Best Affiliate Programs

Almost always, affiliate programs are the most profitable way to monetize a site. While PPC ads can bring you money, it's affiliate ads that can bring you real money. However, it matters a lot which affiliate networks you choose. There are thousands of affiliate networks but needless to say, not all of them are equal. If you pick a bad affiliate network, you are simply wasting your time. This is why we compiled a list of the best affiliate programs for you to start with.

1 Commission Junction

Commission Junction is one of the first affiliate networks, but it still is going more than well. It has a huge selection of offers, including numerous exclusive offers you won't find anywhere else. Most of the brands that have an affiliate program can be found on CJ but the problem is that for popular brands you need to be approved by the advertiser. Very often when the advertiser isn't accepting new affiliates, you get rejected even if your site and promotion skills are out of this world but still there are many other brands to try on CJ. The commission rates there aren't the highest in the industry but still it is possible to find products that pay 50% or more in commissions.

2 ShareASale

ShareASale is another huge affiliate network with offers in many niches. It has both leads, sales, and even clicks, so the choice is really overwhelming. As a whole, the commissions there are generous, though this certainly depends on the advertiser and the product. SAS has a huge pool of advertisers and thousands of products to choose from. The downside is that many sites are rejected, so if your site isn't a good one, it is quite possible you won't be admitted at all.

3 Amazon

Amazon is another very well known affiliate network. In terms of choice of offers it beats every other network - you are free to promote almost any product sold on Amazon. The commissions aren't very generous but you can use it to monetize almost any niche. Amazon is one of the best choices for books and CDs but it also converts well for health products, household appliances and other stuff, food, etc.

4 eBay

EBay is also a great choice for almost any niche, though its selection of offers isn't as huge as Amazon's. Admission to the program itself could be a problem because they have many affiliates and are very picky when new affiliates want to join. In terms of commissions, this isn't the highest paying network but if you can reach good sales volumes, you can make decent money with it.

5 ClickBank

Clickbank is the best choice for eBooks and other digital products. Its user interface and logic isn't the best you can find and very often you will miss great products simply because you can't find them but as a whole, this is one of the best networks with really generous commissions. Due to their payment terms, Clickbank is kind of hard for a beginner because if you don't make sales you are charged for this but nevertheless, it is still very worthy, especially if you have lots of traffic to your site and are serious in your affiliate efforts.

6 Max Bounty

Max Bounty doesn't have the thousands of offers the bigger networks have but it is a really good network. It has many leads and many exclusive offers. It also has some of the easiest type of offers – email submits, which don't pay much but convert much more easily than sales and other types of leads. Many offers allow search traffic, so you can start promoting them right away, even without the need to create a landing page for them.

7 Peer Fly

Peer Fly is similar to Max Bounty but they offer more products to promote. They also have many leads and many exclusive offers, as well as a good selection of email submits, so if you are looking for some easy affiliate products to start with, give it a try.

8 LinkShare

LinkShare is somehow similar to CJ and Amazon because they offer products in many niches, though the selection is certainly not that huge. One of the best things about them is that if you are from the US, the $1 payout makes it easy to get your money soon, rather than have to wait till you reach $100, as the threshold for most other networks is. One of the biggest advertisers here is Buy.com, where you can find products in many niches. Their commissions are kind of low but still there are products that pay 50% or more. The offers are mainly sales - leads, if any, are very rare, so if you are looking for leads, this isn't you network.

9 Never Blue Ads

Compared to the others, Never Blue Ads isn't the best network but if you didn't have success with the other networks on the list, give them a try. They are picky about the affiliates they accept but it isn't that difficult to join them. They do have exclusive offers, so it won't hurt, if you try them.

10 PepperJam

PepperJam is also a good affiliate network, though it isn't as big as the others on the list. It has good retail offers, so if you are looking for an Amazon-like site to promote, it is possible to find it on PepperJam.

11 More Niche

More Niche is last on the list not because it is worse than the others but because it is a niche network that won't be of interest to the majority of Web masters, who don't have sites in the niches it covers. More Niche is great for weight loss, health and beauty, especially if you have UK traffic because all its advertisers are in these niches and there are many top UK brands. Of course, you can sell these products to a global audience but for UK they are the best fit. Their commissions are very generous and they offer tons of affiliate materials, not only the standard banners and text ads.

