How to Get Links to Your Website

 This appears to be the turf of Internet experts and online business gurus. It is highly technical too. One must therefore be very careful taking on this subject because it is still subject of intense debates among many marketers. My own opinion is based solely on what I have learned over time from the limited information I have managed to come across on the subject. To get links to your website, first you must have a website properly so called. That is a given! The site must be interesting, easily accessible/navigable and enjoyable. It must be worthy of links enabling people to find it easily. Links to your site act exactly like Internet pathways directing and leading Internet users through the Internet’s “electronic jungle” to your site. Knowing what the Internet is, that can not by any approach be an easy task. But, it is doable and is being done by many marketers who know their ways around the Internet.


 
To get links to your site, you must be on the Internet and must be found easily in it. You must depend more on Internet Search Engines to bring you out for others to find. Therefore, you must explore and exploit ways to get these Search Engines to “like” your website. The best place to have links to your site is on the most popular search engines particularly Google. These Search Engines are very smart, finicky and efficient and are very good in what they do. To get them to like and be friendly to your site, you must routinely do what they like and tolerate in the management of your own website. That is your very first hurdle. They do not hesitate to penalize any site that goes against their rules of engagement. That is one warning signal you can’t afford to ignore.

Why do you really need links? Great question! Traditionally, the more links you have to your website, the better the site is in the “eyes” of Search Engines. For that reason, the Engines tend to direct more traffic to such sites. Every smart marketer always wants traffic, traffic and more traffic. The more of it you get, the better for your business! Years past, it used to be more fashionable to simply ask other sites for links. But, when Search Engines started dishing out penalties for what later became popularly known as “poor links,” most marketers went back to the drawing board. Now, reciprocal link exchanges are the in thing. Nobody now forces any links on anyone. It remains your decision which links to accept or decline so as to play safe with Search Engines. 

In the very early days of the Internet, people approached all incoming links through “asking and permission.” But, as the Internet expanded and became more sophisticated, it is becoming more difficult to get links to your site just by asking. You must have something good to offer now to get something in return. Welcome to “reciprocal link exchanges.” If you run a poor website, you can hardly get reciprocal links from a good site. The real reason, you must ensure at all times that your website is up to scratch otherwise you can’t hope to take good advantage of this very complicated Internet engagement.

 

How Affiliate Marketing Works

It is simply amazing how really simple affiliate marketing is. Many do wonder how people who own and manage their own websites and blogs that don’t offer products make money. The simple answer is, most of these blogs and sites have page banners or links within blog posts, which are often features of affiliate marketing. This type of marketing typically involves a website or a blog author posting a link to another company’s website or product in order to earn a commission from a sale. This allows for potential readers to connect and for blog owners to make some extra money. The more these links are clicked by online surfers, the more the money the person who posted the link makes.

Every day, people go online searching for information and tips about businesses, life and health matters. For example, people may want information about a particular drug or supplement. Such people may then find online a blog post centered on their topic of interest. Because blog writers know that people who search for such niche topic are likely looking to buy a specific product, they insert links in their blogs linking to where that product is sold. The blog owner in this instance may provide a link to one or more companies selling the products to enable the buyers have a choice platform.  When readers click the links and purchase products, the poster gets a percentage of the sale as commission. In some instances, even if no sale is made at that moment, some affiliate structures allow for some form of payment to be made once the link is clicked. That is how it works.


 

What Makes an Affiliate Program Good To Promote?

 In affiliate marketing program, promotion is really key. Just because you’ve found a high paying affiliate program, doesn’t mean you should promote it right away. If you find an affiliate product which meets these here 4 criteria, you are best advised to consider taking the time to promote it.

Therefore, before promoting an affiliate program, always be sure it meets following key criteria.

01. Have I used it myself? Use a product first and be sure it works as promised before you undertake to promote it. This is rather obvious though but surprisingly, many marketers don’t consider it as very important. By using a product yourself, you will discover both the pros and cons of the product you are using. That information helps you to write more credible reviews or case studies on the product. This is important because the more trustworthy you are, the more likely your readers will click on your affiliate links.

02. Does it work for me? You can only answer this question if you have used the product. Consumers are aware that there are so many products and services out there that don’t do what they promise. Even if they do, they just don’t do it as well from the promotional promises. If you don’t want to lose trust and credibility fast enough, promote only products/services which you have used yourself and they work well for you.

03. Is it a trusted Brand? In affiliate marketing trust is earned over time. Trust readily attracts customers to the brand. That is the real reason many marketers prefer promoting affiliate products of a company or persons they already know and trust. When you know their products are solid and they treat their customers well, you get involved. Such brands readily make the best affiliate programs to promote because people are more likely to search for and buy from only the trusted brands they know.

04. Are the products evergreen? Some marketers prefer to make quick money hence they readily latch on to products that may launch for only a week or two and then close. To others, that is not a good strategy because there is too much work involved in such promotional efforts. It is best to focus more on evergreen programs that you can always promote on the long term thereby earning residual commissions for many months or even years down the road.

