First, you don’t really NEED to submit to any search engines to wind up on their indices. Of course, you’ll most likely be there faster if you do. You’ll be working on your schedule, not theirs. This also gets around another problem. The thing about waiting for the search engines to find you is that they have to find you by an inbound link. In many cases, getting an inbound link involves being on the search engine indices anyway.

Web 2.0 Marketing—Free Inbound Links and Traffic

There are, of course, exceptions to this. If you’re familiar with Web 2.0 marketing, you know that you don’t have to wait for inbound links. You can build them yourself in certain social media properties. In this case, the search engines will find you without you submitting the site to the search engines.  So will your targeted traffic.

Which Search Engines Actually Matter

Now, about this talk of submitting to 15,000 or 20,000 or a million search engines. There are only three search engines that really matter to the average user. These are Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Although Yahoo is losing its importance to the almighty Google, it’s still important enough to go ahead and submit your site to it.  Bing is giving Google some stiff competition, so you’ll definitely want to get on that one.

The large bulk of the rest of the search engines don’t really matter to the average user (read customer). Besides that, there’s a little secret that these SEO guys who are selling this astronomical submission concept aren’t telling you. Want to know what it is?
The large majority of the other search engines have this little graphic on them that says “Powered by Google” or “Powered by Yahoo” or “Powered by Bing.” There may be one or two other search engine providers that power other search engines, but by and large, it’s the big three. Now, what could that possibly mean?

What “Powered by Google” Means

It means that they draw their search engine results directly from Google, Yahoo, MSN, or whatever other search engine provider they’re “powered by.” You are, in effect, submitting to these sites by proxy when you submit to Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The only service they really provide is that they limit the scope of their searches to specific niches. That is, assuming that’s what they’re really doing. How are you to know, really?

The search engines that tend to be “outside the pale” of Google, Yahoo, and MSN are usually interlibrary and university search engines. Unless you’re conducting scientific experiments in marketing, do you really need to be on JSTOR?

Nearly anyone can create a blog profile. Most blogging websites make profile building pretty intuitive. From there, it’s pretty easy to see how you can bring attention to your business on the basic level. For those with a great imagination and who are in the know with Internet marketing techniques, it’s a virtual gold mine of opportunity. It’s all in what information you enter where.

Blogging Doesn’t Have to Take Much Work

As I said earlier, blogging is relatively low maintenance. You might occasionally change around a few things here and there, and you will have to make blog posts regularly. That could be done on your website, sure. However, there are distinct advantages of using blog services like BlogSpot or WordPress over having a blog on your own website. One is that they are responsible for site maintenance, not you. It’s essentially free labor!

Also, if you don’t have the time or interest to actually do the blogging, you can always outsource it. There are several companies on the Internet that will provide that service to you.  The value of your time versus money is your choosing. Usually you can negotiate a good balance with your outsourcing company.

Advertising Your Website through Your Blog

Another technique is that by advertising your website on one or several of these blogging websites, you can use their ranking to your advantage. Combining the Google ranking of these websites along with the fine art of building a profile that’s a virtual advertising machine will shoot you straight to the top of Google searches. You just have to know how it’s done.

Blog Services are Interactive Lists

Finally, a great resource that using a blog service provides is a means to get feedback from your clientele. You can interact with them in the comments to your blog posts. This provides the advantage of knowing what your customers actually want. You can consider advice that they may give and, in general, make a lasting relationship with many of your clients. This can be advantageous to your business in that they may tell others about your services and draw more people to your profile and from there to your business’s website.

Another benefit with blogging is that you can network with other professionals. Obviously, by now, you’re not the only one who’s using this resource for their business. By building relationships with other Internet professionals, you can avail yourself of resources you might not have had otherwise.

As you can see, blogging is a multifaceted tool to use for listbuilding. You can cover a great number of avenues in marketing, customer relations, and networking using this tool. It’s all a matter of knowing what to do with it.

The rationale here is that pretty much, if you designate certain keywords as “headers,” this will draw the attention of the spiders to those keywords. It kind of makes sense, except that it doesn’t work that way. Multiple testing of this idea has consistently proven it wrong.

There are several reasons why this couldn’t work out. First of all, let’s assume that keywords have the same monumental importance that they previously had. The algorithms that the spiders work by don’t include header tags. It’s pretty much the same thing as saying that bolded or italicized keywords help your rankings.

Meta Descriptions – The Exception to the Rule

There is this one exception: It may be more likely that your keywords will show up in the meta description. Again, this will not overtly help your rankings. The search engines don’t consider much about websites based on their meta descriptions, whether they are generated by the search engine or the developers. You might increase some human traffic by theoretically ensuring that your keywords are in the search engine generated meta description, but don’t hold your breath. The keywords tend to be in there anyway.

