Affiliate Marketing SEO: On Page Analysis Fundamentals

In the affiliate marketing business, it's vital to control what you can control and not rely on luck. The quality of your pages, for instance, is one thing that you can control. Page quality is one thing that, well done, will vastly increase your chances of being found by the search engines.

But what exactly constitutes a "quality page"? How is a quality page measured?

There are many tools (some described here) that can help you test your pages for maximum according to "on page" search engine optimization, but these tools, like expensive basketball shoes for a guy with no game, are no substitute for mastering the fundamentals.

Keywords: Keep It Simple, Stupid

If you've spent any amount of time reading about affiliate marketing and search engine optimization, you've no doubt seen the word keyword sprinkled here, there, and everywhere.

One aspect of keyword use that is oft-ignored, though, and much to the detriment of the ignoring webmasters, is following the super-simple fundamental rules of keyword usage. For instance, each page's keyword should be the exact title of each page. Exact as in exact, no variations.

Also make sure to use the exact--no variations--keyword in the meta tag title and descriptions of the page.

The search engines are far from stupid, but keep it simple for them as if they were. They appreciate it and so will you, when they find you easier.

No One Sentence Pages, No Hundred Page Pages

Another important factor in measuring--actually measuring, not guessing--how much the search engines will like your pages is the amount of content on any given page. If a page is less than 150 words, it's much harder to get that SEO love. Beef it up a bit.

On the other side of the equation, there are those pages that go on for pages and pages and pages. Sometimes, this is justified. Usually it's not. And while the search engines won't necessarily penalize you for too high word count, your visitors will likely not like your verbosity.

When those visitors see that mess and want no part of it, they'll click away instantly--and if you don't think that the search engines dock you for that, we've got an expiring domain name in Brooklyn that we'd like to sell you. Break down big pages into smaller pieces.

SEO Secret Sauce: Text Linked Keywords

Have you ever considered hiring an expensive SEO firm to take your pages to the next level? Nothing wrong with that, but first make sure you've done yourself (for free) what they're going to do for you (not for free) before you sign up and fork over:

On every page--no variations!--include a text link for that page's keyword. If your keyword is "dog collars," then, you have a link going out from one mention of "dog collars."

You can link from the keyword to another page on your site or to another site entirely, for example to a merchant partner. Either way, text linked keywords provide an SEO boost.