioned website went live three days ago and has already two pages indexed on Google. Yahoo and MSN did not list my site yet, nevertheless I was absolutely astonished that Google picked up my site so quickly. While it is possible that the website may disappear from Google’s index tomorrow, it still was the quickest ever that my site was listed by any search engine.

Now I am not sure even if I should submit sitemap to Google, I would not want to spoil the little success that I have achieved so far. I hope that this article may be read by a SEO professional who can set me straight on using Google sitemap and its benefits or disadvantages.

Many webmasters spend much time optimizing and promoting their websites. If you are using pay per click advertising, you may be able to tack conversion rate and in such manner measure the success of your work. When it comes for measuring your work in SEO it can be some what difficult and may take longer to aggregate necessary data in order to measure your success.

Seomoz.org offers this wonderful tool called Page Strength, which I have been using lately to improve my websites. The tool it self offers just one paragraph worth of suggestion for you to consider or encouragement and praise if your site/page shows strength of 3 and above. But if you pay attention to aggregated data you may be able to improve your site within days. They refresh the data only once every 72 hours so checking in more frequently will not produce any better results.

I have to admit that I am in no way qualified as SEO guru or anything close to being one. But after looking at the results and changing few things I was able to improve my page strength for some of my websites from 1 to 3 within two weeks.

There are few factors of your website that you will have no control over, as for example domain’s age. This factor will improve over time. But there are few that you can improve yourself.

Here is what I did. Since most of my websites are powered by WordPress, I have started to use plugin that allows your visitors to add your posts to deli.cio.us, and withing days I saw an improvement. Also since the tool measures your websites position for first four words of your title in Google, I have chosen less competitive keyword phrases for my website, and some of my websites when from not showing on the first page of natural search to the 1^st and 2^nd place on Google.

 

Few months ago I have joined EzineArtiles after reading a lot about benefits you get from publishing your articles there. I have not published many articles there since when I made an attempt to publish my first article, it was not approved and to be honest I gave up on it. When you join EzineArticles, you have 10 initial submissions , which have to adhere to editorial guidelines. Since English is not my native language, I thought that writing 10 articles would be too big of a task for me. Nevertheless tow weeks ago I dedicded to give it another shot and submitted 10 articles. Now I am a “Platinum” member which is not a big deal, since almost anyone can become a Platinum member at EzineArticles, but it sure helps since being a Platinum member allows you to submit unlimited number of articles. Also editorial review is much quicker when you are a Platinum member.

So what about results?

I can’t say I saw dramatic results from publishing my articles at EzineArticles. I may not have the sufficient amount of data to pass a judgment. But here are few clues to how effective my approach was.

Link Popularity.

You probably have read that publishing your articles on EzineArticles will increase your websites link popularity, since there will be many publishers who may republish your article on their websites. So far my articles were republished few times, but the sites that picked up my articles either do no have high page rank or are entirely made of ezine articles. I am yet waiting to see any of my articles to be picked up by more reputable website. I have to admit that EzineArticles itself is highly ranked by many search engines, and if nothing else having and incoming link from them may help my websites a little.

Search Engines Indexing.

I definitely noticed some improvement on how my pages are indexed by search engines. I have noticed that Google, Yahoo and MSN, have indexed some of my older pages. I could not understand why these pages were not indexed in the past. Some of the pages were as old as websites themselves, but newer pages would get indexed quicker. I can’t guarantee that this change can be attributed to EzineArticles, but coincidently these “older” pages were indexed by search engines after I started publishing with EzineArticles.

How long does it take to see some real results?

Some people say that it takes about 20 articles before you will notice some real results. It is also have been said that ezine authors with 100 articles and more get the most results. So I guess I still have some ways to go.