SEO strategy basics for the affiliate marketer

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The world of Search Engine Optimization, google bots, meta crawlers etc is a confusing one, and to be honest, one that the average affiliate marketer does not understand, and in some cases clearly doesn’t even need.

What you’ll find here is virtually everything you need to know regarding search engine optimization.  Obviously we never stop learning and as such I would say there is always more to know, but for the sake of keeping it simple – stick with the basics here. SEO as you’ll soon see is not rocket science.  To successfully rank with the search engines, it simply comes down to understanding what they are looking for and implementing the points below.

For sake of ease – and because Im trying to ‘make cents from the chaos’ I have divided SEO into two sections:

• On Page Optimization

• Off Page Optimization

Now let’s look at what we can do on our own site to make the search engines like us more

• The title of the page should contain your main keywords … keep it short and appealing to customers. (this is where I have found the challenge – one which I will go into more detail with later – of trying to find the balance between creating a headline with punch that will attract the reader to keep reading, and one that is keyword rich -see THIS ARTICLE for more on that)

• You know when you type something in google and the pages that come up show your phrase in bold amongst the text of the various sites? Well that’s kinda important so listen up!! –This is the description field and should definitely be optimized – just don’t overdo it, one instance per keyword will do the trick. It should also say, in short, what your site has to offer. ‘Sell’ your site. (this is after all what people will see when you are listed in the search engines.
• META Tags: See META tag summary post here.
• Make use of headers, use h1 tags (title of the page) and insert your keywords.
• Use h2, 3, 4 whenever possible, this is where you can put your low fruit keywords.
• Have your main keywords at the beginning and end of your page’s text.
• Make your text worth reading. It should contain your main keywords at least twice, as well as low fruit keywords. (low fruit means low competition)
• Use alt tags on all images you have on the page, but don’t stuff too many keywords in. Remember that alt tags were designed to describe the image, not game the search engines

Site structure:

• Install a sitemap! Google loves sitemaps as it makes it easier for their spiderbots to crawl around your place and assess things (so to speak) Go to the FREE  GOOGLE SITEMAP GENERATOR here

• Use plain html to link to other pages within the site. Java and flash may look great but they are not friends with SEO at all! Google will simply not attribute anything of value to these links and therefore no pagerank for you!

• Use keywords in all your links – no matter what. (for example – dont use “home” to link to your main page – ummmm, unless of course you are trying to rank for it – lol. Keep it short and informative

• Off Page Optimization basics

• Try to get links from related sites. (well thats kind of the whole idea here actually so I dont know why I made this one point?)
• Links to your site should contain your keywords, but again, don’t overdo it. Use as many different anchors as you can, use your low fruit keywords, etc
• Install a blog on your domain (it doesn’t have to be your main page). Enable pingbacks and trackbacks, this may lead to a few links.
• Let people comment if you’re going to monitor it. It can be good for adding content to your page, but if
  you’re managing a number of sites, comments can be a hassle.
• Add your site/blog to directories. Add your blog’s feed to feed directories and aggregators. You can use a tool to automate this process. RSS Submit Software makes everything MUCH faster. I have seen new sites indexed in as faster as few hours after feed was submitted using this tool (more on this in another post -insert anchor here)
• Use http://pingomatic.com to ping your posts whenever you update your blog. (WordPress and some other blogging platforms will ping your blog automatically when you post).
• Add social bookmarking sites buttons to your blog so your readers can bookmark what they like (and subsequently alert others). Again, more on this in the wordpress basics explained section
• and last but certainly not least: BE CREATIVE! add content to your site that people are likely to comment on. A heated and lively discussion is WAAAYY better than no discussion at all!

OK, this is getting ridiculous! In the time it has taken me to draft and publish this post, I have managed to jot down another 4 A4 pages of notes that will ultimately end up in another blog on the same topic! Aaargh. I’m supposed to be clearing the confusion and making cents from the chaos, oh well, give it time.

oooh, last sentence on SEO, to optimiz for google as an affiliate online network marketer you need to understand the basics of Search Engine optimization and seo blogging tips…. OK that was just a blatant keyword hungry finish, but if there was ever a subject I could do that in, surely it’s this!

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Tagged as: Marketing for SEO, META tags, Off page optimization, On page optimization, SEO Basics, summarising SEO