One needs to choose those keywords that are frequently searched for and which are in high demand, but also not being already used by many other websites and competitors, and thus have low competition. There are a number of keyword research tools that can help you find them.

Some important research tools are word tracker, Overture, Google AdWords Keyword and Guidebeam.

Overture’s http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ keyword suggestion tool is free and much quicker to use than Wordtracker. It works more like the Wordtracker but doesn’t tell you how many websites are targeting each keyword phrase. For example if you type ‘Computer’, the Overture search suggestion tool will tell you that during the last month the word ‘Computer’ was searched, say for example 459550 times at Overture.Com. Similarly ‘computer game’ was searched 302210 times. Also, given one word it will tell you all relevant combinations of that word, which are based on actual searches done by people. If the word you keyed in is not a common search term then you will not get any results. It means that very few people have actually searched for that word during the last month.

Even Google Keyword Tool generates potential keywords for your ad campaign and reports their Google statistics, including search performance and seasonal trends. Features of this tool include,

• Sorting the results of your desired keyword search by popularity, past performance history within the AdWords system, cost, and predicted ad position.
• Easy keyword manipulation where you can select a few keywords here and there or add them all at once.
• Searches for keywords present even in any webpage URL specified by your search. It can also expand your keyword search even further to include those pages that are linked to or from the original URL page.
• More keyword results are generated based on regularly updated usage statistics database. This helps you to get new keywords or phrases.

Guidebeam http://www.guidebeam.com/ is an interesting resource. Type in a phrase and it will suggest a large number of related searches. The numbers generated against each phrase are Guidebeam’s estimation of how relevant that phrase is.

These softwares are useful for researching how people search the web and then optimizing your own web pages so that more people find your web site.

It is the search engines that finally bring your website to the notice of the prospective customers. Hence it is better to know how these search engines actually work and how they present information to the customer initiating a search.

There are basically two types of search engines. The first is by robots called crawlers or spiders.

Search Engines use spiders to index websites. When you submit your website pages to a search engine by completing their required submission page, the search engine spider will index your entire site. A ‘spider’ is an automated program that is run by the search engine system. Spider visits a web site, read the content on the actual site, the site’s Meta tags and also follow the links that the site connects. The spider then returns all that information back to a central depository, where the data is indexed. It will visit each link you have on your website and index those sites as well. Some spiders will only index a certain number of pages on your site, so don’t create a site with 500 pages! The spider will periodically return to the sites to check for any information that has changed. The frequency with which this happens is determined by the moderators of the search engine.

A spider is almost like a book where it contains the table of contents, the actual content and the links and references for all the websites it finds during its search, and it may index up to a million pages a day. Example:  Excite, Lycos, AltaVista and Google.

When you ask a search engine to locate information, it is actually searching through the index which it has created and not actually searching the Web. Different search engines produce different rankings because not every search engine uses the same algorithm to search through the indices.

One of the things that a search engine algorithm scans for is the frequency and location of keywords on a web page, but it can also detect artificial keyword stuffing or spamdexing. Then the algorithms analyze the way that pages link to other pages in the Web. By checking how pages link to each other, an engine can both determine what a page is about, if the keywords of the linked pages are similar to the keywords on the original page.

Keyword density is an indicator of the number of times the selected keyword appears in the web page. But mind you, keywords shouldn’t be over used, but should be just sufficient enough to appear at important places.

If you repeat your keywords with every other word on every line, then your site will probably be rejected as an artificial site or spam site. Keyword density is always expressed as a percentage of the total word content on a given web page.

Suppose you have 100 words on your webpage (not including HMTL code used for writing the web page), and you use a certain keyword for five times in the content. The keyword density on that page is got by simply dividing the total number of keywords, by the total number of words that appear on your web page. So here it is 5 divided by 100 = .05. Because keyword density is a percentage of the total word count on the page, multiply the above by 100, that is 0.05 x 100 = 5%

The accepted standard for a keyword density is between 3% and 5%, to get recognized by the search engines and you should never exceed it.

Remember, that this rule applies to every page on your site. It also applies to not just to one keyword but also a set of keywords that relates to a different product or service. The keyword density should always be between 3% and 5%.

