seo and affiliate marketing blog

If you haven’t already read steps 1 - 5, you might want to do that first:
Step 1 - Picking a domain name
Step 2 - Research the niche
Step 3 - Building your site template
Step 4 - Building a Product Page
Step 5 - Putting Your Site Together

Sitemap
Create a sitemap and keep it updated. Link to every section and page you put on your domain. Making a sitemap and linking to your own products or services, plus listing them again on your main page, should keep your all your pages indexed.

Product Map
If you sell products, like As Seen On Tv Affiliate Program, then make a product map for your site as well. Link to any pages you build that are just for the products. Also, link to the buy pages (your affiliate links). So you have a link directly to your page on your site, but then have a buy product now link as well.

Niche Map
If you have several niches or themes on your domain. Make a map of all your niches, link to each niche. You can even seperate niche maps if you have too many.

Link to every map you build on all your pages. Link back to the main index from all page (which you already did in your template and the head image of your template )

It is always good to link to internal pages within your site. If you can link to every page on every page, then do it. Thinking of it as showing even the most unfamiliar surfer (the dummy that thinks email@emailsite.com is a website), how to find things on your site. If they can find it, a bot can too.

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Written by Tanya Martin from Over The Mark. Keep an eye out for more great articles and tips at her SEO and Affiliate Marketing Blog. Interested in having your linking methods evaluated or your affiliate system evaluated? Contact Debbie Bonventre at debbie@overthemark.com. or call 1.888.987.7861

If you haven’t already read steps 1 -4, you might want to do that first:
Step 1 - Picking a domain name
Step 2 - Research the niche
Step 3 - Building your site template
Step 4 - Building a Product Page

Front Page of You Website
Hopefully by now you have had time to build all your products pages. Now it is time to begin making your front end. For this you need to take out your template.

Head Tags
Change the H1 Tag at the top to the theme of your store (or affiliate website). Place a few product thumbs (be sure to use the alt image tag) and a small introduction of the product on the page. Make each of these have a H2 tag. Link in to your product page, you can also link directly to the affiliate website as well.

Link Tactics
I usually put the name with a direct link to the affiliate program on top, then describe the item and put a click here for more info on product name. That link, I send to my website product page.

This helps send some traffic directly to your sponsor. But also allows then to stay on your site (and search engines to find all your pages).

Link All Products
Once you have enough product images and text to make the page fill up, you can make a directory at the bottom of the website to each of the other products.

Meta Tags
Now finish off with adjusting your meta tags. Change the title, keywords and description. Use several of the products names, preferably the ones you did pictures of.

We will continue with internal linking and site maps in the next part of these tutorials.

Host Crowding Facts
In an earlier article on SEO Theories and Fact I went over how Google filters some websites based on host crowding. We know host crowding is a fact. It is stated in Google’s own FAQ’s about their API. You can read about the Automatic Filtering they do here:
http://www.google.com/apis/reference.html#2_3

Now, because they don’t exactly say how they filter for Host Crowding. We can only go with different theories.

SEO Theories on Host Crowding Filter
Some theories are they filter by Class C IP (this is the most popular one). Some are they do it by whois. Another is they do it by nameservers. Some even say by all of them.

Static IP
From my own experiences with Google and their host crowding filter from years ago, it seemed like they did it by IP. So if you shared an IP, all you had to do is get a new static IP for each domain. For the past year, this has not been enough.

I believe they filter somehow by class C. Now don’t panic. It doesn’t mean if you have 10 sites that they are only going to list one based on what the API Faq’s say. They are looking at the results. So if you have 10 different sites, all going after different niches or themes, then you probably have nothing to worry about. However, linking within your own 10 site network probably won’t do much for you (we will get into that more with link building).

Whois or Nameservers
Now this one is interesting. Google recently became an ICANN Accredited Registrar. TDavid mentions this at Make You Go Hmm blog on Google and MSN. This leads me to believe they may in the future add this to their filter, but I don’t believe they do this already. But it sure looks like they may want to learn more so they can. But then again, maybe they will start letting you register domains sometime.

