How to Use SEO As An Affiliate Marketer

There are no longer any secrets about how to get your site ranked highly with the major search engines; there are any number of resources there about how to properly optimize your site and other web content. But what is search engine optimization? Before we get into this, it’s important to understand how search engines work.

Search engines work by giving users results based on relevance to the search term they entered. Search engines work with very sophisticated algorithms which evaluate the relevance of a word or phrase which a user uses as a search term.

Keeping your site constantly up to date (preferably every day) and adding new content is one way to get the search engines to pay attention. If you want to sell or market anything online, it’s important to search engine optimize your site to get more traffic; and more sales. More than 90% of your business will probably come to your via the search engines – keep this in mind.

Sear engine optimization (or SEO) is how business owners and webmasters use copy in an effort to get their website to rank higher with search engines, thus making their site easier for web users to find. The internet has grown so quickly that the struggle for a favorable position in search engine rankings has led to a huge demand for optimization, since this is vital to the success of web based businesses.

Using SEO properly will get your website ranked higher with search engines. There are several ways to get a higher page ranking; one is to provide high quality content and update it regularly. This may sound easy, but you’d be surprised how many sites fail at this simple task. If you can have better content than do a lot of those boring sites out there then you will be in a good position. You’ll be a little closer to that high search engine ranking your site needs.

The next step to effectively optimizing your site for search engines is to get relevant keywords and key phrases into your content. The more you use these keywords (within reason),  this higher the chance your site will be found by someone searching with these search terms. If you keep at this, you will see your site’s page ranking increase over time.

A linking campaign is another thing which can help to optimize your site. Not only links effectively free advertisements for your site, but each link makes your site seem more important, makes it easier for prospective customers to find your site and best of all, the more links there are to your site, the higher your search engine rankings will rise.

Another way to increased traffic to your site is to have a content based strategy. People turn to the internet usually because they are looking for information. If you can provide them with this, the better the chance you will make a sale to your readers. Writing articles is probably the best way to get more content onto your site. When putting articles on your site, you should come up with a way to organize this new content – just adding new pages to your site as you go is one simple way to do this. This gives you room to add more articles as they are written and lets you build an archive of content for visitors to look through. Be sure to also place these archived articles in a directory just under the root directory of your site to make it a certainty that search engines will index all of your articles.

Remember that search engine optimization is one of the keys to success in the online business world. Make sure that you fill your site with well-written, keyword rich articles and link your site to other relevant sites. These are a few of the things which will increase the traffic and the business which your site will enjoy.

75 Comments

  • Bruno Auger

    Reply Reply November 5, 2008

    I’ve ben seeing a lot of articles on SEO lately. SEO is sure does help you rank well in the searxh engines thats for sure.
    I never really thought of keywords as a part of SEO but the more articles I read and other content in websites, I see its an importat element.

    I actually forget to do internal linking on my blog for SEO purposes which is pretty dumb of me.
    I guess I just need to apply these techniques more effectively to get better rankings.

    Bruno Augers last blog post..How to Advertise yourself through Social Networking

  • Dan Liptak

    Reply Reply November 5, 2008

    I think the most important point is to have great content on your site. If you design your site for people, then you will get a ton of natural backlinks from people. This can help your rankings greatly.
    Dan

  • Hi Reed

    Though I agree that a vast amount of business may come from search engines it is just as true that there are good and bad ways to optimize your sites.

    If you write content solely for the purpose of scoring well with regards to SEO, you might score very poorly on organic impact. We need HUMANS – and especially HUMANS WITH CREDIT CARDS or a PayPal or PayAlert account – to make sales.

    Therefore, content IS king, although it obviously doesn’t hurt to have valid codes and optimized sites as well. 🙂

    Henrik Blunck – Denmarks last blog post..Even John Reese Can Make Mistakes

  • Graham Price

    Reply Reply November 5, 2008

    Great content here as usual thankyou Reed.
    I am told that You can over do it with the placement of keywords on Your pages. I agree that content is King and I believe that back-links are the smart way to go. Kindest Regards Graham.

  • I agree with your take on updating your content. I found when I first put up my site and having in mind I needed ten pages or posts, that the writing was short. By that I mean I made shortcuts in getting my point across.

    What I did was to re-visit each post and open up the writing to make more sense and to provide further detail. I found this had an immediate impact on my se positions and climbed very quickly up through the pages.

    This is a sound strategy and works well.

    Terry @ Womens Swimwears last blog post..Australian Swimwear Designers

  • Daniel Duverge

    Reply Reply November 5, 2008

    Nice article. I just recently realized the power of search engine traffic due to SEO. IMHO its the best traffic you can get.

