Getting started with SEO.

This is a guest post by AffiliateTips.com. Head over there to find out more about affiliate marketing and use their top lists to compare affiliate programs in all niches.

The term of 2008 is SEO, search engine optimization and ”experts” are making tons of money helping companies optimizing their websites for search engines like Google. We are simply going to save you that money and help your affiliate websites increase its traffic and earnings by mentioning two important search engine optimization factors your affiliate business can’t do without.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization is a concept of online marketing based on the fact that highly ranked websites in Google get a heck of a lot more visitors than low ranked websites thus making much more money on their website advertisements. If your website is ranking within the top 3 on Google’s result page on a popular search term, you will to 98% certainty be able to make money of your website. To optimize your website for this scenario is what SEO is all about. Improve various aspects of your site, rank high in Google, get more visitors and earn money on online advertisements/affiliate marketing. This is what you should do:

Get backlinks

According to the mythical algorithm of Google’s search engine links from other websites to yours is vital in order to rank high. The more powerful and already high ranking sites link to your site, the better. In Google’s eyes it adds credibility to your site. If those links are linked according to popular keywords in your segment it will boost your site. For example, you’re running a website about major league baseball and you manage to get a link that says major league baseball from MLB.com (the official site of major league baseball). According to Google this is like MLB.com is vouching for your site.

Getting good solid links to your site will definitely increase your rankings. How you get those links is SEO territory. Either you focus on white hat SEO; improving your content so that people hopefully voluntarily will link to your site. Other ways include making deals and exchanging links for content or money. This is not Google approved and is therefore called black hat SEO. The best way is always to create a website that in one way or another stands out and offer visitors something unique.

Choose keywords to optimize for

Ask yourself the question what keywords you want your website to rank high for? Use keyword software like Wordtracker or KeywordDiscovery to find out which keywords are mostly searched one at the moment. Another option is focusing on keyword phrases, often many keywords in one phrase or sentence, based on the fact that people no longer search on Google with single keywords like “baseball” but try to specify their search by using word combinations like “find game in major league baseball”

If you master these two elements of SEO you are well on you way and will see a difference in your affiliate earnings. But if you discard SEO as yet another voodoo scam of the 21st century your affiliate business will suffer. SEO is your only ticket to a successful career in online marketing. We suggest you get o board!