I tried several different ways to begin this post, but it seemed only fitting to be as blunt in this announcement as I have been during my entire SEO and affiliate career, thus the title of this entry. It's been an amazing ride In 1998, after my oldest son suffered a massive bilateral stroke, I […] The post Peace Out to My Digital Marketing Career – It’s Been One Hell of a Ride appeared first on Sugarrae ..read more

If you've looked into search engine optimization as a promotional technique for your website, you have likely come across the advice to make your website secure (having an https:// appear in front of your URLs instead of http://). Google has been very vocal in pushing for all websites to make the move to being secure, […] The post How to Make Your WordPress Website Secure (SSL) in 6 Steps appeared first on Sugarrae ..read more

Google Search Console (GSC) can be a helpful tool – providing you use it. This guide isn't meant for advanced users nor is it a comprehensive dive into every feature GSC has. I'm not looking to overwhelm you. Instead, we're going to go over eight simple GSC features that can provide you with actionable tasks […] The post Google Search Console – a Beginner’s Guide to Finding Actionable SEO Tasks appeared first on Sugarrae ..read more

Coming up with good topics for your blog posts can be a struggle, especially after you have been blogging for a while. When I get inspired, blogging is easy for me. When I have to sit down and write like it's homework because I need to publish two posts one week, I often sit there […] The post 27 Detailed Ways to Generate New Blog Post Ideas appeared first on Sugarrae ..read more

I get a lot of newer, aspiring affiliates on the Sugarrae site and when you've never done affiliate marketing before, all of the terms can get a little confusing. So I created this glossary of affiliate marketing terms to help newer affiliates and bloggers understand the terminology used within the industry. Above the Fold The […] The post Understanding Affiliate Marketing Lingo (Glossary of Terms) appeared first on Sugarrae ..read more

I always run my affiliate links through redirects – also referred to as cloaking affiliate links – for several reasons: Running them through my redirects means I have a click count to match up to the one the merchant is reporting. Affiliate links are usually ugly and impossible to remember without doing a copy/paste. Redirects […] The post How to Cloak Affiliate Links (& Why You Should) appeared first on Sugarrae ..read more

This past weekend Google sent out a round of manual penalty notices citing “unnatural outbound links” – later confirmed to be targeting sites publishing compensated content and reviews where the blogger is linking out to the brand or site that compensated them. If your site received the notice, you'll find some advice for fixing your […] The post How Bloggers Can Fix a Manual Penalty Caused by Compensated Content & Reviews appeared first on Sugarrae ..read more

Sometimes an AdSense unit won't display an ad to a user for whatever reason. When an AdSense unit doesn't show an ad, it leaves an odd amount of space within the content, and reduces my ability to monetize those pages – and I find that unacceptable. This used to be a much more significant problem, […] The post How to Create a Clickable Affiliate Ad as a Backup for an AdSense Unit appeared first on Sugarrae ..read more

If you follow me on Twitter, then you know I sometimes complain about the current state of the industry – most notably centered around what passes for research and discussion these days. It feels like people want to be handed the fish – with little interest in learning how the person with the fish caught […] The post A Call for a Search Discussion – How Google Works appeared first on Sugarrae ..read more

Google Alerts is a free service offered by Google that will alert you to new content Google finds on the web that contains keywords you specify. Google Alerts is most commonly recommended as a way to monitor your brand – and your competition's brand – online. But I also use Google Alerts as a way […] The post Using Google Alerts to Find New Affiliate Programs in Your Niche appeared first on Sugarrae ..read more