Everyone in this industry knows how important solid SEO tactics are to increase how your offers convert. Sure, we can (and do) buy search terms, but wouldn’t you rather get all that traffic organically, for free?

Now that I have your attention, I want to tell you about a product called from Hamlet Batista called Ranksense. Experts are raving about it:

Search Engine Journal Says: “Besides making the SEO process much easier by automating and semi-automating it, the software gives you an idea of how this analysis should be properly performed.”

SEO Scoop Says: “Tools are an SEO’s best friend. Tools enable us to utilize a machine’s ability to quickly gather and process information…I’ve been testing [Ranksense] for a couple of months and I like it a lot.”

If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that Hamlet’s posts are informative and spot-on. Because he’s such a cool guy, he’s offered to give Advaliant Affiliates a 20% discount on Ranksense! All you have to do is contact you Affiliate Manager to get the promo code.

Head on over and download the free trial, then get 20% off from you account manager today!

Before starting any SEO project, I always recommend being perfectly clear on the overall goals you are trying to achieve. Are you looking for more leads, more sales, more traffic, branding — or do you simply want to show off high rankings for keyword X? Each site is a different, and I want to show you how to measure success depending on your own SEO goals.

Let’s say your primary goal is branding…

Perhaps you only care about the amount of traffic to the site because your blog makes ad dollars from page views. In this case, you need to fix your attention on simple metrics that you can gain from your analytics package: a) the amount of search traffic; b) the bounce rate of the search traffic; c) and the direct traffic.

Look for keywords that result in the highest number of visits and the lowest number of bounce rates. Despite what you may think, traffic with a 100% bounce rate is not even good for branding purposes. You need visitors that spend at least a few minutes and demonstrate a minimal level of interest in your content/offer. Also check to see if you are ranking on the first page for these keywords, and preferably above the fold (the first section of the page that does not require scrolling down). The difference in traffic generated between a #1 ranking and a #2 is usually tremendous.

A good way to measure the progress of your branding campaigns is to chart the increase in your direct traffic (people who type your URL into the address bar or arrive from a bookmark). Another important metric is the number of people that come to your site via brand searches (people who typed your company or site name into Google hoping to find you). Traffic coming from brand searches is usually the best converting traffic there is because these are visitors who have already expressed interest in your company or product. If you’re a merchant, don’t make the mistake of bidding in AdWords for brand searches. You should end up with the traffic anyways through organic SEO and it is not smart business to pay twice for the same visitor. However, if you’re an affiliate marketer, the situation is just the opposite. Some merchants don’t understand the process and still allow affiliates bid on brand terms. Some might even encourage it, and that allows you to make a lot of money. Take advantage of those few merchants while you still can!

Now, let’s say your primary goal is sales…

This has to be the goal of most affiliates and small business owners. When your primary goal is sales/conversions/actions, your first order of business is to set up conversion tracking properly. As an affiliate this can be tricky because the “thank you” page is under the merchant’s control. But in cooperation with your affiliate manager you might be able to get your tracking bugs installed on the merchant thank you page. Another alternative is to use your ad network tracking software, which often includes the capability of specifying your tracking bug on the affiliate backend. (I already suggested this feature to the team at Advaliant and I’m sure they will make it available in the next major update.) There is a more advanced technique that I sometimes use involving tracking IDs that I will explain in more detail in a future post.

Tracking conversions essentially means identifying the best keywords and the best sources of traffic so that you can adjust and improve your future traffic generation efforts. I like to set up PPC campaigns not just to drive traffic but also to use “broad match” to find lots of new keywords that I did not consider during my initial keyword research. Focus on the best-converting keywords and try to reach the top spots for them. Remember, the difference in traffic generated between a #1 ranking and a #2 is usually significant and worth your effort.

Final thoughts

Small things can produce big results, but in SEO it’s just as important to step back and look at the big picture. Tiny little tweaks like adding ALT descriptions to images is useful and necessary, but how many new visitors will you gain this way in comparison to the amount of visitors you would have gained by refocusing your keywords to ones with higher traffic and conversions?

If you do a search in Google for “search engine optimization”, “seo” or any similar term you will find countless outdated articles that promote practices that are not very useful these days – i.e.  website submissions, link exchanges, altering meta keyword tags, etc.

These seemingly useful tactics do very little for the ultimate goal of an effective SEO campaign—to drive meaningful traffic.  Because search engines have changed significantly in the last ten years, many of these outdated practices are no longer necessary; while some, like the massive link exchanges are actually considered search engine “spam”.

So if these techniques are not the way to higher search rankings, what are we left with?