Simple steps to check the density:

• Copy and paste the content from an individual web page into a word-processing software program like Word or Word Perfect.
• Go to the ‘Edit’ menu and click ‘Select All’. Now go to the ‘Tools’ menu and select ‘Word Count’. Write down the total number of words in the page.
• Now select the ‘Find’ function on the ‘Edit’ menu. Go to the ‘Replace’ tab and type in the keyword you want to find. ‘Replace’ that word with the same word, so you don’t change the text.
• When you complete the replace function, the system will provide a count of the words you replaced. That gives the number of times you have used the keyword in that page.
• Using the total word count for the page and the total number of keywords you can now calculate the keyword density.

Referrer logging is used to allow web servers and websites to identify where people are visiting them either for promotional or security purposes. You can find out which search engine they used to find your site and whether your customer has come from a ‘linked site’. It is basically the URL of the previous webpage from which your link was followed.

By default, most hosting accounts don’t include referrer logs but may be subscribed for an extra monthly fee. If your web host does not provide a graphic report of your log files, you can still view the referrer logs for your website by logging into the host server using free or low-cost FTP software, like these:

FTP Explorer:   http://www.ftpx.com/

LogMeIn: http://secure.logmein.com/dmcq/103/support.asp

SmartFTP: http://www.smartftp.com/

FTP Voyager: http://www.ftpvoyager.com/

The log file is available on your web server which can be downloaded into your computer later. You can use a log analysis tool, like those mentioned below, to create a graphic report from your log files so that the files are easier to understand.

Abacre Advanced Log Analyzer http://www.abacre.com/ala/

Referrer Soft http://www.softplatz.com/software/referrer/

Log Analyzer http://www.loganalyzer.net

You can view the files using Word, Word Perfect, txt or WordPad files even if you don’t have the right tool. This information is very crucial to your business and marketing plans and is not advisable to neglect it.  In addition to identifying the search engine or linked site from where your visitor arrived, referrer logs can also tell you what keywords or keyword phrases your client used for searching.

As referrer information can sometimes violate privacy, some browsers allow the user to disable the sending of referrer information. Proxy and Firewall software can also filter out referrer information, to avoid leaking the location of private websites. This can result in other problems, as some servers block parts of their site to browsers that don’t send the right referrer information, in an attempt to prevent deep linking or unauthorized use of bandwidth. Some proxy software gives the top-level address of the target site itself as the referrer, which prevents these problems and still not divulging the user’s last visited site.  Since the referrer can easily be spoofed or faked, however, it is of limited use in this regard except on a casual basis.

Search Engine Optimization is a process of choosing the most appropriate targeted keyword phrases related to your site and ensuring that this ranks your site highly in search engines so that when someone searches for specific phrases it returns your site on tops. It basically involves fine tuning the content of your site along with the HTML and Meta tags and also involves appropriate link building process. The most popular search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, AOL and Ask Jeeves. Search engines keep their methods and ranking algorithms secret, to get credit for finding the most valuable search-results and to deter spam pages from clogging those results. A search engine may use hundreds of factors while ranking the listings where the factors themselves and the weight each carries may change continually. Algorithms can differ so widely that a webpage that ranks #1 in a particular search engine could rank #200 in another search engine. New sites need not be “submitted” to search engines to be listed. A simple link from a well established site will get the search engines to visit the new site and begin to spider its contents. It can take a few days to even weeks from the referring of a link from such an established site for all the main search engine spiders to commence visiting and indexing the new site.

If you are unable to research and choose keywords and work on your own search engine ranking, you may want to hire someone to work with you on these issues.

Search engine marketing and promotion companies, will look at the plan for your site and make recommendations to increase your search engine ranking and website traffic. If you wish, they will also provide ongoing consultation and reporting to monitor your website and make recommendations for editing and improvements to keep your site traffic flow and your search engine ranking high. Normally your search engine optimization experts work with your web designer to build an integrated plan right away so that all aspects of design are considered at the same time.

Affiliate Marketing Success

Being a comparatively a new form of internet marketing, so far there has been a lack of standards to measure different affiliate marketing methods. Training and certification is practically non-existent and there has been little self regulation.

Which leads me to the point of why some affiliate marketing sites work so much better while many others don’t?

