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You MUST have high quality, unique content if you want long-term, free search engine traffic.
This is the most important tip of all. Sadly, it's one which many website owners ignore. Provide LOTS of information-rich, keyword-rich, useful content for the search engines and humans to find.
You know that search engines are being clogged with junk at an alarming rate. The other day, I came across a marketer who was boasting that he owned more than 20,000 blogs - and he's not the only one. Consider the scary effect of this exponential increase in low quality blogs and websites. Old, large, well established sites will inevitably become more and more important and trusted by the search engines.
Owning a large, well established, high quality site is a very solid investment in your future. These days, even Google's webmaster guidelines advise affiliates to publish "unique and relevant" content. If you spend time thinking of ways to provide truly USEFUL content that people will talk about, you'll automatically end up with lots of free, one-way links to your site as people recommend it without even being asked to do so. I've been building information-rich websites ever since I created my first site in 1996. This method has worked extremely well for me and continues to work very well.
If your website helps solve people's problems, they'll love you for it.
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Keep ADDING fresh, relevant, useful content
According to Google, about half the 2.5 billion searches done a day at Google are for unique, one-off phrases. The more pages you build full of on-topic material, the better the chances your site will be found.
When it comes to keywords, think big. You want your site to be found via THOUSANDS of different phrases every month. Then you can lure that traffic to your best money-generating pages or to your newsletter sign-up page. Also, search engines prefer fresh sites which keep gradually adding new
content. Don't let your site go stale.
Super affiliate James Martell says:
"My own rule of thumb is this: Add a minimum of 1 article per week, 2 preferably. Adding an article daily is euphoria and adding 1 every six hours, well, that's the best."
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Choose a memorable domain name
If you're launching a new site, choose a name people will remember easily. Years ago, I visited a site called "forkinthehead.com". Its logo is a man with a fork in his head. Sounds dreadful, doesn't it?
However, all it took for me to remember that unusual site was ONE visit years ago. You may not wish to go to such extreme lengths, but at least ask yourself: "Will people remember my domain name?"
At my four main sites, a large percentage of the visitors are people who have remembered the domain name and typed it directly into their browser. (I also own a site built in 1996 which has a totally impossible to remember URL, but that's another story.) Try to choose a name which won't be confused with similar names. You
don't want people typing your competitor's domain name when they’re trying to find your site.
NameBoy.com has a handy tool to help you choose domain names. Also, you can find a surprising number of good deleted (expired) domain names at Whois.net. Both those tools are free.
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Buy the wrong domain name, too
If you think people may confuse your domain name with a similar name, try to buy that name, too. I noticed that sometimes when newsletters mentioned AssociatePrograms.com they put the "s" in the wrong place and called it "AssociatesProgram.com". It even happened at an Internet marketing conference I was attending. The speaker kindly mentioned my site, but got the name wrong. Whoops!
So when that wrong domain name became available, I bought it.
Now, if you muddle up the name and type "AssociatesProgram.com" you're automatically redirected to AssociatePrograms.com It occurred to me that people in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, who think "programs" is spelled "programmes", might also have trouble getting my domain name right. So I bought AssociateProgrammes.com, too. It also redirects to the correct domain.
A good domain name registrar will make it very easy for you to redirect one domain name to another. 000Domains.com is one that does.
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Make your domain name easy to read - especially if it's a .NET
Which of the following is easier to read and understand?
www.daffodilvarsity.edu.bd or www.DaffodilVarsity.edu.bd.com See how using a capital letter at the start of each word makes the second domain name easier to read - and easier to remember. Whenever you mention your domain name anywhere, ALWAYS present it in its most readable form. A good place to start doing this is in your email signature file. If you're unfortunate enough to have bought the ".net" version of a domain name because someone raced you to the ".com", help people to remember your site by writing it like this...
Example.NET
Being MEMORABLE helps you get more repeat visitors.
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Use appropriate keywords in your image file names
One of my websites gets hundreds of visits a month from people who are searching for images. I'm not sure how valuable those visitors are, but I didn't have to do anything very special to get them. Google Images - http://images.google.com - makes it easy for people to search for graphics online.
To take advantage of this, when choosing the file name of an image on your site, use an appropriate key phrase, for example, "book-ends.jpg" if you're promoting book ends. Here's a tip I just discovered...
When I searched in Google Images for "book ends" I discovered that the very first search result was for a page which did NOT contain a graphic of book ends!
Instead, the page contained a "book ends" LINK to a book ends graphic on a second page. It if suits the design of your site, you may want to experiment with this technique.
I'm not sure how much use traffic to images is, but if it's ADDITIONAL traffic you can get simply by choosing image file names carefully, it's worth having.
