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[JonMarc Wright Company: Usana Health Sciences, Inc. Contribution Level: 3]

Yeah I double-checked and GoDaddy is doing the same, creating an inline frame and giving you the ability to add in your meta data for title, keywords, and description. Title will allow you to display whatever you want up on the top bar of the window, where it says Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Maxthon, Opera, Flock, Shiira or whatever other browser you happen to use. Like I said in my last post, the keyword and description fields really aren't that useful as search engines are pretty much going to ignore them for lack of content within your page.

[Steve Rodgers Contribution Level: 3]

I'll definitely be picking up a copy.

What I've come to find out is that although godaddy offers masking to anyone who buys a domain, hosting companies either have yet to realize the value of masking urls or they just don't know about it.

My hosting company, as awesome as they are, simply doesn't offer this feature. Unlimited redirects, but no masking features.

Because I'm using a paid marketing system that comes with all the bells and whistle (proven capture pages, ad copy, back office, personal branding, etc) it is important that I'll be able to cover the system generated links with my own domain AND be able to modify keywords for whichever capture pages I choose to use.

I hope this helps you all to understand the value of Iframe Gen a bit more.

Cenay also has a ton of in-depth how to videos on her blog. It's a goldmine for newbies and the technically challenged.
Thanks Cenay!

-Steve

[Steve Rodgers Contribution Level: 3]

Soooooo.... does that make masking useless for ppc?

[JonMarc Wright Company: Usana Health Sciences, Inc. Contribution Level: 3]

Dean,

Pretty much...

Steve, not necessarily. I haven't played around with this much for PPC, but you might try using the exact same keywords and description as the actual site your redirecting too, it could help because then at least the keywords and description would match up, even though the url's don't, in the eyes of adwords.

Back to Dean...

If you look at the web standards for html, now xhtml, you'll see that the latest versions of xhtml standards do not include frames. they are being phased out of standards-based html coding. As xhtml goes modular in it's code structure, there is a new way of coding that is being worked on for frames. This will hopefully eliminate some of the issues with frames. This stuff is all a bit confusing if you're not an html coder probably. I've been part of the web standards community for years now so I keep up with all of this stuff.

Anyway, essentially, right now, the search engines will see your page as having no content of its own if you your entire page is a frame pulling another website. If something is going to show up on a search, it is likely to be listed with the link that is in your actual frame, and with the description that is on that page, not necessarily what you type. Not in every case, and there are other things you can add to your frame code to make it less confusing for the bots to deal with, and some ways to trick the bots, but I really wouldn't bother with it.

Affiliate URL masking is something you do to get people to your affiliate site without seeing your affiliate links. It is not an SEO tactic or something you do to generate organic traffic. If you're going to spend time trying to get your page to play nice with google, do so on a review page, or an information page about the affiliate product so THAT page will go up in rankings, and drive organic traffic to your affiliate page (which you'll mask of course).

Take care,

jM

[JonMarc Wright Company: Usana Health Sciences, Inc. Contribution Level: 3]

Steve, just to expand on what you said a bit. Masking is something that google doesn't like. The objection is more on principle than anything else. Google loves transparency. They love "honesty" and their goal is to connect people who are searching with the best possible match of information/product providers.

The idea of listing your website as one thing (your domain name) and then pulling in an entirely different website that takes the place of yours (the frame redirect), would sort of seem to go against those things they love.

The google bot will say to itself.... what is this.... why aren't I just pointing these people to this other page... why is this person trying to be "sneaky" and draw people to one thing only to give them something else... hmmm...

Now, we know that's not exactly what is happening. Affiliates are doing the same thing google is... they're trying to connect people who want something to people who are providing it. We're like an extension of google! But..... because some people don't like affiliates and affiliate codes, and will remove them before going to a web page, we're trying to make sure our hard work of playing matchmaker isn't taken advantage of. But still... it poses the problem for google, how do we discern between honest affiliates and ticksters.

The best thing I can say for PPC is to just try out different a different combination regularly. With PPC you should be split-testing for conversions and better headlines, but you should also be split-testing to check the technology side... see what google is displaying more and try to think about why.

Take care,

jM

[Steve Rodgers Contribution Level: 3]

My sentiments exactly, Dean.

That was a high powered response. I think I managed to have 3 "Ah-ha" moments all at the same time.

JM, I knew I liked you, man.

Great stuff as always

-Steve

[Cenay Nailor Company: Nussentials Contribution Level: 2]

Steve, had to drop by and give you a quick *Thank You* for the kudo's and the plug.

I will add one thing to the whole debate, that I do. I have created a series of iFrame redirects on one of my domains and use those from my blog and other sites as a single place to refer people to. Since the iFrameGen software also adds Title, Description (meta) and Keywords (meta) as well as Google and Woopra tracking analytics, I am able to add these pages to the sitemap I generate for Google.

While it's initial purpose was to help me salvage my affiliate commissions from those who would bypass me (thereby circumventing the match making process), I am finding a great benefit in knowing how they got there. That kind of business intelligence is priceless.

jM, I really loved your explanation and will probably quote you shamelessly. =)

[JonMarc Wright Company: Usana Health Sciences, Inc. Contribution Level: 3]

Haha. Thanks guys!

Actually I'm a little bit disappointed that Cenay posted on here, because I wanted to post before her. I was planning to do so last night when I got up here to my home in the mountains but I didn't get in until 2am and pretty much went straight to sleep. I was meaning to write a post to clarify the fact that I'm not knocking her frame gen or saying it isn't useful at all, I think it is a great tool and can really save you time and energy and I highly recommend it. I just grabbed it myself yesterday for the first time and will definitely put it to use from time to time.

I was just clearing up some of the technology questions related to masking via GoDaddy, and masking as it applies to PPC and SEO specifically.

As you just said Cenay, the business intelligence that you can gather with the addition of the tracking option using your gen, and adding them to sitemaps is priceless. Any little piece of information you can get about your traffic, especially in affiliate marketing where often the traffic stats are the only interaction you'll ever have with with people that potentially might be making you money, is extremely valuable and should be collected and analyzed.

Your tool helps non-tech savvy people get closer to some of that traffic information when they might not otherwise do so, and that in and of itself is great!

Thanks for the time saver Cenay!

jM

[Mark English Contribution Level: 2]

I wish I could help you but I never had to tackle that proplem. Good Luck ! Mark13

[Cenay Nailor Company: Nussentials Contribution Level: 2]

Actually I'm a little bit disappointed that Cenay posted on here, because I wanted to post before her. I was planning to do so last night when I got up here to my home in the mountains but I didn't get in until 2am and pretty much went straight to sleep. I was meaning to write a post to clarify the fact that I'm not knocking her frame gen or saying it isn't useful at all, I think it is a great tool and can really save you time and energy and I highly recommend it. I just grabbed it myself yesterday for the first time and will definitely put it to use from time to time.

Hey jM, no offense taken... this forum is about sharing and you have provided some wonderful information! iFrameGen isn't a one-size-fits all kinda solution, but I think it has it's place. As does purchasing domain for a specific task and forwarding, or building your own pages on your own domain.

Keep up the great work jM, I always enjoy your posts.