The Affiliates Center Blog » internet marketing

SEO Affiliate Marketing Tips: How To Get Top Google Rankings With On Page SEO

AffiliatesCenterBlog — Sun, 08 May 2011 10:32:57 +0000

This is the start of a series of SEO tips designed to get your site ranked highly in the search engines. Experienced internet marketers will also gain great benefit from these SEO tips as it’s always a good idea to refresh yourself with what Google really wants to see on your web pages.

This series will cover both on page and off page SEO factors so let’s get started by first looking at what some of the important on page ranking factors are. Let’s be clear, no one really knows other than Google what they really want and SEO is really speculative but the following factors have been determined from years of testing by successful internet marketers and will give you a great start.

On page SEO affects about 20-25% of the overall SEO strategy and those who tell you it’s not all that important are kidding themselves. It’s where it all starts and just applying the following will get you off to a great start.

Important Ranking Factors

Title tags are extremely important. Make sure you create them and always include your keyword.
Include your keyword in the H1 Header tag.
Meta Description is also extremely important as they get indexed but for ranking, not so.
Meta tags have been a debatable subject and the truth is, they don’t really turn Google on.
Your body text can influence rankings so you need to make sure you have your main keyword clearly mentioned two to three times. But it’s also important to add secondary keywords through the text. Don’t over use keywords though. Make it look as natural as possible. In the title, the first paragraph and the last paragraph.
Keyword linked anchor text is another extremely important ranking factor.
Image alt tags and text.
External links quality is often overlooked but testing proves this is pretty important.
Using your keyword in the url is another hotly debated topic. We say it’s important especially when targeting a particular product or niche but many will say look at some of the biggest and most popular sites on the web such as Google and Yahoo.
The age of the domain can be a big benefit when trying to rank well in the search engines. Google seems to pay more respect to an aged domain than a new one.

What you don’t want to be doing are things such as keyword stuffing, duplicate content and content spinning that doesn’t make sense. Content spinning is fine in our books but you want to make sure the spun article is almost totally unique and reads well. Link farms can be bad and we recommend avoiding them and something you might not be aware of but hidden text can also be risky.

This is just the start and a shortlist. There are other factors we haven’t mentioned but they are things which have little impact. Overall, just do the basics and you will get off to a good start. Don’t over-do it though. With experience, this stuff will become second nature.

Bottom line…there are just a handful of on page SEO requirements you need to be doing. We will look at these in the following posts.

How to Write Blog Posts That Get Lots Of Traffic Guaranteed

AffiliatesCenterBlog — Tue, 03 May 2011 12:19:27 +0000

This is a common question I get across my desk on a regular basis and after a little thought, the one constant I nailed down when reading popular posts from other bloggers and internet marketers was emotion and personal experience.

No, I’m not saying you sit down and pour out your heart over the problems you’re having but instead, relate something in your life to the topic you are writing about within your niche. Think about the blog posts that had you reading from start to finish; what was the style of the post?

Emotion and personal experience is a great selling tool in affiliate and internet marketing. I have posted plenty of how to articles in the past which get good traffic and tweets and likes in the social media world but the ones which really took off were the posts that related something from my experience which touched the emotional triggers in the readers.

Now obviously you can’t related every post you write to something about yourself but occasionally you will and when you do, don’t hold back. This is a great opportunity to let your real personality come across and when you do this, readers suddenly look at you as a real person with real person issues.

So you want an example? Okay. If you are blogging in the affiliate marketing or internet marketing niche for example you would appeal to the newbies in the audience or those looking for an opportunity to make money online but don’t know where to start.

If you are having even a little success and success in affiliate marketing can be defined as having mastered the learning curve of putting a site together or writing articles and submitting them, anything that looked insurmountable to you when you started but you can now do with your eyes closed.

You simply relate one occasion where you were stuck and spent hours trying to figure something out. AT the time you thought this was too tough and you would never succeed but you did.

That’s the kind of stuff newbies in internet marketing like to hear. It’s reassurance that they can do this and there’s hope that they will start earning money in the not too distant future. If they relate there stumbling block to someone who is more advanced it will let them know it’s okay and even the experienced IMers had trouble at one point in their learning curve.

Make sense?

Don’t forget to check out James Martell’s Affiliate Bootcamp training. It’s where I started several years ago and was the one breakthrough I had that put me on the path to making a full time living in internet marketing. Click here.