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Do REALLY SERIOUS keyword research
If you want to get LOTS of traffic from search engines, you need to find out the exact phrases which people are typing into search engines. There are free tools available for this, but they're not nearly as useful as the more comprehensive paid tools. For example, if you're using the Overture keyword tool for your research, be warned, its results can't be trusted.As my Special Projects Manager, Jay Stockwell, likes to point out, the Overture tool shows you the SAME number of searches for all these
searches:
daffodil university
university daffodil
daffodil international university
university of Bangladesh
This is obviously nonsense. The Overture tool is useful to give you a quick rough guide, but NOT for serious research. Here's a good tip from "Charlie" on our affiliate forum:
"The harder it is to discover a certain search phrase (getting traffic), the less competition you will have in the SERPs (for that search phrase). If a keyword research tool is free and popular, how many competitors will you have for the phrases you discover there?"
Jay has spent hundreds of hours researching and analyzing keyword research tools. He's built the best site on the Internet reviewing keyword research tools - KeywordWorkshop.com You need to visit Jay's site whether you're using search engine optimization (organic SEO) or pay-per-click advertising.
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Try this page titles experiment
Here's a good way increase your traffic. Go to Google and type any phrase into the search box. Look at the titles of the websites in the top 10 rankings. Which ones catch your eye and tempt you to click on the link? Some are dreadfully stodgy, boring. Some are merely a long list of keywords. Some are good. Some are junk. Good titles are written for search engines AND humans.Now look at the titles on your site. Start with your most important pages.
Rewrite them to make them more eye-catching. Now go to Google and do a search of your site like this...
site:example.com
Study the page titles. If you own a large site created over many years, you may be horribly embarrassed at just how BAD some of your page titles are. Do you want to find some examples of good titles? Simply go to Google and do some more searches. Don't stick to your industry.
Type in all sorts of different phrases and study the titles that appear in the top 10. You'll soon be brimming with ideas on ways you can improve your page titles. Checking how enticing the information is in your meta description tag can help, too. Some search engines display this information in their search results.
If you have a well established site, you may have written many of your page titles and meta descriptions years ago when you knew less about marketing than you do now. If so, it's time for another look at them.
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Organic SEO - a few key points
Search engines are getting cleverer all the time. You can try to outsmart them but to me it makes more sense to work WITH them. They're gradually getting better at sifting out low quality websites and ranking them poorly. So build high quality websites containing genuinely useful material that other people want to link to. The basics of good search engine optimization are fairly simple. Here's a very quick summary:
• You need to make it easy for a search engine to figure out the topic of your page.
• Find appropriate keywords or key phrases and use them in the title, in the page heading, in the introduction, throughout the article, in the meta description, in alt tags, at the end of the article, in links on the page, in bold or italics, and perhaps in a list on the page.
• Use key phrases in your file names, for example: keyword1-keyword2.html.
• Use synonyms and word variations naturally throughout the page.
• When linking to your pages, use appropriate keywords in the anchor text (the words people click on). Do this for links throughout your site, and also on other people's sites which link to yours. Vary the anchor text.
• For internal links, it's better to use text than graphical links.
• Create a logical navigation system so that humans and search engines can easily find the content on your site.
• Get links from other sites to internal pages as well as to your main page.
This is just a brief overview of a big topic. If you want excellent, reliable advice on search engine optimization, there's one place I recommend above all others. It's the resource the professionals use - Stephen Mahaney and his team at Planet Ocean. These guys do nothing but search engine optimization. They're experts. I've been a subscriber for years. Planet Ocean is an often recommended resource because it publishes a search engine optimization newsletter and an excellent book which is updated every month, so you can rest assured the information you're reading is right up to date.
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Submit to the main directories
The more high quality links you have to your site, the more impressed the search engines will be. Start with major directories such as...
Yahoo!
DMOZ.org
sbd.bcentral.com
...and move on to...
Gimpsy
Skaffe
Joeant
GoGuides
Business.com
SevenSeek
ThisIsOurYear
LookSmart (probably too expensive)
BlueFind
WowDirectory
Best of the Web
GeniusFind
Here's a good list of directories
http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php
Be sure to read the submission rules carefully at each site. This will slow you down but it increases your chances of getting your site listed. Listings can last for years, so it's worth while taking your time to get the details correct. You may want to outsource this task by finding someone at a site like eLance or hiring a student.
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Submit to niche directories
Search for smaller, specialist directories in your niche. For example, if your site is on a health topic, look for health-related directories. How to find niche directories:
• Go to Search It! (It's a very handy free research tool.)
• Scroll to the Search Category, "Specialty Hubs and Directories"
• Choose one of the 4 options in STEP 2
• Read the "Click Here for Information..." help before proceeding
• Complete STEPS 3 and 4, and then click on Search It!