  • Timothy Millar

    Reply Reply November 5, 2008

    Hey Reed, I just posted on my blog about SEO but ofcourse it is not as good as yours,maybe its just different. I found a good way to get the links you need at linkedin (Bruno)and it seems to be working pretty good, I have only been blogging for a month on this blog and i have had 300 visitors with several already from Search Engine Traffic. Is that good enough to get you to link with me Reed? Sure could use the help. Have a nice Day, “The Leprechaun”

    Timothy Millars last blog post..Seo tools? Are they Necessary ?

  • Luis

    Reply Reply November 5, 2008

    Hi reed! I voted today! I see every where about
    seo. I agree content is king but i am having problems trying to write my own. Can you do a blog post on article writing? and what about
    using rss feeds is there a way i can use rss
    in my blog at blogger? for content. thanks for the great blog post.

    Luiss last blog post..Using a free Marketing System

  • Jane

    Reply Reply November 5, 2008

    Hey Reed,

    This is offtopic, but I recently noticed that your blog is a “no follow”.

    Just wondering what your opinion is on “no follow” and “do follow” for blogs. I myself tend to comment and post on “do follow” blogs to get a little “link love”.

    My blog is set up as “do follow” but I was just wondering about your opinion on this.

    I know you have the “CommentLuv” plugin. What’s the different between that and the “do follow”?

    Thanks,
    Jane

  • Mohamed Akram

    Reply Reply November 5, 2008

    That’s another important topic from you Reed because really If I or any affiliate marketer dominated a laser targeted keyword for our product there can be no limit to our sales!!!
    I know someone made $20,913 in 3 days because of this method only

    Mohamed Akrams last blog post..PS3 Travel Bag Review – It can be a Life Saver to Your PS3

  • Sylvester

    Reply Reply November 5, 2008

    Hi Reed,
    You have always been an inspiration to me. Personally I feel that content is the one sector that is going to provide ample room for optimization and traffic generation. Keywords and linking appears to have reach a level of almost mechanical automation.What keeps the web relevant and real today is fresh, original content!

    Sylvesters last blog post..10 Christmas Gifts and The Law of Attraction

  • Geoff Dodd

    Reply Reply November 5, 2008

    Thanks Reed. I’ve recently started to fix the internal linking structure of my 34 sites. Often we waste PR by linking directly to an affiliate program using their long link or a cloaked version of an aff link. Instead I’m going to focus these links towards one pre-sell page on my site, thus concentrating the PR and not ‘giving it away’ to the product merchant. Another SEO trick I use is getting web 2.0 properties like Digg and Reddit and Stumbleupon into my inbound link game!
    Geoff Dodd
    Australia

  • Ari Lestariono

    Reply Reply November 5, 2008

    Reed, what you write is absolutely true.I have other site selling apartments, using SEO on/off page, it boost my rank to no.1 google, with certain keywords of course.Now I don’t do any blogwalking, or getting traffic, yet the visitors are always there.

    Ari Lestarionos last blog post..Onions: Different Taste for Each Season

  • Palapple

    Reply Reply November 5, 2008

    Thanks for sharing. Search engine optimization is indeed one of the most crucial areas in Internet marketing, it is a perfect bridge between technology and business.

  • thebeast

    Reply Reply November 5, 2008

    Look Reed and you other who have write in this blog in this days matter,Ewery one says You who is you is it Me ??
    I feel so stupid? But I hope it is !
    Because What a team we could be ha? Iam serius
    Why have you Redd not think of that I think you are a clewer guy (ok I dont know all many of you too)So Reed and You others here Please think about what i have surgest .That would be awesome and we must have something with blog in the company name i think ! take care you all !
    to day I love the world have a nice day !the beast!

  • Ari

    Reply Reply November 5, 2008

    Reed, my feeling is that content is in no way a guarantee to higher search engine ranking. My most recent Google searches have shown that any garbage – even pages with no intelligible English content – can get higher page ranking if they are keyword “optimized”(more alike keyword spamming). I recently came across a webpage – ranking 2nd at Google – that had the main keyword repeated eight times within a 20-line article…Would this be SEO?

    Another point I noticed is that Google robots and spiders seem to be extremely sensitive to the words “scam”, “review” and “download”. Once you associate your keyword to those words you immediately jump up a few positions, no matter how qualified is your content. That’s probably the reason why there are now thousands of “reviews” pages, templates and systems being sold online.

