Ask Sandy Swain

THIS WEEK’S EDITORIAL (Originally Posted on 2/21/08)
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Welcome to another edition of The Affiliate Review!

To wrap up this series on standing out as a Super Affiliate Marketer, here is tip #5:

BOOST THE RANKING OF YOUR AFFILIATE WEB SITE BY GETTING QUALITY LINKS BACK TO YOU

I’ve seen a very fun musical called “Wicked”. It’s the story of the witches (The Good Witch and the Wicked Witch) from The Wizard of Oz–before that pesky Dorothy and her little dog came along. In one scene the two witches are young girls in school and Glinda the Good is giving green-skinned Elphaba a lesson in how important it is to be viewed as popular by others. She gleefully sings:

Popular!
It’s all about popular!
It’s not about aptitude,
It’s the way you’re viewed!
So it’s very shrewd to be
Very very popular
Like me!

Now of course every affiliate website owner would LOVE to be “popular” with the search engines because that means traffic and sales! However, getting there is not always as easy as Glinda waving her magic wand. A search engine uses mathematical formulas called “algorithms” that rank page popularity according to a variety of factors. One of the most important factors is how many other web sites have a link back to you. In fact, this is probably the most important factor (next to your actual content) for how the search engines view your site.

In this case the “popular people” are sites that the search engines consider to be the authority on a subject or are ranked highly for some reason. If every link to your site is considered a “vote”, then a vote from these sites will carry more weight. For example, my former web site design firm had several clients that were city government sites. We were able to rank highly in the search engines even for the highly competitive term of “web design” because we the links back to us from official city government sites were considered “important” links. This in the search engine world is the equivalent of dating the prom queen or the captain of the football team–instant popularity!

Here are some ways to get some of that link popularity:

1. User Forums on Other Web Sites
This is where web site users post messages back and forth about certain topics. If you join some of these forums and write about topics related to the products you are promoting as an affiliate, you can include a link to your web site in your “signature” where you identify yourself as the poster. The key here is to make your posts relevant to the conversation and not post so much that you become obnoxious. It is best to “lurk” or hang around a forum that you are unfamiliar with to get a feel for the culture and what is acceptable there.

2. Trade Something of Value for a Link
If you have something that another web site owner wants, he or she might be willing to link to you in trade. For example, a person who designs web site templates might offer a customized template to a site owner if they will put a link back to the designer’s site. Could you give someone a free product, complementary membership or offer them a reduced price in exchange for a link? You could also offer to do a reciprocal link exchange (I’ll link to you if you link to me) but one-way links are much stronger than two-way links in a search engine popularity contest.

3. Submit your site to Free or Paid Link Directories
If your site is one that offers great information (and it definitely should!) you can submit your site as a resource on one of the many directories out there. Anything from community sites to sites about certain dog breeds or hobbies. If you can show the directory webmaster that your site will help his visitors be more informed on the topic at hand he will probably be more than happy to include your site. It might be well worth your while to have your site included in a paid directory especially if that site is already loved by the search engines (like on their first page!)

4. Write Articles
This is a great method for getting hundreds of links back to your affiliate site as well as helping to get your name out there as an authority on your particular topic. The basic strategy here is to write an article and include a paragraph at the end called a “resource box” that includes a short bio about yourself and a link back to your web site. Then other sites wanting free content can paste your article on their site, thus sending a link back to you as the author. I’ll be going a LOT more into this strategy in the next few issues of The Affiliate Review!

Now…BEWARE MY PRETTIES

The search engines are on to you and they will quickly figure out what you are doing if you are trying to get overly aggressive with getting links. Beware of “link farms” or “free for all” link sites that are indiscriminate about who they link to. These sites don’t have good ranking anyway so don’t even bother.

Also, forget about using software to post bogus comments to other people’s blogs simply for the purpose of getting a link back before the blog owner notices it and deletes it. Incidentally, I HATE it when people do that to me. I get all excited that there is a real comment on my blog and it is only a spammer. That totally bums me out.
If you use spamming techniques with the search engines, they will penalize you–and your little dog too! Then you may never achieve a top ranking in a search engine. If your site is good, it will naturally acquire back links just from word of mouth. Then you will know that you are really, truly popular.
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JUST SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT
Remember, a real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken new action. If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided.
Anthony Robbins
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Until the next ‘review,
Sandy Swain, Editor