How To Get Quality Backlinks To Your Afffiliate Website.

To have a successful affiliate website, you must have traffic. If your target market doesn't find your site, you don't make affiliate commissions. Simple enough, right?

Do you know what the most important factor in SEO is? It's not:

• Title tags
• Keyword placement and density
• tags
• Description

While all of these on-page SEO tactics are certainly important and should no doubt be used, the most important part of your SEO strategy is:

Backlinks To Your Affiliate Website

Especially important in the search engine ranking algorithms are high quality one way links to your site. This means that another site is linking to you without asking you top link to them in return.

You should still continue to trade links with other relevant websites, but do it at a steady, slow pace.

Meanwhile, the one way links are much more powerful in getting your site ranked higher in the search engines.

How do I get a link to my site without having to link back?

I'm going to show you a few easy methods you can use right now to get the one way backlinks:

• Social bookmarking
• Article submission
• Forum signatures
• "Link bait" (see :"What Is Link Bait And How Do I Create It?")
• Blog posts on your own blog
• Comments on other people's blogs

Keep in mind that wherever possible, you want to use anchor text (e.g. Affiliate Marketing Help) as opposed to a raw link (e.g. http://www.LetsStartEarning.com). This will help your rankings for your specific keywords. But don't just go out and get 100 links pointing to your site with the same keyword phrase. Mix it up between 3-4 different phrases that you want to rank for. The search engines love this.

Now, let's take a peek at each method I mentioned for obtaining quality, one way links.

Social Bookmarking
Places like Digg, Stumble Upon, and Technorati allow you to submit "stories" for bookmarking as well as getting them in front of other eyeballs. Here you can use anchor text as well as providing a keyword rich description of your content.

A word of caution. Use these with the utmost respect. Don't go in there and simply spam these sites with every single page of your site and every insignificant blog post you ever make. Only submit quality content. Remember, this is a social media, have respect for your peers.

Article Submission
Every article you write should be submitted to some of the highest ranking article directories. Just make sure you write useful articles otherwise they may just get deleted by some or your reputation as an "expert" will suffer.

You usually can't use anchor text here but your raw links are, just the same, high quality one way links to your affiliate website. Remember to put your articles in your blog as well.

Forum Signatures
Find a couple of forums you like that are related to your industry and create a signature that links back to your affiliate website(s) using compelling anchor text that is also relevant to your keywords.

Each time you post, BAM... a one way link. Again, as with any social medium, have respect. Don't just post for the sake of posting. Contribute useful information in forums, your reputation depends on it.

Link Bait
This just means that you want to create great content that people just automatically want to link to. Link bait can be in the form of:

• Articles (you want people to use your articles on their websites or blogs)
• Blog posts
• Web pages. The more content filled your site is, the easier it will be to get backlinks. Not to mention, it will make people want to stay, subscribe, come back.

Blog Posts
Every time you post to your blog you need to link back to relevant content on your site. Not necessarily the home page but whichever page applies. In Blogger, you'll add it in the "link" field as well as linking back to your site with relevant text within the post.

Again, don't stop reciprocal linking, it counts too. But make sure you make a solid effort to get as many one-way links as you can.

What is "Link Bait and How Do I Create It?"

This is a cool term that I picked up in an intense Webmaster's forum. I

fancy myself a reasonably talented SEO marketer. I've never used Google

Adwords or any other PPC advertising and I'm well-schooled on

traditional as well as Web 2.0 search engine optimization strategies.

I can definitely say that Web 2.0 methods are a lot easier and a lot

more fun than the tedious traditional methods.


What is the #1 thing that you need to get higher rankings in the search

engines?


Backlinks to your site.


The more links to your site, the better your rankings, in a nutshell.

There are of course other factors such as the linking site's pagerank,

whether or not it's a reciprocal link, and the anchor text used--just

to name a few of the biggies.


So what exactly is this "link bait" and how do you make it?


Link bait is the kind of content that makes people want to link to it

naturally. No link trading, nothing in return. Just content so good

that people just want to be connected with it somehow.


