This upgrade will be focused on the management of the link directories that we added in 1.2. You will be able to sort by pagerank, suggest new directories, suggest directories that should be removed. This will help us all work through the submission process more efficiently.

Version 2

For version 2 we are going to build a 3 way link network for all the software users, so you can have automatically generated, relevant inbound links from related sites. As the network gets bigger, you get more links.

Suggestions welcome!

1) Auditing and removing directories that have closed, dont work, or are paid.

2) SEO benefit for friiso.com.

It takes a while for the links to be picked up in google webmaster tools, a few weeks generally… monitoring the progress of this closely

As you can see from the screen shots below, its pretty simple.

1. Enter your details in the options dialog. Make sure you have selected your domain in the dropdown on the main toolbar.

2. Click Next Link Directory, and a link directory that you have not processed will open in the browser.

3. Navigate to the submit link form in the browser.

4. Click ‘Fill Form’ and it will fill out the details for you, except the category and captcha.

5. Enter link category and captcha, and submit the form.

6. Repeat!

Note:  Often you have to check your email to confirm the link after submission.

To view a report go to the Tools Menu where you can see the directories you have submitted to.

We will upload the new version in the next day or two – trust me its worth waiting for!

1. Semi-automated Link directory submission – NOW LIVE!!!
2. A 3 way link network

The link directory submission tool will provide you with a list of link directories, and enable you to quickly call up a directory, populate the form with pre-defined information, leaving you only to have to enter the captcha code. This way you can work through a lot of link directory submissions on your own very quickly.

This expected by the end of the year or early next year.

The 3 way linking is going to take longer, arriving in the second quarter of next year.

Additionally there will be some small bug fixes to the page rank checker to make it more robust and easier to view results.

Best of all… its always staying free!

Being the advertisee is using something like adsense. This is where you are paid advertising money to give google a space on your site to place ads. Every customer who clicks on the ad earns you some money, depending on the bid value they advertiser has placed on that ad group.

There are other advertising networks available, but its probably best to focus on affiliate programs targeted to your niche. Check out our affiliate section for more information there.

Generally there 2 forms of traffic reporting;

Server side log file analysis

Packages like awstats which do log file analysis on the server will provide basic reporting functions to you. They are fairly reliable and comprehensive.

Client side javascript based tracking. i.e. Google Analytics.

GA is a great choice for your business intelligence. Its constantly evolving, integrating with other google products, and its free.  Its really worth the effort to do some extra tracking with GA, especially if you are interested in conversion rates and PPC tracking. From the smallest websites to massive dotcom empires, they are all using GA. If its good enough for them, its good enough for you.

There are two basic choices when it comes to presenting the interface changes, and that is client or server side. Generally, if you work with a server side scripting technology such as asp.net or php, you are likely to harness this to load the ab testing data from your database and conditionally present the different versions of the site to the different groups. A sample client-side implementation is optimost, where javascript is used to do the tracking and showing of different versions. Its generally a lot less powerful as you are limited to showing/hiding html rather than on the server where you have complete control over the presentation.

Test storage is usually done with a database, so you would register all your tests in a database. When the page code runs, it looks in the database to see if any tests are assigned to this page type, and returns them all. Now the page knows about the tests that apply to it, individual tests that are coded on the pages can check whether the test is running or not, and whether this user will get the A or the B or the C etc. The code then executes to modify the interface for the user. We then need to gather the key information about that user, which is where your tracking comes in. Traffic tracking is quite a large area on its own, but for the purposes of this, we just need to be aware that the following things are tracked;

Which version the customer saw
Whether the customer converted or not, and how much they spent.

The analysis script will later crunch all this data to find out which test is winning.

There are often dilution effects to consider as well. For instance if some functionality will only be shown for certain product types, yet the test is registering across all users, then the results are diluted. Also, it may be that the test is only shown within an ajax piece on the page, which only a certain proportion of users will actually use. Dilution is not a huge problem, if you can reduce it, it certainly helps.

The next phase we will look at is the reporting and analysis side. We will be looking at power functions, which are used to calculate the sample size we need to test again, a few difference confidence calculation formulas, along with charting and decision making. This is probably the hardest part of ab testing as its a subjective area, and we will soon be there.