Salvaging the FFAL...

Posted Thursday, November 18, 2004

Are FFAL pages really dead? I say no. Let me tell you a short story. I put a site analysis tool on my FFAL page to see what it was doing. I didn't expect to see much but was surprised to find out that I was receiving hits on my page that have nothing to do with my website.

Find free site analysis tools at: (http://www.webtrendslive.com/default.htm) (http://get.hitbox.com/)
(http://www.extreme-dm.com/tracking/?reg) (http://sm6.sitemeter.com/default.asp) (http://www.websitetrafficreport.com/)

I've read a couple of articles about how FFAL pages are hurting search engine ranking on websites. I'm not convinced. Find an FFAL page that is well traffic ed. Look at mine if you don't know of one.

(http://www.pagecrafters.net/links/links.htm)

Pick a link and copy the title. I picked: FreeLotteriesOnline - the guide to free online lotteries

Now do a search on Google for that title. Not all of the titles will show up. You might have to look through several. What your looking for are websites that end in link.htm, but your going to find classified ad sites also. Look on the first three pages of the search engine. Link pages do get indexed.

If your not sure of a search engine, use a robot.txt page to keep specific search engines out.

I'm picking up hits on embroidery, travel, casino, dating... you name it. I started looking at the referrers to see what the search engines were seeing, and I found out something. My FFAL page is being indexed at least once a week. Because of that, whatever happens to be on the page at the time is what is being indexed.

Since having a site analysis tool on the page, I have a good idea of what is getting placed on the page and how many people are searching for it. About 300 people a month find my page this way. Why, you ask, is my FFAL page getting indexed? I read an article written by Mark Joyner over a year ago, and it seems that others have read it also. In case you missed it...

(http://www.roibotlibrary.com/articles/99nov24.htm)

What it says in short is, after placing your link on several FFAL pages, index it to the search engines to give your website a temporary popularity boost.

The next question is, what can I do with this information. I know how many, and what they are searching for. If I'm lucky, I'm already selling what they want. Chances are, I'm not. I turned to affiliate programs to fill my visitors needs. I set up affiliates with casinos, travel and dating. I then placed them on the FFAL page.

Affiliate programs can be found at: (http://clickbank.com/) (http://www.cj.com/) (http://www.linkshare.com/)

Find FFAL scripts at: (http://www.worldwidemart.com/scripts/) (http://www.shavenferret.com/scripts/links/) (http://castlecgi.castellum.net/scripts/CastleLinks/)

If I'm getting random visitors to my site with the FFAL page, why shouldn't I try to keep them on my page and sell them something? I don't have any real stats just yet, but I will let you know how it turns out.

About the Author
Dale Sexton owns & operates 'PageCrafters.net', & publishes 'Small Business Tools magazine'. Both focus on tools & tips for small business. mailto:pagecrafters@pagecrafters.net Sign up for 'SBT magazine' at: (http://pagecrafters.net/newsletter.html)