So how do you create this kind of content that we call link bait? Well,

you can give them what they were looking for such as news and solid

information. If you become known as a reliable source of information,

people will link to you whether they use your articles, link to you

from their blogs, or bookmark you in the social bookmarking sites for

example.


Another way to create link bait is to stir your reader's emotion. Make

them laugh, make them angry, scare them. Post the kind of content that

makes people say: "Did you read so and so's article? I can't believe

she said THAT!"


Create a controversy, if you can back up what you're saying on the

matter. Go against the grain. It's ok to have your own opinions. As

long as they're well-founded, you should tell the world about them.

That is what the "new web" is all about.


Now go start a commotion or share your wealth of knowledge and create

some instant link bait.


Sheree Motiska is a single WAHM. She is experienced in the world of

affiliate marketing and network marketing and shares her knowledge at

How To Build A Business Online and

Affiliate Marketing Newbies.

Just claiming my blog.

Technorati Profile

Breaking the Myth about Page Rank (PR)

by: Christopher Smith

The most difficult challenge most web designers face is getting traffic to your site. There are plenty of companies who promise to send traffic your way. Sadly, most of this traffic is not qualified. Yes, your hit counter will move higher, however, if its not qualified, you may find you have unhappy visitors to your site. Unhappy visitors will not click on your ads or purchase your products.

Once you have optimized your site, consider submitting it to every search engine. If you want to get spidered quicker in Google, have a web page with a PR of 4 or higher point to your site. Your site will be spidered within a couple of days!

One myth I would like to bust is that PR is a measure of a web site. Its not. I receive countless emails offering a reciprocal link with their PR5 or PR6 site. Unless my link is appearing on the main page, or a page that has PR6, I am not getting a share of PR6. Most likely, my link will appear on a page that has a PR2!

Page rank is Google's ranking of that specific page's relevance. Just because the main page has a PR of 4, does not make every page on the site a PR4. Beware of sites who claim that they will exchange links with you and its to your benefit since they have a PR5 or PR6. Where is your link appearing? If its on a page that has a PR of 4 or 5 or 6, great!

Reciprocal linking, if done properly, will ensure that your keywords are at the top of the search engine. If you have a popular keyword, youll need to have more back links. Pick your link partners properly, and ensure that they are linking to your keyword.

For example: if your site is www.joesdinner.com, consider sending out requests to relevant higher ranking pages to start with, followed by lower ranking pages and ask web designers to link back in a manner so that your url is a hyperlink for your keyword, not your site url or site name.

Presuming their keyword is "best dining in new york", having links pointing to your site with an anchor tag incorporating your keywords will improve your search engine rankings dramatically.

Once you have established a collection of sites pointing to your site using your keywords, you will start receiving reciprocal link exchanges from other sites. This is where you can start to be particular.

If you want to maintain an effective PR and attract better sites for linking, follow these tips:

a) Is it indexed?
While their site may be indexed, the page where they are placing your link, is it at least indexed by google? If you type in allinurl:www.sitename.com/links/right_here.html and there are no results, consider declining their offer. If the page your link appears on has not been indexed, there is no benefit whatsoever to you. If your pages have PR, they may consider placing your link on another page. If the page your link appears on is indexed, but does not have PR, consider accepting their offer. While the page today may not have PR, it will in time.

b) How many neighbors?
The value of the page rank is shared with each of the links on that page. If you are splitting that PR with several other sites, your share of PR will be small, which doesnt help you. Reconsider accepting any link exchanges if your site is 1 of more than 30 - 40 sites that will appear on that page, unless its a very high PR. Further, if there are too many links on that page, Google may consider the page to be part of a link farm, which may end up penalizing your site.

c) Is it relevant?
Google is big on relevancy. Ensure your links pages are relevant. If you operate a site about golf, having links from cooking sites will not help you establish your page rank. It may cost you more than you get in return.

