How to earn money online (part-4)
What the heck is SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most cost-effective ways to get traffic to any website. It's one of the first things that most affiliates learn, so we won't go into it in depth here. But it's such an important subject that it deserves to be revisited from time to time.
SEO is an ongoing process. It's not one of those “set it and forget it” things. Once you've done your initial optimization it becomes easier to maintain it, but you must keep working at it. Search engines change their algorithms frequently, so it's crucial to continually check on your rankings. That way, if they drop, you can take action before you lose too much traffic.
If your site ranks highly in the search engines, you won't need to spend a lot of money on pay per click and other forms of advertising. You can concentrate your efforts on building incoming links and creating new content to keep your visitors happy.
Pay Per Click Strategies
Performing search engine optimization is one of the least expensive and most effective ways to get traffic to your site. But it's not the only way to get visitors from search engines. Pay per click advertising (PPC) requires an investment, but it can greatly boost your affiliate traffic and sales if used correctly.
We've all seen the “Sponsored Links” at the top and sides of search result pages. Those are actually PPC ads. (They're also found on some websites.) Some Internet users have grown rather blind to these, but there are still plenty who click on them. Besides, when you run a PPC campaign, you're not paying for each time your ad is shown. You're paying for each time someone clicks on it.
Affiliates use PPC ads for a few different purposes. One is to get visitors to a website or blog where they promote affiliate products. Another is to send them to a squeeze page, where they can sign up for a newsletter or e-course. And sometimes they just direct visitors straight to an affiliate link. Your approach will vary depending on which of these is your objective.
If you're directing PPC ads to an affiliate link, it's important to use keywords that attract people who are interested in buying. Otherwise, you're pretty much wasting your money. For instance, if you're an affiliate for a company that sells leather gloves, try to think like someone who is interested in buying a pair. Perhaps he has a brand or color in mind. You could try using something like “black leather gloves” or “Cole Haan leather gloves” as your keywords. Or if you're targeting bargain shoppers, “discount leather gloves” might be a good keyword phrase.
If you're trying to get opt-in subscribers, you would use a much different strategy. The idea here is to lure prospects with the promise of information. That way you won't be paying for visitors who are interested in buying something right now and will click away when they see a squeeze page. Keyword phrases that contain words such as “learn” or “information” are well suited to this purpose. The ad text should further emphasize the promise of information.
Those who want site visitors might use a similar approach as far as keywords go. In order to get visitors who are actually looking for what you have to offer, be as specific as possible. If you feature reviews on your site, be sure to include the word “reviews” in your keyword phrases. If it's a blog, use the word “blog,” and so on. The ad text should be compelling, but usually not pushy.
Writing effective PPC ads almost always requires trial and error. You'll need to implement a tracking method in order to see whether or not your ads work. If you're directing traffic to your own site (or using redirects for your affiliate links), the statistical software will tell you what you need to know. Most affiliate programs also offer stats tracking that will tell you how many visitors made it to your affiliate link and how many made purchases.
If you find that you're getting lots of traffic but few sales or click-throughs to your affiliate link, it's time to go back to the drawing board. Very low traffic can be a sign of a poorly written ad. But if you're getting a high percentage of conversions out of that small amount of traffic, it probably just means that you've done a good job of choosing highly targeted keywords.
Choosing Pay per Click Networks
Ask any Internet marketer to name a PPC network, and there's a good chance that you'll hear the name Google AdWords. It stands to reason that since Google is the number one search engine, its pay per click offering is one of the most popular. Many affiliates make their first foray into PPC with AdWords, and they often stick with it.
AdWords has the potential to bring you lots of traffic. But it's not the only PPC network that's worth using. There are many others to consider, including:
Microsoft AdCenter – Displays ads on the Bing search engine and the Microsoft content network.
Yahoo Search Marketing – Displays ads on the Yahoo search engine.
7Search – Supplies search results and ads to over 500 search engines, blogs and websites.
Adbrite – Supplies ads through a content network.
Bidvertiser – Supplies ads through a content network.
After Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are the next biggest players in the pay per click game. But that doesn't mean that all other networks are a waste of time. Smaller PPC networks have an advantage when it comes to pricing. On average, advertisers pay less per click than they would on the “Big Three.” So if you're on a tight budget, you may do better to give them a try.
