If you’re just getting started in affiliate marketing then one thing you’ll have to learn about is keyword research. While the term “keyword research” itself may seem really daunting the task is really much easier than it seems.

What exactly is the researching of keywords? Basically, as an online marketer it’s very important that you define two things before you get started with a campaign: Your niche and more specifically the keywords you’re aiming for within your niche.

Indeed, if you fail or neglect to do you research in these areas your site will not have sufficient focus. You will not know what words or phrase you’re trying to rank for and will experience tons of frustration.

In the keyword research process what you’re trying to do is identify keywords that you think you can rank for on Google (and on Yahoo and MSN too). In Brian G. Johnson’s affiliate marketing courses you’ll learn specifically how to use the number of results the Google displays.

This number indicates the competition for the keyword among other online marketers and publishers. If that number is too high you’ll have a very tough time ranking for that keyword. If the number is low enough you’ll have an easier time ranking and thus making money in the niche.

Another aspect to keyword research is long-tail versus shorter keywords. Basically, long-tail keywords are actually phrases made up of several words. While long-tail phrases are easier to rank for the search volume for these words is lower. In contrast, shorter keyword phrases have higher search volume but are harder to rank for.

Using Brian’s methods outlined in Commission Ritual you’ll learn exactly how to find the sweet spot for keywords that you can easily rank for and drive free Internet traffic.

As an online marketer you’ll probably want to get your hands on a good keyword research tool or software package. Personally, I have been using Micro Niche Finder for a while now and have had great success. I’d say the greatest benefit of this software is that it helps me to find keyword ideas that I would not have thought of without it.

Furthermore, Micro Niche Finder speeds up the whole process of keyword research and saves me tons of time. For example, if I want to check to see if domain names are available I can find out really fast with this tool. With free tools such as the Google keyword research tool you’d have to manually search domain availability.

Also, the software has an extremely useful feature called “Strength of Competition”. For any given keyword Micro Niche Finder gives you a number (above or below 50) and a green, yellow or red light indicating how high your chances are for ranking based on a long list of ranking criteria.

Keyword research is no joke. It really isn’t too complicated and is actually really fun! The sooner you learn it the faster you’ll be on the path to making serious money online.

If you’re just getting started in online marketing or you’ve been doing it for a while but are looking for a few tips and pointers to boost your click through rate (CTR) and increase you’re earnings I’ll share some advice here.

The Internet is full of articles about how you can optimize your AdSense structure to get the best CTR. You’ll read all about blending your ads and which size ad blocks to use. But, this only works to a certain degree.

I believe there’s much more to boosting your CTR than a few layout tweaks.

Everyday when you look at your AdSense statistics one number to track is your click through rate. This is the number of number of click you get divided by impressions (an impression is when an ad shows online).

It is against Google’s terms of service to reveal your CTR so I won’t discuss my exact numbers here. However, I’ll share a very common sense tip for you to get your CTR numbers higher.

Whenever you hear Google itself giving advice and tips they always talk about relevancy.  What is this exactly? Basically, what they want is for the content of the results of a search to match the search term as best as possible.

Now, how does relevancy apply to your AdSense click through rate?

When you launch a website and put in your AdSense code you’ll notice that some of the ads that appear are highly relevant to the theme or subject of your site. Other ads, however, will be completely off subject.

Now, put yourself into the shoes of the visitor to your site. If you make a search query and land on your site and see the ads are highly relevant to your search term will you click? Probably yes if you’re really interested in the subject and can’t find exactly what you want on the site.

Will you click if there are no relevant ads? No way. You’ll just hit the back button on your browser and bounce off the page. Lost opportunity and no money.

So, how do you make websites that show relevant AdSense ads?

The key answer to this question lies in your initial research before you make your site. You need to look at and analyze the AdSense ads that appear on an already existing site to the one you intend to make.

How do I do this?

Go to Ezinearticles.com. You can also go to Hubpages.com. Now, type in the search term of the site which you intend to build.

For an example, let’s use toothpicks. Type that into Ezinearticles and click on the first site that comes up. What kind of ads appear? I see one ad about toothpicks but the rest of the ads are about other dental care products. Would I click? Probably not.

