Affiliate Marketing Apprenticeship Program - Lesson 5/13
written by Anthony Dinh
First, I’d like to say thank-you and congratulate you for joining my Affiliate Marketing Apprenticeship Program. You’ve taken the first step in the right direction towards building a successful online business and financial freedom. This 13-step program is your roadmap to wealth, and it’s jam-packed with invaluable information…no tricks or gimmicks here folks, just solid and proven methods that work! SEO (search engine optimization), copywriting and various internet marketing methods will be covered throughout the tutorial. I suggest that you read through it once, let it soak in, try it out, then go back and read it again because you’ll surely pick up something new that you missed the first time around.
Here’s a breakdown of each lesson for your convenience:
Lesson 1 - Set Your Goal
Lesson 2 - Find Your Niche
Lesson 3 - Keyword Sniping
Lesson 4 - Research Affiliate Programs
Lesson 5 - Build a Website Around Your Keyword
Lesson 6 - Incorporate Affiliate Links in Your Posts
Lesson 7 - Build Quality Backlinks
Lesson 8 - Submit Your Site to Web Directories
Lesson 9 - Submit Your Post to Article Directories
Lesson 10 - Add More Content and Build More Backlinks
Lesson 11 - The Waiting Game
Lesson 12 - Tweak Your Site
Lesson 13 - Scale Your Campaign
Before we begin with “Lesson 5 - Build a Website Around Your Keyword“, please bookmark this page and subscribe to my full RSS feed as there are 13 steps, so you definitely won’t want to miss out! If you are just joining us now, be sure to go back and read “Lesson 1 - Set Your Goal“.
Affiliate Marketing Apprenticeship Program
Lesson 5 - Build a Website Around Your Keyword
After you’ve selected your niche and researched some affiliate products, it’s time to start building an interesting and informative site entirely around the keyword(s) that you’ve sniped from Lesson 3 - Keyword Sniping to promote these products. The structure of your site must be built correctly in order to achieve SEO optimization and higher ranking, so it’s important that you chose an SEO friendly template. Courtney Tuttle offers a few nice ones that I would recommend. Remember, a quality affiliate site should be rich with content and keywords, be SEO friendly, and should help the visitor make an informed decision between one of two products to purchase.
You will need to create and publish a minimum of 10 posts surrounding your keyword and product with some solid content that speaks with authority on the subject matter. Before you do this, you will have to purchase a domain, preferably one which contains your keyword. This will definitely help you rank higher for the keyword, not to mention it will be much easier to sell the domain in the future if you ever choose to do so. If you’re able to find a used domain on TDNam.com that contains your keyword, it would make getting ranked significantly easier and much quicker as the domain has already been indexed and backlinked by other sites. Additionally, a domain that’s been live for awhile will help you in avoiding Google’s notorious “sandbox effect”. If budget is an issue, you can also opt to use a free Blogger sub-domain. I currently register and host all my domains with IX Webhosting, so I would definitely recommend them for your hosting solutions.
Now that you’ve got your domain, the next step would be to either install Wordpress or create your page statically using straight HTML if you are proficient at coding. Just remember that it is much easier to link build and make your site SEO friendly using Wordpress. Though you probably will be using Wordpress blogging software and your site will look like a blog, the difference is that you won’t have to post regularly as you would with a typical blog. As a matter of fact, I would suggest removing all post dates as the information you provide should not appear to be dated in the readers’ eyes. Be sure to use a nice, clear headline that catches the reader’s attention and compels him or her to click on your product. Also, including social proof, testimonials and screenshots will help in convincing the visitor that your solution works and it’s what they’re looking for.
Each of your 10 posts should be at least 300 words and contain a keyword anchor text link back to the homepage which also contains the keyword. It may seem like a daunting task to write 10 posts about the keyword, but you can simply Google for the keyword to get some ideas, but don’t copy or steal the content! Linking each of your posts back to the homepage with the keyword anchor will help your homepage rank by giving it more internal and external links with the keyword anchor text. The external links come into play in the event that an aggregator or scraper site steals your content, there will always be a keyword anchor link which points back to your homepage.
Once you’ve installed your template, place your keyword in the following locations. Doing so will ensure that your site will be well optimized.
