While the offering of products as a part of your solution process, they should not be the primary focus.  You need to provide sufficient information in the form of articles to give you credibility and some measure of comfort that what you offer will help them with their problem.

You need to actively promote your website.  You can’t assume everybody is looking for your website–even if it may have the answer to their needs.  You have to “found.”  You have to promote your website as much as possible.  There are several ways to go about promoting your website, or specific articles.  Promoting your website can increase traffic.  Increased traffic means more visitor–more potential customers to direct to your affiliates.

Here are some suggested helps in promoting your website (there may be links to more information relating to a specific topic):

Search Engine Optimization

This function cannot be over stressed. The key to any affiliate marketing success comes from getting traffic to our website.  You are looking to have your pages rank high from natural or organic searches by visitors.  What they naturally type into the search engines should provide them with your posting high on the search results page–no further than the first or second page.

The best way to accomplish this is to create articles and posts that are structured to get them ranked as high as possible by the search engines.  The promotion of your site by the search engines comes from their indexing process.  You want to provide the search engine “spiders” with sufficient clues that they can determine what your web-page is about.

You need to use effective and well researched keywords–both in the page title and in the meat of your page.  The keywords you feel would be most searched should be used first.  This can help people find you quicker from a general search.

Use the META Tag description.  This is another of the search engines tools to determining what your article is about, and ranking you accordingly.  Make sure you use the keywords you’ve researched.  Don’t use keywords that are not found in your article.

Headers (H1), (H2), (H3) should be Keyword rich.  Search engines give special consideration to keywords found in the headers of sections of your webpages.

Strategically place your keywords in your articles–the first paragraph specifically.  Search engines spiders read just like you do–from top to bottom–only faster.   Use your most significant keywords in the first paragraph, but don’t use any keywords to excess.  “A little goes a long way.”

Keywords and phrases should be used in your links where they make sense.

Use a Site Map or Alpha Index to help in the navigation on your website.

Your website should be structured around your “target keywords.”  Articles should be developed from these keywords.

Offer your site to the key directories, like Google, Yahoo, Open Directory Project.  About.com and Business.com are two directories you must pay for.  Yahoo, too, has an annual fee program you may want to consider.

Get others to link to your site–referred to as “reciprocal links.” The spiders give significant credit to these inbound links–especially if they are from a related topic site.

Provide articles you have written to others for use in their websites.  Be sure you have link backs to your site.

Be sure to ask visitors to bookmark your site.  There is no harm in asking.  You can create some measure of importance to your website simply by asking the to add your site to their bookmark file.

Utilize Social Media

Take advantage of the social network community: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg . . .  These are avenues for you to get additional exposure to your website.  These forums are great places to promote your site.  The growth of these forums have exploded on the scene in recent months, and offer another means of getting the word out to visit your site.

Conventional Means Including E-Mail

Add your website URL to business cards, stationery, brochures, information booklets, and other forms of handout literature you may use in your business. If you advertise in the Yellow Pages be sure to add your URL in the ad.   Provide “free services” people can access via your website.  This will encourage them to go to your site for the information.  This offer should be of substance and value to prospective visitors.  If you offer them little or nothing, your “trust and branding” will be diminished.

Take advantage of your e-mail opt in list to send valuable information to them via an e-Mail Newsletter.  DO NOT SPAM!  You should include your URL link where appropriate in most e-mail communications–especially when responding to inquiries–as a part of your e-mail signature.  You can direct them to special offers located on your site.

Other Assorted Methods or Opportunities to Promote Your Website

Create and promote a contest accessed on your site.

Create a viral “buzz.”  Promote something that could be spread by word-of-mouth, traditional PR or advertising that could spread exponentially (viral) in the process.  These are more difficult to produce because you have little control of the dissemination.  However, if you are fortunate enough to fashion successfully the results can be astounding.  The social networking avenues are really fertile grounds for this kind of promotion.

Pay for the Promotion or Advertising

When all else fails, you can always pay to have your website promoted.  You can advertise in e-Mail Newsletters.

You can engage in a Pay Per Click (PPC)  ad programs.  Yahoo, Google, Bing can be channels to fill this option.

You can list your wares with such services as BizRate, PriceGrabber, Shopping.com, Yahoo! Shopping and Amazon Marketplace can help meet this opportunity.

Rent or buy “targeted” commercial lists.  The problem here is being sure they truly are filtered to your “target market” with sufficient numbers to be of value to you.  Test marketing with a small list first could help you decide if you are paying for a productive list.

Obviously, there are other potential ways of promoting your website.  Don’t feel compelled to use these, and certainly be open to modifying any of them to suit your own needs.  The important issue is for you to promote your website as much as possible to increase traffic and potential income opportunities.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, December 19th, 2009 at 2:25 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.