Each PPC network has rules that advertisers must follow, and it's imperative that you read over them carefully. Some do not allow advertisers to use direct affiliate links. Some have minimum deposits that you must make. And all have certain guidelines for the ads themselves. You can save yourself a lot of headaches by making sure that you understand the terms fully before placing your first ad.
tent and Affiliate Marketing
Early on, content sites made up a large portion of the World Wide Web. There's a lot more out there now, but good content sites still have a great deal of value. They serve as sources of information, and information is still something that most Internet users look for on a regular basis.
One of the advantages of content sites is that they are easy to maintain. It takes some work to get them set up, but once you've got everything in place, you don't have to keep it updated on a regular schedule. Adding some new content from time to time is a good idea, but it's not absolutely necessary. If you pay special attention to SEO when building a content site, you won't even have to put a lot of effort in to promoting it.
Another good thing about content sites is that it's easier for visitors to find the information they need than it is on a blog. A content site's navigation is usually organized by topic, allowing users to find what they're looking for with just a couple of clicks. Blogs, on the other hand, are organized chronologically.
You can use categories to make posts somewhat easier to find, but older posts are still left in the shadows of new ones.
Content sites do not have to have pages upon pages of information to be useful. In fact, if you're working with a sufficiently narrow niche, a mini site with just a few pages will do. Instead of trying to provide huge amounts of information, concentrate on creating a few pieces of great content.
The keys to getting traffic to a content site are providing informative content and optimizing it for keywords that your target market would use. Get some backlinks coming in and do a little initial promotion, and you can often leave the site alone and let it work its magic for a while. But don't forget to check your stats periodically, so that if you lose ground in the search engines or conversions drop you can find and fix the problem.
Getting Webmasters to Promote Your Site
Promoting a website can be a lot of work. But you don't have to do it all yourself. In fact, it's best if you don't. Enlisting the help other webmasters will allow you to gain exposure on their websites, and that can seriously boost your search rankings. The days of the link exchange have passed, but there are other ways to get assistance from fellow site owners.
One way you can get your links on other websites is by submitting articles to article directories. Article directories are designed to provide free content for webmasters, and anyone can submit articles. You're allowed to add links and a resource box to your articles, and anyone who uses them must leave these things intact. If you write good articles that are related to your niche, fellow webmasters will place them on their sites and you'll get back links and traffic from it.
You could also contact bloggers in your niche and ask if they would allow you to write a guest post for them. In exchange for the free exclusive content, you can request that they link to your site. If it's a popular blog, you could get lots of traffic for a long time to come.
And then there are joint ventures. You could contact other site owners and see if they would be interested in sponsoring a contest, producing an information product or participating in some other type of marketing activity with you. Both of you would work on it, both of your names and URLs would be on it, and both would promote it. And each of you would gain new traffic and back links.
By creating quality content, you can gain back links from webmasters who find it useful. But it certainly doesn't hurt to be a little more proactive about it. These methods won't cost you a dime, and they have the potential to bring you lots of traffic and better search engine rankings.
Blogs and Affiliate Marketing
Blogs are well suited to affiliate marketing. Internet users enjoy reading them because they are interactive and personal. This makes them excellent relationship builders for affiliates. And readers know that they are usually updated regularly, so when they find one they like they keep coming back. This gives you infinite opportunities to make a sale.
Some affiliates get their start in affiliate marketing by mentioning products in posts on an existing blog. For niche blogs, this works very well. But with few exceptions, blogs with general topics tend to generate fewer affiliate sales. If you're looking to earn commissions by blogging, you're better off to start a blog with a narrow focus. Or better yet, several of them.
For affiliate marketers, part of the beauty of blogging is that blogs are so easy to set up and run. Many web hosts provide automated installation of blogging platforms such as WordPress in their hosting packages. You can write posts and pages without having to know HTML, and it's very easy to make modifications to a blog's appearance and functionality.
Perhaps the hardest thing about blogging is coming up with good niche topics. For best results, you need a topic that's pretty narrow, but that generates a lot of interest. It should also be something that you are interested in, because you're the one who will be writing content about it on an ongoing basis. If you have no interest in or knowledge about the subject, it will be difficult to do that.
Another thing to consider when choosing a niche is how much competition there is in it. The less competition there is, the better. You can get a general idea of the amount of competition in a given niche by plugging related keywords into the Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool
(https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal). The tool will also tell you how much search volume keywords receive, giving you an idea of the amount of interest.
If you choose a good niche and join affiliate programs that will interest your audience, you can do very well with affiliate marketing through a blog. With some promotion and regular updating, a blog can be a very effective commission generator.
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