This post continues our Affiliate Marketing 101 series. Read the first part to learn the first four basic steps of creating a viable affiliate marketing site.
Congratulations! You have decided to become an affiliate marketer. You have chosen and purchased your domain, set up a hosting plan, and selected a theme for your site. Now you’re all set to make tons of money from your site by stuffing it with ads and links right?
WRONG!
The biggest mistake most people make at this point is to put the cart before the horse by trying to monetize their site before they have any real content. Ads do NOT count as content.
Having a domain and a website doesn’t qualify you as an affiliate marketer. People aren’t going to flock to your site because yours has the most ads. In fact, even if they find your site, they’ll most likely be put off if they feel ambushed by advertisements. Even worse, search engines like Google target these kinds of sites, known as ad dumps, and give them a low rank in the SERPs or block them entirely.
This post will focus on SEO best practices to position your site to get ranked by search engines and for visitors to find you.
“Good order is the foundation of all things.” – Edmund Burke
SEO optimization
SEO is a term that, as an affiliate marketer, you will hear a LOT. Almost every day, there is some article published discussing the do’s and don’ts of good SEO practices, whether SEO is worth worrying about, tips and tricks to optimizing your site.
Because of the constantly changing nature of online marketing, it’s highly recommended that you subscribe to some or all of the listed sites in the Resources section. You will need to keep up with the latest strategies to be a successful affiliate marketer
Title tag
The title tag is one of the most important elements of your webpage and they heavily influence the search engine results pages (SERPs). In our split-second, first-impressions-count world, the better (read: more eye-catching) the title tag, the more likely someone will choose to visit your site instead of a competitor’s.
So what makes a good title tag?
First off, they need to be descriptive and relevant. This is your big chance to prove to the search engines that your site has information searchers are looking for. Poorly written title tags not only discourage visitors but also raise the ire (meaning, low ranking) of the search engines.
Secondly, each word of the title tag should be considered carefully. Only 70 characters (including spaces) will actually appear in the results page so make sure your most important keywords are included.
Meta description
The meta description tag serves the function of advertising copy. – Moz
Right below your title tag is the meta description. Although they are not important to the search engines for ranking consideration, meta descriptions are another huge opportunity to catch the interest of the reader and hopefully increase your conversion rate. In approximately 150 characters (again, including spaces) you can provide a fuller, more compelling description of the webpage content.
This is especially important on social sharing sites such as Facebook which will include the meta description when the page is shared.
Meta keywords
Meta keywords are there to ostensibly help searchers find relevant results. However, there is much debate over their value. Meta keywords are for the most part, far less important than the title tag and meta description in optimizing your website.
For ranking purposes, the major search engines give meta keywords very little weight in their calculations however, you should still ensure that they are chosen carefully and reinforce the relevancy of the webpage.
Tag lines
Tag lines can be thought of as your website’s slogan, a short and sweet catch phrase that sums up what your website is about.
Although tag lines are not part of any algorithm that search engines use to rank your site, a great tag line can be the deciding factor for whether someone clicks on your site instead of the 10 other choices presented on the search results page. A great tag line should encapsulate your site’s mission, promise and brand so people can remember it later and can be included in a meta description for greater impact.
Permalinks
A permalink is a link to a specific page on a site and is the part of the URL that follows the domain name. If your affiliate site is a blog, then you’ll want to pay special attention to setting up permalinks correctly. It’s important that you use them properly because as you post new entries, you’ll want your readers to be able to locate specific entries quickly and easily.
Permalinks – as with title tags – should include your keywords so that the reader and search engines can identify what your post is about. You’ll want to create a standard format for your permalinks and LEAVE IT ALONE.
Although you can adjust the format going forward, it’s almost never a good idea to reformat existing links. One of the most frustrating things is to click on a dead link. Not only will you miss out on potential traffic and customers, your site may be penalized by the search engines if you have too many broken links.
Site map
A site map is simply a list of the various pages that comprise your site (pages, links, sections, etc.) and guides the search engines as they crawl your site. This is especially important when you make changes to your site.
As a general rule, you should submit and resubmit a sitemap to the various search engines every time you make changes (add a page, create a new post, etc.) to your site. Search engines love fresh content!
Keystone
Once you’ve decided to create a site for affiliate marketing, use SEO tactics to make sure search engines and search engine users can find it.
John Hernandez is an Affiliate Marketing Manager at cleverbridge
In an upcoming post, he’ll focus on what makes for great content and how to use many of the tools available to you to your advantage.
Resources
Search Engine Watch
Search Engine Journal
XML-Sitemaps.com
Moz