Moving forward with example. Now, type in “wholesale t-shirts”. What kinds of ads come up? Right off the bat I see five ads about t-shirts which I’d consider checking out if I was interested in wholesale t-shirts.

Now, if you do Internet marketing and need to decide on whether to make an AdSense site about toothpicks or wholesale t-shirts which site do you think will get you a higher click through rate and ultimately more money in the long run?

Click Here For Article Underground!

If you’re just getting started in affiliate marketing then you’ve surely heard that it’s very important to get links to your sites. Indeed, Google judges or “ranks” sites based not only on content but on the links pointing to your site.

Here’s how it works for most affiliates in the beginning and you also might relate to what I’m about to say. You hear or read somewhere that you need to get links to your site. Then, you somehow get the impression that you need to get as many links as possible.

Then, you find out that you can use social bookmarking sites to get links to your site. You get accounts at all the big social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Stumbleupon and Mixx. Maybe you even buy some software such as SENuke or BookmarkingDeomon.Com to automate the process for you.

The next thing you know it you have TONS of NEW links pointing to your site. You have a handful of these links showing up on Google in addition to the URL for your site.

But, there’s one problem. And this is a BIG problem. What Google wants to see is that the links to your site grow in a steady and natural fashion. In Goolge’s eyes a link to your site is a vote of approval, resulting in the improvement of your ranking.

But, if you’ve just launched a site and it suddenly has a hundred links pointing to it in the matter of hours (if you use linking software) or days (if you do it manually yourself) Google will say, “What the heck!”. It’ll see way too many links pointing to your site in too short of a time period and this is not good.

See, what’s extremely important to Google is TRUST. If the search engine sees that you software suddenly has too many links pointing to it it’ll lose trust immediately as building links too fast is considered a form of spamming.

However, if you build your links slowly over a long period of time you’ll build trust with Google and see a really good result in your rankings. Furthermore, you won’t waste your precious time building links – an extremely mundane activity I may add – and use your time wisely spending your working hours publishing content to the web.

This brings me to the best linking strategy which I learned from Brian G. Johnson’s affiliate marketing courses. When I launch a site I just get ONE inbound, or  backlink after the site’s completion. Personally, I use a service called Article Underground, which is recommended in Brian’s courses.

Article Underground is a PLR service that offers up to 400 article every month which you can publish to the web yourself. They also over 10o WordPress blogs on which you can write short posts that link to your site using the anchor text of your choice.

Again, I personally write only ONE post per site with two outbound links – one on my anchor text and the other on my domain name (URL) and that is it! I wait about 24-72 hours and my sites are usually indexed and ranking on Google. While Article Underground costs some money to join it has been worth every penny for me.

Back to the best strategy. After making that one post I walk away from linking for abut SIX months. That’s right – I do not engage in any linking practice for half a year. The main reason for this is because I want to build trust with Google. Then, after six months I return to Article Underground and make some more posts.

If you don’t want to spend any money then there is another way you can go about linking, based on Brian’s teachings. You can find blogs that use the CommentLuv and KeywordLuv plugins. These are WordPress sites on which you can leave post comments with links back to your own site.

Again, the same principal of building links slowly applies here. After finishing a site I’d recommend to make three to four posts on different blogs all linking back to your site with your anchor text. All you’re hoping for is one of the webmasters to approve your comment. Then, you’ve got what you need: A link through which Google can find your site.

When I first got started in affiliate marketing I got endless sites kicked off Google because I was too aggressive about my linking. My sites were immediately marketed as spam by the search engine and I ended up losing precious hours of my time with my sites getting banned.

This does not have to happen to you though. Go about your linking strategy in a very slow and prudent way to build the maximum amount of trust with Google in order to get the best possible rankings for your sites.

Further reading

Getting good quality links is important for all online marketers and webmasters. Here are some resources for further reading that may help you.

• Link Building .Net
• Getting Inbound Links
• Linking And SEO
• Google Pagerank And Linking
• Where To Get Links
• Web 2.0 Link Building
• Link Popularity Checker
• Linking Strategies That Work