There is a lot of money in affiliate ads. It is true that while you learn the ropes you might be making next to nothing but this isn't a reason to give up. If you have good, targeted traffic, affiliate offers are your best bet. Join the networks on the list, find suitable offers, start promoting them, and chances are you will make decent money with this.

Article Source:www.webconfs.com

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Free SEO vs Paid SEM

In order to learn how to use them successfully, here are some tips about when it is best to use free SEO and when SEM is the better choice. However, before we move to the tips themselves, it is more than necessary to clarify first what we include on the free SEO list and what goes in the SEM category.

What Is Free SEO and What Is Paid SEM?

There are multiple definitions of what SEO and SEM are. In some cases they are even used as synonyms, which is not precise because they are very different, or SEO is included as a subcategory of the broader SEM umbrella, which is also somehow confusing.

Therefore, to avoid confusion, here is how we define SEO. SEO involves all the link building and onpage optimization activities the purpose of which is to achieve good rankings in organic search, while SEM is everything else you pay for, such as PPC traffic. You might ask if this means that paid links belong to SEM. No, they don't – they are simply black hat and they belong neither to SEO, nor to SEM.

When to Use Free SEO

Free SEO might not involve spending money but it isn't the cheaper alternative. When you consider how much time you spend for onpage optimization and for link building, you don't regard it as free anymore – time is money and these free SEO activities have wasted you so much time that you already know how expensive 'free' can be. Nevertheless, there are cases when you just need SEO. These cases include:

• Less competitive keywords, especially long-tail keywords. For less competitive words, your investment in SEO is more likely to pay off because you don't need that much time and effort to achieve good rankings. This is especially true for long-tail keywords because even if you bid on them, you will hardly get many clicks. For long-tail keywords it is possible to rank well even without any special SEO activities – just include the long-tail keyword a couple of times on the page and it's not unlikely to get to the top of search results even without many (or even any) backlinks.
• When you are on a tight budget. The second case when SEO is not only the better but the only option is when you are on a tight budget and ideally you have all the time in the world. When your budget is too limited, you might be able to buy some cheap PPC clicks but basically 100 or 200 clicks won't make a huge difference anyway. In this case, you just invest your time in SEO and when your budget allows it, move to PPC.

It might look like SEO isn't very useful, when the cases it's the better option are that few but this isn't so. SEO is useful and even if you can afford to spend tons of money on PPC, never ditch organic rankings completely.

When to Use Paid SEM

Sooner or later you see that free SEO alone doesn't deliver the results you want. This feeling is especially strong after another update to the search algorithm, such as the Panda update, when your sites that used to rank well for your keywords get buried down the search results. At times like these, almost everybody will turn to PPC and paid search. However, even when the times aren't drastic, SEM is a good alternative. For instance, it works best in the following cases:

• For competitive keywords. Competitive keywords are too hard to conquer organically. If you have in mind how much time free SEO takes, for competitive keywords PPC is much cheaper than organic. Of course, if you start with Adwords and $3-4 dollar clicks, the costs will be huge but if you try competitive keywords on some of the Adwords alternatives first, most likely you will achieve better results for a fraction of the money you would spend on Adwords.
• When you need lots of traffic in a short period of time. Free SEO takes lots time to see some effects. If you are under time constraints – i.e. you need traffic on some occasion, you will hardly want to wait. For instance, if you sell Christmas stuff and your keywords are too competitive, you might end ranking well organically but it's no use to rank well for Christmas-related keywords in February, for example. Therefore, in November and December you might want to drive huge traffic with PPC. If you want to start SEO at that time, it's just in time for next year's Christmas, so basically in this case PPC is your only alternative.
• For better exposure. Most experts think that it is Top 5, or even Top 3 for a particular keyword that matters. In other words, if you manage to make it to the 7^th or 10^th place, for example, this won't be as good as getting into the Top 5 and still you will have invested a lot in free SEO. If you want to get better exposure, you need to consider paid listings. Paid listings for a given keyword are displayed above organic ones, so you are getting more exposure, but you also must have in mind that generally users are more likely to click on organic results than on paid listings because they feel organic listings are more authentic.
• To find keywords that convert well. Paid SEM is a great source of keyword ideas for free SEO. After you launch a campaign, you will see that some of the competitive keywords you thought would do great for you, if you ranked well for them in Google, actually don't convert. It's quite logical that if a keyword is competitive, this doesn't necessarily mean it will convert well for you and it's best not to learn it the hard way.
  The wisest you can do is spend some dollars on a PPC campaign and see if this particular keyword converts well. If it does, then increase your free SEO efforts and your PPC budget for it.

