First, too few of big merchants have understood power of marketing via RSS feed and affiliation. These sluggish retail giants, many with a long-standing presence on English high streets, are missed by those of us with neighbourhood corner shops. We want to pass business their way, for a small commission. So, take note please big merchants, costs of setting-up and maintaining RSS feeds, and paying us small commissions, are far outweighed by value of increased sales.

It seems that some of ‘giants’ have been caught off-guard by cost-effectiveness of this new technology and approach to marketing in combination. It’s simply a matter of them re-writing their product lists in XML and offering coded feeds to affiliate networks. When they do so, I suggest humbly that they seek out networks offering small shopkeepers like me an unlimited number of feeds at no cost, and that they avoid studiously any ‘exclusive’ deals.

Some merchants are quicker to exploit new technologies than others; that’s way markets work. The most agile survive: least agile suffer. This creates an opportunity for small and medium sized merchants who are inherently more agile than larger competitors. We English shopkeepers, need them to master RSS technology and affiliation quickly, to plug gaps in market left by big merchants.

Recently, for example, I’ve been hunting English merchants who can offer me affiliated RSS feeds for used and new cars. I have also been hunting similar merchants capable of offering me regularly updated RSS feeds for package holidays and real estate. Cars, package holidays and houses are just sort of products that would sell well in my shop, yet there are big gaps in market there right now.

To conclude, Napoleon was right: we English are a nation of shopkeepers. Many, like me, love our work. To continue tradition, what this particular English shopkeeper needs is two things. Additional, big merchants offering affiliated RSS feeds with broad appeal and smaller merchants offering narrower, deeper feeds that cater for niche interests.

The "Google Bombing" was done by at most a few hundred links with this link text pointing to page. Though more links would probably be necissary for a more competative term. Still, it goes to show how important link text is to rankings of a page.

Google Bombing is nothing new. But what many people don't realize is that Google places more relevance on anchor link text that it finds when it first discovers a link to your website. Each consequent link either adds value to that first impression or subtracts from it.

Many times you can control which link google finds first just by knowing where google goes regularly (like on a daily basis) and effectively placing your link in it's path. This is called "baiting" google bot to visit your website through this link.

Each link you place after this initial link should further show google that their first impression (or first keywords it discovered that linked to your website) was and still is correct. Each subsiquent link is a "vote" so to speak to validate Google's original impression of what your website is about.

Placing that first link to be found by Google is only first step, but a very important one. Choose your anchor text keywords carefully. Each incoming link you place after this one should serve to validate this first impression. Part 2 will discuss appearance and disappearance of links over time and how they effect your traffic and search engine placement.