How to Find Good PR sites:

a) Do a search for them by typing in your keyword and start asking for reciprocal link exchanges. Take a look at their PR and go from there. Remember, its the number of sites that backlink to you that matters, not strictly the PR of the page. I would rather have 50 pages that have a PR1 pointing to my site, than to have 5 sites that have a PR5. Of course, if you can get 50 pages that have a PR5 pointing to your site, you are laughing!

b) Take a look at your existing link partners and check out their links pages. Its clear the people appearing on those links pages are interested in reciprocating.

c) Purchase software that will help find quality link partners.

It is important to attract higher PR sites when you are on a reciprocal link campaign. However, its not the most important thing when it comes to search engine rankings. Its the backlinks that point back at you that are key. The more of those, the better off you will be for your keyword.

Remember: every page starts off as a PR0. Just because its new doesnt mean it wont get a higher PR once google gets around to assessing a score. If the page your site appears on is indexed, and its a relevant site of quality, consider exchanging links. You'll grow a large list of link partners in a short period of time, and increase your search engine rankings in the process.

About the author:
Christopher Smith has been helping people make money through Google Adsense by providing them with the Top Paying Adsense Keywords for his visitors to Adsense Heaven. http://www.adsenseheaven.com

I Hate Writing Articles - Isn't There An Easier Way?!

Owning, running and maintaining an internet based business or a site needs articles. Plain and simple, every who has a site knows this. Even those who don’t have sites but are frequent internet users knows this as well. Articles quench the thirst for information and knowledge of the people. Plus, the articles provides many other benefits for the site.

The benefits that articles provide are putting a site high in the ranking in search results of keywords and keyword phrases that pertains or are relevant to his or her site. They also provide attraction to website visitors when they are appreciated and is linked to your site from another site or newsletter. Articles provide for the increase of the confidence and trust levels of customers to your site and company.

Many articles are also beneficial to both company and its traffic. When the readers like the articles, they would tell more of their friends, family and peers and recommend your site to them, providing for a larger volume of traffic. You get bigger sales if your traffic trusts and believes in you. Your product or services would be much easier to sell when they know you know what you are doing and talking about.

So ok, we have established that articles are very important to a site and to business. Articles are crucial and to keep ahead in the game, a site must have an article, it is imperative. There is one dilemma though, not many people like writing articles.

Many website owners would rather spend their time on something else, and unless you’re a big time company, you don’t have the necessary resources to use on a pool of article writers. Plagiarism or copying of other articles is frowned upon and could easily get you into trouble, worst case scenario; a hefty fine and jail time.

So what are the other options?

Well, for starters if you hate writing articles and you can’t afford to hire people to write for you then don’t. Get free articles. The first place to look at for free articles is the public domain. Here you won’t have problems with copyright infringement and the following penalties and fines if you get caught for plagiarism.

Public domain articles are articles freely given to the public for public use. You can do whatever you want with it. You can place it on your site, name it as yours, put it in a newsletter its you decision. Always remember though that you will have to choose articles that is very relevant to your site.

The downside to public domain articles is that since it is free for everybody, many of your competitors may have access to them as well. Since every site needs to be original and unique even though you have the same niche, this could be a predicament. You may also have to edit them a bit to place more keywords and keyword phrases to make them better.

Another way to get free articles is to allow other sites which has the same subject or topic as yours to submit articles to your site. This would be only to augment your existing content or else all your articles would be leading to other sites since these articles would have resource boxes with them that could link or direct the readers to their site. That’s why it is important to have your own articles; you cold use them to link your site to other sites as well.

But, to truly feel the impact of what a good article to you, go for original ones. There are many article writers who do part time and freelance article writing jobs that charges only minimal fees. You can get good articles that have all the keywords and keyword phrases you need and people are looking for.

The investment you made for these articles would be worthwhile because you could use them for all the benefits you could offer. You hold copyrights to them and you will be able to use them anyway you want. As your articles help you in building your business and your site, you will have more articles to write and maybe then you wont be having second thoughts about articles.

