Rock Your Affiliate, Internet Marketing World

What’s the difference between affiliate internet marketing and a marketing campaign on the internet for a local business?

Zero … nothing … zilch … nada

I recently got a request to design a website for a private detective.

The strategies I used for this website is exactly the same I would use for my affiliate sites. The basics are:

• Design a search engine friendly  website and layout (The theme for the website was already there),
• Decide on the website structure,
• Can we use any testimonials?
• Research the keywords and evaluate the competition,
• Optimize the pages for search engines,
• Provide related content,
• Build one way backlinks to the site,

Although it is a local service business, the principles stay the same.

If you are an affiliate, doing internet marketing for a product, on page optimization is the easiest part of the marketing process.

Building Your Authority

Building backlinks takes time to get your well deserved share of SEM . You have to search for suitable and theme related sites with a high page rank (PR) where you could leave a link to your site. Submitting articles to directories are the most famous and safest way to built quality backlinks to your site.

Directory listings are also a popular method. Use the method as described in the graphic below when you use Guugle to search for relevant directories. Replace “enter your search terms” with the search term appropriate for your website.

Get Some Link Love

What contribute towards link quality with your internet marketing efforts as an affiliate?

1. Theme relevance between you and a partner site.  What do you have in common?
2. Anchor text. The words you want to optimize for should be in your anchor text. If you are optimizing for “romantic ideas”, the anchor text should include those words.
3. Context surrounding the link for example, “Want to treat your partner to romantic evening? We have 101 romantic ideas you could use to set the mood”. Using your anchor text in this way looks natural and score points.
4. Link value. If a page has outbound (or inbound) links, a portion of the page PR are added to each page it links to. (You’ll also get a portion of the domain PR). Thus it makes sense when you are an affiliate in internet marketing, to have your link on pages where it doesn’t have a lot of link competition.

Warnings

1.  The SE algorithms are getting more and more like “humans”. The key here is to build backlinks on a constant basis.  Using software to submit your site to a gazzilion directories all in one shot might help for short term rankings, but the seo experts warn against this.

• Certain directories are called “link farms” a big SE no-no.
• A link to your site could land up on an unsavory site leaving you with no credibility.
• It could look as if you are spamming in which case you’ll be dropped from the indexes.
• Build steady and on a constant basis with your affiliate and internet marketing efforts.

2.  Some article directories, like A1articles.com give a “nofollow” link. The purpose of getting links is to build your website reputation with search engines.  In other words, you are building “votes” for your site. A “nofollow” link doesn’t count as a vote. Therefore it doesn’t contribute to increase your ranking in the search engines or to the page rank of your site.

3.  It takes about 3 weeks (sometimes more) for the search engines to pick up on your one way link.

4.  Keep it real. Building links in an organic way, although it takes effort and time will have a long lasting effect.  Keep a balance between articles and directory listings, i.e. more articles than listings.

Should you buy email marketing to boost your affiliate internet marketing efforts?

No! ( I didn’t suggest email marketing to my client!)

Why not?

Many South African companies who are doing so-called email marketing campaigns are spamming the inboxes of uninterested parties. They are harvesting email addresses from the internet to use in their email campaigns. They just don’t stick to ethical email marketing campaigns.  It would be money down the drain for my client and would hurt the reputation of the company as well.

Would you risk being banned by your hosting company or the affiliate network, after you have put in hours, days and weeks of hard work into your affiliate internet marketing?

I don’t think so.