    My experience so far has shown that two of the best ways to get higher search engine ranking is through social bookmarking and link building. Although I’m just a rookie marketer, I’ve managed to place two of my blogs on 2nd, 4th and 5th positions, using these techniques.

    Aris last blog post..Article Cash Robots by Davion Wong

  • Peter

    Reply Reply November 5, 2008

    Hi Reed,
    Here you can read in all your comments what your SEO is doing when there is no content. SEO is nothing without content. You force people to think about the market and then to choose the product and then promoting something you are an expert and give a damn about SEO.
    Peter

  • PV Reymond

    Reply Reply November 5, 2008

    Hi Reed,

    I agree with you, SEO is a good way to get traffic.

    People that go to search engines to do a research are people that have a problem and need a solution and probably they will be willing to pay for that solution.

    So, if you optimize your website using the right keywords, you have relevant links pointing to your site and you have a huge amount of great content on it chances are that when someone does a research for your keywords your website pops up.

    The point is that search engines (specially Google) are always changing their rules and the way the index and rank websites.

    SEO is not easy to master but you can learn the fundamentals and start applying what you learn.

    Thanks,
    ^PV Reymond

    http://www.pvreymond.com

  • Jussi Koiranen

    Reply Reply November 5, 2008

    Hey Reed

    Luis here already mentioned RSS feeds… I was wondering if having an updating feed on your page means updated content aswell? I have a website which I don’t update often, but I have a blog that has relevant content and I was wondering would it affect the Search engine(SE) rankings if I place a feed to my website?
    Newspapers do good in SE and their content is often updated and well backlinked.

  • James and Helen

    Reply Reply November 5, 2008

    Reed this is what we are trying to do here and we understand it better now with the way you have just explained it better to us. We thank YOU for this.
    James and Helen

  • michael.f

    Reply Reply November 5, 2008

    Hello, how are you? did that yesterday morning. I agree. a good source of info on that stompernet.com they have alot of up to date info. Have a great day!let go Obama!

  • Chad Van Norman

    Reply Reply November 5, 2008

    Hello Reed. Great content as usual.

    Chad Van Norman

    Chad Van Normans last blog post..How To Get Hired At Geek Squad Parody Video

  • tmobil8

    Reply Reply November 5, 2008

    Greetings Reed, Thomas Richmond here, Admin of Super S.E.O. Submitter,i want to thank you for what you try to put out there for us to be more aware of how important it is to get somebody to your websites,By using a search engine, anybody can quickly and easily find a web site with the information needed. So ask yourself, “Can Internet users find my site when they need my information or service?” By registering your site with the search engines, this will allow people to easily locate your site! 🙂

  • Wayne Bell

    Reply Reply November 6, 2008

    Good advise Reed, As usual. Another great way to get noticed is by posting keyword rich content Press Relealeses that are informative.

    Regards – Wayne

    PS – Just thought I would mention that today my wife and I celebrated my retirement after 30 years with the same company.

    Health, Happiness And Success
    Wayne & Susan Bell
    BELL’S HOME INCOME NETWORK DIRECTORY
    “Searching The World To Bring You The Best Online”
    http://bhpnincomedirectory.synthasite.com/

  • Warren Brown

    Reply Reply November 6, 2008

    This is a great article. I use WebCEO which provides me with great tools for KEYWORDS and for getting tonnes of Traffic to my sites.

  • admin

    Reply Reply November 9, 2008

    @Bruno keep us posted on your results

    @Dan agreed that can help a lot

    @Henrick yeah traffic that doesn’t but is pointless

    @Graham thanks

    @Terry congrats

    @Daniel I still prefer JV’s but it can be very good traffic

    @Timothy congrats keep us posted

    @Luis I’ll keep those in mind

    @Jane I believe I have nofollow free installed which should be the same as dofollow

    @Mohamed that’s cool do you know more about it?

    @Sylvester fresh original content will always come on top

    @Geoff keep us posted

    @Ari cool

    @Palapple agreed it can have a big impact

    @thebeast what?

    @Ari good content doesn’t guarantee you higher rankings but sites with high quality content will almost always win in the long run

    @Peter I agree you need content in order to have long term seo success

    @PV agreed it’s always changing and you can learn the basics and then it’s trial and error

    @Jussi It may have an effect

    @James & Helen you’re welcome

    @Michael stompernet is probably the top SEO place right now.

    @Chad thanks

    @Thomas it’s nice when users find you quickly and easily

    @Wayne thanks, congratulations!

    @Warren congrats on your success

  • delords

    Reply Reply November 22, 2008

    SEO is the best way to drive traffic to sites and the part i love is in writing good contents on your site with relevant keywords that’s the way to go

    delordss last blog post..

