Some months ago I heard someone claiming that you don’t need search engine ranking optimization in order to make money with affiliate business.

This is technically true. You can drive all the traffic to your site from other places different from search engines organic results, such as PPC and other kind of ads, mailing lists, and links in other websites (especially social media sites, blogs and forums). But would this be enough?

Let’s assume you are starting out, so that you don’t have a list yet, and paid advertisement is not in your budget, so that you can only use free traffic methods. Would you be able to drive enough visitors to your web without search engine ranking optimization?

With effective search engine ranking optimization, people will visit your site basically because it is listed in the top search results of whatever search engine they are using. If you are not optimizing for search engines, you do not expect this to happen, but you still need people to find your site. There are basically four ways to be visible for users without the help of search engines:

–   By posting in  forums and blogs

–   By participating actively in social media sites.

–   By writing articles

–   By having a link to your web in other people’s sites.

As you can see, all these methods have something in common: they are content-based methods.

When using search engine ranking optimization you need to grab the attention of search engines. With alternative traffic generation methods, you need to attract people, not robots, and this is done basically writing good and useful content (in your own site and in the sites from where users will reach yours). Don’t get me wrong here… Writing good content should always be a must. The difference is that if you rely on search engines to get traffic, it is indispensable to optimize your site for them. If search engines don’t like your web, you will not even have a chance to please your visitors (because you will have no visitors at all). When not using search engine ranking optimization, the first step is to write great content outside your site in order to grab the attention of the readers and generate traffic to your web.

I have tried this approach with one of my websites. I was trying to drive visitors to a site selling a couple of products in a very competitive niche. I decided to pretty much forget search engine ranking optimization because in a so crowded niche I didn’t want to depend on search engines for traffic.

From data analysis of my other sites, I realized that many of the highest quality traffic came from other places different from search engines (lists, forums, blogs, social media sites, and articles).

For that new web I could not rely on email lists, because it was my first site in that particular niche. So I figured out a new strategy to get traffic. I decided to focus just on writing good content (in my site and outside it). And guess what? In three months I accomplished my goals in terms of visitors and sales, with no traffic coming from search engines.

I started by creating a blog with quality content. Basically, useful information in the form of tips, how-to,  and product reviews. I designed the site and wrote the content without thinking about search engine ranking optimization at all, just about readers.

In order to promote the site I started to daily post in one forum and two blogs. Again, focusing on writing quality content. Only that way people will click the link to your site.

I also wrote six articles every week and submitted them to a couple of different article directories.

The last, but not less important, part of my strategy consisted on attracting social media traffic. The key to success in social media is, again, quality content. Write good content in your site and outside it. If people like your content they will spread it. And getting viral is exactly what you want.

And the best thing about this content-based method is that you build trust. If you ask them, many of your visitors will become subscribers, so that it is easy to build a mailing list. And this is an asset you want always have, especially if you want your business to not depend on Google, or any other search engine.

About the Author

I’m Wechito Kumura, half of the team behind http://smartaffiliatebusiness.com. The other half is J.J.Olsen. We have been friends for years and now partners. Our intention is to promote only quality products that really can help you to succeed. You are very welcome to visit our site and to get the FREE REPORT that will boost your affiliate profits.

(ArticlesBase SC #2537338)

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ – Search Engine Ranking Optimization. Do You Really Need It That Much?

However, there are so many things you must learn before you hop into the PPC boat. To make your online advertising campaign as effective as it can be includes preventing the 5 popular PPC advertising mistakes.

1. You Home Page Shouldn’t Be your Landing Page. Whatever search engine you use for your campaign, be it Google, Yahoo or MSN, you can choose where to turn your prospective customers when they click your ad. When the prospective customer clicks your ad, he is looking for something very specific that’s why he entered that keyword in the search box. If you let them land on your home page, it’s equivalent to not giving them precisely what they want and notifying them it’s somewhere else. You need to design a specific landing page where you can present your customers with exactly what they are looking for when they clicked your ad. You should target your keywords on your landing page as you did on your PPC ad. This increases the likelihood that your visitor will not just be another visitor, but be an actual buyer.

2. Not Customizing your Landing Page. To struggle to combine several products or services into one landing page is a usual mistake entrepreneurs create. To lead your prospect to the page he is looking for; make sure to alter your landing page targeted to the specific keyword written on your PPC advert. This will make you gain another customer because there is no confusion whether your visitor is in the right place.

3. Don’t Create Generic Ad Copy. For each PPC advert, you only get to have 70 characters for Google and 90 characters (with spaces) for Yahoo. Make the most out of this valuable online real estate by targeting the specific keywords your prospective clients are entering to find the products or services they are looking for. Don’t include meaningless words and generic statements that don’t make your PPC ad stand out. Your headline must be captivating and should include your main keyword. The next line of your ad should contain the biggest benefit that your customers will get from you. This sets you apart from the competition. The third line should be a special feature of your product or service like a discount or freebie. By optimizing your keywords on your PPC ad, you’re most possibly to turn those clicks into cash.

4. Not Getting Top Enough Placements with your Bids. You couldn’t bid high enough on those keywords top placements on the search engines, which would make you miss out on a good percentage of clicks that could have been yours if don’t closely your keywords to the specific product or service. With your PPC campaign, target your keywords and bid high enough to secure a top spot, ensuring that people entering your targeted keyword will find your website, rather than your competitors.

5. Not Testing your Ads. All of the major search engines provide split testing of your ads. This means that you can create variations of your ad so that you can assess different ad copy to determine which works best. Don’t just choose a keyword and write one PPC ad to display, but write multiple ads and try to beat the previous ad. Since they tend to realize what their buyers are exactly searching for, advertisers who experiments with their adverts have a more fruitful Pay Per Click campaign.