Free SEO and paid SEM complement each other brilliantly. Each of them has its strengths and weaknesses and for best results, the winning approach is to use both. You just need to experiment a bit till you find the right combination for you and do ongoing monitoring of the effect but once you find the perfect formula, you won't believe how much traffic you'll be getting.

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How to Acquire SEO Customers

You might be a SEO genius but if you are doing SEO for a living and you don’t know how to acquire clients, not only nobody will appreciate yourskills but you will soon find yourself starving. In order to avoid this, here are some tactics you need to know, if you want to acquire SEO customers.

Think Twice, If You Really Need to Grow Your SEO Business

First, before we start with the tactics themselves, one other issue needs to be clarified - do you really need new clients? It might look like new clients are always welcome but this certainly isn’t the case.

You might be thinking, the more, the better. Not so. When you grow your business, quality issues start to popup. For instance, will you be able to service all the new clients you acquire? If not, what makes you certain you will be able to hire the right people to provide the service your clients expect? Business growth is good but the list of companies that drowned because of poorly managed growth is miles longa nd it makes no sense to join it, so before your rush hunting for new clients, do think if you will be able to handle them.

1 Get Referred and Recommended

After you have made sure you do need new clients, let’s see how to find them. The first tactic is to get referred and recommended. You can ask friends and acquaintances to do it but your best referrals are your past clients. Sometimes satisfied clients will refer you anyway but you might also ask them explicitly to do it. You can even ask them for written testimonials/recommendations and put these on your site.

2 Check SEO Job/Gig Boards

SEO job/gig boards, such asCraigslist, are huge opportunities to find new clients. You can place an ad offering your services, or you can check ads of people who are looking for SEO services and respond. Also, in addition to general job boards, you might want to check the ads at the most popular SEO forums, such as WarriorForum.

3 Get a High Quality Site

Your site is another tool to find clients. You need to have a top-notch site because no matter which channel you use to find clients, they will always have a look at your site before hiring you. If they see a messy site, don’t expect they will do business with you. It probably goes without saying that your site needs to have good rankings, too. If your site is nowhere to be seen for your keywords who will hire you – if you can't do proper SEO for your very own site, who is mad to trust you with theirs?

4 Partner with a Web Designer/Developer

A tactic that can bring you really a lot of clients is to develop a partnership with a Web designer/Web developer. They can send you clients directly and you can do the same with your clients, who need a new design/coding for their site. Additionally, if you know the designer/developer and are certain of the high quality of their work, you won't have problems doing SEO for a poorly designed/coded site, which we know is always a nightmare.

5 List Your Services and Rates Onsite

You can't imagine how magnificently this works! When clients are looking for SEO help and they see a concrete offer rather than the standard “We are the greatest!!!!” blah-blah-blah (and if your rates are normal, of course), they are really eager to contact you. So, don’t be shy but put your rates onsite.

6 Offer Package Discounts and Subscriptions

You can also consider offering package discounts and subscriptions. For instance, you can offer reduced prices if a client orders SEO for two sites. Subscriptions are good because they bring you a monthly fee and since SEO is an ongoing activity, it makes sense to offer subscriptions for let’s say 5 or 10 hours of work a month and ask for extra payment if in a particular month you worked more hours for a given client.

7 Get As Much Free Publicity As You Can

Free publicity is not a direct shot at clients but it helps to build your reputation, which in turn helps a lot to convince clients you are their person. The opportunities for free publicityare numerous and you don’t have to try them all. One advanced tactic here is to join a site such as Help a Reporter because it gives you exposure to really high quality publications.