Affiliate Marketing Warning: Be Careful Of The Google Manual Review

AffiliatesCenterBlog — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 12:51:11 +0000

This is going to be a short post and an affiliate marketing tip with a stern warning.

Just reviewed a site from a reader who was distraught that after ranking on the first page of Google for several keywords, his site has suddenly lost it’s impact and has disappeared from the rankings.

He had at least six pages on page one of Google covering a variety of keywords and was ecstatic at his genius and ability to rank highly. But it’s all come to an end swiftly.

Dejected, he asked me if I had any reasons why he’s suddenly lost favor and while it’s hard to fathom why Google does what it does on occasions, I said I’d take a look and see if I could spot anything that might have “upset the applecart.”

The domain is seven years old so the usual Google dance which is common with many new sites was virtually ruled out and he supposedly had spent plenty of time making sure this site would be filled with original content.

Well, it didn’t take long to figure out what was wrong. He had original content alright but not from any English dictionary I’d ever seen. It was absolute jibberish and my immediate thought was either spun content or written by someone whose first language was not English.

After the recent Google rampage on unsuitable and bad content the message still doesn’t seem to have gotten through to many internet marketers. If you are using spun or content that doesn’t read well then sooner or later you will pay the consequences. It’s only a matter of time.

I’m convinced this person’s site was reviewed manually and that was the death knell for it’s high rankings. The big “G” just won’t tolerate illegible or bad reading content when they are trying to present the best product and search results possible to their audience.

If you want to build a site that people will take notice of and come back to it regularly then for goodness sake, write the content yourself or get someone with good writing skills to write it for you.

Affiliate marketing tips don’t come much clearer than that in 2011 so take heed.

If you want the best affiliate marketing training available then you need to learn from the best. Click here.

Auto Link Juicer: Scam Or The Real Traffic-Getting Solution?

AffiliatesCenterBlog — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 10:39:48 +0000

Okay, this is not a hoax or a plug for one of the crap products flooding the internet marketing world at the moment. This is a serious warning to be on the lookout for quite possibly the launching of this years most innovative and valuable internet and affiliate marketing tool.

Auto Link Juicer will hit the market about mid-may and is already causing great interest. We are all for automation here at The Affiliates Center Blog but only if it’s tried and tested and is a quality product.

The team at Blog Blueprint have been busy in the lab lately; recently they launched Traffic Kaboom and will follow it up wit Auto Link Juicer. It’s a collection of WordPress tools designed to get your blog’s link structure right and in turn, increasing traffic to your site.

Jason Potash and Jason Katzenback are the brains behind this tool and over the past six years, they’ve developed a fearless reputation online for producing quality products and training. Just do a search for them online.

Here’s what Potash has to say about Auto Link Juicer:

“The “auto link juicer system” is designed specifically to help you fully optimize your blogs internal linking structure plus work with (and listen to) the search engines (primarily Google) to automatically adjust your blogs internal link structure as needed to optimize your search engine rankings.

98% of people screw this part up, without even realizing it. Not anymore. Auto link juicer auto-fixes your on-page optimization — placing more emphasis on your “money” pages and forcing more human traffic to hit your “call to actions”. Without doing anything shady or sneaky. Google actually likes this because there are no tricks being used here.

Install the auto link juicer system and it’s like giving yourself and instant traffic, rankings (and pay) raise!

And it gets better… ALJ (aka auto link juicer) also has an extremely powerful and custom “social linking” element built right in that gives all your blog posts a good quality (not spammy) link boost to get you even higher rankings and more traffic.

Best part… all the magic is done in the background without you touching a thing or having to be an SEO hotshot.”

Potash says you can install this tool in a couple of minutes and immediately watch your blog climb up the search engine rankings.

Bold statement I know but as someone who has worked with these guys for several years now you can take it from me that they don’t make bold statements unless they can back them up.

There’s nothing to buy yet and the launch is a good 30 days away. Click on this link and grab your copy today. I’ll definitely keep you posted on the development of Auto Link Juicer.

How To Write Internet Marketing Articles

AffiliatesCenterBlog — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:14:50 +0000

Figuring out how to write internet marketing articles starts with putting yourself in the shoes of a searcher and mimicking what they would be looking for and how they would go about it.