Multiple Class C IP Solution
This solution by far isn’t easy to get. It takes either breaking up your domains with many hosting companies, which usually cost more money or finding one that has many servers or many class C’s. This week, I was lucky enough to find a hosting company that has multiple Class C IP’s available. Not only that, they will also have muliple nameservers available.

If you are interested in getting on the priority list, contact tanya@overthemark.com. Let me know how many Class C IP’s you are looking for and anything else you may require.

As soon as they have the packages setup in the next week or so, I will post the information here for everyone.

If you haven’t already read steps 1 - 3, you might want to do that first:
Step 1 - Picking a domain name
Step 2 - Research the niche
Step 3 - Building your site template

Building a Product Page
First open the template page we made in Step 3. This is what we will start with. Hopefully you know the products you want to promote or you have joined MixedGoods Affiliate Program.

Product Image
We will need a picture of the product. Place this in the top or side area of the page, your choice. Go ahead and link the image with your affiliate linking code. Include text for the image alt tag. ProductName is a good one. If the product has more then one word as the name, try putting it all as one word. Often there are searches for it as one word, but very low competition. This makes for an easy sale for you.

Page Tags
Next you will want to change the first Header Text (H1) to the name of the product. Then change the meta tags to match this product. Describe the product and put in the description that they can buy Product Name there.

You already have some ads on the page from when you built the template. You can customize them a little (the friend finder one) to other keywords.

Description Text
Next place the product text on the page. Describe the product. Change H2 to reflect something about the product. Example Product Name Features: can be a great Header Tag. Bold keywords in the text, don’t do this too much. Just a few times to highlight that this is what your page is about.

Anchor Text
Include the name of the product at the top of your text. Link that with your affiliate code. Also include Buy Product Name at the bottom under the text. Again link this with your affiliate code.

Repeat
Keep repeating this for every product you want on your website.

Later we will go over building the index page, internal linking and link building.

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Written by Tanya Martin from Over The Mark. Keep an eye out for more great articles and tips at her SEO and Affiliate Marketing Blog. Interested in having your linking methods evaluated or your affiliate system evaluated? Contact Debbie Bonventre at debbie@overthemark.com. or call 1.888.987.7861

If you haven’t already read step 1 and step 2, you might want to do that first:
Step 1 - Picking a domain name
Step 2 - Research the niche

Building Your Website
If you don’t know html or how to use Dreamweaver (or similar program), well then you are in the wrong place. I’m not going to teach you that here

You will want to come up with a design for your site. Preferable something that shows some nice image/logo and has room for text content. A good way for beginners to start is to make a simple header image for the top of the page. The name of the site and maybe some type of logo or image that relates to the theme of your site. Place this on the page and use the rest of the page for text and links.

Now that was pretty simple. Before you go any further, put a link on the bottom of the page. This link should be Keyword Phrase Home or just Keyword Phrase. Link that to the index page of your site. Also, link the header image you just made to the index. Put in the alt tag…alt=keyword phrase. The top and bottom do not have to be the same phrase. Similar is fine. Maybe you are promoting the As Seen On Tv Products or Unique Gifts from Mixed Goods. If your focusing on As Seen On Tv Products, then have as seen on tv in one place and as seen on tv products in the other.

Next layout the rest of the page, put an area for pictures and/or text. Add 1-2 area’s for other ads. Maybe one on the side and one on bottom. This will be our ads for Google Adsense and Friend Finders.

Header Text
Once you have the layout done, you can start laying out header text. Put the words Header Text 1 (set as H1 in the font settings) right under your header image. Next put Header Text 2 (set as H2 in the font settings) in the text or picture area. Finally put Header Text 3 (set as H3 in the font settings) in the ad box on the side and ad box on the bottom of the page. Now if you don’t like the big text (which I don’t) you can pick a font and a smaller font size for these.

