Affiliate Marketing Techniques - The Whys and Hows of Blog SEO

Blogging adds such value that it deserves a place in any successful marketers arsenal of affiliate marketing techniques. Not only does it give value to your website and for your customers, it can also be good for your profits. Let's explore why you should blog and how to optimise your blog posts.

When used as an affiliate marketing strategy, blogging adds an amazing amount of value. Let's explore why it absolutely deserves a place in your arsenal of affiliate marketing techniques:

What is blogging?
Blogging is the act of writing short articles (known as posts) for your website. It could compare to writing a regular newspaper column. Just as a column in a periodical has a readership who look for the next instalment, readers will follow a blog. However, it can also provide some great results in terms of traffic to a website.

Why blog?
Putting in the effort to contribute and maintain a well written blog will reward both you and your site. Let's explore how:

Search Engine Crawlers. Google just loves fresh content. The search engine bots are continually on the prowl, and when they come across new pages and content, they will be return often to check for more. Google will also reward you for being current and up to date. For this reason, it is best to put your blog on your own site and not on one of the dedicated blogging sites like Blogger.com or Wordpress.com.
Search engine results. Using keywords and optimising your posts can get you onto the first page of Google's results if you are attentive. Be sure to carefully pick out keywords for the best results.
Good content is king. Yes, that old saying – but it's not an old saying for nothing. Good content earns readership. Keep posts engaging, educationa and informative and you will have the crowds flocking to your site looking for new posts.
Familiarity and trust. Rand Fisher (of SEOMOZ fame) states that 'blogs build familiarity and positive branding'. How right he is. As with any sales, the more people feel that they know you, the more likely they are to buy from you. The internet is a challenging environment when it comes to building trust. A blog provides an opportunity to connect, so that people can feel that they know you, they trust you and they like you. They will then buy from you.
Stay human. Blogs provide a window to show that you are human. Your site is not backed by a machine but a human. Sometimes by adding mere trivia, such as what you are eating for lunch, you can really drive this point home.
Networking opportunities. Spend time on blogs in your niche to build links and traffic. Build relationships by adding supportive and valuable additions to the comments area. The blog owners will visit you and so will any passing traffic. All blog owners should spend just as much time as they do writing their posts on building relationships in the blogging community.
Develop the business with the readers. A blog provides a forum for asking customers what their ideas and thoughts are on topics. You can take these answers and apply them to your business for improvements and new products. For example, ask your readers for the best points and the worst points about the products.
Stay the expert. Blogs present the ideal platform for you to retain your position as an expert. By sharing quality information, your reputation will be secured as a knowledgeable experienced specialist.

How to Keyword Optimise Your Blog Posts

As you are no doubt aware, a website that is displayed on the first page of Google will benefit in terms of traffic. If you are first on the search engine results page, you will attract 55% of the possible clicks for that keyword. This being the case, it is essential that you keyword your blog post for search engine results.

Here I'm going to show you how to apply search engine optimisation to your posts. We will use Wordpress as the model as that is what I use for my posts.

Find relevant keywords

To find suitable keywords, it is important to use a keyword tool. A tool will be able to tell you how many searches that keyword is getting per day. I quite often use the Google keyword tool. So let's go there now. Enter your keyword and make a note of the keywords that are returned. We are going to use these keywords in the blog post.

Write the blog post

OK, now you can start writing your blog post. Keep in mind that it needs to be engaging and it needs to offer something useful. I usually add posts that are 'How To' posts so that I can offer some educational aspect to my blog. Take the list of keywords that you wrote down from the tool, and use them throughout the post. Add them for the search engines, but be sure to keep the writing of a quality that humans will want to read. This can sometimes prove to be tricky, and if you come across a challenge on it, then err on the side of the human readers.

Other SEO techniques to apply:

Add a list to your blog. Include the related keywords that you gathered from the Google keyword tool. Link through to other posts that you have on these other topics. Not only will this provide more useful related content for your readers to spend more time on your site, it will signal to Google that you have created an expert page on this topic.

Ensure that your blog post title contains your main keyword. You will also need to add it to the post every 100 words or so. Use the h1 headings and the h2 headings for the main keyword. Add your list of keywords under h2 headings too.

Add links to authority sites. These may include sites that end in .edu or .gov or sites that are well respected such as Wikipedia.

Add an educational video from YouTube. Find something engaging but relevant and useful. Use it to demonstrate points made or as another source of 'how to' information. YouTube provides information about how to insert the video, it is easy to do.

Add images. Be sure to add your keyword to the alt img tag for the image. Another way to score more kudos with Google is to save your image file name with the same main keyword that you are using on your site. You might want to use the images that Zemanta Wordpress Plug-in offers. Many of these images are from Flickr. Otherwise, you could add a royalty free image from a site such as Clipart.

Write in small paragraphs. Humans read information on computers in a different way to reading a book. They most often skim the screen. Make it easy for them to read by using small paragraphs and bolding important text.

Use categories. By setting up your blog with categories to match your keyword – you will be in a good position for optimisation. However, it is best to organise your blog site up front with the categorisation as opposed to doing it as you go along.

4. Hit the publish button

Once your post has been published, then take some time to circulate your post. You can use social bookmarking and social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook to publicise it. Write an article for an article database and then link back to it. This will give it more search engine result power.

Blogging does take time and effort, but the amount of traffic that your site will attain from it, will make it something that you will be well rewarded for.