  • busby seo test

    Reply Reply November 23, 2008

    you need to update content to get extra traffic. give them what they search about and you get traffic from searching trends. seo is not simple but you can optimize it with a good way to get better rank.

  • admin

    Reply Reply November 26, 2008

    @delords yeah write for your readers and that can help a lot.

    @busby agreed

  • get ranked number one

    Reply Reply November 29, 2008

    Thanks, Very interesting comment.

  • admin

    Reply Reply November 30, 2008

    @get you’re welcome

  • Asher

    Reply Reply December 2, 2008

    Hi Reed,

    SEO is but one strategy to use in affiliate
    marketing. What you shared is good stuff and
    SEO is a strategy to use in the long term.

    Of course, it can be used in the short term
    as well but it works better in the long run.

    And the best way to learn about SEO is to
    get good resources that teach about SEO. I’m
    pretty much into SEO myself and I’m surprised
    to come by a lot of misconceptions about SEO
    when people don’t get properly educated on
    the subject.

    Asher

  • admin

    Reply Reply December 6, 2008

    @Asher perhaps you could guest blog some SEO tactics shoot me an email reedfloren AT gmail.com

  • Most people overlook what you are saying because of its simplicity. Content is and always will be king. Bookmarking your content with web 2.0 sites is a great way to increase your website rankings and traffic.

  • There’s so much to know about getting traffic but SEO is probably the best way. It takes time and of course education on how to do it but it will pay off in the end. You’re right that great content will help and a blog is the way to go. Writing the blog should be planned with the proper keywords
    Thanks for the post

  • If you just know how to work SEO strategies for your website then for sure your site will boost traffic and probably increase page rank. We just need to be relevant on the sites that we are working.

    Jane “need cash today” Aidans last blog post..ONLINE CASH ADVANCE FOR AUSSIES

  • Ari Lestariono

    Reply Reply January 25, 2009

    SEO only works though need time, must have patience.Another fast way to get your blog on top of google, make blog comments to blog PR3 and above.Writing article based on news trends, look at google trends and news and blend those issues to your content.All depends on your keywords and niche, if the competition is tough takes around 6 months on top google.

  • Ron

    Reply Reply February 3, 2009

    Great post and even greater comments! Nice sharing community we got going here 🙂

    Rons last blog post..New Free Software: Password Manager… with MRR and Giveaway Rights!

  • Jack Clarke

    Reply Reply March 3, 2009

    SEO is certainly an “ongoing” process, any let up can influence your PR / Alexa rather quickly. Nice tips! 🙂

    – Jack

  • Altis Lo (Beaulife)

    Reply Reply March 15, 2009

    All the comments pertaining to this topic are really eye-opening to me, as I realized lots of mistakes in my blog site (http://www.bestbuyidea.com). I am so grateful to Reed Floren for the fantastic postings in your site. I totally agree that keyword, backlinks, traffic and page rank are contributing to the success of the SEO of any websites.

  • Biztec-Consulting

    Reply Reply April 28, 2009

    Content is King! This should be the first priority for all sites who want to rank.

  • istanbul hotel

    Reply Reply May 2, 2009

    I read your article.The things you have written sound very sincere and nice topics i am looking forward to its continuation.

  • postakusu

    Reply Reply May 5, 2009

    thanks at all…….

  • Tennessee SEO

    Reply Reply May 6, 2009

    Writing articles is probably the best way to get more content onto your site.Make sure that you fill your site with well-written, keyword rich articles and link your site to other relevant sites.

  • Yemek Tarifleri

    Reply Reply May 11, 2009

    Thanks for this article… SEO is really important chance for us.

    Yemek Tarifleris last blog post..Cilt Beyazlatan Krem ve Maske

  • SEO Packages

    Reply Reply May 12, 2009

    Unique and fresh content is very important in my opinion. This is why blogs are so great for seo and affiliate marketing. You can publish content fast and it gets indexed quickly.

    SEO Packagess last blog post..Charlotte SEO

  • Brett

    Reply Reply June 1, 2009

    Hi, yes patience is a virtue (or so they say), we usually advise that six months is a fair amount of time to get highly competitive keywords listed on the front page of google, but we have done it in less time than this.

  • Akasya dura??