• Read the tutorial. It tells you what to do with the search results
• Get your search results. You should be able to find relevant, themed hub sites and directories which will list your site. Some charge a fee, some are free.
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Distribute USEFUL articles to article directories.
Write articles and submit them to article directories. Make sure they're USEFUL, interesting articles, not fluff. Other websites will pick up these articles and use them on their site.
If you've added a link to your site in the "About the author" box at the bottom of the article, you can get hundreds or thousands of links to your site. You also boost your reputation. When writing the article, you need an eye-catching heading. You also need to give people a strong incentive to visit your site.
Here are some ways to do that:
• Give people a link where they can get a free report.
• Tell them where they can subscribe to your newsletter.
• Tell them to visit your site for Part 2 of the article.
• Tell them to visit your site for a more comprehensive version of the article.
Distributing articles to directories is tedious and time-consuming. You can either do it manually or you can speed up the process - and receive a very helpful instruction manual - if you use ArticleAnnouncer. It's expensive but good value. Another popular way of distributing articles is to use the Article Marketer service to do all the hard work for you. iSnare is another good one. Here are some popular article distribution sites.
http://ezinearticles.com
http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.netterweb.com
http://www.articlefinders.com
http://www.articlecity.com
One annoying thing about this technique is that some unscrupulous website owners will publish your articles without linking back to your site. Oafs like that should be tarred and feathered, I reckon. Over all, the advantages outweigh the minimal disadvantages.
You can find a long list of places to submit articles in this discussion on our affiliate forum:
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/discus/ftopic9801.html
Some people publish an article on their site and a few days later submit it to article directories. I'm cautious. I believe the search engines will eventually get much tougher on duplicate content, so I believe a safer approach is to distribute articles which are markedly different from the ones you publish on your site.
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Write articles directly for other sites
Getting high quality links to your site is hugely important. Ideally, you want links from "authority" sites - sites which have a lot of links to THEM. As well as reading what search engine optimization experts say, study what they actually DO. One common tactic they use is to write expert articles and get them published on related websites. When they do this, the links they get to their site are beautifully on target - those links come from a page which is all about search engine optimization - which perfectly matches the theme of their site.
To a search engine, such links look much more important than a boring link which is just one of dozens on a page in a little mini-directory tacked on to a mini-site.
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Submit articles to newsletters which are archived online
Submitting articles to newsletters has been popular since the early days of marketing online. In the "Internet marketing" niche, publishers tend to be swamped with offers to publish articles. Other fields aren't so ridiculously competitive.
You're likely to have more success if you take the time to establish a relationship with a newsletter publisher. Also, if you're prepared to write an article exclusively for one newsletter, your offer is more likely to impress. Subscribe to each newsletter and study it carefully. Study the online archives. The article you offer needs to be genuinely useful.
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Submit brief hints to newsletters and blogs
A brief, useful hint published in an archived newsletter can give you a link to your site for many years - perhaps even a decade or more.
You can also submit tips to blogs.
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Include keywords in your online profiles
Whenever you create an online profile anywhere online - on your blogs, on a forum or on sites such as LinkedIn - always use carefully chosen key phrases.
This increases the chance that people will find you, either via search engines or, for example at LinkedIn, via the site's search facility.
The other day a friend of mine, Phil Tanny, mentioned that he'd started a forum. To try to find it, I typed...
Phil Tanny forum
...into Google. The No.1 search result surprised me. It was Phil's profile on OUR affiliate forum. (The ranking may have changed by the time you read this.) Profile links probably aren't very valuable in Google's eyes, but they're quick and easy to set up. Try it on our forum:
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/discus/index.php
You can often find forums in your industry by going to Google and typing in...
keyword +forum
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Get one-way links and a few reciprocal links
Reciprocal links aren't as important as they used to be. They should not be your major traffic-generating strategy. They ARE still very useful, especially when you're getting a new site established in the search engines. Here's an article I wrote describing in detail how to get reciprocal links. For a comprehensive look at ways to get links, I recommend you read this article by Bill Hartzer:
Linking Campaigns Lead to Increased Online Visibility
Stephen Mahaney offers a wealth of information in this article:
12 Essential Strategies for Building & Structuring Inbound Links (Both those articles are excellent examples of experts getting articles
published on other people's sites.) Also, here's one of the many warnings from Google:
"Keep in mind that our algorithms can distinguish natural links from unnatural links. Natural links are links to your site that develop as part of the dynamic nature of the web when other sites find your content valuable and think it would be helpful for their visitors. Unnatural links are links to your site placed there specifically to make your site look more popular to search engines."
Source: http://sitemaps.blogspot.com/
Google's webmaster guidelines say plainly:
"Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank."
