Affiliate Marketing 101

Search engines are a great way to find just about anything. Most of us use search engines often; we look for information about many subjects from astronomy to zebras. We use search to find new places to live, plan for college and – of course – find games to play.

Some of us look at search engines in other ways … we desire people to look for and find our content, our websites and merchandise. If you are like me, you dedicate a lot of time to promote and merchandise your web page so it gets noticed on search engines.

No matter what it is you want to do or sell, these tips will help you to get more potential customers to your site. There are some things you can’t change; the age of your site is one of them. But beyond that, there are two things to concentrate on. First, your web sites should be written in a way that will satisfy search engines; the second is to  get other blogs to link to your content. This post is mostly about “on page optimisation”, in other words writing pages content search engines want to include in search results.

I am a jewelry designer. I create handcrafted jewelry. I have been merchandising my artisan made jewelry online since 1998. Since that time I have learned a lot about search engine optimization. There are many things that go into a well constructed page; and you should include as many of these elements as you can to tell search engines why your page should be indexed and easily found.

Search engines employ software programs they use to discover, index and rank web pages called “robots” or “spiders”. These software programs “crawl” the web, following links from page to page recording what they find in an index. Each search engine has their own algorithym; these are the requirements web pages have to meet to be included.

First try to check to find out what keywords you should include in your pages. If you have a site that offers cosmetics, bath products and fragrances try to find out what shoppers look for to find those items. One good method is to have a couple of family members search for your content in front of you; make a note of everything they type into the search engine box. Keep them for use as your keywords or search phrases. Don’t use the name of your business for this; only the things you sell .

One of the most crucial parts of the website is your title. The title appears in the blue bar at the top of your browser window. It should clearly state what you sell or what your site is about. There are about 40 characters to work with if you want the whole title to show in search results. The title can be longer; but only the first 40 or so characters will be displayed. Put your primary search keywords up front.

Generally, you need around 500 – 700 words on the page for search engines. This includes the webpage’s body text, but also visible photo captions, text links, and all other text you’ve included in the header or footer portions of the site. The more text you include for search engine spiders, the better … they read text, and know what your site is about by scanning what you’ve written.

On your  home page you should usually mention your primary keyword once in the title; once in a Heading 1 headline; once in a Heading 2-6 page element; once in an Image Alt Tag; one time in bold text; and in a text link to an internal product page or a subscription form. Don’t overdo it in your website’s body text; mention your selected keywords only once for every 100 words. Follow this guideline for each of your keywords if possible.

Keep it uncomplicated by using brief paragraphs and sentences. Break paragraphs up if you have to. Create an easy to comprehend site.

Things to stay away from are just as important. One of the most vital is that search engine bots only understand text.  Pictures, artwork, slideshows and flash movies look like big, empty, blank spaces on a website to a search engine robot. Use these elements farther into the document; be certain to use the Image Alt descriptions to describe your graphics. Flash intro pages are attractive, but you’ll have a difficult time getting great rankings if that’s the only thing on your main page.

It is required to put every search term included in the Keywords META Tag on the page as visible text, preferably included in a sentence that is part of a larger, relevant paragraph. Context matters; the search terms must be surrounded by text that makes sense. Keywords in the keywords tag that aren’t on the page can result in your site being  banned from the search results. Visible text means exactly that – not too tiny to see and not the same shade as the background of the document.

Remember – your most important advantage is content. Make it fresh and interesting, and you must make it original. This is what search engines look for! If you supply value on a steady basis your site will be visited often and you’ll see better search engine rankings.

Robert Edwards is the webmaster of a popular shopping site offering handcrafted silver jewelry and custom made silver chains. This article may be reproduced on blogs and websites provided all links in the article and this author’s statement remain intact.