Get Informed, Get Traffic, Get Paid!

Knowing what keywords to focus on in both your content and your SEO and SEM efforts is in many ways hit or miss. You need to test, test, and test some more. Some keywords will work for you, some won’t. Some will work now, some will work later. Its an almost daily task you should look at.

If you are running a PPC campaign you can easily view which keywords are netting you results. Additionally you may be able to see in your hosting logs what keywords are drawing people in. Keep the ones that are working, flush out the ones that are not. Its a constantly evolving process.

Whether you are just starting out, or you a seasoned pro, you likely need some additional help in developing and choosing your keyword strategy. By using a tool such as this FREE KEYWORD TRACKER, you can input words/phrases to see what the top 100 monthly search queries or keywords are for the term you submitted. Because the most obvious keywords tend to be more generic, and more searched, their bid costs tend to be higher. Using a tool like this allows you to find relevant, more direct, but less costly keywords that you can plug into a PPC campaign.

The life of affiliate marketing business depends on traffic. No traffic, no site to exist. It will help you increase your click ratio and sales commissions. Here are the 5 ways to drive visitors to your website:

Blogging - like a web diary where you can write interesting articles for readers. The articles you made can be use to link your readers to your site also known as back links. Back links can help you to improve search engine ranking. Register one of your blogs on www.blogspot.com and Google will promote your blog in 2 days with RSS feeds to gain more traffic.

Forums – a fun way to promote your business where you can post questions and answers to learn a lot and help others. Advertisements are not allowed here but you can display your email signature every time you post.

Viral Marketing - one of the oldest and best forms of marketing. You can give away an e-book on your site and have a couple of links and a full-page ad in the back for your product or service. Grant permission to your readers to give away the book and see this promotion snowball.

Social Marketing – one good example is MySpace. Myspace is now being used as a popular way of marketing products and services.

Article Distribution - a powerful way to promote your business where you can write interesting and informative articles for your readers. It will bring many visitors to your site.

Avoiding Affiliate Scams

Affiliate marketing helps you in making your business profitable and fun at the same time. The key is choosing the right programs. You can benefit with the good programs either be involved with scams that will not pay you for your hardships and owe you the commission you deserve in the end.

How to avoid scams: The best way to avoid these scams, do your research well. Consider these points before joining:

1. Does the company have good support? Do they answer emails and have valid contact information?

2. Do they have a valid offline address?

3. What % of commission do they pay; 30%-50% is the best.

4. Tracking system - this should be in real time and accurate.

5. Products should be well targeted for your market and of good quality.

Where to research:

1. Forums related to your industry. There are many savvy people who use the forums for reference. You can ask advice from others base on the programs they use.

2. Discussion lists.

3. Look into the program carefully.

4. Put the company name, plus the word scam, into the search engines and see what comes up. Use your own judgment, as sometimes these reviews may not be 100% true.

GOLDEN RULE: Look before you join to prevent being victimized with these scams. It is advisable if you ask other people’s opinions. Do not rush, choose good reliable programs wisely that will give you the profits you want for many years to come.

Search engine optimization is important because it improves the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines. Do you want to put your website in the high ranking? Here are some tips you have to consider:

Website Optimization = Content + Links = High Ranking

1. How Google Measures Link Popularity

Higher link popularity scores = Higher search engine ranking

Link popularity is by far the most important factor for determining your search engine ranking. You need to know what link popularity is, why it is so important, and how Google measures your link popularity (over 50% of all search engine traffic comes from Google, and if you can get to the top of Google, you will raise to the top of the others search engines as well).

Link popularity - the number of links (votes) that SE have for your site.

Here is a link for a good tool that measures the link popularity from SE’s. It shows you the link popularity from Google Yahoo and MSN and lets you to see the history report so you to figure out the rise of your site.

http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/default.htm

2. Articles:

Consistency is the key. It is a fact that as more and more articles are added to article directories, your article will go lower in the listings, but if you constantly and consistently submit new articles, then you will continue to reap the benefits. Making articles is a great way to build up the link popularity of your website. It gives you life-time links.

• Always close your articles off with a link to your site which is relevant to the copy of the article. Hyperlink the keyword with your url. For example:

Author Bio:

Quote:
“Johnny Brown is an expert in affiliate marketing. Visit his site for more online marketing tips.”

3. Control Your Words.

“Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts”.

This does not apply to our situation. In the Meta Tags, you must count every word and every keyword. Use a tool like this one to count the characters from your Meta tags.”

http://allworldphone.com/count-words-characters.htm

4. Optimize the Title Tag

• Include 1-2 of your most important keyword phrases in the title tag, but don’t just list keywords.

If you just list keywords, you risk being viewed as spamming the search engines which can ultimately lead to you being blacklisted and not included at all.

• Your title tag should include your keyword phrases within a readable sentence to avoid this problem.

• Make your title appealing to humans!

Don’t forget that even if you get that top listing in the search engines, our listing still needs to say something that makes the surfer want to click your link and visit your site.

• Since the length of your title tag could cause some engines to crop it, we suggest place the keywords at the beginning of the tag when possible to decrease the risk of having them cut off.

Each page of your site should have its own title tag with its own keywords that relate to the page that it appears on.

5. Optimize the Meta Description Tag

• Give appropriate descriptions (as some search engines display this description in the search result), make it more appropriate to your site. Put only targeted keywords in description. Do not stuff the description with more keywords. Restrict the number of words in this tag to 10 to 15 words.

• Place the most important phrases at the start of the description, so, even if any search engine omits some part of the description, the important phrases will be displayed.

6. Optimize the Meta Keywords Tag

The importance of Meta Tags is debated these days. So this is an optional extra.

• Include only the keywords that appear in the body text, and no more than 5-7 keywords. Add alternate spelling of words (including typos) and synonyms of those keywords.