10 Tips to Improve Website Rankings in Google

There are crystal-clear ways webmasters can improve websites rankings, and their websites visibility in Google's search engine results page. This SEO is made up of smart, user-and-search-engine friendly techniques.

Think of SEO as of great stuff webmasters can do to help their sites perform better in search engine results. So here are the top ten strategies for better search engine websites ranking.

1. Title tags

The words in the title tag appear in the link that appears in the search engine result page. This is where you tell the search engine and the future visitor what needs to be known: company or publication name; relevant, targeted keyword or keyword phrase taken from the text of the page. Each page should have a title tag as Google ranks each page individually.

2. Content

Content work as parts of the whole; you almost certainly understand that content should be quality, but it should also be rich in the keywords you are targeting to drive search traffic. That does not mean just throwing them in there. Keyword use and keyword variation should be natural and not overflowing. For the visual text part of the page, focus on working in the relevant words and phrases you want people to find you for.

3. Quality Links

Or more distinctively, back links, links to your site from outside sources. Links are your letters of recommendation. If nobody is recommending you, or the recommendations seem fake, then it will not work. Authority links are weighted most heavily, of course, so try to get industry-related authority sites to link to your site.

4. Quantity Links

Authority, high quality and high PR links are by nature more difficult to get, so you will have to start somewhere else. Google demonstrate that you cannot buy Google's love with link exchange or buying links. So, try to get as many links as you can from good websites by promoting. Submit links to respected directories like DMOZ and Yahoo, as well. Many low-quality, non-authoritative, or bad-neighborhood links, though, can do a lot more harm than good; so keep things natural.

5. URL

Search engines don't like too many parameters in the URL, (it's easy to confuse the spiders), and people cannot read those long URLs and tell what they mean either. The people aspect here is especially important, because they're the ones clicking and they need to understand where a link leads them at a millisecond glance. Keywords in the URL are a good idea.

6. Spider Food

Search spiders eat HTML, not Flash. They eat text, not pictures. Make the spiders happy with HTML and lots of text to eat. Remember that text should be rich in the keywords.

7. Site Architecture

The goal is creating a website spiders can easily access, a website that tells them where to go and what to index. Sitemaps are essential for this purpose, as is proper use of Robots.txt.

8. Frequently Updated Content

You could start a site, add some content on it, and let it sit there in cyber space. It'll certainly be indexed, but it will really expand it's credibility as a relevant source of information, if it updates regularly. In addition to spiders, it gives visitors a reason to come back, too.

9. Start a Blog

A great way to establish yourself as an expert on the Internet is to start a blog about the industry you are in. Maintaining a blog means another entry point with regularly updated content that adds some authority to the main site via targeted links.

10. Don't Forget Humans

There's an art to designing a site that is friendly to both Google spiders and the people you ultimately want to convert. Without people, what is the point? So first design for them, and then adjust to please the spiders, not the other way around. Make websites for users not for spiders.

10 Tips for Managing the Affiliate Channel

If done well, affiliate marketing can provide a cost effective and highly measurable way to acquire customers and grow sales.

Find the right affiliates

Affiliates are the ones who will actually sell and promote your products and services, so finding the right affiliates for your programme is essential. Ideally, you should be choosing relevant sites with a good image that will represent your products well and generate quality leads.

Communication

Good relationships and clear lines of communication are a pre-requisite for success in affiliate marketing. The most successful merchants make sure that they are equipping their affiliates with the information and creative they need to succeed.

Choose banner ads carefully

The right banner ad can have a significant impact on your click through rate (CTR), so choose carefully. It is often best to select a relatively simple banner as graphically rich ads can slow download speeds and may mean that visitors are not seeing them.

Offer a range of banners / text links

Make sure that your affiliate programme offers the full range of banner sizes, text links and so on that your affiliate network allows. You need to make it as easy as possible for affiliates to put your ads on their sites.

Respond promptly to affiliates' questions

From time to time, affiliates may have queries about your programme - responding promptly will show that they are a priority for you, while ignoring emails or taking too long to reply will have them looking for another merchant.

Pay particular attention to 'super affiliates'

Super affiliates tend to generate the majority of sales so you need to keep them happy. An estimated 80% of sales come from just 20% of affiliates, so there is a lot of power in the hands of a small minority. Regular communication, providing custom reports and giving them the right levels of commission are all important as they could easily swap to another merchant with a better offer.

Provide realistic incentives

Many merchants offer tiered commissions, which is fine, but the targets have to be realistic and achievable to incentivise affiliates. For instance, if your average order value is £50, then don’t set the first tier at £2,000 worth of sales per month – to smaller affiliates this looks unachievable, and many just won't bother. Set the tier at a lower level for improved results.