That means thinking about what they would type into a search box and if thwhat they are typing had some intent about it. You see, the biggest mistakes inexperienced article marketers make is either writing an article from scratch without a rudder or writing the article around a broad term where the competition is just too much for them to see any concrete results.

What do we mean about “writing an article from scratch without a rudder?” Simply not optimizing their article around a keyword. Yes it happens and there must be literally millions of pieces of content floating around the internet basically drifting aimlessly without much attention.

How to write an article that gets attention begins with keyword research. It’s the first leg of a four leg relay in constructing an internet marketing article piece that will get noticed with the title, content and resource box completing the relay. Mess anyone of these up and you suddenly put yourself on the back foot against your competition.

The following video examines the first aspect of how to write an internet marketing article starting with keyword research. At the beginning, I give some crucial advice about what it takes to be successful at the article marketing game.

This is a simple method of keyword research which we’ve covered elsewhere on this site but it’s powerful and has served me extra well over a number of years or since Google began offering suggestions in the drop down menu of the search box. Practice it and the more you do it the better you will become at analyzing keyword terms quickly and efficiently.

The next lesson will look at the window to an internet marketing article – the title.

Keyword Research Marketing – More Free Keyword Research Tips

AffiliatesCenterBlog — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:41:56 +0000

Doing keyword research marketing can be one of the most challenging tasks especially for new people online. Internet marketing has become a competitive area and for those blazing the online marketing trail for the first time as a means of earning extra income, it can be laden with explosive mines.

Many look for free keyword research marketing tips when they first venture into internet marketing simply because they are limited by budget meaning expensive keyword research tools need to be put on hold. We showed you in the previous video tutorial how to find a list of keyword phrases using Google’s free tools and now, we will show you how to find relevant terms to your main term that you can further optimize for such as writing content for your sites and article directories.

And again, it’s Google we are turning too for help. As the dominant search engine online they have a pretty good clue of what people want in their searches so why not let them tell us what the relevant terms for our root keyword is.

The truth is, you can get by with your keyword research marketing simply by using Google and letting them tell you exactly what terms they would like to see you optimize for. While these initial quickfire research tips will get you off the starting blocks in a hurry there is still further analyzation required although you could go ahead and simply optimize for the terms you find initially.

Stay tuned for more keyword research marketing tips and we’ll also get into analyzing some of the root terms we find to ascertain just how competitive they are and whether we can actually make an impact on the rankings and dominate our competition.

Free Keyword Research Tip – How To Find Those Hot Keywords

AffiliatesCenterBlog — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 10:18:58 +0000

Keyword research continues to baffle a lot of people especially those who are getting started in internet marketing or haven’t been working online for too long.

I always maintain that while keyword research is important to the success of any campaign – get it wrong and you may as well not bother, too much time is spent on it. Here’s a free keyword research tip – don’t over analyze this part of an affiliate marketing campaign. Yes you need to get it right but spend too much time on it and you’ll get caught in that syndrome called paralysis analysis.

If you don’t have any of the major keyword tools with all the bells and whistles then don’t worry, I’m going to show you how to come up with a list of keywords that can kick start your research into action using totally free resources.

It makes sense doesn’t it…Google just about makes the rules as far as keywords are concerned so why wouldn’t you go to them to source the ammunition you need to get ranked. The Google search box and Google keyword tool are two resources you have access to right now without having to shell out a dime to use them.

Stay tuned…we have more coming up in keyword and niche research.

How To Make Money With Article Marketing – 8 Articles Which Get Attention

AffiliatesCenterBlog — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 12:06:39 +0000

How to make money with article marketing is a question that comes across our desk several times a day. My response is usually “have you thought about the article you’re going to write and what topic you are going to write it around?”

You see, article marketing online is all about getting the attention of the reader. They are looking for a solution and answer to a problem and you need to get their attention right away. That is where your title comes in and it’s the hook and bait to get someone reading your article so you can guide them down to your resource box.

The next question is what type of articles usually get attention? Well, we are about to reveal eight types of articles that always get attention and if you based your writing around the following, you should never have any issues in attracting more than a curious glance from visitors.

So let’s take a look at the type of articles that get the most attention:

- Top Ten Lists
- Myths And Secrets
- Easy Ways Or Reasons
- Tips
- How To Articles
- Reviews
- Interactive Articles
- Truth Articles

Each one of the above works it’s magic in it’s own special way. Take a look at the magazines on a news stand the next time you’re near one. Check to see what they are using as their titles to attract people’s attention. You can be rest assured it will usually be something revolving around the topics we’ve mentioned in our list.