8 Guest Post and Comment on Top Ranking Sites

Again, guest posts are not a direct shot at clients but they also help to build your reputation and gain more exposure. Look for SEO/Web sites, or if you specialize in a niche SEO, for sites in that niche, contact the webmaster, write a post and little by little you will gain a substantial Web presence.

For instance, back in the day when the site was at its prime, a friend of mine used to write for SEOchat. She told me that on days/weeks when she published a popular article, she was getting multiple emails, a large portion of which offered some kind of SEO gig or even jobs and this continued for years after she stopped writing for the site.

9 Be Active on Social Media

Social media also give you a lot of exposure, so explore them, especially the SEO channels and/or niche channels on them. While Facebook and Twitter do work, the best place is LinkedIn because it is a business-oriented network. Take part in forums and channels there, answer questions, ask for recommendations, etc. and sooner or later you will see clients pouring in.

10 Do Followups of Past Clients

Past clients are not past! They can bring you new clients. Maybe this was a one-time client who was pleased but has forgotten about you, so if you remind him or her gently about your services, you might be lucky to land a new client. Just make sure you are not spamming - don’t mass mail all your past clients, or don’t send multiple emails to one client.

These tactics can bring you new clients but actually it is more important if you can retain these clients. It makes no sense to acquire new clients, if they leave you dissatisfied. So, in addition to wondering how to find new clients, do some effort to retain them- this is the key to a successful SEO business.

Article Source:www.webconfs.com

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The Importance of Using Google Webmaster Tools for SEO

Out of the many SEO tools, Google Webmaster Tools is one of the most useful. It doesn't have all the perks of commercial SEO suites and it is not a tool for any SEO need but it comes from Google itself and it offers lots of vital SEO insights. All these are good reasons to start using Google Webamaster Tools (if you are not already doing it, of course).

What Is Google Webmaster Tools?

It is hardly difficult to guess from the name itself that Google Webmaster Tools is a set of tools for webmasters. However, what you don't know right away is that this is a very useful toolset that allows you to communicate with Google and adjust many aspects of how Google sees your site, such as list the external and internal links to your site, adjust the crawl rate at which Google bot indexes your site, check the keywords users typed to land on your site, as well as the click through rate for each keyword, see your site's statistics, and many more.

One issue that needs mentioning is privacy concerns. Since you are giving Google a full access to your site's stats, you might be worried about how they handle this data. While Google is a reputable company and it is not very likely they will abuse the data you are giving them access to, if confidentiality is a top concern for you, think twice before letting Google (or any other statistics solution, for that matter) to your site's secrets.

If you use Google Webmaster Tools together with Google Analytics, the results will be even better. You can access your Google Webmaster Tools data directly from Google Analytics, so if you are already using Google Analytics, with just some more effort you could easily integrate it with Google Webmaster Tools, too.

How Do I Get Started?

In order to use Google Webmaster Tools, you need to join it first. You can do it from here. After you join, you need to go through the verification process, so that Google knows you are the legit owner of the site you want to use Google Webmaster Tools on.

There are several ways to verify ownership. The first one is to download an HTML file and to upload it to the root directory of your site. Another one is to add an HTML tag into the head of your home page. If you are using the same Google account for Google Analytics, a third option to verify ownership is through Google Analytics. There are more ways to verify ownership but if you are interested in them, check the Google Webmaster Tools settings and you will see them.

Google Webmaster Tools to Use Daily

Once you have verified your ownership and have Google code in place on your site, you can now start enjoying the advantages of Google Webmaster Tools. When you log into your Google Webmaster Tools account, the first thing you see is the Dashboard:

From here you can access all the major sections - Search Queries, Links to Your Site, Crawl Errors, Keywords, and Sitemaps. Clicking on any of these will open the respective section.

Search Queries

The Search Queries section shows the keywords that led users to your site.

This long list shows which keywords users searched for when they came to your site. It is best if this list matches the keywords you are optimizing for but very frequently this list contains good keywords you were unaware of. In this case, pick these good keywords and start optimizing for them, too.