- Page Title: This can be accomplished with the All-In-One SEO Pack plugin. I prefer the “post title | site title” format.
- H1 Tag: The keyword should appear in the H1 tag on all your site pages.
- Footer: The footer should contain a link that points back to your homepage using the keyword as the anchor text.
- Inpost Link: As mentioned above, each of your 10 posts should contain a link back to your homepage with the keyword as the achor text.
- Homepage: Ideally, your keyword should appear about 6-7 times on your homepage, but this is usually covered by virtue of the links that you’ve placed within each post. Being the homepage, it will get ranked for your keyword, so be sure that your keyword appears on it enough times. To avoid tripping off Google’s spam filter, your homepage should contain at least 1000 words, this should be covered if you have 4 posts with a minimum of 300 words each.
For those of you who are less technically inclined and wish to simplify things by automating that whole process, I would recommend using Ken Evoy’s Site Build It (SBI) software.
SBI is an all-in-one program that will enable you to build, host and promote your site all from a single location. Once you’ve built your page(s), SBI will teach you how to optimize them so that they are SEO friendly simply by clicking on the “Analyze It” button. Its comprehensive manual, step-by-step Action Guide and user forum are invaluable and will surely get you started on the right track to success. SBI will help you simplify the process which will save you some valuable time so you can focus on the more important aspects of building your site, such as writing interesting and informative content.
To learn more about Site Build It, I highly recommend watching the video tour below.
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Affiliate Marketing Apprenticeship Program - Lesson 1/13
written by Anthony Dinh
First, I’d like to say thank-you and congratulate you for joining my Affiliate Marketing Apprenticeship Program. You’ve taken the first step in the right direction towards building a successful online business and financial freedom. This 13-step program is your roadmap to wealth, and it’s jam-packed with invaluable information…no tricks or gimmicks here folks, just solid and proven methods that work! SEO (search engine optimization), copywriting and various internet marketing methods will be covered throughout the tutorial. I suggest that you read through it once, let it soak in, try it out, then go back and read it again because you’ll surely pick up something new that you missed the first time around.
Here’s a breakdown of each lesson:
Lesson 1 - Set Your Goal
Lesson 2 - Find Your Niche
Lesson 3 - Keyword Sniping
Lesson 4 - Research Affiliate Programs
Lesson 5 - Build a Website Around Your Keyword
Lesson 6 - Incorporate Affiliate Links in Your Posts
Lesson 7 - Build Quality Backlinks
Lesson 8 - Submit Your Site to Web Directories
Lesson 9 - Submit Your Post to Article Directories
Lesson 10 - Add More Content and Build More Backlinks
Lesson 11 - The Waiting Game
Lesson 12 - Tweak Your Site
Lesson 13 - Scale Your Campaign
Before we begin, please bookmark this page and subscribe to full RSS feed as there are 13 steps, so you definitely won’t want to miss out!
Affiliate Marketing Apprenticeship Program
Lesson 1 - Set Your Goal
First, you need to set a goal so you know where you’re going and when you get there. Otherwise, you will be wandering aimlessly, and you’ll have no way of gauging your progress. You don’t get up in the morning and just walk out the door without setting some goals for yourself do you? Subconsciously, we all set goals for ourselves without even realizing it such as making some new business contacts, making a sale or meeting a deadline.
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I’m Not a Baby, Get Me Out of the Sandbox!
written by Anthony Dinh
DiariesOfABlogger.com has been up and running for about a month now and I’ve tried just about everything I could think of, but it’s still failing to get ranked by Google. I’ve come to the conclusion that my site has possibly been sandboxed by Google. I know I’m a newbie blogger and that my site logo is a baby, but enough already, get me out of the sandbox…whaaaaa!
Here’s a quick rundown on what I’ve already done.
- about 3 backlinked comments left a day on reputable blog sites
- sitemap submitted to Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com and DMOZ open directory for indexing
- auto ping list enabled
- domain link included on social network profiles (Twitter, MyBlogLog, Myspace, Digg, Entrecard, etc.)