The second reason that header tags don’t work for rankings is simply that keywords don’t have that much importance anymore. They have importance, yes, but there isn’t a magical formula to use them to improve your rankings. However, you can still get banned for keyword stuffing, so make sure that you’re not doing that in your header tags any more than the rest of your site.

It’s All about the Content

Another reason that putting keywords in header tags doesn’t work is that if the spiders come to that page, they’re going to crawl enough of the content on it to determine what they need to know about the keywords. If header tags DID get special consideration and draw attention to certain keywords, then so what? They’ve seen enough of the rest of your content that the headers don’t matter when it comes down to it.

Keyword Stuffing in the Header Tags

Why is it that the spiders don’t really care about header tags? Call it a hunch, but it looks like an easily exploitable flaw that could be used as a black hat trick. If header tags got special attention, and you can pretty much put in however many you want, guess what? You could spam the crap out of your header tags. You would, of course, have to be careful about keyword stuffing, but you could stuff less and have more weight. Guess who would catch on and not like it?

In the final analysis, you can use header tags all you want, but you shouldn’t expect any big results out of them.

By comparison, what do you think is the most important organ in the human body? Is it the heart? Is it the brain? The liver? The kidneys? The fact of the matter is that all of your organs are there for a reason. Without any one of them, there’s a good chance that you would be dead.

Your Entire Marketing Strategy is Important

The same is true of your marketing strategy. There is no one aspect of it that can stand alone and give you success. Anyone who says so is a flat-out liar.

According to Google, “Content is king.” However, without a high page ranking, your content will never be seen. Content by itself will not get you a high SERP rank.  If people don’t see what you’re saying, they naturally won’t click through on your link.

Keyword Placement is Important to Get Seen

Keyword placement is important to getting rank, especially if you’re working in a highly competitive niche. However, it is not a stand-alone technique for getting rank. In fact, if you have keywords and no content, you get shuffled over to the ignore pile and may be banned altogether. Besides, no one will want to look at a webpage of just keywords.

Your Web 2.0 and interlinking strategy are necessary steps, but they don’t make a website profitable by themselves. You still have to have content; you still have to have something to sell; and you still have to have keywords for the spiders to find. It won’t matter squat if you have a buddy in the government who will just link to your page. If you don’t have something to show, you’re dead in the water.

These and all the other elements of in-site and off-site SEO are all important but will not get you conversions on their own. It’s a group effect that no one thing can give you.

High Page Rankings Alone Won’t Win You Success

For that matter, high page rankings are, of course, important but by themselves are useless. Let’s say that somehow, without content, keywords, links, and everything else, you still manage to get a first page spot. So what? If you don’t have anything to say or show; if you don’t have anything for the spiders to crawl; and if you have nothing to sell, then you’re not going to get anything out of it.

Don’t ever be fooled by the words, “all-important.” These words, whenever combined with any aspect of affiliate marketing, are a sure sign of a myth.

How to Keep Affiliate Websites on the Cutting Edge

Affiliate websites are some of the most difficult websites to update. They usually amount to only having a page or two, and the content is pretty well set from the word “go.” What you’re left with is tweaking different elements to stir things up.

Chances are that you worked hard to create the perfect pitch, and you don’t want to mess with that. So, let’s look at the other elements on your page. Do you have a video on your page? If not, put one up. If so, put up a different one or at least change the tag. The anchor text leading to your opt-in page can usually be changed pretty readily. You can put up new testimonials or change old ones out (quite a substantial change in the copy!), have an editable countdown for empty seats, and so on. The point is to change enough stuff on the page that the search engines notice. Then, ping it!

News Sites are Easy to Keep Up-to-Date

Among the easiest (and most essential) websites to regularly update content on are news sites. If you’re doing news on a particular niche, the easiest thing to do is get a news ticker script at a site like www.hscripts.com. This program makes it easier to write and post news-worthy events on your website without all the hassle of the add/edit/delete process. In fact, this kind of script could be useful for a variety of sites, not just news related sites.

Blog Sites are Easy to Update and Extremely Useful

Particularly if you’re an affiliate marketer, external blog sites are essential for your cause. They start right off with a high level of authority and trust for the search engines. You can even monetize them if you want to play the Adsense game. Some people, strangely, think that this is an unethical practice or that they would even rather join a revenue sharing site like suite101.

The real money, though, is how your affiliate sites can gain page ranking by being linked to it. Most affiliate sites are temporary and don’t have time to get seasoned by Google’s PageRank. The promotion will often end at some point. You may decide that there are greener pastures out there and neglect an affiliate site. That’s all just peachy keen since they have the weight of your blog supporting them.

Your blog, on the other hand, is eternal. The longer you keep it going, the more authority it gets, and the greater a workhorse it is for your affiliate promotions. If you don’t have one, GET ONE!

