So much of the issue with being successful in affiliate programs is generating quality traffic. In my experience, purchasing traffic from various sources is at best a break even game. How can you tip the scale to your favor? Getting as much traffic as you can from search engines for free! Here are 10 quick tips that if done right can get your site more traffic!
1. Creating quality content for your website
Perhaps the number one most important SEO activity you can undertake is creating quality content. Regardless of all the tricks and other tips you follow, having quality content has several advantages:
- You end up getting better SEO results from search engines
- Visitors will come back to your site
- Other webmasters will link to your content
2. Selecting Keywords that can jump you to the top of search engines
This is tricky because you want popular keywords, but not keywords that are so popular you can't get good rankings. For example... if you want a loan site to get better rankings it would be tough to get to the top of that competitive market with keywords like 'low interest loan'. However if you started to look for regional (Loans in Chicago) or more niche markets (boat loans) you will likely have more success. Try to find the sweet spot where you can get popular keywords, yet not so much so that you get swamped out of the top positions.
3. Get quality back links
One of your primary SEO goals should be to have as many quality links point back to your site as possible. There are many ways to accomplish this:
· Use signature footers on popular forums
· Create unique articles and post them in respected directories
· Find site directories in your niche that allow you to post links
· Use social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Digg
4. Avoid link farms
You may become tempted by services that offer to submit your site to 10,000 directories and search engines. Typically you should avoid these services. Google and other search engines filter for these tactics and have labeled them ‘bad neighborhoods’. While you cannot be penalized for links that come to your site, you can be penalized by pointing to them. In general, create quality content and forget thinking there is a shortcut.
5. Use your keyword phrase in your site content
Many webmasters can boost their site traffic by looking at their pages and finding ways to modify their content to incorporate keyword phrases. When you are writing your article content, make sure that you keep the important keywords in your mind. As this is an article on SEO tips and tricks I’m consciously using keywords that I believe will help this article get better positioning and ranking by various search engines. At the same time it is important not to overdo it. The search engine providers are not stupid and have algorithms that look for excessive keywords or content that is created simply to trick the search engines.
6. Update your site frequently
Having new content and a site that continues to deliver new information will help your site’s search engine results in the long run. This also helps meet tip #1 and creating quality new content. In addition to search engine value, updating your site frequently will encourage users to come back and check on it. It helps you become more of an authority in your market and get a leg up on the competition. Another advantage to updating your site frequently is that it will bring the search engine spiders back on a more frequent basis and they will index your site more frequently. If you make no changes for six months, then when you do make a change it will take it much longer to see those results than if your site is changing every day. When I’m doing serious SEO work on a site I make changes each and every day and add content each day. That way I can see the results of my efforts and get a faster feedback loop.
7. Work to find your site niche
On the Internet it is often better to be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond. Many markets on the Internet have very intense competition for search engine results. Creating a new site it will often feel like your site is invisible getting only a few visitors a day at most. How do you increase your visibility? Instead of trying to compete against the entire field, instead work to grab a smaller niche of the market. Let’s use a site like animals for example. That is a big field! Now if you were to create a site just focused to dogs, there would still be a lot of competition. If however you narrowed the site to focus on ‘hunting dogs’, you have a smaller niche. Finally you could decide to focus your hunting dogs site on Black Labs. As you narrow down the niche your ability to climb to the top of the search engines increases.
8. Create links within your own site
This is one of those tips that you can do without having to depend on the kindness of others. While not as valuable as links from other popular sites pointing to your own, it definitely helps to have links within your own site pointing to other pages. This also can help with keeping people on your site and leading them to additional content. Many webmasters overlook this trick which you can use to give yourself an advantage.
9. Write a unique keyword rich title for each and every page
One of the most obvious mistakes a webmaster can make is using the same title for every page on their site. I consulted with an electronics repair company that had more than 5,000 pages of parts and circuit boards they could repair. Yet the title at the top of the website remained the same no matter which page you landed on. Making this one change had a dramatic impact on search engine results. Google and other search engines put a great deal of emphasis on the value of the title of your webpage. Think carefully about the title of each of your pages and make sure they include keywords that will deliver visitors for the keywords you wish.
10. Get a domain name that has the keywords you wish to target
Google has a way of giving a lot of credibility domain names in which the keywords tie in well with the content. For the best results you want to get the .com extension. It still is the Cadillac of domain names and seems to always get better value for your SEO efforts. That does not mean that other extensions are worthless. It just means that .com is going to make your life that much easier at getting your site ranked near the top of the search engines. Also, remember that you can use hyphens in domain names without getting a significant (if any) penalty.
Conclusion
Search engine optimization is more of an art than a science. Take the time to make small changes then see how those results work their way through the search engines over the next few weeks. Remember though that tip #1 is the most important. Your site needs content not just to get higher up in the search engines, but to have staying power there. Sure there are tricks that can temporarily get you better rankings, but if you want something that lasts you have to do it right.
Best of luck!