SEO for Affiliate Marketing

With the use of Google free keyword tool, you can do an easy online keyword research for more than 500,000 searches in the competition. After this, you can move on to ranking based on the searches just like what SEO specialists do. This will give you an edge with all the searches that you are doing.

Outline the exact keywords that you will go after. Make a draft. Then, type in the keywords you have in mind in the Google search box and see what the competitors in your niche are up to. Check the competitiveness of that specific keyword that you have chosen. Observe how far and where that phrase can get you with regards to the industry you are in.

Here is what we do as SEO services provider. Let us use ballet dancing as an example. Let us type that in the Google search bar. Then, we will observe the happenings with the competition. Using the Who is tool we can track what the name of the domain is. This is a great part of online keyword research that may be done for any niche. At the same time, using FireFox, you can get the exact page rank of your competition. Internet Explorer has been a very buggy server so I stopped using it. FireFox hold better features such as plug-ins called Search Status. You can see this in the top left hand corner. The best thing that you can make use of it is to know the page rank of a certain website.

If I go into a new market that I’m going after, and I look at page number 1, and I look at the first person on top and they have a page rank of 4 and then I go to the last one and they’ve got a page rank of 3 or 4 and it is quite solid throughout, I know that is very competitive. I don’t mind so much though if I go into a phrase and then the first one is PR6 but then it drops off really quickly. What you’re looking for is the speed at which the page rank drops off because that will give you an indication of how much competition there is in the search material.

That said, you can get a pretty good idea as to what your competition is by going and having a look at the page. Have they done the basics? Do they know their on page optimization? That is a really basic one, especially in SEO promotion of a local business website or small business internet marketing. Nobody’s doing on page optimization yet; for SEO, that’s just 101. You can also head over to how many pages are indexed within Yahoo. Use the Yahoo! Site Explorer.

The number of back links connecting to a specific website is another factor that you got to look at. The Yahoo! Site Explorer can help you with this. On the top of its page you will see two options. You will see here how many pages are indexed. I use Google to track the number of pages that are indexed. On the other hand, I use Yahoo! Site Explorer to get the number of back links reflecting the website. This is what useful online keyword research takes.

If you’re trying to make money as an affiliate marketer either with or without an affiliate website, there are some basic steps you have to complete to even get started. One problem that many people face right at the start of their affiliate marketing careers is not being able to get accepted by affiliate networks. There are some definite steps you can take that will make it more likely that affiliate networks will approve your applications, and we’ll be talking about some of these here.

Don’t Start With the Largest Networks: At first, it can be hard to get accepted by the largest affiliate networks, so begin by applying to some that aren’t as well known. Since a well known network may get hundreds of people applying to it every day, they only bother to accept affiliates who can prove they get lots of traffic with their existing affiliate websites. It’s a completely different story with a lesser known network, where you’ll find that you’re likely to get approved without much fanfare. You don’t have to cross the better known networks off your list. The smaller ones, however, can be the best way to start, as you can always get into the larger ones later on. What you really want is to begin promoting offers, without spending too much time on the application process. Some affiliates never get off the ground because they’ve devoted to much time to trying to get into certain networks.

A Simple Action to Increase Your Chances: You can improve your chances of getting accepted by an affiliate network simply by calling them after applying online.

Many networks will want to call you, but you can still take the initiative and make the first move by calling them. This can speed up the approval process, or even make it more likely that you’ll get approved at all. The best person to talk to would be the affiliate manager, as this is the person you have to convince that you’re anxious to be working with the network.

The Source of Your Visitors: You should be ready to tell affiliate managers what part of the world your visitors or traffic comes from. The preferred answer to this question is, “I get most of my traffic from the US.” For this reason, many affiliate networks are less likely to accept applications from affiliates who don’t live in the US or Canada. You can still get accepted if you live elsewhere, but make sure you tell the manager that you have ways to get US based traffic. Affiliate managers want to know that you have effective ways of getting the kind of traffic they want, so be prepared with some well thought out ideas.

All in all, getting accepted in an affiliate network is no big deal if you know what you’re doing. You just need to focus on getting your basics right.