Be Careful About Your Domain Name

Choosing the right domain name is all important, especially if you’re planning to keep it in the long haul. Affiliate programs come and go, but your domain has to stay. If it’s irrelevant to your future products, your site isn’t going to rank as well. It has to be universal but still relevant.
The thing to keep in mind is that you should never name your domain after your first product or even necessarily after your niche. You will probably change products in the future, and you may even go out of your niche. Your website named www.shawnspeanuts.com isn’t going to work if you’re selling t-shirts one day.

A good rule of thumb is to think of it either as www.yournames-affiliate-marketing.com or www.yourname-affiliate-marketer.com or something similar. Unless you have a very common name, your name will make it unique, and the rest is about the keywords. If your name is so common that no keyword combination works, consider an alias.

Why You Shouldn’t Use Free Sites Like Geocities

It may seem like a good idea at first to use a Geocities or Homestead free site for your first affiliate marketing site. It’s not—that is, if you expect to succeed. “Some” money CAN be made by setting up shop on a free site, but you’re not in this to make “some money,” are you?
You see, search engines and directories don’t count these sites most of the time. They’re technically considered “personal home pages,” and personal home pages don’t usually last long enough to be worth the search engines’ interest. In order to make ANY money from one of these sites, you have to seriously hit the mass mailings and social media sites. These strategies are great ways to start a campaign, but free sites defeat the purpose of trying to rank on the search engines.

The Problems with Black Hat Strategies

Black hat strategies often seem appealing, but they come with their own problems. Sure, you get a super-high ranking from using them, but you won’t last long at the top. Depending on how quickly the search engines update their indexes for your niche, you could be on top for as little as a few days, especially if you make a HUGE spike in your rankings. Not enough days to get many conversions.

Now, you may think, “No problem, I’ll just put up another site.” This site will also get de-indexed, and any future ones will also get de-indexed quickly. Meanwhile, while you beat your head against the search engines’ walls, you’re losing money.

Usually, the Sales Copy is already Done

Chances are that the copywriting is already written for your product.  If you’re promoting physical consumer products like clothing, video games, or whatever, the copy is a short but sweet catalog list.  With information products, especially electronic media, webinars and the like, the copy could be a long document that the vendor paid a copywriter several thousand dollars to write.

Either way, it’s important for you to realize that this stuff was written by someone who went through extensive and expensive training to write.  It takes literally hundreds of hours of practice, study, and experimentation to master, let alone the thousands of dollars they probably spent in classes, training materials, mentorships, and seminars.

In other words, the ultimate clinch is out of your hands and in the hands of people who know in intimate detail how to do it.  Your job as an affiliate marketer is to make them see that page.

Pre-Selling is Great for Directing Traffic

Our job ultimately is directing traffic, and pre-selling is a great way to grab their attention.  If you want to collect a bigger affiliate check, you need to learn how to do this.  Pre-selling works by warming up the visitor before they see the sales copy.  You have to connect with them.

A great strategy for pre-selling is to talk about the issues and problems that your prospects are concerned with.  Don’t worry about talking about the product; that’s what the sales copy is for.  Talk about the problems, provide your affiliate link as the solution to the problems, and let the sales copy take it from there.

Let’s say that you’re selling acne products.  It’s all well and good to talk about the processes of acne, but that really isn’t going to grab a visitor’s attention.  What IS going to grab their attention is talking about the issues surrounding acne: the embarrassment, the prom date in jeopardy, the horror of disfigurement.  It’s not about having a pimple that causes the pain; it’s that it causes them to have social embarrassment.

In short, it’s your job to push the mental and emotional buttons that make them follow your link to the solution.  Speaking in extreme terms about the problem gives them a sense of urgency about their problem that selling a product doesn’t.  Describing zits as facial volcanoes will go much farther than calling them white heads.  Once you’ve accomplished that sense of urgency, your affiliate checks will skyrocket.

Put Your Web Address on Business Cards

Business cards are a great place to start “real world advertising” for your web address.  They’re inexpensive, and you can take them with you wherever you go.  You can often leave them on store displays and counters.

Let’s say that you’re going to a marketing convention.  You will naturally want to have business cards there to get your name out among your peers.  It only makes sense to have your web address included.  Your phone number may be optional, but you’re missing a great chance if you don’t include your web address.

Advertise Your Web Site in the Newspaper

Many people still use the newspaper, and it’s still a valuable advertising medium for your website.  There’s a good chance that you’ll have to start small if your business is new.  Start with the local papers and expand to the more national ones as your budget allows.

Magazines are also a great place to advertise your website.  Just like with the newspapers, you’ll want to start off local and expand to the larger ones as your business grows.  You should particularly focus on the magazines that are local business oriented, especially if they relate to your niche.