    Reply Reply June 8, 2009

    SEO is certainly an “ongoing” process, any let up can influence your PR / Alexa rather quickly. Nice tips! 🙂

    Akasya dura??s last blog post..Akasya dura?? 40.Bölüm Ratingi

  • And the best way to learn about SEO is to
    get good resources that teach about SEO. I’m
    pretty much into SEO myself and I’m surprised
    to come by a lot of misconceptions about SEO
    when people don’t get properly educated on
    the subject.

    fx15 lida yilan yagi karinca yumurtasi xaccs last blog post..fx15 lida y?lan ya?? kar?nca yumurtas? xacc – 20090608/Askeri-helikopter-dustu-2-olu

  • Toby

    Reply Reply June 9, 2009

    1. Picking the right keywords/phrases to optimize for Performing minor “on page” changes to help search engines navigate and rank the site 2. Performing link building activities to generate one way backlinks using the keywords/phrases as the anchor text when appropriate 3. Picking keywords and phrases. The most important decision for the search engine optimization process is the selection of the “right” keywords and phrases to optimize for.

  • Zemalf

    Reply Reply June 10, 2009

    I like the content based “strategy”. I just like to write about things I do, keeping SEO in mind but write mainly for readers, and good posts seem to bring in the traffic. Which is great, as I see lot of these link campaigns around and I don’t want to go that way personally.

    Zemalfs last blog post..How To Join Your First Affiliate Program

  • oyUn

    Reply Reply June 16, 2009

    Nice article. I just recently realized the power of search engine traffic due to SEO. IMHO its the best traffic you can get.

  • Sohbet odalari

    Reply Reply June 20, 2009

    My pleasure, glad you found the articles helpful, I found very useful, I wish working the success.

  • SEO only works though need time, must have patience.Another fast way to get your blog on top of google, make blog comments to blog PR3 and above.Writing article based on news trends, look at google trends and news and blend those issues to your content.All depends on your keywords and niche, if the competition is tough takes around 6 months on top google.

  • seda

    Reply Reply June 22, 2009

    The informations are so lovely and so usefull so thank you very much. Be sure i will use all of them keeping in my mind.Have a goog luck.

  • Brian

    Reply Reply June 24, 2009

    I agree affiliates who use seo make big bucks.

    Great post

  • Razoze

    Reply Reply June 27, 2009

    Great content + great seo = profit. I think so

  • Noah

    Reply Reply June 29, 2009

    I don’t really agree with Biztec Consulting. Or I should say I only partly agree with him. Its only from a good balance of quality content and quality links that you’ll link. It should be of equal priority with link building and getting your content out in front of people’s eyeballs.

  • Toby

    Reply Reply July 7, 2009

    I think alot of people are still under estimating the whole link plan concept. Google is eating up back links to the site. on page SEO is very important but the back links to your website still far out way the on page stuff. For you to really rank well you obviously need to do both.

  • botox

    Reply Reply July 28, 2009

    Thanks… I agree affiliates who use seo make big bucks

  • Logsdon

    Reply Reply August 23, 2009

    great tips. maybe i have done half or 3/4 of this

  • darren@aflfootball

    Reply Reply December 2, 2009

    Thank you for the great information you have included here. Certainly given me some ideas.

  • xpserkan

    Reply Reply December 22, 2009

    Thanks for this article… SEO is really important chance for us.

  • Another great post man – should’ve used this back in 2008 when I started reading blogs.

  • Avery Thompson

    Reply Reply January 15, 2010

    Great info Reed

  • Kcobe Magic Cube Store

    Reply Reply February 17, 2010

    SEO is very important for anyone who wants to make money online, no matter bloggers, affiliate marketers or real estate… It’s always the best way to get targeted traffic.

    By the way, there is an typing/spelling error for the first word of 4th paragraph of your article. A missing “h”.

  • Megan Abott

    Reply Reply February 22, 2010

    I think it all depends on the market which you are trying ot affilate in, the online gambling market is huge aswell as the forex stuff atm, i haev just startedmy affileate sites adn have already started making a bit of money but as i am an SEO i haev a bit of an advantage:) x

  • David

    Reply Reply April 5, 2010

    Great article.
    I know SEO is very important, but I wish it wasn’t. It’s undoubtedly the most boring part of running a business. So much guess work. But maybe it’s because I try to do my SEO work using free tools. Maybe paid tools make it easy and more accurate, and maybe a little fun.

  • dinsblog

    Reply Reply December 12, 2010

    I’ve to agree that how the power of seo to invite free traffic to our site with zero cost.

  • paul

    Reply Reply December 20, 2010

    does anyone know the exact time SEO Netlinks is coming out? i heard it’s an amazing way to generate tons of traffic

  • Laronda Milardo

    Reply Reply February 13, 2011

    Hm, So i’m comfortable with this nevertheless not utterly confident, so i’m going to research a tad bit more.

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