By Allan Gardyne
CEO of AssociatePrograms.com
Volume 1
Traffic tip #1
You MUST have high quality, unique content if you want long-term,
free search engine traffic.
This is the most important tip of all. Sadly, it's one which many website
owners ignore.
Provide LOTS of information-rich, keyword-rich, useful content for the
search engines and humans to find.
You know that search engines are being clogged with junk at an alarming
rate. The other day, I came across a marketer who was boasting that he
owned more than 20,000 blogs - and he's not the only one.
Consider the scary effect of this exponential increase in low quality blogs
and websites. Old, large, well established sites will inevitably become more
and more important and trusted by the search engines.
Owning a large, well established, high quality site is a very solid investment
in your future.
These days, even Google's webmaster guidelines advise affiliates to
publish "unique and relevant" content.
If you spend time thinking of ways to provide truly USEFUL content that
people will talk about, you'll automatically end up with lots of free, one-way
links to your site as people recommend it without even being asked to do
so.
I've been building information-rich websites ever since I created my first site
in 1996. This method has worked extremely well for me and continues to
work very well.
If your website helps solve people's problems, they'll love you for it.
Traffic tip #2
Keep ADDING fresh, relevant, useful content.
According to Google, about half the 2.5 billion searches done a day at
Google are for unique, one-off phrases.
The more pages you build full of on-topic material, the better the chances
your site will be found.
When it comes to keywords, think big. You want your site to be found via
THOUSANDS of different phrases every month.
Then you can lure that traffic to your best money-generating pages or to
your newsletter sign-up page.
Also, search engines prefer fresh sites which keep gradually adding new
content. Don't let your site go stale.
Super affiliate James Martell says:
"My own rule of thumb is this: Add a minimum of 1 article per week, 2
preferably. Adding an article daily is euphoria and adding 1 every six
hours, well, that's the best."
Traffic tip #3
Choose a memorable domain name.
If you're launching a new site, choose a name people will remember easily.
Years ago, I visited a site called "forkinthehead.com". Its logo is a man with
a fork in his head. Sounds dreadful, doesn't it?
However, all it took for me to remember that unusual site was ONE visit
years ago.
You may not wish to go to such extreme lengths, but at least ask yourself:
"Will people remember my domain name?"
At my four main sites, a large percentage of the visitors are people who
have remembered the domain name and typed it directly into their browser.
(I also own a site built in 1996 which has a totally impossible to remember
URL, but that's another story.)
Try to choose a name which won't be confused with similar names. You
don't want people typing your competitor's domain name when they’re trying
to find your site.
NameBoy.com has a handy tool to help you choose domain names. Also,
you can find a surprising number of good deleted (expired) domain names
at Whois.net. Both those tools are free.
Traffic tip #4
Buy the wrong domain name, too.
If you think people may confuse your domain name with a similar name, try
to buy that name, too.
I noticed that sometimes when newsletters mentioned
AssociatePrograms.com they put the "s" in the wrong place and called it
"AssociatesProgram.com".
It even happened at an Internet marketing conference I was attending. The
speaker kindly mentioned my site, but got the name wrong. Whoops!
So when that wrong domain name became available, I bought it.
Now, if you muddle up the name and type "AssociatesProgram.com"
you're automatically redirected to AssociatePrograms.com.
It occurred to me that people in the United Kingdom, Australia and New
Zealand, who think "programs" is spelled "programmes", might also have
trouble getting my domain name right.
So I bought AssociateProgrammes.com, too. It also redirects to the
correct domain.
A good domain name registrar will make it very easy for you to redirect one
domain name to another. 000Domains.com is one that does.
Traffic tip #5
Make your domain name easy to read - especially if it's a .NET
Which of the following is easier to read and understand?
www.associateprograms.com or www.AssociatePrograms.com
See how using a capital letter at the start of each word makes the second
domain name easier to read - and easier to remember.
Whenever you mention your domain name anywhere, ALWAYS present it
in its most readable form. A good place to start doing this is in your email
signature file.
If you're unfortunate enough to have bought the ".net" version of a domain
name because someone raced you to the ".com", help people to remember
your site by writing it like this...
Example.NET
Being MEMORABLE helps you get more repeat visitors.
Traffic tip #6
Use appropriate keywords in your image file names.
One of my websites gets hundreds of visits a month from people who are
searching for images. I'm not sure how valuable those visitors are, but I
didn't have to do anything very special to get them.
Google Images - http://images.google.com - makes it easy for people to
search for graphics online.
To take advantage of this, when choosing the file name of an image on your
site, use an appropriate key phrase, for example, "book-ends.jpg" if you're
promoting book ends.
Here's a tip I just discovered...
When I searched in Google Images for "book ends" I discovered that the
very first search result was for a page which did NOT contain a graphic of
book ends!
Instead, the page contained a "book ends" LINK to a book ends graphic on
a second page. It if suits the design of your site, you may want to
experiment with this technique.
