Affiliate By Night

Affiliate Marketing Resources: Part I

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This will be part 1 in a series of posts about various affiliate marketing terms, techniques and strategies. This is designed to be a beginner’s guide and cover the basics, although some of the strategies and resources covered can certainly be used by affiliate marketers of all levels.

Part 1 is going to cover some common basic terminology you’ll need to be familiar with:

Affiliate Marketing: The namesake of this whole enterprise, affiliate marketing can be defined in various ways. In it’s simplest form, it simply refers to the directing of traffic to certain websites in return for compensation. It’s obviously more in-depth then that, but on it’s face that’s the basis for what affiliate marketing it: driving traffic to websites in return for money.
For more information as to what affiliate marketing is all about and the history of it’s development feel free to check out the following links:
Affiliate Marketing Wiki Page
Affiliate Marketing Starter’s guide (log in to read beginner article - lots of other great content too)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): SEO is focused on improving the volume and quality of traffic heading to a website by optimizing facets of the searching process. There are numerous factors that go into determining the “top” websites and SEO focuses on using a number of techniques to improve a given page’s rank in the search engines, operating under the theory that the higher up on the search list a site is, the more traffic it gets. SEO can include anything from how a website is designed and coded to improving content and making the spidering process – or automated content indexing done by search engines – smoother and more relevant.
One of the resources we used to familiarize ourselves with a lot of the basics of SEO was this beginners guide from SEOmoz.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM): Similar to search engine optimization, SEM is focused more on driving traffic to a given website increasing their visibility on search engine sites. Popular ways to do this include using SEO techniques, as well as purchasing paid placement at or near the to of relevant searches. Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing are two huge programs used to garner better search results for your site through the process of bidding a certain amount of money on various search keywords, with the more popular and shorter ones costing significantly more.

Long-Tail Keywords: A very important part of affiliate marketing is making sure you not only drive lots of traffic to your website but also to bring the most relevant web searches to your site so they are more likely to click on your advertisements or buy products from your store. Search engine queries are referred to as “keywords”, and the most common, shortest keywords often provide the most general traffic.

Long-Tail keywords are 3-5 word phrases that will often direct more specific traffic to your website, and is a great way to target a niche audience. For example, a lot more people would search for “herbal remedies” then would search for “herbal remedies for acne”, but if you were looking to sell herbal acne medicine, the latter would be a much more relevant group of customers. It’s about balancing the volume and relevance of traffic with the costs, especially as you are just starting out on a tight budget.

Stay tuned for more in this continuing series and as always if you have suggestions for terminology you want defined, programs you want explained or strategies you don’t fully understand feel free to bring those up in the comments section.