Focus on Qualified Visitors

First, you need to think about SEO in terms of specific goals. Think of SEO as anything and everything you can do to your website or landing page to improve the number of qualified visitors who are attracted to it from search engines.  In order to attract these qualified visitors, you should strive to achieve the following 3 goals:

Goal # 1 The most critical is increasing your site’s visibility.  Before a user can find a website on a search engine, the search engine must find that site first!  What’s more, the search engine must also deem the site important (i.e. worthy of having a high place in the index).  At the moment, the major search engines rely primarily on a site’s incoming links. If many large sites link to your content, Google will assume your content is at least somewhat useful.  To increase your site’s visibility you must work on building quality incoming links.

Goal # 2 - The second goal is targeting.  If you want to get more qualified visitors to your website, you must understand which keywords are bringing you the right visitors—visitors that are likely to take action on your site (subscribe to a newsletter, buy something, etc.)  A lot of people who are new to SEO or the Web just want a lot of traffic — but traffic alone will not guarantee success.  What you want is the right kind of traffic, the traffic that will take action on your site. Targeting the right keywords is the best way to accomplish this.

Goal # 3 - The final goal that you should pursue is what I like to call the site’s presence. This involves getting as many pages as possible indexed, especially the ones that are most important to your overall goals. If your content isn’t getting listed then people aren’t going to be finding the most relevant content that you’ve created.

Three Simple Steps to Successful SEO

SEO is not simply about ranking #1 for a random keyword.  Many people will tell you that, but they are missing the point.  The purpose of effective SEO is getting as much traffic for qualified keywords. 

When the right visitors are coming to your site and taking action on your content, then you know you’ve accomplished successful SEO.  But how do you achieve this?  My strategy has 3 distinct steps:

1.     Research – Try to understand where your site is right now.  Are you targeting the right keywords? What’s your market? Are you missing any keyword opportunities? What are your competitors doing? Understanding what successful competitors are doing lets you learn and apply their strategies to your own site.

2.     Create/Promote – The next step is to create an SEO plan that will get you where you need to be. This usually involves creating or reconfiguring content to attract the right type of user with qualified keywords. Just as important, you need to promote your content so that users can find it. There are a lot of tactics to do SEO properly, but here are some basics, many of which I’ve previously discussed in my SEO blog.

 

• Keyword research
• SEO copywriting
• Social media marketing
• Link building and baiting
• Blogging
• Creating and submitting XML sitemaps
• Duplicate content
• URL rewriting and redirects

3.     Track progress – The final step, and this is one that people often forget, is tracking your progress! How far are you from your specific goals? Periodically checking in will help you understand where you are so that you can learn what worked and what didn’t, as well as those areas that you still have to work on.

It is important to understand that you need to complement your affiliate landing pages with useful content. It is very hard to attract visitors and links to pages that are only sales pitches. Use content pages as pre-selling tools that lead to the affiliate offers. The content pages should be the ones you are trying to optimize.

This is my first post on this blog and I am not sure how educated readers are on SEO.  I hope this has been useful! Please feel free to sound off in the comments.

…Of course you do. Anybody who is anybody wants to take their affiliate marketing business to the next level. OK, so how do you do it? Tell me Mike, what’s the quickest way to strike it rich? Tell me, tell me, tell me NOW!!!

The first step in the creation of your “ladder to success” is, and this is coming straight from the advertiser’s mouth; “think like the client.” What helps them drive their business? Put yourself in their shoes and pretend you’re the VP of Marketing for a while. Be original and swim up-stream. The effort is worth it and besides, it’s not as crowded in that direction.

The reality of today’s online space (and kick me if I wrong) is that almost anybody can be an affiliate. Somewhere along the way you’ve become incredibly web-savvy, have a site or sites with ad space, have built an email database of opt-ins or you have the uncanny ability to create a search program while eating your Cheerios. With one or more of those skills and assets you’ve just earned your affiliate ID # and can now start promoting offers and cash-in on the CPL or CPA payout. Don’t get me wrong, there are some great affiliates out there, but there’s also no bar exam to pass, no affiliate designation to get. On top of that, unfortunately, that openness to join the affiliate fraternity allows a few rotten apples to ruin it for the bunch. What do you get when you build a pile of great apples and then surround them with a few rotten ones? - it’s not a pretty smell to advertisers. That smell means we have to self-regulate to clear the air.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come across a new affiliate running a campaign whose conversion rates have been out of this world. When you see 5 clicks and 5 conversions, jackpot bells don’t ring, fraud sirens do. Wow, how did that affiliate get that great conversion rate? – don’t bother answering, we already know. With that kind of activity does the affiliate believe that those leads will turn into customers for the client? Do they think that the client won’t notice your AFFID # as the source of poor leads and ban you from future campaigns? The reality is the Aff ID# will be red-flagged and not allowed to run other high quality private ad campaigns.

Let’s get real here. If you think like the client and focus on finding and acquiring quality leads and quality conversions then you will be building your “ladder to success” – not with toothpicks but solid high quality rungs. The client will identify (and us too) that you are a professional marketer, and that your leads and conversions can be trusted. With honesty, effort and professionalism comes opportunity. Straight from the client’s mouth: “quality is the number one focus.” If the quality is there then the vault will open and everyone will get rich.

