Affiliate Marketing Tips: Piggybacking on Authority Sites

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If you’re an affiliate marketer who is just starting from the ground up, you’ll want to reach this article. Lately, many folks are finding it challenging to rank websites because of Google’s Penguin update. Lots of sites have taken a huge hit from Penguin and have seen their rankings fall substantially (though there are ways to recover).

In extreme cases, some affiliates even found their sites de-indexed from Google. Now marketers are crying foul. “Quick! Kill the Penguin before it lays eggs.”

Unfortunately, it looks like the new SEO rules are going to be in place for a long time. Why?

Google is giving more value to authority — for example, relevance and quality. The search giant always weighted such factors, but now they receive even more. So if you’re a newbie marketer, this could smash your hopes of making it big on the Internet.

But there’s still a way for you to score big online; by piggybacking on authority sites by hosting your content on them.

How exactly can you do this, and what are authority sites, anyway?

Web 2.0 properties such as Blogger and Tumblr, and video-sharing sites like YouTube and Metacafe are considered to be among the best authority sites on which you can host content these days. One test showed how one blog hosted on Blogger.com that “fell by the wayside over four years ago” recently found its way up to the first page of search engine results after Google rolled out Penguin.

So if you’re a budding affiliate marketer, consider the following tips to get ahead in your niche:

Create a blog on Blogger or Tumblr
According to recent studies, your content will have a better chance of ranking higher on the search results if you host it on an authority domain like Blogger or Tumblr. If I were just starting out these days, I’d use Blogger.

Why?

Blogger is owned by Google.

Blogger may not be as user-friendly or customizable as WordPress, but once you get the hang of Blogger, posting content on this platform becomes almost as simple as posting content to Facebook.

For best results, create a Blogger.com name/URL that contains the keywords that will optimize your affiliate marketing campaigns. For example, if you’re marketing HD TVs, your Blogger-hosted domain should look something like besthdtv.blogspot.com.

Host videos on YouTube and other top video-sharing sites
The default site for online videos these days is YouTube. It’s the most popular and the largest, with more than two billion views on a good day. Best of all, YouTube is, again, owned by no less than Google.

Because search engines are now placing greater value on video, you should step up your video marketing efforts and start posting content on YouTube. But don’t discount other video-sharing sites. Sites like Vimeo, DailyMotion and, yes, MySpace also enjoy huge followings. The resulting traffic from these sites could be considerable. In fact, one affiliate marketer reported that a video he posted on DailyMotion outperformed the one posted on YouTube.

Conclusion
Newbie affiliate marketers, now is your time to shine. By following these affiliate marketing tips, you won’t have to wait three to six months before you see your first sale come in. By piggybacking on authority sites, it might only take months, weeks, or even days until your first order comes in.

If you want to learn more about blogging and social media marketing, contact us and we’ll be happy to walk you through your options.

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