Meta Tags
Place your meta tags in the top of the page, just under the html tag. These will be your basic tags. Here is an example:

In the classification, I usually look at dmoz and find categories that my site would match. That is what I use there. First this will help you focus on what type of site you are building, second some search engines may pick this up.

Website Template
Now save this as your index page and then as temp or template.html. This will be the page we will start with on everything else we do for the site. You will adjust things on each new page you build using the template, like keywords, title, etc. But you have the basics ready when you get that far.

We will start building more tomorrow.

So you know the domain you are going to use. If you don’t please read Step 1 - Picking A Domain Name.

Researching the niche
In Step 1, you researched some keywords to help you pick out a domain. Now you need to use some of those keywords to find out what websites are listed for them. Check Google, Yahoo and MSN for each of the keywords that you are interested in using.

Click through to these sites and see how they are laid out. What type of words do they use? How much text do they use? How many sites are linking to them? How many pages on this site are indexed?

Search Engine Commands
Some search engine commands can help you with the task of finding out how many backlinks a site has and how many pages are indexed for that site. (backlinks - how many links they have pointing to the site)

Google & MSN Commands
site:domainname.com (shows the pages indexed)
link:domainname.com (shows the sites that link to it)

Yahoo Commands
domain:domainname.com (shows the pages indexed)
linkdomain:domainname.com (shows the sites that link to it)

Evaluate the research
After you know these things, you can decide on what keywords you would like to use. Just realize that if the keyword you are targeting has 25,000 links to it, it may take some time.

I never tell anyone to pick something easier to get. It just shows you how much link building you will need to do. I go for the tough ones, but target the smaller keywords at the same time. We will get to that after we go over building the site.

Remember, if someone tells you that the keyword has too much competition, that you should try something easier, just maybe they don’t want another competitor. How will you know whether or not you can do it if you don’t try?

Research Conclusion
You should now have an idea of how much link building you will need to do. Also, you can see how much content and how many pages most competitors have. You will want to try to get this many on your website. It will give you a good internal link structure. I will go over that when we start building the website.

Domain Name
First part of search engine optimization is your domain. Google doesn’t put much weight on this, but Yahoo still does. So you want to pick a domain that has some keywords in it that matches your niche/theme (what you are selling). If you have a domain, know your niche and don’t really want to build a new domain, then you should skip this article.

Affiliate Programs
First I look at the affiliate program. As Seen On Tv Affiliate Program has many different types of products. You will find automotive, kitchen products, gifts, as seen on tv products, jewelry, etc. Decide which type of products you are interested in promoting. This is the theme of your site.

Other sponsors like Google Adsense and Friend Finders are good add ons. You can build very targeted sites and pages for Friend Finders, but they are wonderful for any type of site you have. Google Adsense and ads like this can be used anywhere.

Keywords
To help find some good keywords you can use for your niche and new domain, you might try wordtracker if you have an account. Or you can head over to Digital Point’s Keyword Tool which is free.

Domain
After you pick your niche and research a little for keywords. Find a domain! Remember not to use any more then 2 hyphens (buy-this-now). Hyphens are good with Yahoo, okay with Google.

The last thing to think about is the look of the domain name. When you have your site ranked in the top 3 listings on Google, it is nice if the domain name makes the surfer interested. You can get the #3 spot and get more clicks then #1 and #2 if you do your job now.

Domain Examples
Say Google has these sites listed in the 1-3 positions:
hot-products-here.com #1
myfavoriteproducts.com #2
productsofficialsite.com #3

Which one would you click? I know each person will have their own pick, but most will click that ProductsOfficialSite.com or Products-Official-Site.com. There is just something a little more special about the name, something, I don’t know “Official".

Stop back by tomorrow for Step 2 - Research the Niche/Theme

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Written by Tanya Martin from Over The Mark. Keep an eye out for more great articles and tips at her SEO and Affiliate Marketing Blog. Interested in having your linking methods evaluated or your affiliate system evaluated? Contact Debbie Bonventre at debbie@overthemark.com. or call 1.888.987.7861