#1 Top Ten Lists

People love top 10 or top 7 or top 15 lists. They love a list because it suggests they don’t have to scroll through a maze of bunched up copy to find what they’re looking for. In fact, by using “The Top 10″ hook, it seems to convey that the article will be an easy read and the solutions will be laid out for them one by one. Try it and see if it makes a difference to your article marketing.

#2 Myths And Secrets

Myths and secrets is popular because people love a secret. Don’t you? If a title starts with “The Secret To…” doesn’t that more often than not, just want to make you know what the secret is? It’s something this author often can’t resist taking a peek at.

#3 Easy Ways Or Reasons

People are always looking for a shortcut to their problems. Just take the internet marketing field. People just want to know the quickest way to becoming successful and are continually on the lookout for the shortest route possible. That’s why articles title with either “Easy” or “Reasons” get plenty of mileage.

#4 Tips

Tips articles are proven winners. But there is a trick to making them more effective and that means highlighting both the problem and solution in your title like this…”5 Tips Guaranteed To Lower Your Gas Bill.” All you have to make sure of is providing the information you’ve promised in the title.

#5 How To Articles

How to articles are not as high on the list as they once were but are still very effective. The fact that many now use how to articles may have taken the edge off their effectiveness a bit. Many inexperienced internet marketers miss the mark with them and you’ve got to remember, you’ll make an impact with how to articles by creating and solving the problem in the title something like…”How To Knock 10 Years Off Your Life With Our Secret Age Defier.” Just make sure you back up the title with the information in the article.

#6 Reviews

Amazingly, reviews are still massively underutilized. Review articles are popular for the simple fact that you can get them ranking well when you attach the word review to a specific product or service. Your article can act as a conduit between the searcher and vendor and if you focus your reviews on more targeted products the more chance the searcher has of landing on your page.

#7 Interactive Articles

Interactive articles are very powerful and while you shouldn’t over use them, they are perfect for shock value. In other words, you are creating a problem and then offering a test to see if they have it. It’s funny how human nature behaves. Most times you wouldn’t give something a second thought but when you see a title like…”You May Be An Alien – Take Our Quick Alien Test To Find Out.” Alien test being the keyword. Can you see how powerful this can be?

#8 Truth Articles

Truth articles are great and in many ways, in a similar vein to review articles. People looking for some confirmation on a product or service and suddenly see them attached to a headline which says “The Truth About Samsung’s 50 Inch Plasma” are going to want to take a look if that’s the brand they are searching for. And again, the more specific you can be with the use of the truth tag the better your results will be. In other words, use it on targeted products or services.

How To Make Money Online And Be Showing A Profit 12 Months From Now

AffiliatesCenterBlog — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 11:06:23 +0000

Article marketing is just about my favorite topic in the internet marketing niche and I love to talk about it. This time last year I sat down and figured out how to at least double my income this year and I kept getting back to article marketing.

Two things I isolated that needed attention was focus and eliminating the issue of being an information consumer. Don’t get me wrong, I was doing okay but there were still some bad habits which needed exorcising.

So this was the plan I devised which I’m hoping that some of you who may still be on the starting blocks will adopt, and get some income flowing into your hip pockets. It’s simple in nature but is going to require a lot of work. Are you up to it? Here it is:

1. Plan to promote two products a month simply using article marketing. Spend a little time researching your niches.

2. I suggest sticking with Clickbank and choosing a niche and then look for a product you can promote within that niche.

3. When you’ve found your niche create web 2 properties at Squidoo, Hub Pages and Wetpaint based around a long tail keyword related to your niche.

4. Then write ten articles which you will submit to the following article directories over a two week period:

http://ezinearticles.com

http://searchwarp.com

http://www.selfgrowth.com

http://www.zimbio.com

http://www.goarticles.com

http://www.amazines.com

http://www.articlesbase.com

http://www.ideamarketers.com

5. Make one of your web 2 properties your money site and point your links to it. Squidoo or Wetpaint are good choices.

6. Bookmark your articles pages and submit your RSS feeds.

That’s it. Sound like a lot of work? It is but if you have yet to make any sort of a move in internet marketing then this will be a great way to “get your hands dirty” and better still, it will give you focus. You’ll be kept pretty busy but remember, once you start to earn income then you’ll have extra money to get some of the writing outsourced.