- articles submitted to EzineArticles
- link exchange program with some blog sites
- relevant posts interlinked to each other, and links back to homepage
- H1 tags used on each post
- permalinks enabled to rewrite SEO friendly URLs
- page title formatted to “post title | site title”
Each day, Google is inundated with literally thousands of new sites and it has no way of knowing the trustworthiness of these sites, so in order to maintain the integrity of its index, Google sandboxes these sites until it’s able to analyze and filter out all the spammy sites that are of little or no value. From what I’ve been reading, apparently a site can be sandboxed for anywhere from 3 months to a year, and there’s nothing you can really do but sit and wait…very annoying! 
Hopefully, I will be free from the confines of the sandbox soon so I can run and play with all the other fellow bloggers.
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Full Contact Blogging - Garry Conn vs JohnCow
written by Anthony Dinh
After some cow patties were thrown back and forth, things came to a head and JohnCow has finally called Garry Conn out to a fight to the death…well, not really a fight, just a “friendly” competition. The reason I quoted friendly is because we all know, this thing has the potential to get ugly, so you don’t wanna miss it!
The two blogging heavy weights will be going hoof to head, each building a non-IM niched blog from scratch. After 1 month, whoever sells his blog for the most mooney on Sitepoint will be the champion! This is the tentative plan anyway, the exact rules and details are being worked out as we speak.
The best thing about this competition, is that both bloggers will be offering enrollment into their classrooms so you, the newbie blogger, can follow along and see first hand exactly what they are doing every step of the way! Every strategy, tactic and cheapshot will be laid out on the table for your hungry little brains to soak up! I don’t know about you, but I’ve already enrolled in both and I know that I will definitely learn a ton, so run, don’t walk!….head on over there and sign-up now!
John “The Madcow” Bloxxing Club
Will JohnCow be victorious, or Will Garry make minced meat of the Cow? dun, dun, dunhhhhhhh…stay tuned!
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Why Pay for Reviews When You Can Get Them FREE?
written by Anthony Dinh
By now, I’m sure most have you have either read or heard about Jason’s previous post “You Are A Moron If You Buy Paid Reviews For Exposure” in which he expresses his disdain towards worthless paid reviews. I was actually in the process of shopping around for a paid review and had narrowed my choices down to a few of the more reknowned bloggers when I came across his post. I was ready to spring for the $500 price tag JohnChow charges per review, but I’m glad I saw this post because it saved me a lot of money! Jason stated that paid reviews don’t convert 90% of the time, and the buzz that they generate is short term, usually only lasting a day or so. Read more about this topic in my follow-up post “Jason Pereira and Fabian Speak Their Minds About Paid Reviews“, where Fabian of SmallFishBigMoney and I also share our views regarding paid reviews.
Insignificant as it may seem, I still however, feel that there’s still some value in the buzz and traffic generated by having your blog reviewed, not to mention the backlinks that you will gain. So, instead of paying for one, I did some research and found a handful of sites where you can get your blog reviewed for free! I’ve used some of these services with positive results, so I just wanted to share them with you so you too can build up your backlinks, increase traffic and hopefully even gain some RSS subscribers.
|
Service |
PageRank |
Description |
 |
PR3 | submit your blog by writing a quick summary, and gain a backlink back to your site. you can also rate or review other blogs for a chance of getting your site featured on their front page. |
 |
PR4 | just leave Abhinav a comment and he will review your site for free! |
 |
PR3 | extensive, honest and opinionated site review based on site appeal, content and design using 5 star rating system. gain a backlink to your site as well as tips on how to improve it. |
 |
PR6 | free reviews, but due to high demand, waiting time may be extensive. $50 donation option available to expedite review within 3 business days. |
 |
PR3 | a subdomain of UntwistedVortex.com. queue of blogs awaiting review was 13 deep when I signed up and it takes a bit of time to get through the queue, but well worth the wait for some free link love. |
 |
PR3 | complete 10 question interview, and your blog will be selected for review if they find it interesting. either way, you will gain a backlink. |
 |
PR0 | free review and link juice with “dofollow” backlinks to your site. |
Keep in mind, these are free services, so the quality may or may not be great, but every little bit helps in building your brand and getting yourself known within the blogosphere. Also, the unbiased opinion of these experts can only serve to make your blog a better place where entrepreneurs come to not only ask questions, but to also learn and grow as they embark on their journey to making money online and financial freedom.
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