Share market demographics

As a merchant, you know who your typical customer is, so share that information with your affiliates.This will enable them to target their advertising more effectively - they get more sales, you get more sales and everyone is happy.

Keep tabs on affiliate forums

Affiliates use message boards and forums, for information about affiliate programmes, so it's important to visit these sites to keep abreast of trends in affiliate marketing. In addition. by participating in these forums, you can increase awareness of your own programme and hopefully attract more affiliates.

Use more than one affiliate network

Using multiple networks for your programme can be beneficial, as it gives potential access to more affiliates, and can help you find the most effective network. For some though, the benefits of belonging to more than one network may be outweighed by the extra administration, duplication of effort and the danger of being spread too thinly. It makes sense for merchants to use two affiliate networks. This means that there is limited duplication of effort but ensures that there is back-up if there is a problem with one of the networks.

How to Select an Affiliate Program?

Today with so many affiliate programs flooding the internet and a large number of them getting added everyday, selecting the right affiliate program(s) for you can be quite a daunting and confusing task.

In this situation the best thing to do is to make a list of affiliate programs that appeal to you the most. Then take a few notes about the various features of each program. Be as critical as possible. In this way you will be able to quickly compare various programs that you think might work for you. If you are unsure about anything, be sure to ask a few questions.

How much does it cost?

Most of the online affiliate programs are free, because it doesn’t costs them that much to have you do the advertising and send the referrals to them. Then they will pay you depending on the their requirements. Many affiliate progams pay out as much as 50%.

How do they pay?

Most of the time there are 3 statistics from which to choose the company: sales, hits and impressions. A sale is considered whenever someone on your website clicks an affiliate banner or text ad and goes to their website and actually makes a purchase. Hits are simply clicks on your banner or text link and impressions are the number of times someone views the links. Generally the average sales are paid from 20-50%, hits are .01-.05% and impressions very little because you need 1000’s of them to count. Not every one pays for the hits and impressions. Find out what their average hits to sales average is by all affiliates.

How do your referrals get tracked?

How do they track your referrals coming from your website, and how long do they stay in their system? Is there a method for you to track your referrals to their site and do they continue to give you credit if the referral doesn’t buy right away, but may do so later on, even months away?

What about statistics?

Are you able to login to their website and see various details pertaining to your account? You really want to be able to keep a close eye on them so you can evaluate your results and also allow you to see if your advertising is working or do you need to improve it.

What about commission checks?

How often and when are you paid-weekly, monthly or longer? Do they have a minimum amount in order for the checks to be issued? Do they offer a 2 tier system whereby they pay you for sales generated by the referrals as well as their becoming an affiliate? What are their various modes of payment: Mailed checks, PayPal, bank transfer, etc.

What is their company history?

How long have they been in business? What are the products and do you really believe in them? Ask yourself if you would buy those products without their affiliate program. Don’t join if you are a little unsure whether they are worth the money being asked. That attitude could carry over into not promoting your company as well as you should.The best place for recommendations is a public forum. People love to give advice and you could get a better picture of the program.

Do they offer tools and resources?

Do they offer advertising tools such as banners, classified ads, e-mails etc.,usually with their links embedded in them already with your affiliate number? Often they will offer a series of emails that you can use with your autoresponder.

Conclusions:

Beware of outrageous claims as to high commissions and also be leery of companies that keep bombarding you with offers. They seem to be more interested in getting you as a customer instead of just letting you do the referrals. (You probably won’t see this until you have actually joined.) Some of this information will be a little harder to obtain but I think if you setup the questions you want to ask ahead of time it will go a long way to matching you up with the best program(s) that are a good fit for you.

Speak to Your Market

The thought of creating the content or pitch page for your web site may, at first, seem daunting but it is far easier than you think. All you need is an understanding of what your particular market responds to – and the rest will follow.

Effective content to pitch your product is often referred to as a "sales letter." Ideally, if you later expand your product offerings (or if you haven't yet created your first product) you should construct your sales letter prior to your product. Just go ahead and create the perfect sales letter for your perfect product. It is well known that many successfully selling products are created AFTER the sales letter.

You should aim to appeal to the market you are promoting to and remember these potential customers are not experts, but rather they are ordinary, average people seeking information/help.

Remember, your advantage here is identifying with the customer, i.e. I used to be like you, now my "problem" is solved because "I simply did x,y,z." Provide a solution to their problem.

Focus the majority of your sales copy on their emotional needs ("stop embarrassing snoring"). By all means use scientific proof, but make sure you identify with their immediate needs ("they need to stop snoring tonight otherwise their marriage is over").

The majority of publishers are not "qualified experts" with extensive proof that their product works (for example testimonials, screenshots, endorsements, etc). And that's fine – provided you position yourself in your sales letter as an "average guy who overcame the problem" and come across as believable.