Thursday, December 29, 2005

Search Engine marketing and affiliate links

You have a business on a site. You need to get people TO that business. One of the hands down best ways to do that is to have good Search Engine position, aka ranking. Let us say you are looking for Cashflowpc. You heard about Cfpc, maybe read an ad which you did not respond to or whatever. So, you go to your browser and do a search on the word cashflowpc. The results come back in pages. You view those pages starting with page one.

How did those sites get there anyway? First, you have to get on the map so to speak. This means you need a website and then you need to optimize your site (or have someone do it for you, or be provided with one already optimized) and then you need to submit the site to the Engines.

* Sound simple enough?
In 2005 it got complicated. The Search Engines decided to stop accepting affiliate links.
This is having a major impact on people trying to market their affiliated related goods and services. With Cashlowpc for example you will have one or more. Everyone will have a basic affiliate storefront like http://cashflowpc.com/affiliates/t.php?rid=57822 This kind of link is no longer accepted by the Search Engines. So, you need to create a page or site or short url or something that Search Engines will easily accept in order to promote your product page.

This kind of site: http://xtreamnet-cfpc.com/ is acceptable for Search Engines. For promoting your vouchers and your products however, it is adviseable to create specific pages for that. The same issue applies to VIP Travel Rewards. The affiliate tracking links like this http://www.viptravelrewards.com/code.asp?c=agy5j5 are not accepted. Your main link like this one: http://xtreamcfpc.viptravelrewards.com/distributor/index.asp has the same translation issue as the Retail Store link. All those extra "/" drop out and you end up with a garbage link the Engines cannot find. So, for Search Engines you need to create pages or tiny urls or affiliate masking urls and then submit those to the Engines.

Solutions include:

1. Creating a suitable tracking link for your site. It needs to be short enough for the Engines to accept so you have to be careful where you create it.

2. Another is to obtain a landing page. This is one we are building for my Cashflowpc products: http://www.launchapage.com/
3. Obtain a short or tiny url.

* Once you have your sites, you need to submit them to the Engines at least once a month. You will find various submitters at the XtreamNet Marketing Forum and they come included in your upgraded subscription.

Then, as your sites are indexed (or added to the Search Engines) you will need to drive traffic to your site. In other words, get visitors. The more traffic, the higher your positioning in the engines. There are many ways to do this and this will be discussed in the next couple articles.