Link Master

In Affiliate Marketing Blueprint 3 we went over SEO, Domain Names, Hosting etc., so lets continue on with our plan of action. Creating our site is pretty easy if you chose to use a blog. If you are going with a static Website then you must know some html to get you started. There are a lot of templates and themes available to get you off to a running start no matter what route you want to take. Just make sure that the template you use is not restricted to non-commercial use, because some do come with restrictions on what they can be used for.

Creating Your Site

You are going to want to write some articles, or have someone write them for you. You want to use your Keywords throughout the articles for your content. If you chose a Niche that you are familiar with then it should be pretty easy to get this done. If not just do some research on the Internet about your Niche to come up with topics surrounding your Niche that you can write about? You want to write about how your Niche is going to solve someone’s problem, or fulfill his or her needs. You need to express the features and benefits of your product to your visitors and what it is going to do for them.

With a Blog you will get indexed fairly quickly, whereas with a static website it usually takes a little longer. With a Blog you have what is called pinging. What that is basically is announcing that something new was added to your blog. Blogs are social websites where the content tends to change frequently, and pinging is a way to let everyone know that you have added some new content. I have pinged a static website address as well, but it is used mainly for blogs.

Getting Indexed

What do I mean when I say getting indexed? All that means is that the search engines know your site exists, not that you are on the top page of search results. How do you know if the search engines have indexed your site? If you do a search for your Domain Name in quotes like “golfswingtipsandmore.com” and your site is not listed, that means that they have not indexed your site yet.

How do you go about getting indexed in the first place? You have to give the search engines what they want, Content. But not just any old content will do, that is where your work with SEO, Keywords, Site Title and Description along with your articles all comes together to become relative content. Is that enough? No, because the other thing search engines like is a website that it sees as an authority on the topic it is indexed for. That means a website that other websites have links to. Those links are called Backlinks and give your website more authority then by itself.

Ok, I know what your thinking. Sounds like a lot of work and just how are you going to get all of these Backlinks to your site. Well, it will take some work on your part, but what will doing nothing get you? Be honest with yourself. Can you go to your job and do nothing and get paid for that? If so then great, you have the best job in the world, although I think I would be bored. On the Internet a little work can go a long ways and has the potential to pay long after the work is done. Ok, enough about that lets keep going here.

Adding Your Links

There are a number of ways for you to create backlinks to your site. You can write a press release. Write articles and summit them to article sites. You can join youtube and create some videos or, join a couple forums that relate to your Niche. You can create a free blog at blogger.com and Wordpress.com and you can bookmark your site using socialmarker.com all of which you can then link back to your Website. All of this will do two things for you. It will create the Backlinks you need to give your website more authority in the eyes of the search engines, plus free traffic from those sites as well.

Don’t just link to your main site, but also to other pages within your site to give you depth in your Backlinks. It wouldn’t help you to link everything back to your main page. Be creative and have a number of accounts each with different email addresses. Write a report and give it away for free at your site or on your free accounts for some viral links back to your site. You could even write a short ebook and give that away the same way. All with links back to your site or product.

Some of the best titles for reports and ebooks like this are 10 things you must do to blank, The 5 best ways to do that, 3 Secrets to something else. People loves list of things that show or tell them what they need to do to do something. Or to have a question answered, and How To’s are all good giveaway viral items. Plus it can help you build a list if placed with a sign up form.

Promotion

Once your Website is indexed by the search engines add your Affiliate Links to your content. By doing everything we just talked about you are also promoting your site and driving traffic to it as well. Once your backlinks start to build the search engines should start rating your site better. Use as many of the tactics I mentioned above as you can and you should see the traffic level increase to your site. It won’t happen overnight, but if you keep building more and more Backlinks it will happen.

Traffic

You could also place ads at free advertising sites, buy solo ads in ezines and newsletters. You could start a PPC ad campaign to drive traffic as well. Depending on your Niche you could even place ads offline to drive traffic to your site.

Once you have built your backlinks, joined a couple of forums related to your Niche, etc, etc. you can look back at what you have done to see how things are working. What can you do more of, what can you change, or do differently? What can you farm out to others that would free you up to start your next project?

Evaluation

Evaluate your site and see if changes need to be made. If so make them and re-evaluate, or If things are looking good do it all over again with your next project.

I know this series of posts have been a condensed version of some ideas to get you started. The main thing is just that, to get started. If you never start what have you gained? It doesn’t matter what you do, just do it, and change things if you need to later. You don’t have to be perfect and you can learn anything you need to know as you go.

I hope this has helped. Being that space is limited I am going to be putting a Resource Page together for all the links I couldn’t fit here within my posts. I will gather up some great Free Ebooks for you also that may cover some of these topics in greater detail if you are interested in getting more information. See you soon.

Mark