Basic SEO Tips For Dating Affiliates

This post will contain nothing new for experienced SEOs. It will, however, benefit webmasters new to search engine optimization with a simple primer on the basic principles of seo.

I would estimate that 80-90% of your search engine traffic will derive from the one search engine: Google (with Yahoo and MSN taking second and third place). Accordingly, it is standard practice to optimize for Google. Having said that, if you optimize for google you will actually be optimized for other search engines. So, due to Google’s high-traffic and the knock-on optimization effects, we tend to concentrate our efforts on the big G.

1. Keyword Choice

A common mistake in choosing keywords is to isolate those which receive the largest chunk of daily traffic in your chosen niche. A thread on the forum GFY (www.gfy.com) springs to mind. A guy intends to post the results of his new seo experiment. He seems highly motivated and wishes to learn seo in a hands-on fashion. Good stuff! Unfortunately, he makes a mistake right off the bat by targeting keywords that are way too popular and unspecific: dating, love, girls, adult.

When choosing keywords you must specify exact phrases that are related to your niche. If you want to rank more easily in SERPs (search engine result pages) you choose what we call low-hanging fruit, the keyword phrases with less competition. Let me give you an example. A good free keyword tool can be found over on seobook. If we enter the keyword dating we get a ton of dating keywords with the monthly search-volumes from WordTracker, Google, Yahoo and MSN. Partway down the list we find a sub-niche: Herpes Dating. Let’s compare how many competing pages there are for dating and herpes dating.

Dating: 282,000,000 Indexed Pages.
Herpes Dating : 201,000 Indexed Pages

It is going to be easier to rank for herpes dating than dating because there is less competition.

Now let’s explore this further and look at a keyword phrase within herpes dating.

Dating With Herpes: 75 Daily Google Searches / 16,600 Indexed Pages

Ranking for the term dating with herpes is going to be even easier. In fact, you could accomplish this within hours to days. This is ripe low-hanging fruit. Ripe for the plucking!

So instead of setting up a new site aimed at the entire dating community, you might choose a niche like herpes dating. When you create your site, you should use individual pages to target keywords within your chosen niche. One page, for instance, will be targeting dating with herpes. If you setup a dating blog you will, similarly, devote categories to this phrase and relevant posts.

So, to recap, we have concentrate on 3 factors when choosing keywords:

1. Specify exact keywords that get searched with regularity.
2. Supplement primary keyword choice with related keywords
3. Target keywords with less competition in the SERPs.

2. URL & Title Tag

There is some debate as to whether having a keyword in your domain is advantageous. In other words, does the Google Algorithm reward a site if it contains a keyword in the URL? My answer: Yes. If you want to establish a herpes dating site it would be advantageous to have your primary keyword, herpes dating, within the URL. This signifies to Google that your primary purpose is herpes dating. Therefore, you will be rewarded when it comes to ranking for the search term herpes dating. Another valid reason for using keywords in urls is because the anchor text in your future backlinks will reflect your chosen primary keyword and will, therefore, help you gain further rewards from Google (more about that in a minute).

Just as important as a keyword in your domain is the title tag. If you are lucky enough to secure a domain that contains your primary keyword then you can compound the positive effects by using that same keyword in your title tag; it this case it would be herpes dating. If, however, your domain does not contain the primary keyword, you can still use it in your title tag as long as it is relevant to your site as a whole; if not then add it to the title of a relevant page or section of your site.

As a general rule, the first words in your title tag are more important, so try to use them for your primary keywords.

3. H1 Tags

The Google ranking algorithm assumes that the text within H1 tags is more important than other text on your page.

The simple rule here is to include your keyword(s) within the H1 tags. An example with our herpes dating site would be a blog post entitled Herpes Dating - 10 Hot Tips.

4. Keyword Density

Keyword density is the ratio of keywords to normal words in your site’s content. A good percentage to aim for is about 10%. So 10 keywords in a 100 normal words.

There is no doubt that having good keyword density will have a positive impact on you in the SERPs for your chosen keyword terms.

It is, therefore, of utmost importance to KNOW your keywords. If someone says to me, “Hey, Kris, what are the keywords for your new herpes dating site”, I should be able to reel them off hardly without thinking; it should become second nature for you to reel off these terms.

5. Back Links

What are back links? Simply put, these are non-reciprocated inbound links; sites that link to you but you don’t link back and, thus, reciprocate the linking.

The more back links to your site, the better. Why? Google assumes that if sites are linking to you then you must be a good site. It, therefore, rewards you by better indexing.

It is not enough, however, to simply get links from other sites. The best back links are those from relevant sites with the anchor text of your chosen keyword(s).

For instance, a link from a dog food site with the anchor text a date site is not as good as a link from a high PR dating directory with the anchor text Herpes Dating.

The more inbound links you have from relevant, high PR sites with the anchor text herpes dating, the better you will do in the SERPs for the term herpes dating.

So the obvious question: How do we get back links?

Ah, the age-old question!

A full answer is beyond the scope of this article but, fear not, I have answers.

One method is what we call link-baiting. If you write a quality piece of content, people will find out about it and link to it. This makes perfect sense. Google is rewarding you by creating good content and therefore encouraging the creation of high-quality content. Clever! Good sources of link bait are highly controversial and original articles on popular topics.

Another method is to add your site to relevant directories that do not require a reciprocal link. Unless you know which sites these are it can be a time-consuming practice searching through google, but the results are well worth the effort.

Yet another method of getting link backs is writing to related (not competing) sites and asking to be included in their links. For instance, a general dating site might carry your link or, perhaps, a site about flowers (which is related to your dating niche).

Now, before I close this topic, it is highly important that your back link campaign look natural to google. Obviously, getting 100 backlinks per day is not natural. Far more natural is getting 2 today, 5 tomorrow, 3 the next day, and so on.

After reading the above basic seo tips you should be thoroughly ready to begin your own seo strategies. Best of luck and let me know how you get on!