In the Search Queries section, you can also see the number of impressions and the number of clicks, which gives you an idea about the CTR for this keyword. All equal, a higher CTR means the keyword is relevant, so you might want to invest some more efforts into this keyword. However, if you notice that as a result of your efforts, the CTR goes down, it is best if you don't touch this keyword anymore.

Links

The second very useful section of Google Webmaster Tools is the Links to Your Site section.

Here you can see where your backlinks (internal and external) come from, as well as the pages they are linking to. As with other link checking tools, don't expect that every single link to your site is displayed but nevertheless this list of backlinks is useful to check from time to time.

One of the advanced uses of the Links section is to disavow links to your site you deem harmful. Links from bad sites can hurt your rankings, so if you want to get rid of them, follow the instructions in this article.

Crawl Errors

The Crawl Errors section shows the errors Google bot encountered on your site. The data you get is similar to what you get when you use the Spider Simulator and it shows inaccessible pages, missing pages, server errors, and all sorts of problems that prevented Google from correctly crawling your site. You also get some other crawl stats (such as the number of pages crawled a day) that are useful to know.

Keywords

Similarly to the Search Queries section that also deals with keywords (but it is the ones users type to get to your site), the Keywords section also shows keywords. However, the difference is that here you see what keywords (and their significance) Google has found on your site. The two lists (of keywords users type and the keywords Google finds on your site) could be very different, which means you are not optimizing for what users are searching for.

The Keywords section also allows to see the theme of your site, which post Panda has become even more important.

Sitemaps

The last section you can access from the Dashboard is the Sitemaps section. Here you see the sitemaps of your site Google has found and the number of URLs in them. If the sitemap found by Google is different from what you expected it to be, you can submit a new sitemap for Google to use.

Robots.txt and Other Advanced Stuff

The sections described so far are the basic Google Webmaster Tools sections. There is also a lot of advanced stuff in each of them but we won't describe it into details. For instance, you can use your Google Webmaster Tools to submit a robots.txt file, or to set the preferred domain syntax (i.e. with or without www) to be displayed in search results. Google Webmaster Tools also allows to know if your site is infected with malware. If it is, you need to clean it first and then resubmit it for review.

Google Webmaster Tools is a really valuable instrument for SEO. It gives you at a glance data about all important SEO aspects of a site, such as keywords, links, crawl errors, etc. If you don't use it already, take the time and get familiar with it – it will help you get better rankings for sure.