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Publish articles on your site and invite other sites to publish them on their sites, with a link to you
Some websites make it very easy for other sites to reprint their articles. At the end of each article on their site, they publish a note giving people permission to reprint the article providing the source box at the end is published, too.
(Caution: Although this technique apparently works well for those who do it, I don't use this technique. My goal is to have almost all unique content on my sites. I wonder if the technique may not work quite so well some time in the future. I could be wrong, but I speculate that as search engines become more and more clogged with junk sites, search engines will get much tougher on duplicate content. Sites which don't publish duplicate content will benefit, I believe.)
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Publish a lively, useful newsletter
Let's say you have 3,000 people a week - or month - visiting your site. Most of them are going to look at one or two pages and then disappear, perhaps never to be seen again. You need a way to persuade them to return. Writing your own newsletter is an excellent way of boosting repeat traffic. A newsletter reminds readers that your site exists. To encourage repeat visitors, you can tell your readers about new articles you've added to your site. You can also remind them of articles they may have missed. You can tell them about a survey you're running on your site, a special report, or interesting new posts on your forum.
While you're writing your newsletter, keep asking yourself, "Is this item useful? How can I make it MORE useful?" If you're not keen on writing, you can outsource the writing or simply publish brief notes which let your readers know that your site has been updated. My
newsletters tend to be long, but yours doesn't have to be.
Newsletters enhance your reputation, add to your credibility and - best of all - give you repeat opportunities to make a sale. Another advantage of publishing a newsletter is that when you want to launch a second or third website, you can give it a flying start simply by mentioning it in your newsletter.
If you haven't published a newsletter, you'll find that the technical side of it is much easier than you imagined. A good, reliable way to publish a newsletter is to use Aweber to distribute it. Aweber takes the hassle out of newsletter publishing. Using a professional service like Aweber and a double opt-in sign-up process gives you protection against spam complaints. Aweber has been around for years, has an excellent reputation and one of the highest - if not THE highest - successful delivery rates online. It automatically handles subscribes and unsubscribes. It gives you a form you simply paste into your website to start collecting email addresses, and it even provides newsletter templates. It's a wonderful service. I use it for two of my newsletters and highly recommend it. It's much better than a more expensive distribution service I also use. It's tricky switching one from service to another. Because of inertia, you're
likely to lose a large percentage of your readers if you have to switch to a new service. So make sure you start with a well established, reliable company that's here for the long haul.
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Submit your newsletter to newsletter directories
Search in Google for...
ezine directories
ezine directory
newsletter directory
newsletter directories
...and submit your newsletter to newsletter directories.
It's time-consuming and you probably won't get a lot of traffic from this technique. If you have more money than time, outsource this task. You could hire a student to do it.
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Publish a mini-course
This technique encourages visitors to keep coming back to your site. Publish a short (or long) informational email mini-course. Provide genuinely useful content. Starting gradually, after you've won the trust of your readers, weave relevant affiliate links into the messages.
Also, give your readers reasons to visit your site, giving them links to related articles on your site. These pages can contain both affiliate links and AdSense ads.
To retain your readers' interest, at the end of each message, give them a little teaser telling them what they'll get in the next message in the series. The autoresponder service I use and recommend is Aweber. With only one subscription, it allows you to publish newsletters and autoresponder courses from different domains. Some smart marketers using this technique don't send the mini-course via email. They just send out a memo announcing when each new part is online.
Doing this helps you evade spam filters - the shorter the message, the more likely it is to get through. Also, it gives you an opportunity to get eyeballs in front of the affiliate links or AdSense ads on your site.
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Write testimonials that are worth using
When you read an ebook or newsletter or some product which you find useful, write a quick note to the author. Sometimes, your quick note will be published as a testimonial, with a link back to your site. Joe Vitale has taken this tactic to extraordinary lengths. For examples,
trying doing a search in Google for
"joe vitale" +testimonial
Don't go crazy over this technique. Remember that every single thing you write online builds - or damages - your reputation.
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Make helpful posts in forums
Join forums in your niche and promote your site in your signature. Be careful. Read the forum instructions first or you're likely to annoy forum moderators and forum members who have been there for years. Lurk and learn.
Some forums allow signatures. Some don't. Some won't allow words like "See the link in my signature". Tread carefully. You also need to remember that many affiliate agreements specifically say that posting an affiliate link on a forum is regarded as spamming. Ignoring
this rule can get you dumped from an affiliate program. You could lose any commissions you've earned. Build your reputation by posting genuinely, helpful, useful comments.
If you think carefully of ways to provide truly USEFUL content that people will talk about, you'll automatically end up with lots of free, one-way links to your site as people recommend it without even being asked to do so. Do a search in Google for
yourkeyword + forum
yourkeyword +"message board"
A good place to start is our friendly, helpful affiliate forum: http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/discus/index.php