Website and SEO go hand in hand. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is what attracts traffic to your website. Traffic to your website is what gets clicks on your advertisers’ ads and clicks on your advertisers’ ads is what makes you money.
“When you discover which keywords generate the most hits, you can saturate future content.”This being the case, it’s easy to see that to have a successful affiliate website, you must master SEO. There are some basics you need to understand about SEO to be successful. I’ll follow up this article yet another two on the same subject.
SEO Basics: Keywords
Keyword Planning
Your most important weapon in the battle to have a successful affiliate website is keyword planning. This means figuring out which keywords people plug into search engines. These people will be interested in your advertisers’ products and services. The more and better placed your relevant keywords, the more search engine hits you are likely to get.
Generating Keywords
You can generate keywords in a number of ways. Free analytic programs on the web can collect metrics for your site and tell you which keywords most commonly bring traffic. When you discover which keywords generate the most hits, you can saturate future content. There are also free programs that take the most popular keywords and generate keyword phrases designed to bring even more traffic.
Keyword Research
Another method you can use for generating effective keywords is research. Type in a few relevant keywords and see which sites come up. Head over to those sites and look for other commonly repeated words. These may be good keywords to use for your own site, if you haven’t already. Try them out and if you don’t see an improvement in traffic, you can always replace them with more effective ones later.
The Value of Keyword Planning
Good keyword planning does not guarantee a successful affiliate website, but you will be hard pressed to have a successful site without it. Keyword optimization is the foundation of SEO. Once you have gained some expertise with keyword planning, you will be ready to take additional steps in maximizing the success of your affiliate site.
The more social bookmarking sites you have backing up your website, the more traffic you are likely to get.”The fact is that there are many affiliates out there competing for traffic and the best ones are always doing everything they can think of to expand their visitor base. Once the site is worth visiting, the next thing to do to get more visitors is to take advantage of social bookmarking sites. This is my second article on SEO and next week I’ll post my third and last article on the subject. Hopefully you’ll snap up a thing or two.
How Social Bookmarking Works
Social bookmarking sites, like StumbleUpon, Digg and Technorati, are essentially websites that find other websites for you. A lot of web users have fairly short attention spans and are always on the lookout for something new.
Web users want to jump online and immediately find an interesting new site that they haven’t seen before. They may also want to share cool sites with others. Social bookmarking sites facilitate this process.
Social Bookmarking Sites and SEO
How does this fit in with your affiliate site? The answer should be obvious. The more social bookmarking sites you have backing up your website, the more traffic you are likely to get. If you’re looking to increase traffic, submit your site to as many social bookmarking sites as possible. Encourage those who visit your site to recommend it on the social bookmarking site. In this way, you can build a visitor base exponentially if your site has enough appeal.
You should also use these sites to see what is out there yourself. You’ll gain credibility on the bookmarking site and you may find opportunities for more SEO tool application, such as link building.
Social Networking Sites
It also doesn’t hurt to have a presence on social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace. The larger your presence on the web, the better your chance of making the connections that will cause your affiliate website to explode in popularity.
Search engines use the number of inbound links that a web page has to determine the importance of the page.”
Link Building and SEO
Link building is the key to really making your affiliate website take off. Link building is simply creating a situation in which multiple websites link to yours. Search engines use the number of inbound links that a web page has to determine the importance of the page. This is a key factor in determining how high your page will appear in the search engine rankings.
Link Building Methods
You can use a number of methods for link building. One of the most popular is a link exchange. Visit a website you like, perhaps even one with content similar to your own, and message the webmaster of your interest in a link exchange.
If he or she is amenable, that site posts your link in his or her list of sites to visit, and you do the same. You can amass a great many inbound links in a short time in this way. You can also provide free content containing your link. That is to say, if you post a lot of information on your website that other sites may want to use on their own sites, be sure to include your link so people will link to you and build up your credibility with the search engines.
Link Building Pitfalls
While it may be tempting, you should try to avoid creating multiple websites with the sole purpose of creating interconnected inbound links. Search engines are wary of this tactic and you may not get the search engine results you want. You may even get banned from search engine rankings for excessive practice of this method, so be careful about this.