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The Importance of Backlinks

If you've read anything about or studied Search Engine Optimization, you've come across the term "backlink" at least once. For those of you new to SEO, you may be wondering what a backlink is, and why they are important. Backlinks have become so important to the scope of Search Engine Optimization, that they have become some of the main building blocks to good SEO. In this article, we will explain to you what a backlink is, why they are important, and what you can do to help gain them while avoiding getting into trouble with the Search Engines. What are "backlinks"? Backlinks are links that are directed towards your website. Also knows as Inbound links (IBL's). The number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of that website. Backlinks are important for SEO because some search engines, especially Google, will give more credit to websites that have a good number of quality backlinks, and consider those websites more relevant than others in their results pages for a search query. When search engines calculate the relevance of a site to a keyword, they consider the number of QUALITY inbound links to that site. So we should not be satisfied with merely getting inbound links, it is the quality of the inbound link that matters. A search engine considers the content of the sites to determine the QUALITY of a link. When inbound links to your site come from other sites, and those sites have content related to your site, these inbound links are considered more relevant to your site. If inbound links are found on sites with unrelated content, they are considered less relevant. The higher the relevance of inbound links, the greater their quality. For example, if a webmaster has a website about how to rescue orphaned kittens, and received a backlink from another website about kittens, then that would be more relevant in a search engine's assessment than say a link from a site about car racing. The more relevant the site is that is linking back to your website, the better the quality of the backlink. Search engines want websites to have a level playing field, and look for natural links built slowly over time. While it is fairly easy to manipulate links on a web page to try to achieve a higher ranking, it is a lot harder to influence a search engine with external backlinks from other websites. This is also a reason why backlinks factor in so highly into a search engine's algorithm. Lately, however, a search engine's criteria for quality inbound links has gotten even tougher, thanks to unscrupulous webmasters trying to achieve these inbound links by deceptive or sneaky techniques, such as with hidden links, or automatically generated pages whose sole purpose is to provide inbound links to websites. These pages are called link farms, and they are not only disregarded by search engines, but linking to a link farm could get your site banned entirely. Another reason to achieve quality backlinks is to entice visitors to come to your website. You can't build a website, and then expect that people will find your website without pointing the way. You will probably have to get the word out there about your site. One way webmasters got the word out used to be through reciprocal linking. Let's talk about reciprocal linking for a moment. There is much discussion in these last few months about reciprocal linking. In the last Google update, reciprocal links were one of the targets of the search engine's latest filter. Many webmasters had agreed upon reciprocal link exchanges, in order to boost their site's rankings with the sheer number of inbound links. In a link exchange, one webmaster places a link on his website that points to another webmasters website, and vice versa. Many of these links were simply not relevant, and were just discounted. So while the irrelevant inbound link was ignored, the outbound links still got counted, diluting the relevancy score of many websites. This caused a great many websites to drop off the Google map. We must be careful with our reciprocal links. There is a Google patent in the works that will deal with not only the popularity of the sites being linked to, but also how trustworthy a site is that you link to from your own website. This will mean that you could get into trouble with the search engine just for linking to a bad apple. We could begin preparing for this future change in the search engine algorithm by being choosier with which we exchange links right now. By choosing only relevant sites to link with, and sites that don't have tons of outbound links on a page, or sites that don't practice black-hat SEO techniques, we will have a better chance that our reciprocal links won't be discounted. Many webmasters have more than one website. Sometimes these websites are related, sometimes they are not. You have to also be careful about interlinking multiple websites on the same IP. If you own seven related websites, then a link to each of those websites on a page could hurt you, as it may look like to a search engine that you are trying to do something fishy. Many webmasters have tried to manipulate backlinks in this way; and too many links to sites with the same IP address is referred to as backlink bombing. One thing is certain: interlinking sites doesn't help you from a search engine standpoint. The only reason you may want to interlink your sites in the first place might be to provide your visitors with extra resources to visit. In this case, it would probably be okay to provide visitors with a link to another of your websites, but try to keep many instances of linking to the same IP address to a bare minimum. One or two links on a page here and there probably won't hurt you. There are a few things to consider when beginning your backlink building campaign. It is helpful to keep track of your backlinks, to know which sites are linking back to you, and how the anchor text of the backlink incorporates keywords relating to your site. A tool to help you keep track of your backlinks is the Domain Stats Tool. This tool displays the backlinks of a domain in Google, Yahoo, and MSN. It will also tell you a few other details about your website, like your listings in the Open Directory, or DMOZ, from which Google regards backlinks highly important; Alexa traffic rank, and how many pages from your site that have been indexed, to name just a few. Another tool to help you with your link building campaign is the Backlink Builder Tool. It is not enough just to have a large number of inbound links pointing to your site. Rather, you need to have a large number of QUALITY inbound links. This tool searches for websites that have a related theme to your website which are likely to add your link to their website. You specify a particular keyword or keyword phrase, and then the tool seeks out related sites for you. This helps to simplify your backlink building efforts by helping you create quality, relevant backlinks to your site, and making the job easier in the process. There is another way to gain quality backlinks to your site, in addition to related site themes: anchor text. When a link incorporates a keyword into the text of the hyperlink, we call this quality anchor text. A link's anchor text may be one of the under-estimated resources a webmaster has. Instead of using words like "click here" which probably won't relate in any way to your website, using the words "Please visit our tips page for how to nurse an orphaned kitten" is a far better way to utilize a hyperlink. A good tool for helping you find your backlinks and what text is being used to link to your site is the Backlink Anchor Text Analysis Tool. If you find that your site is being linked to from another website, but the anchor text is not being utilized properly, you should request that the website change the anchor text to something incorporating relevant keywords. This will also help boost your quality backlinks score. Building quality backlinks is extremely important to Search Engine Optimization, and because of their importance, it should be very high on your priority list in your SEO efforts. We hope you have a better understanding of why you need good quality inbound links to your site, and have a handle on a few helpful tools to gain those links.

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