3 Things You Must Do Before You Submit To Article Directories

To all writers and non-writers out there, now is the time to start digging up those creative writing skills back.
With modern communication technology comes the popularity of information-based marketing, which is one of the oldest and most effective techniques in getting targeted prospects to sites and converting them into buyers. This is why article writing, submissions and publications are also getting popular.

There are already many tools that people can use to make the process of distributing their articles more easily. Though this is invaluable in getting the contents more exposure, which is only half of the story.

Let us take a look first at the common mistakes that some people make before submitting their contents to article directories:

1. Confusing the reason to promote the articles with the reason to write them.
In article writing, there are three key benefits why you are promoting them; branding, lead generation and promotion, which are all part of your optimization efforts.

But there is only one reason why you write an article, and that is to inform your audience. If the article is not focused on this primary and most important purpose, it will fail to achieve the three promotion benefits because no one will be interested in reading them.

You need to figure out first how to get people to read what is in your article, then make them click on your resource box. You can achieve this by producing better contents.

2. Failing to maximize the promotional opportunities of article marketing.

You may know already that your articles can help you generate additional links back to your site. But do you know that you can get more visitors and better search engine results from that same articles?

Mention keywords at strategic places. Just be sure not to overdo them. Some are even using anchor texts which is also an effective method. But it is important to know that majority of the directories are not able to support this.
Remember that is not only about the links back to your site. Part of doing well in your article marketing is getting picked up by publishers with a large number of audiences and gaining the ability of leveraging other brands because of the quality of your work. Better search engine results also are great benefits.

But these things do not put much money in your pocket. There are other factors that can turn your article marketing efforts into an opportunity that can boost your earnings. Not just increase the number of visitors to your site.

Start out with a plan and see to it that your article will serve the function that you intended it to have.

3. Publishing content that does not help your readers.
Maybe in the process of writing articles, you are thinking that all that is you wanted is links back to your site. And any visitors it can generate are fine.

Guess what? Not all article banks and directories are going to accept your content automatically. Oftentimes, they have some guidelines and specifications on the articles that they are accepting.
You can double the number of sites you can submit to by writing articles that the directories want to share with other people. All it takes is one publisher with a hundred thousand readers to increase your potential audience overnight.

Write the articles that publishers want in their publications if you want your article marketing to work the most effective way for you. This also means you have to obey the standard guidelines, spell checks, researching on a good topic and even hiring a writer to produce a good content on your behalf.

In the end, it is all really a matter of choice on your part. You can start getting a little exposure from increased links back but on a very basic level. Or enjoy massive exposure from a little extra time making quality contents.

It will be your choice. You may not be aware of the fact that an article submitted on directories is not meant to have the same level of exposure as highly-targeted content ones geared on a narrow group of people.

Learn the difference between these two and it will surely help you know what kinds of articles to write and to submit.

Newbie Tips Newsletter: The Shining Star Issue

Build Your Business On Your Terms And Brand Yourself For Success.

O.K. guys, you're about to embark on an amazing yet possibly frightening adventure. What I want to do is help you get started with your new home business on the right track. I want to keep you moving straight toward your goals and away from the money hungry gurus who are trying to show you an "easy system."

Please, don't get me wrong. I am not at all bitter about the Internet home based business industry at all. It's what I do for a living full-time and I love it.

What I am upset about, and have always been, are the hordes of scammers out there making the whole thing look bad. There really are great opportunities out there and people are making great incomes running home based business' on the Internet. It makes me sad that people who could've done very well end up getting discouraged and give up because they were promised something and it didn't deliver.

I just want my readers to have enough knowledge to be able to defend themselves against the too good to be true get rich quick scams out there. I must admit that some of them are very convincing which is scary.

Your goal is to start a legitimate home based business that will make you money without stealing your integrity, right? Well, lets get started and get you on the right track from the beginning.

The first thing I want to do is give you the low down on what is really involved. Every single day I'm online and I see a new "system" for sale, I cringe. Please, be careful with these. They are extremely convincing when they tell you that all you have to do is plug them in and the money will start rolling in.

This is complete crap.

