LinkShare Blog

Using  CSS to provide a printer-friendly document

One of the basic concepts in web design is making things simple and user friendly. As a designer, I’m always looking for new and innovative ways to serve information to my client’s audience. A simple principle to understand, but not always simple to execute, is producing a printer-friendly version of your website content. The need for printer-friendly web pages is especially necessary if your audience wants to print coupons, articles, receipts, recipes or even itineraries. By simply pushing the print button your audience can be at the mercy of how their printer handles the web page or simply just how the web page is built. This can produce pages with small amounts of information per page and large amounts of pages being wasted.

So how do we solve this problem?

Well, we can establish a “click here for printer friendly version”, but this means someone has to write a script that creates a version or create the version themselves. Not extremely difficult, but it is unnecessary work if you simply know how to structure a good CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) document. (Not to mention that you can end up with duplicate content on your website which should be avoided for search engine optimization.) CSS is a style sheet language to help website creators format content and visual design.

CSS has the ability to use different style sheets for different media types. Simply put, we can see different versions of your web site for different media. If someone uses a handheld device, a TV, or  printer, CSS initializes a specific style format for each one.

How does this help us?

With the use of a print specific style sheet we can clear away all the formatting that benefits the visual medium of the web but may hinder production of a printed document. You can read about and see this function in use at A List Apart ( www.alistapart.com/articles/goingtoprint)  by just pushing CTRL +P (PC) or CMD +P (MAC).  Learn how to put your own print style sheet in action at meyerweb.com/eric/articles/webrev/200001.html.

-By Raul Sinclair, Web Designer

Did you know that Advertisers can search for Publishers in the LinkShare Network who have not yet applied to their program? The Find New Affiliates tool helps Advertisers grow their Affiliate Marketing program by finding Publishers that are aligned with their offers. The tool allows Advertisers to search by:

- Demographic category (Arts, Entertainment, Health, Sports)
- Active versus inactive status
- Date the Affiliate joined LinkShare Network
- Monthly unique visitors
- Total number of page views
- Geographic location (city, county, postcode or country)
- Keyword

Most importantly the Find New Affiliates tool allows Advertisers to search by keyword which is important because Advertisers often use product and demographic related keywords to find new Publishers. If a Publisher does not have this area filled out effectively then they will not appear in search results!

As a Publisher, when you joined the LinkShare Network you filled in the basic details about your site. You can expand on this in the Marketing Channel section of the Publisher Dashboard. Make sure to keep this area updated with the latest information about your Website to help ensure that Advertisers can find you!

Go to My Account –> Marketing Channel
Select to ‘Edit’ your Marketing Channel

Click here to go straight to the page where you can update this info!

Tip: When updating your keywords think about what you focus on and your audience reach. For example, if you are a fashion company, you will need to have the keyword fashion in your description and even go as far as to list products that you review or talk about e.g. jeans, skirts, t-shirts etc. Alternatively, if you target high end consumers then ‘high end consumers’ etc.

It might take a few minutes but it could really help build your programs up.

It can seem like a full-time job to stay current on what’s going on in SEO and social media. There are plenty of AMAZING blogs and sites that you can go to so you can remain ‘in the know’. We’ve honed the list to five top blogs to visit to stay up-to-speed with this fast-paced industry.

1. Search Engine Journal – Loren Baker, Editor in Chief and his team KNOW what they’re talking about. It’s a publication that has been around for awhile. Loren and his team are a creative group, but also share amazing tips, tricks and tools to assist you with your search efforts overall.

2. HubSpot – These people know internet marketing. If you or you have employees that need to learn about internet marketing starting from the basics and up, then this blog is for you. Not only does HubSpot put an easy spin to understanding internet marketing, but ever so often you will see their team singing their hearts out about internet marketing, conversion and getting leads.

3. OutSpoken Media – Oh YES THEY ARE!!! This team of women knows how to get a point across.  Rae Hoffman, Lisa Barone and Rhea Drysdale (The Outspoken team,) while very outspoken, have really good ideas to get across and if you don’t mind a little profanity once in a while, you will learn a lot from their blog.

4. Search Engine Land – This site is more like a site for SEO news overall. Search Engine Land has very good topics related to the industry and will keep you current on SEO and social media trends, education, news and events.

5. SEO Book – Aaron Wall, yet another guy who knows his stuff. He also has some pretty cool SEO tools you can use too. I recommend his toolbar. It gives you a brief overview of PageRank, Yahoo inlinks, DMOZ Directory information, as well as a lot more information without actually having to travel to those individual sites.

By Victoria Edwards,  SEO &  Social Media Marketing Specialist

We’ve launched a new page to help you keep track of the rapidly changing Internet Ad Tax law situation!  Simply select the state from the drop down menu for the latest status.  This is a dynamic situation and as a member of the community it’s vital you are informed on the latest developments.

You can also look at our blog posts tagged affiliate tax.  We’ve created a series of tax maps to show the wide range of entrepreneurs who are impacted by this issue.

• Tennessee
• Hawaii
• Connecticut
• Minnesota
• Florida
• California

Thanks to the PMA for all their hard work and advocacy on this issue.  Follow their Twitter stream and blog for the latest and greatest, in 140 characters.  Their “Shout Out” series has focused on some of the individuals who have made a difference.

Mark Kirschner, CMO

“The only marketing left is content marketing.”
–Seth Godin, Marketing Guru

Content marketing is providing useful, helpful, interesting, authoritative articles, audio podcasts, videos, images, and other rich media that engage people. The content can be online or offline; however, we’re focused on the online publishing aspects for advertisers and publishers in performance marketing. Outstanding, fresh content is one important factor to distinguish your merchant or affiliate website in the search engines and with online searchers.

Marketers are all publishers today. You need to think like an editor.

Here are some ways you can get in on the content marketing revolution:

• Create video, audio, slides, rich media and article content that is helpful, informative, fun, and engaging.
• Develop a marketing plan for each key piece of content; it can be reworked and repurposed into a different form, such as article to video to podcast to slide show.
• Publish the content on your site and blog, as well as on syndication and sharing sites such as YouTube, iTunes, SlideShare, and eZineArticles.
• Promote the content on social media, such as Facebook and Twitter and in online news releases
• Use tools to automate updates to social media. For example, now you can easily import your blog posts into your Facebook fan page, then automate Facebook to send an update to Twitter, and automate Twitter to update your individual  LinkedIn profile page, use services such as Posterous or Ping to update all your social media outlets at once.
• Update your LinkedIn company profile page and other directory listings with content that has changed or is new.
• Generate links and additional traffic back to the site for conversions by commenting on key influencers’ blogs and forums, answering LinkedIn questions and other Q & A sites with a helpful link back to an article on your site or in your email signature.
• Continue to build Web traffic organically as it is viewed, shared, and promoted by others.

With a little bit of creativity, some time and effort, and not a lot of money, you can attract visitors to your website and make them fans of your business before they even buy. Then, when they need your services, you will be “top of mind.” That’s the beauty of content marketing–another useful tool in your online marketing toolkit.

By Sally Anne Dishong,  SEO + Social Media Content Editor