I'm not sure how much use traffic to images is, but if it's ADDITIONAL traffic
you can get simply by choosing image file names carefully, it's worth
having.
Traffic tip #7
Do REALLY SERIOUS keyword research.
If you want to get LOTS of traffic from search engines, you need to find out
the exact phrases which people are typing into search engines.
There are free tools available for this, but they're not nearly as useful as the
more comprehensive paid tools.
For example, if you're using the Overture keyword tool for your research, be
warned, its results can't be trusted.
As my Special Projects Manager, Jay Stockwell, likes to point out, the
Overture tool shows you the SAME number of searches for all these
searches:
bikini girls
girls bikini
bikini girl
girl bikini
bikinis girl
girl bikinis
This is obviously nonsense.
The Overture tool is useful to give you a quick rough guide, but NOT for
serious research.
Here's a good tip from "Charlie" on our affiliate forum:
"The harder it is to discover a certain search phrase (getting traffic), the
less competition you will have in the SERPs (for that search phrase). If
a keyword research tool is free and popular, how many competitors will
you have for the phrases you discover there?"
Jay has spent hundreds of hours researching and analyzing keyword
research tools. He's built the best site on the Internet reviewing keyword
research tools - KeywordWorkshop.com.
You need to visit Jay's site whether you're using search engine optimization
(organic SEO) or pay-per-click advertising.
Traffic tip #8
Try this page titles experiment.
Here's a good way increase your traffic.
Go to Google and type any phrase into the search box. Look at the titles of
the websites in the top 10 rankings.
Which ones catch your eye and tempt you to click on the link? Some are
dreadfully stodgy, boring. Some are merely a long list of keywords. Some
are good. Some are junk.
Good titles are written for search engines AND humans.
Now look at the titles on your site. Start with your most important pages.
Rewrite them to make them more eye-catching.
Now go to Google and do a search of your site like this...
site:example.com
Study the page titles. If you own a large site created over many years, you
may be horribly embarrassed at just how BAD some of your page titles are.
Do you want to find some examples of good titles? Simply go to Google and
do some more searches. Don't stick to your industry.
Type in all sorts of different phrases and study the titles that appear in the
top 10.
You'll soon be brimming with ideas on ways you can improve your page
titles.
Checking how enticing the information is in your meta description tag can
help, too. Some search engines display this information in their search
results.
If you have a well established site, you may have written many of your page
titles and meta descriptions years ago when you knew less about marketing
than you do now. If so, it's time for another look at them.
Traffic tip #9
Organic SEO - a few key points.
Search engines are getting cleverer all the time. You can try to outsmart
them but to me it makes more sense to work WITH them.
They're gradually getting better at sifting out low quality websites and
ranking them poorly. So build high quality websites containing genuinely
useful material that other people want to link to.
The basics of good search engine optimization are fairly simple. Here's a
very quick summary:
· You need to make it easy for a search engine to figure out the topic
of your page.
· Find appropriate keywords or key phrases and use them in the title,
in the page heading, in the introduction, throughout the article, in the
meta description, in alt tags, at the end of the article, in links on the
page, in bold or italics, and perhaps in a list on the page.
· Use key phrases in your file names, for example: keyword1-
keyword2.html.
· Use synonyms and word variations naturally throughout the page.
· When linking to your pages, use appropriate keywords in the anchor
text (the words people click on). Do this for links throughout your site,
and also on other people's sites which link to yours. Vary the anchor
text.
· For internal links, it's better to use text than graphical links.
· Create a logical navigation system so that humans and search
engines can easily find the content on your site.
· Get links from other sites to internal pages as well as to your main
page.
This is just a brief overview of a big topic.
If you want excellent, reliable advice on search engine optimization, there's
one place I recommend above all others.
It's the resource the professionals use - Stephen Mahaney and his team at
Planet Ocean. These guys do nothing but search engine optimization.
They're experts.
I've been a subscriber for years. Planet Ocean is an often recommended
resource because it publishes a search engine optimization newsletter and
an excellent book which is updated every month, so you can rest assured
the information you're reading is right up to date.
Traffic tip #10
Submit to the main directories.
The more high quality links you have to your site, the more impressed the
search engines will be.
Start with major directories such as...
Yahoo!
DMOZ.org
sbd.bcentral.com
...and move on to...
Gimpsy
Skaffe
Joeant
GoGuides
Business.com
SevenSeek
ThisIsOurYear
LookSmart (probably too expensive)
BlueFind
WowDirectory
Best of the Web
GeniusFind
Here's a good list of directories
http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php
Be sure to read the submission rules carefully at each site. This will slow
you down but it increases your chances of getting your site listed. Listings
can last for years, so it's worth while taking your time to get the details
correct.
You may want to outsource this task by finding someone at a site like
eLance or hiring a student.
Continue...
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