Which way are you going to swim?

The Digital Media Evolution: A birds-eye view of Affiliate Marketing 2004 - 2008

It is hard to not to distinguish the stages of evolution which have taken place over the period of 2004 to 2008.  I have noted these changes first hand and often gasp at the rapid growth of our space.  The online marketing realm was built on innovation and it is for this very reason it will continue to progress at a staggering rate.

The affiliate marketing community is comprised of varied distribution methods and unique business models. The common denominator, is our end goal to successfully monetize the traffic we are receiving or in some case acquiring. So where were affiliate marketers in 2004 and what has changed today?

E-mail Marketing – Inbox Gold

During 2002 to the mid/end of 2005 e-mail marketers dominated the space as a lucrative distribution channel. The creation of the CanSpam Act assisted with enhancing the user experience and establishing provisions and guidelines for affiliate marketers to adhere to. Today e-mail marketing continues to evolve as a brand centric distribution channel with solid reach.

Display Marketing and the Pop Up Ad Bust

Simple display marketing was, and will remain, the pillar of CPM media buys. This platform will continue to be used as a method to drive brand awareness however ROI has vastly shifted due to contextual/behavioral technologies moving to the forefront during 2007.  Late 2005 and early 2006 brought forth the regulation of adware programs which was very much spearheaded by the work of Mr. Benjamin Edelman. Many affiliate networks moved to cease any/all association with organizations deemed as adware networks and affiliate marketers were forced to seek new distribution channels.

Search Engine Marketing [SEM] – Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

The affiliate community shifted their marketing spend during 2006 and thus began the pay-per-click revolution. Many publishers tested multiple platforms simultaneously [Google, Yahoo etc] in order to gage their ROI, learn the platforms and test all possibilities. Late 2006- early 2007 the tipping point occurred and PPC soon became the distribution channel of choice regardless of grave competition.

Social Media Extravaganza

Search engine marketing spearheaded a new level of reach/audience targeting and then, welcome the explosion of social networking sites. Although Friendster and MySpace were first to launch, it wasn’t until Facebook opened its API [mid 2007] that affiliate marketers could capitalize on sites of this nature. Today publishers can select from a number of metrics and creative outlets which best meet their unique marketing needs and business models.

Today a distribution channel is classified as any of the above platforms however there are many others bubbling to the surface [IE mobile]. Regulation will dictate the next course of action for all marketing platforms but technological advances will indulge the savvy affiliate marketer throughout the evolution of digital media.

As an affiliate marketer, you have embarked on a journey that provides you with the entrepreneurial freedom to choose a business model that caters to your professional strengths and personal interests. All successful conquests begin with a clear and concise roadmap and as an affiliate marketer yours must be transferrable and innovative! Your marketing strategy should be as dynamic as the landscape is, and by incorporating these points to each of your initiatives, you will be well on your way to a successful campaign launch!

Identify and Become the Brand

• Take the time to assess the active marketing initiatives of the brand you are looking to promote.
  -What mediums is the brand actively using to market its product? (online, radio etc)
  -Current SEM promotion: is the brand marketing on all tier 1-3 engines?
  -Note the verbiage and graphics used in all of the promotions (is the message clear and marketable?)
  -What is the value proposition to the user and is there a sense of urgency (seasonality/limited time offer)?
• Determine the core demographic of the brand and identify who the online target audience is.
  -Is there a similarity (brand demo and online target audience)?
  -If so, draw the parallels and note the similarities. This will assist you with marketing to the most conversion prone audience.
  -If not, be sure to target both audiences as there may be an opportunity to capitalize on a new (unsaturated) market share.

Competitive Landscape Analysis

• Conduct an extensive search to determine who the brands offline/online competitors are.
  -Analyze each competitors campaigns by taking note of the features/benefits of the product and the value proposition to the user.
• Note the distribution channels that the competition is using to promote their campaign (IE: SEM and Social Media etc).
  -Diversifying distribution channels allows for an extensive reach to multiple market shares. (IE: SEM targets real-time purchasers while social media provides brand engagement/awareness)
• Do not simply mirror the competition but trump it through innovation.
  -Identify what is marketable about the competitor’s campaign and finesse it.

Distribution Channel: En Route to Conversions

• Establish a marketing budget which is flexible to the emerging media landscape.
  -SEM distribution: Be clear with what your ceiling and floor spends are but ensure you have the ability to inflate/deflate daily.
• Institute a monthly TEST budget .
  -If you’re monthly marketing budget is $1000 (SEM distribution), allocate $200 of that to test distribution via an alternative channel.
• Marketing your campaign through more than one distribution channel will assist with stabilizing your revenue streams and building your portfolio. Diversification is the claim to fame!

Happy marketing (and earning)!