How to Create Content Specifically For Your Affiliate Product

The Internet is sometimes called one big advertisement. It is true that, since the first web sites began to appear, web designers have realized the potential of web driven product sales. It may seem like an impossible task to join the fight to make online sales today. However, the door is still wide open for you if you can learn how to create content that is valuable to readers and how to create content specifically for your affiliate product. There are a few considerations that you must keep in mind.

Striking a Healthy Balance Between Promotion and Value

One of the worst things that you can do when creating content specifically for an affiliate product is to make the content one big sales pitch. Anyone that has spent even a little time hunting for products on the Internet knows exactly what such content looks like. It provides little information that is not opinionated and gives no real information. In fact, all it does is prop up a product or service as the best without giving a reason why.

Instead, use a writing technique called selective informational reviewing. This is the same technique that many documentary film makers and some news channels use to spin information. All that you need to do is write a review that gives solid information about the product without including a single opinionated statement. For example, compare the following statements. Both are intended to sell the product but only one is valuable:

Company Inc. is the best company out there for white bread.
Company Inc. bakes their white bread with all natural ingredients and old fashioned clay ovens.

Don’t Just Review – Reveal

One of the worst things that you can do on your web site is to just build an enormous review center. Generate content that not only promotes an affiliate product, but informs your readers about the product itself. For example, a reader might not know the benefit of choosing white bread made from all natural ingredients if they do not know the health benefits of doing so, the methods used to create such bread, the source of the ingredients, etc.

You might also consider creating some content about the history of bread baking to rank for the keyword bread (a challenge, yes) or inform your readers how much fresh bread can be when made like it was in the past. Pretend like your readers have no clue what your affiliate product is. The more information that you can include to increase the strength of your claims, the better.

If you are paying content writers to write your content for you, make sure that you are giving them the proper guidelines. If you expect a writer to just automatically know what to do then you are going to have a lot of issues with the content. If you want your content to be generated specifically for your affiliate product, then you need to let your writers know about that. Give them the details and goals that you have in mind.

source: niceblogger

SEO Questions & Answers

Time for more common SEO questions…

1.    What is more important – content or links?

I love this question!  My response is: why is it one or the other? If both are important to the engines (and they are!), focus on both!

I will say that the engines fluctuate a lot in what links they will credit your site with. You may see Google crediting you with 200 links one day and only 20 a week later.  People try to manipulate the engines through linking and Google has gotten pretty good at weeding out links they don’t think should count.

But good content has never been devalued – it’s always been important to the engines.

So my suggestion is to start with good, clean, search engine friendly code and then build your site with strong content that uses your keywords well and then focus on building quality links.

You don’t want to ignore links or content but you want to focus your efforts on what will have the most impact and you want to cover all areas.  If you are writing good content, you should be putting it out there via your Blog, Facebook Fan Page and Twitter account and that should help your content spread and help you pick up links.  So although both links and content are important, I personally always come back to content as the foundation and then build from there.

2.    How do I know if I should hire an SEO Firm?

If you don’t have the rankings/exposure/traffic you need to grow your business AND you don’t have the time or knowledge to handle the work yourself, then you need to outsource the work.

If you aren’t sure if you will benefit from search engine optimization, you should contact me to schedule a consultation.  I will look at your site, determine what the issues are, take a look at how much potential traffic there is for you to tap into and go over costs and options.  There is no obligation.  Contact me at 562-592-5347 or jennifer@ecombuffet.com

So to summarize: if you think your site is lacking in rankings/exposure/traffic , you should definitely contact me.  While it’s true rankings increase over time and history matters, if your site doesn’t have a solid foundation, good content, some linking and on-page optimization then rankings won’t magically appear.

That’s all for today.  Stay tuned for future questions and answers and as always – keep sending me your questions.

source: ecombuffet

8 Ways To Increase Your Email Clickthrough Rate

Email marketing is a powerful tool for engaging your client base, and getting them accustomed to the idea of taking action based on the information you send them. The simplest form of response is the clickthrough, which affirms the reader’s perception that you are offering something that is valuable to them.

These 8 simple tips will help you to substantially increase your email clickthrough rate.

Increase Email CTR

1. Keep the layout clean and simple. Complicated layouts with navigation links and large header images draw attention away from your links and calls to action.

2. Include only snippets of each article or section. Link to the full version on your website. This will not only increase clickthrough rate, but also make it easier for readers to scan through your messages.

3. Add video links. People love to click the “play” button on embedded videos. Take a screenshot of your video as it looks embedded in a web page, and include this in your email message. Link it to the page with the actual video, so that when the reader clicks through, the video will play for them.

4. The best content should come first. Most people read all their email in the preview pane of their email client, and many won’t bother to scroll through your newsletter to see what’s in it. That’s why your most compelling content or call to action should be located at the very beginning of your message.

5. Remind the reader to act at the end of the message. If your message is interesting and useful, your subscribers will be likely to forget about your call to action by the time they reach the end. A great way to remind them is by included a “P.S.” line at the end of the message.

6. Increase the scarcity of your offerings. Any good salesman will tell you that people want things more when they’re tough to get. You can increase your clickthrough and conversion by limiting offers to a certain time-frame, or to a certain number of respondents.

7. Send more targeted messages by breaking up your lists into smaller segments. You can divide your lists based on location, demographics, or interests. An especially powerful trick is to segment your lists based on subscribers’ responses to your previous messages.

8. Create a few different versions of each message and test them against one another. Since the factors contributing to reader response can be unpredictable, the best way to improve clickthrough is to test different subject lines, calls to action, and visual layouts to see which one your particular mailing list responds to better.

source: quickonlinetips