Why do you need images to write content for? Lots of free images out there. If you are needing an image for a review on a product, I can see where that could get tricky. But you really shouldn't be putting affiliate links if you don't have plenty of content first.

You need images if you write review. What else can you do? There are no free images for this purpose. You need to show what you present. Kyle was more than clear about this. I do not stay on the page with a boring text only, nobody does.

Why should I not be adding links from the beginning? What kind of service do you give to visitors if this is about selling stuff, if they cannot buy it and check details by following the links?

I am building a site right now, started almost the same time as Marcus, have 9 texts and all with multiple links, at least 3 links each post. They are all ranked within top 3 pages in Google. Links make no harm at all. I already have clicks, and this is the point.

Thanks for letting me know, Jovo. By any chance, do you have a link to the information that says I cannot use the images? I would definitely like to read this to get clear on that issue.

It's great that you are ranking even with the affiliate links. Of course, we will never know for sure whether you would be ranking better without those affiliate links. It's also very early days, so Google could still de-rank you at any time. But it's definitely a good sign so far, and it will definitely be worth seeing how things progress.

However, I think it is unscientific to make absolute statements based on one case and based on a short time frame. You can say that it seems that the links have made no difference to your site so far. But you cannot say for certain that links make no difference to any site. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying there's perhaps not enough data yet to make that firm conclusion. This is why it's great that you are doing a similar thing to me but with some differences, because my site is definitely not enough data to make any conclusions about.

Hey Marcus, I am just saying what I have at my side. My texts are ranked with links, and for most of them this is after they were initially ranked lower. There is a blog by Dom who also writes that affiliate links are not an issue for Google as long as you provide useful info for visitors, and he supports this with his own experience.

As for images, this is everywhere in lessons we have had at WA. Jay was very clear about it. He says at one place "you just do not do this".

Okay, fair enough, Jovo. Thank you very much for letting me know. I will add the affiliate links in soon and see how things progress. This first site is a bit of a test anyway, so it will be interesting to see what happens.

I remember Jay saying it's fine to use images from Amazon, but now you are saying this is only the case if we are actually linking to Amazon? That does make total sense, though, now that I think about it, so I thank you for bringing that to my attention. It just goes to show, none of us can remember everything all the time, which is why we need each other here :-)

By the way, did you just call me "lover"? I wasn't aware we had that kind of relationship. I thought you said you were married anyway? :-D

This was a typo, my bad English.

Cool.

See if this helps. Keyword Ranking

When you set up a website within SERP Lab, you get to choose which version of Google it will check the rankings for. All you need to do is set it to Google.com.

That helps a LOT. Thanks Marcus.

I'm picking long tail keywords with QSRs less than 30 thinking that I'm guaranteed to be on the first 3 or 4 pages. But most of my pages aren't even in the top 100 (top 10 pages). Even after I get comments.

I must not understand the keyword tool at WA. Because when I use a keyword with QSR of less than 30 or 20 or 10 I think I'm going to get some sort of ranking. But typically I don't even get to the top 100. Even after several months and comments.

Are you doing the on-page SEO well? Have you got the keyword in the title, somewhere at the beginning or the content, somewhere at the end of your content, and in the names of the images?

Thanks Mike.

Thank you.

I think it is only recently that AIO SEO has had the sitemap function, so Kyle's training has not caught up with that yet. Yes, you should be able to remove your sitemap plugin and enable the sitemap through AIO SEO. If you call the sitemap "sitemap" then it will still have the same URL so you should not need to submit it again.

Thanks! I will do that.