What they don't tell you in the sales letter is that in order for these "plug-in" systems to work for you, you must do a lot of tedious stuff every single day. While they may give you a "free money making website" with built in products, how are you going to get sign-ups and make sales if no one sees your site?

So, alas you've got to sit around and figure out how to get traffic to a website that has no personality and is exactly the same as hundreds of others who sighned up for the same thing. Even if you've got creative control, this isn't very "plug and play" now is it?

The daily chores include:

• Surfing Traffic Exchanges For Credits.
• Going to forums and talking about how easy you've got it when you know it's not working.
• Spending hours and hours researching different topics so that you can write articles that might bring some meaningful traffic.
• Posting blogs about how you don't have to do any work.

The list goes on and on.

Some of these systems teach some very good marketing techniques that actually work, but not for blatant affiliate links. Besides, your doing all of this work promoting something that's supposed to be "hands free money making." Doesn't sound like a lot of fun does it?

Here's what I think.

If you're going to go to all of this trouble anyway, why not go the whole way and build your business your way?

Instead of marketing someone else's system, build your own website and only include products and opportunities that deliver what they claim. There are plenty of good products out there that actually teach or do what they claim.

I'm speaking about the home based business niche in my experience, but I'm sure that this holds true in other niches as well. So, when I talk about information products, that's what I mean. Plus, even if you're planning on going into another niche, you'll still need to educate yourself about basic online marketing principles.

You're not going to find an easy way out, so why not have fun with it and brand yourself?

That's how affiliate marketers who are making the big money do it. They don't promote their affiliate links directly. They position themselves as experts and then lead others to their affiliate products and income opportunities as recommendations.

That's how you really stand out among the masses of sales pages on the internet. Offer your assistance and people will really appreciate it and follow your lead.

How To Be A Shining Star...

• Help people get what they need and the money will come.
• Be honest.
• Don't "sell" people, no one likes to be sold.
• Follow up with stellar customer service, even if you're not selling your own product.
• If you're sponsoring people into a multi-tiered type program, show them the way. Those type of programs are worthless if the next tier has no clue what to do.

The last one reminds me of another point I want to make. Some of those programs that are supposed to be free to join and all you have to do is get people to sign up under you are quite misleading. You may only be able to make money if you have a certain sales volume which means that you can recruit free people till you're blue in the face and you won't make money until someone "upgrades" or buys a product (if the program even has a product other than the upgrade itself), so be sure to read the fine print before you go wasting your life on something that will give you minimal returns.

In my affiliate webmaster's course, I show my subscribers how they can build a professional website for their affiliate recommendations. The key is to focus on what that product has taught you or enabled you to achieve. I teach them to position themselves as authorities on the particular problem that the product can solve. This is done by showcasing the skills they've obtained by using the product themselves (if it's an information product, but there are other things you can sell online as well).

Just be smart about it, don't sell junk to people. Keep your customers happy so they come back. You want your efforts to keep making you money again and again. Just stick with products or opportunities that live up to the claims.

Here are some good ones that you can start with because you'll want to educate yourself in these areas for your own business start up.

• Marketing courses.
• Webdesign courses.
• Software.
• Communication.
• Personal Growth.

All of these are things that you can benefit from owning and then promote by example.

I mentioned multi-level marketing earlier, where you profit from signing others up in your business as well as product sales. This is another great way to get into Internet Marketing because if you've signed up with a good company and the person who signed you up is willing to train you (this is the way it's supposed to be done), you'll be able to make a great living. Just make sure that training is available and that the company is established and has a great product that people are going to want.

The way it's supposed to work is that when you sign up, your sponsor shows you exactly what to do and then you show your sign ups and so on. So, make sure that you keep the duplication going by taking an interest in those who sign up in your business. Get them excited and confident to go out there and keep it growing.

If you do that, you're business will continue to pay you a residual income long after all of the hard work in the beginning is done.

Either way, direct sales or network marketing/ MLM business models, it's about people. It's the people who are going to be buying from you so focus on them. Build strong relationships and really stand out and you won't go wrong.