By Cynthia Arko
For affiliates, it is important to be listed with the major search engines because they can potentially generate much needed traffic. A top 10 ranking in a major search engine will often generate more targeted traffic than an expensive banner ad. The more visitors your niche site attracts, the bigger your affiliate checks become.
I'm sure you've heard of the well-known engines such as AOL and Yahoo! but for a complete list of other major search engines that you should become familiar with check out SearchEngineWatch.com.
Understanding Meta Tags
Meta tags provide a useful way to control your summary in some search engines. They provide keywords and descriptions on pages that for some reason may lack text. There are several meta tags, but the most important for search engine indexing are the description and keywords tags. The description tag returns a description of the page in place of the summary the search engine would ordinarily create. The keywords tag provides keywords for the search engine to associate with your page. Stamps.com is a good example:
<title>Stamps.com: Home</title><br>
<meta name="description" content="Postage from your printer!"><br>
<meta name="keywords" content="stamps.com, stamps, postal code, postal, internet postage, postage, meters, post office, US postal service, online postage, mailing, stampmaster, mail, usps, buy stamps, postal rate, buy postage, postage over the internet, postal authorities, postage meters, postal meters, postage and computer, usps stamps, us postage stamps, postmaster, electronic postage, digital scale, PC Postage, New Postage, New Stamps, easy stamps, US Post Office, digital postage, post office, stamps online, indicia, postage servers, print stamps, print postage, get stamps, get postage">
Although Meta tags are a good start you must also...
For more information about affiliate programs, check out these other articles from Cynthia Arko's ongoing weekly series:
Getting Started in Affiliate Marketing
Revenue Sharing 101
In this first in a series of weekly articles, Cynthia Arko, Product Director for internet.com's Refer-it.com affiliate directory, presents a no-nonsense approach to generating revenue from your Web site.
How to Indentify Quality Affiliate Programs
With literally thousands of affiliate programs available on the Internet, it could be difficult to determine which ones are high quality. However, the process could be made easier when using some basic criteria.
Understanding Affiliate Commission Structures
If you want to get paid, you need to understand affiliate commission payments and the many different commission structures that exist.
Content Sells
Making money with affiliate programs requires much hard work and continued attention to developing and retaining visitor traffic.
Search Engine Tips, Part I
For affiliates, it is important to be listed with the major search engines because they can potentially generate much needed traffic.
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Create a content rich site
Not only does content create stickiness; it may also help your ranking with the search engines. Search engines frequently sift through millions of pages to find relevant information for indexing a particular topic. A page full of flashy banners will get poor results while a site rich with articles, product descriptions, news and information will have a good chance of ranking high in the search engine. Although no search engine uses the same search mentality, it's likely that your content rich site will be more attractive to the vast majority.
Competitive Research
If your site has been up and running for a while be sure to download a free trial of WebPosition Gold to check your current rankings. Take a few hours to surf the major search engines and type in any keyword that you can think of that relates to your site. Look at each site and try to determine what keywords or meta tags have been used to get a good ranking. Always take a close look at the number one ranking and follow their lead with a mix of content, banner ads and keywords.
Buy keywords on paid search engines
Paid search engines allow you to bid on specific keywords that relate to your site.
Bidding on keywords is a proven technique to boost affiliate sales. If you are selling a book on tennis injuries through one of the major online booksellers, why not buy the term tennis injury?
For just a few cents you can get top placement on Goto.com. For a 15 percent affiliate commission on a $45 book -- it may just be worth investing the two cents. Get creative and bid high and low throughout the paid search engines. Goto.com recently implemented monthly minimums but others allow you to maintain low bids and do not require a monthly minimum. Be sure to inspect your reports and check back often to see if your site may have been outbid by another advertiser. Beware, this technique can become ADDICTIVE!
Paid Searchengines.com and Position Guardian are Web-based keyword bid optimizers that automatically keep track of a bidder's positions while finding costly spaces between bid amounts. Other resources include Payperclicksearchengines.com and Search Engine Watch.
Next week's article will conclude the topic of Search Engine Tips.
Cynthia A. Arko is the Product Director for internet.com's Refer-it.com (Refer-it.com) affiliate directory. She coordinates advertising, site development, and conference planning. Cynthia helped grow Refer-it.com from a small directory of Affiliate Programs to the Web's leading resource for information about affiliate programs. She also currently maintains KidsTown Direct, a shopping portal for parents and young families. Cynthia can be reached at carko@internet.com.
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