Affiliate Marketing – NoFollow and Content Is King

By Tom Sunday March 7, 2010

Affiliate marketing appeals to a lot of people for various reasons. However, I believe that a lot of newbie affiliate marketers simply fail because they feed into the hype that you can just build a site really quickly, and magically the traffic is going to come pouring in. Not to mention that there are a million get rich schemes out there that seem to promise the world.

I wanted to take the time to clear up some misconceptions that you might hear from day to day on affiliate marketing. Also, I wanted to clarify that you are not going to become a millionaire without lifting a finger, affiliate marketing takes A LOT of work.

NoFollow Tags – Big Misconception

There seems to be a big buzz about DoFollow tags these days. I recently listened to a very successful Internet marketer Justine Brooke that really helped clear this dreaded DoFollow misconception up for me. Typically, you are taught to blog comment on niches that are related to you, however, 7 out 10 people will tell you to look for DoFollow tags on blogs.

They seem to think that other blogs carry no weight. Well this couldn’t be any further from the truth. That was really a tactic set up by Google to help stop the spammers that were putting their keywords in the name field with a URL linked backed to them. However, Google is the only one that abides by these.

You will get credit for them in the end, because many sites are indexed on Yahoo and Bing. I guess what I am trying to say is that affiliates get so caught up in DoFollow tags. Do not just go around and drop links on other blogs, you need to be respectful of others blogs. Add some value, and maybe every once in while if it is necessary leave a link to help people. So this brings me to my next subject, “content is king.”

Content Is King – So What

What does this mean? I am sure if you are an affiliate marketer you have heard this a million times. However, what does content is king actually mean. Well, for starters you can’t just focus on creating websites that are focused on SERPS because while that might be great for the search engine, users will eventually catch on and stop reading your content.

You have to talk about stuff that has some value to your audience. No one wants to read the same washed up information over and over again. So bear in mind, make your writing interesting and don’t put so much emphasis on writing for the SERPS. You will want to use strong, emphases, and underline tags, but just don’t go crazy with it.

So all in all make sure you are adding value to your articles, blog post, ect. Do not just write for the search engines, and most importantly don’t over stuff your content with your keywords. As a good rule of thumb I would keep your keyword density to below 3%. If you follow this advice for the misconception of the DoFollow tags, and content rules you should be fine in the affiliate marketing world. What other advice would you guys at buildthatlist.com feel are necessary for any affiliate marketer to understand?

This article is a guest post from Garen Arnold who owns the best web hosting service. Garen is a freelance web site designer, and also runs a site that allows people to report online scams to help keep the Internet safe.

When Is The ‘Creative License’ Taken Too Far In Marketing?

By Tom Sunday March 7, 2010

12 Comments

When Is The ‘Creative License’ Taken Too Far In Marketing?

If you have been a reader of this blog recently you would know that I have been promoting The Aweber Code.

Recently Jack from Create A Successful Blog posed the following in regards to The Aweber Code’s squeeze page:

Firstly who would sign up to that? How did people back in 600 B.C know about the internet, email lists and emails? Sounds like a lame attempt to get readers.

Although people may think “Wow, and awesome document from the past” when you actually think about it, it just doesn’t make sense.

And Jake makes a really interesting point.

We can get so desensitized to the ‘marketing hype’ that internet marketers throw our way to try and make us buy their products and sign up for their email lists – but do these internet marketers sometimes take it to far?

But When Is It Too Far?

Now I am not saying that there is anything wrong with The Aweber Code as a product, but as Jack added in an addition comment:

I just find The Aweber Code just unrealistic. And since it provides false information on the marketing campaign (which I think may work a little following of The Da Vinci Code), it also makes me believe the product in question isn’t really good.

We are putting our reputation on the firing line if we are not promoting our products or email list with integrity and honesty. All the marketing hype may help with your conversion, but what is more important – sales or your credibility?

Now I am going to continue promoting The Aweber Code because Tim Bekker has a great track record, I am always intrigued by the whole product launch process and the fact that Tim’s last product did over $100k in sales in the first 48hours of launch – and that is something we would all like to do.

But Where Is The Line For You?

So, where do internet marketers cross the line for you? What is it that really turns you off a sales or squeeze page? Or what are the things that internet marketers do that leaves a bad taste in your mouth?

FREE EBOOK: The Membership Site Masterplan

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