From the individual’s point of view the following areas could be a pointer on how successful that person is as an affiliate marketer:

• Join affiliate programs that interest you. That way you would have the interest to research, know and possibly even buy the product to experience it. Becoming an expert would be to the person’s benefit.
• Make a sincere effort to know your audience. By doing this you would be able to relate to the customers and position the product suitably. It goes without saying that being truthful and helpful adds to the site’s credibility.
• The use of your own website allows for customisation. Differentiation, especially if the person is good at designing the site, would pull in more customers and viewers. Having reciprocal links with other marketers in the niche can be a double-edged sword; if the marketer is new to this format, it can reap benefits, but for more mature sites, stand-alone might be the better option.
• Notwithstanding the above, joining forums and discussion boards helps. You can then devise customer centric solutions and have better participation.
• Having your own newsletter and / or an e-zine always allows your site to stand out especially if you have an outstanding presentation.
• Having your own email list reduces the risk of your page being recorded as a spamming site. It also allows the individual to target the most appropriate customers, increasing the strike-rate.
• Having an auto-responder program connected to the site would help save time for the individual to pursue more creative work.
• The individual writing timeless but relevant articles and posting these on a separate page o the website would stand out. Most customers who are interested in a particular product would be looking for the additional information.
• Provide good content to whatever you put on the website. Select material carefully and keep changing as and when required. In this fast changing world, with all the options, don’t get left behind!
• You may have to try different programs before you hit on the right ones. However do give each its rightful space, before moving on.
• Be patient – the rewards may not be immediate, but the sincere effort (and a bit of luck) will lead to success

1. I got accepted into clickbank, well they accept everybody.. so nothing much to rejoice here.. here’s the juice on clickbank. Founded in1998, ClickBank is the online retail outlet for having over 10,000 digital product publishers and more than 100,000 active affiliates.Click Bank is privately held with offices in Broomfield, Colorado and Boise, Idaho. Click Sales Inc. is a subsidiary of Keynetics Inc. Clickbank Is an affiliate program that is of highest standard. It specializes in digital products which usually don’t require any physical delivery. Clickbank gives its affiliate a lot to cheer. Most of the product it listed in its website gives more than 75 percent commission to its members. ClickBank makes a sale somewhere in the world every three seconds. It serves over 200 countries, and is consistently ranked as one of the most highly trafficked sites on the internet. You do not require a storage facility and you are not required to look after the shipping. You simply transfer sales or leads to the click bank and pocket a cool 75 percent commission on most cases.
   Clickbank has over 100000 publishers who are selling its products. It has over 10000 digital products listed for you to sell and make money. Click bank has a very good multilingual customer care that takes care of all your queries. www.clickbank.com

Special features of click bank:

Earn as much as 75 percent commission.
Unlike commission junction you are not required toapply and get approved for each product. You can sell as much as 10000products.
Real time statistics available.
Weekly payouts now.
Fast and free membership
Recurring commissions and global reach.

Buddy Tip
Pros– Clickbank is really a safe bet and good way to start your journey to earn money online by becoming an affiliate. Clickbank has no prerequisite conditions for becoming their member. They don’t really care how you sell their products, through email marketing, social sites marketing, or virtually through anything… as long as the particular clickbank product is sold through your affiliate link, you can be assured to get your commission. They also have a nice help section, where you will find all faqs in simple format and some nice tools for advertising their products on your website. Unlike some hard to get in affiliate networks, wherein to get accepted you need to have a strong website with lots of visitors or some prior experience in affiliate marketing, while some require a fee to be their affiliate member.. clickbank always welcomes you with open heart. Registering with them is as simple as signing up in a forum.
Cons– There aren’t really any negative things to be said about click bank, expect you should be ready to face a lot of competition for almost all the products you sell via clickbank. I mean its understood, since they accept almost everybody. They usually don’t have any physical products for selling, which means that you need to be fine tuned to the art of selling digital products.

According to Wikipedia:

Affiliate marketing is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts. Examples include rewards sites, where users are rewarded with cash or gifts, for the completion of an offer, and the referral of others to the site. The industry has four core players: the merchant (also known as ‘retailer’ or ‘brand’), the network, the publisher (also known as ‘the affiliate’) and the customer. The market has grown in complexity to warrant a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates and specialized third parties vendors.

Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods. Those methods include organic search engine optimization, paid search engine marketing, e-mail marketing, and in some sense display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques, such as publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner.

Affiliate marketing—using one website to drive traffic to another—is a form of online marketing, which is frequently overlooked by advertisers. While search engines, e-mail, and website syndication capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile. Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in e-retailers marketing strategies.