I mention this system simply because I hear the question of “where do I start?” so often that if you simply did this for a year, not only would you have started but it’s likely you will have developed a decent income stream by the end of it.

Two niches and products a month would give you 24 campaigns by the end of the year. Supposing just six of these prove profitable then you will have income coming in you didn’t have before you started. I’m tipping with good research, you can get at least half of these profitable. Now I have no control in what you come up with but remember, when a niche proves profitable, then the possibilities open up such as creating a review site within that niche and adding other products within it.

And better still, you will have gained a whole lot of education in know how and I’m also tipping during this twelve month period, you’ll have plenty of those a-ha moments to add even extra streams of income to your business.

The Truth About How To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

AffiliatesCenterBlog — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 11:05:47 +0000

The truth about making money with affiliate marketing is it’s not rocket science. It’s actually rather simple yet many treat it as some type of big mystery that has clues you need to follow to get to the end and find the holy grail.

In fact, it’s a little like watching The Da Vinci Code – a mystery around every corner but you know it shouldn’t be. This business is so simple I get frustrated watching people fumble around trying to get something perfect before releasing it to the world.

Are you making money with affiliate marketing yet? Have you reached your goals yet this year? You know, the ones you promised yourself at the beginning of 2009. We are already at the end of August which is two thirds of the year gone.

Even if you haven’t made any serious money yet – if you’ve been on the internet marketing treadmill for any length of time you’re in a good place. Why? Because you are already ahead of the game with so many newcomers trying their hand at this business for the first time. So don’t despair if the income is slow or hasn’t started yet.

How To Become Productive In Internet Marketing

One of the things I like to do is compare where I am now to where I was at the beginning of the year and then back track and figure out what I was doing that was productive and what I did that didn’t do a thing for my bottom line.

I have come to realize that making the decision to work from home is the best decision I’ve made but I’ve also realized that while it’s great to be your own boss, choose the hours you work and no longer make the commute to a job environment, there really is one main reason I’m doing this and that’s to make money.

Along your internet affiliate marketing learning curve, you’ll go through various stages of accomplishment from putting up your first web property to earning your first income. Each time you hit one of these goals it adds an extra bit of self belief that it is possible to earn a living from the safe confines of your own home. But that excitement doesn’t last long and you soon yearn for more. If you don’t, then from where I sit, you are still very much in the hobby stage.

Are You Suffering Through A Tough Economy?

Many of you will be working a full time job and dabbling a little in affiliate marketing. That’s okay. I imagine many of you will also be dreaming of one day being able to earn your full time living working online. That’s okay too. In today’s recession dominated environment, many people are losing their jobs and a good majority are turning their attentions online as a way of making a living.

What does this mean for you? In a word…urgency. You see, the online marketing landscape is growing by the thousands each day. It’s going to get crowded and that means the competition is only going to increase at an exponential rate. In a sense, that’s the bad news but the good news is, you already have a solid head start over the current and future crop of newbies trying their hand at affiliate marketing.

What I’m trying to say is, now is the time to make your move. If you are serious about transitioning from the hobby stage to the pro level now is the time to get going. In the next 2-3 years, this business will continue to grow in numbers and by positioning yourself now for a “slice of the pie”, you’ll be in a solid position compared to the masses who are just entering the fray.

Are You An Affiliate Marketer Yet?

As a small exercise, I had the opportunity to recently take a peek inside another membership service which opened in the past few months and one thing that struck me was the lack of experience contained within it. This was a major launch, promoted as the answer to making money online and from where I sat, looked like an advanced membership.

But when I went through the forum and counted the number of people saying “I’m new to internet marketing” I was simply staggered. Without word of a lie, almost half of this membership were in the newbie category and many had recently been laid off or were looking for answers on how to make money with internet marketing. What was being taught was basic stuff – very basic and that’s why I was surprised.

so if you have been on the internet marketing treadmill for any length of time you are very much at an advanced level and now is the time to apply that knowledge and skill and take it to the next level in 2009. If you’ve made any sort of an income then plan to double it next year as your long range goal. Nail down what worked and then repeat it.

Stay tuned…in the next post present you with a simple plan to increase your earnings over the next 12 months.