TV Commercials Too Expensive?  Try Google TV Ads

Of course, having TV commercials would be awesome, and now Google TV Ads makes it affordable to most marketers.  Until a couple of years ago, TV advertising was cost-inhibitive for fledgling Internet marketers.  Here’s a basic idea of how Google TV Ads works.

If you’ve used Adwords, the interface for TV Ads should be familiar to you.  Much like in Adwords, you auction for your niche.  You use keywords to find the appropriate shows that you can advertise in, and you bid for time slots.  Once you win your time slot, you can upload your video and you’re ready to air.

This is, of course, assuming that your video meets their technical specs.  They’re not terribly hard to follow, but they have the option for you to let someone in the Ad Creation Marketplace make it for you.  It’s your call if you want to use it, but I’m willing to bet that you can find someone to make your commercial for you cheaper than what you’d find in the Ad Creation Marketplace.

The expenses in TV Ads follow the same basic patterns as in Adwords.  The hotter your niche and the better your time slot, the more expensive it is.  Just like Adwords, your TV campaign will be a compromise between your budget and your desired results.

First, Offer the Live Seminar for Opting In

As you can imagine, the promise of a live teleseminar is a great impetus to get people to start opting in.  If you use guest speakers, they will bring in their list, which you can add to your own.  Your list can literally grow by the thousands in a week or two.

You can keep offering live seminars, assuming that you’re willing to schedule a new seminar every week or so.  Of course, your ability to do this depends on your ability to schedule time for it, but it’s not a huge chunk out of your life.  If you’re not able to schedule repeated teleseminars, there are options.

Offer Recordings for the Opt In

If you don’t have the ability to do repeated live teleseminars to get people to opt in, you can offer a recording of your teleseminar as a freebie.  This isn’t nearly as exciting to a potential subscriber as a live seminar, but it still works.  There are certain benefits that it has to you beyond mere convenience, though.

For instance, you can use clips or text exerts as teasers.  You can put these on your capture page, or you can sprinkle them over your blog and other social media platforms.  This way, your recorded teleseminar can be a great way to drive traffic to your site.

Transcribe the Recordings to Drive Traffic to Your Website

Once you’ve milked your recordings for what they’re worth, you can still use them to drive traffic to your website.  If the traffic starts flagging from your teasers, it’s time to transcribe the teleseminars into text files.  This helps with your campaign in several ways.

First of all, you can use it for blog content.  It’s a kind of “rainy day check.”  You have to keep up with your blog posting, as you know.  As we all do at some point, you may have a day where you don’t feel particularly inspired to write a post.  No problem—you have stuff from your seminar that you can throw in there.

You can also use it for article marketing.  Each teleseminar can give you about three to four pieces of unique content.  This might call for some wording changes to hit a good keyword density, but it wouldn’t take much work to do it.  If you’re one of those guys who are into re-spinning articles, you can get many more articles, though this has its own risks.  Garbled articles and non-unique content come to mind.

Then you have press release material.  This could call for some ingenuity and reformatting on your part, but the results are worth it.  Submit them to several press release sites and watch the traffic roll in.

How to Write Press Releases for Submission

The first thing you need to know about how to write press releases is that you’re not writing articles.  If you write an article and submit it to a press release site, chances are you’ll get turned down.  You have to have the mindset of a reporter when you write these things.

Think of it this way: Your next product launch or event is always newsworthy.  Then write it as if you’re writing for a newspaper, which you are essentially doing.  You don’t have a “title.”  Instead, you have a “headline.”  Include the city and state at the front of the PR, if applicable.  You can even get a bit “salesy” with your press release since you’re trying to generate excitement.

How You Drive Traffic With Your PRs

Depending on the specifics of the PR site, you have a particular number of links that you can put in your PR to drive traffic to your site.  On the average, you’re looking at about 3 to 5 hyperlinks total.  You can usually have one of them as a URL link, but the rest of them have to be used to anchor text.

The URL link (your www.dot.com) will usually appear at the end of your press release.  The rest of them should be scattered throughout the PR, usually anchored in words that describe your product or service.  You can even use your name or the company’s name as a link.  Ultimately, it just has to make sense that this word could link to your site.

Don’t Forget to Draw Traffic with Contact Information

Another essential part of your press release that can draw traffic is your contact information.  In a way, it’s a very abridged version of your “author bio” when you write articles.  Instead of a paragraph about yourself, supply a list of ways that a reader can contact you.

Here, you should include either your name, your alias if you’re using one, or the name of a contact rep.  You could have a phone/fax number and a mailing address but above all, you should have another URL link here.  The idea is to draw traffic to your site, so you shouldn’t neglect this opportunity.

As you can see, using press releases to get more traffic to your website has huge advantages.  You have several opportunities to generate one-way backlinks while you’re generating excitement about your product, service, or event.  Besides that, it’s a great way to mix things up if you’re getting bored with traditional article marketing and blogging.