Tips for Writing SEO-Compliant Content

As every online marketer very well knows, targeted traffic is very crucial to succeeding in affiliate marketing. The more targeted traffic you can drive to your website, the more the sales you can make. Therefore, your first duty as a marketer is to explore credible ways to build traffic to your affiliate marketing website. You can’t get organic traffic if important Search Engines like Google are unable to locate your website easily then rank it for searches. That is what is technically called SEO, Search Engine Optimization and it usually takes some techniques to get it right. Part of those techniques is to have a good placement for your website on Google SERP pages. If you do that correctly, you will attract more visits, which is good for affiliate marketing, especially if it is targeted. SEO is a very important success factor in affiliate marketing and it all starts with the content. By using these tips, they can help you to go a long way to create content that is search engine friendly.


 
Here are some of the techniques you need to get your content ranking high on SEO.

Choose Your Keywords Correctly: First you must decide on your keywords depending on the niche business you have settled for. This is where keyword research comes in. This you can do by using Google web technology tools to find keywords relevant to your affiliate marketing niche. Before writing a content, you should always have your chosen keywords in mind because every post must contain one or more of your chosen keywords for effects.

Target One Keyword at a time: You can’t afford to be aimless with your content creation. For that reason, every piece of content you create should have a clear purpose with a keyword as its unique identity. For best results, each article or piece of content should target one main keyword even if with some expertise, you may choose to add a few secondary keywords which help to capture clusters of long tail keywords related to your main keyword.

Use the chosen Keyword in Important parts of the Content: What counts here is to try to add the keyword in the right places on the content. Experts recommend that you place your keyword most preferably in the title, in the first paragraph, in the last paragraph, and in between. Adequate care must however be taken not to stuff your content with keywords as Search Engines like Google are now smart enough to detect such gimmick. If they do, they could penalize you severely for it. It pays to also include keywords in the alt-text of images.

Use Hierarchy in your Content: If you want to make your content easy to find by visitors, you must use hierarchy in it. This involves the use of Headers and Sub-Headers to show relationships between the different sections of your content. When visitors find it relatively easy to find and navigate your content, it makes them happier. The happier your site visitors are with your content, the more likely they are to stick around to view and hopefully click on your affiliate promotions. Search Engines too also love Headers because Headers provide them useful clues which help the Search Engines to better understand what your content is all about.

Build Internal and External Links: Link building is important because, the number, quality, and relevance of links pointing to any content is an important ranking factor used by foremost Search Engines like Google. Therefore, when writing a new content, you must endeavor to find older content that is relevant to your current content and add links pointing at them. It is not smart to just embark only on promoting your affiliate marketing links. Using appropriate links also helps to promote your older content. Once you complete any article, it helps to also link to it from some of your older content making sure you use the main keyword in the anchor text of the internal link.


 

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

Great question! Many people particularly newbies keep asking this question. Many of the questions are concerned mostly about online affiliate marketing even though affiliate marketing can be done offline as well. The real reason for this curiosity is because of the internet which allows many affiliate marketers to leverage easily on web technologies. To do affiliate marketing, first you need a merchant or a company that offers affiliate marketing opportunity or an affiliate marketing program. Next step is to signup directly with the merchants or with an Affiliate Network which may have hundreds of programs to join, making it easy to find affiliate marketing opportunities to your heart’s desire. An affiliate network acts practically like a middleman between merchants and affiliate marketers. They offer tracking software that tracks your sales and reports your sales and performance. They also handle payments for and on behalf of marketers.

Here now is the real business. When you sign-up to an affiliate program, you are provided with promotional material which includes a link and / or banner and links. Your job as an affiliate marketer is to promote these links and banners using your blog, social media pages, or online advertising. These affiliate links lead to the merchant website and come with a tracking code that monitors whether or not the lead buys a product from the merchant. When a person clicks on your promoted link, a signal is sent to your affiliate program’s server notifying them of the referred visit by means of a specialized cookie which chalks up the counter of your referrals. Depending on the merchants, you can get paid-per-visit, PPV or paid-per-click, PPC depending on what the cookies record in your favor. That is how Affiliate marketers get to make their money. Simple business no doubt!


 

How to Transform Website Traffic into SFI Sign-Ups

These days, most SFI affiliates are hunting for sign-ups to build their downlines. If your Website has good traffic, it is a very big plus in this business. It is from this traffic you can get business leads and PSA sign-ups. I believe you can transform your Website traffic into sign-ups if you do the following.

1. Display banners in your Website with your Gateways links.
2. Link some words and phrases in your blog posts to your Gateways.
3. Promote SFI/TripleClicks products in your Website.
4. Write articles about SFI business in your blog linking some of the words to your Gateways.
5. Use the signature feature of your blog/forum posts to promote SFI and link it to your Gateways.
6. Advertise freebees on your Website to entice and obtain contact information from your site visitors for follow-up with email marketing of your Gateways.

If your Website traffic is good, chances are that some of your site visitors will click on these links and hopefully make up their minds to sign-up in SFI. That is how it works.

Resolve to give it a try and see how it works. Good luck!!!