Yeah I know another term you are not familiar with, SEO or search Engine Optimization.
What does it mean and what does it have to do with affiliate marketing….
SEO or Search Engine Opimization is the process of optimizing content for search engines, but without sacrificing quality for readers or taking away the readability.
But what does it mean when you are starting a blog and how do you do it….
What is SEO
When you decide to create a blog for affiliate marketing, then you are deciding to create quality content that solves problems and promotes solutions.
But this content on your site is no good if readers can’t find it.
So you need to tell the search engines about it.
Search engines are one of the most common ways to find content on the web.
So you go to google and type in ‘how to clean shoes properly’ – this is known as a query.
Google searches within its lists of all the pages on the web it knows about for any instances containing your query, or combinations – which is why you get some interesting results occasionally.
So the list of results you get back, besides being huge more often that not, should contain at the top results that are very relevant to your query.
If not you will try another search engine.
But how do these pages get to the top and be seen as being most relevant.
Query to keyword – how to get there
You as the creator of content for your site must produce content your niche wants – otherwise no one may read it.
How do you do this – well…that query you typed in earlier ‘ how to clean shoes properly’ is also something affiliate marketers can use to answer that query and create content…
Where do they find that you have typed this into a search engine…
Sometimes from the search engines themselves or from keyword tools…
You know as you are typing into google it suggests a list of queries…
Well these are all things that google knows are asked for many times….
So if you want to create content for your niche then start by asking queries in google and look at the autocomplete.
You can also look at the bottom of the search results pages at the related and the questions at the top…
You now know what your niche wants answered, so create content for them…and the search engines…
Creating content on your site
When you are creating content you are satisfying two masters.
The search engines and the readers…
Which one is higher – always the reader, the search engines are trying to find out what the readers wants…and they are getting closer, but there is a long way to go yet…
Taking the query, you now come up with a good headline which includes the topic of cleaning shoes properly.
‘Cleaning brogues properly’ this has now taken it down from just shoes – which covers a very wide range to a certain type of shoes.
This will be a lot easier to create an article about and use words google associated with cleaning brogue shoes – so the content being very relevant to the topic.
Going through the other related searches you have bull shoes, polishing, conditioner, deep clean, stop polish rubbing off, proper way to take care of shoes.
These are all useful words to keep in mind as subtopics the reader may want to know about.
Going through and creating subheads on the topic so the content flows and skimmers can ‘read’ your content from the subheads.
Then fill in the paragraphs.
Now you know the main words you want google to see in your topic are about cleaning brogues properly – so you need to use that a couple of times – and as the top of the content is very important ( similar to the old newspaper days where it was folded and the content ‘above the fold’ was the most important to grab your attention, it still passes across now) use the phrase in the top 500 words.
Use other words related to brogues like shoes ,mens, classic style, heel. toe, polish, bull – all words associated with shoes and cleaning shoes.
So now you have your content created , there is the content for the search engines – the meta data – the meta title, and meta description, these can be created on the topic and try to use keywords without stuffing ( over using) them.
So the meta description could be something like ‘ how to bull your men’s classic brogues in record time, without effort using just polish’
You have content on your site , you have filled in the meta data now what – you need google to take notice of it…
Getting Google to notice you
As you setup your site you can tell google that you are doing this.
You effectively register your site with google analytics – a free program that give you back anonymous information on the visitors to your site and tells google that there is a site with content available.
So it is a two way street.
Search console is another part of google analytics that gives you more information on how your site is performing and allows you to add a sitemap of your content and as you create content you can update this.
Bots then periodically come to your site and crawl over it looking for new information and links to other sites.
The information is passed through the algorithm to see what your content is about.
This is the reason for picking a narrow topic and only talking about that.
Once the google algorithm ‘sees’ the relationship between the ‘keywords’ and knows it is about cleaning brogues properly it checks the other sites against your content to see the difference in relevance.
Now the ranking starts to happen
Google ranking
Comparing your content against what is already out there on the web, google tries to place your content where it 
thinks it fits.
If it is the most relevant then you get the top position….
Using related keywords and staying on topic are very useful ways to get ranked highly.
Optimizing for the search engines – using keywords in the right places, adding the right data all will help get you ranked.
Google may try your site at a high rank and see what traffic now click through – so it is testing you against others – if you don’t get many clicks compared to others , you will drop down the rankings.
So it is important to have a good compelling title and a description with curiosity factor – but be able to deliver on this information.
As someone clicking on your site, then jumping back to google to then click on someone else’s site will hurt your ranking ( known as pogo’ing)
Or even if they click onto your site and then back to google – bouncing.
It signals to google that your site doesn’t have the answer, so down you go….
Thee is a lot more to being ranked – like site authority ( how relevant all your content is to your niche), domain age ( how long have you been around, google waits for a period before starting to trust that you are going to continue),whether anyone links to your content( backlinks) and over 200 other factors.
But controlling what you can will help you get known within your niche.
And build your brand and business.
SEO in a nutshell
So SEO is something you can learn how to do and apply to each and every one of your articles you add to your site.
It is not a black art- although sometimes it appears like it is, but following some simple rules you can succeed in getting your site ranked highly in the search engines.
Enough to get organic (search engine) traffic.
This means that some of your traffic is free ( well except for the time you spend SEO’ing it and getting it ready for the search engine).
Promoting it on social media and building up a list of interested people who want to read your latest content is another aim.
Proper training in how to structure your site and its content will help you gain this valuable resource of organic traffic.
Two such training courses which i have found very valuable in my journey online are the wealthy affiliate program and lately project 24.
Of these i would recommend the Wealthy affiliate program for complete beginners – this has a few features not found in most other programs…
Or if you are slightly more experienced then i really would recommend Jim and Ricky’s program – project 24.
Of the two project 24 is slightly more up todate, but Wealthy affiliate is a very safe and active platform ideal for beginners – and you start this one for free……so if you want to start creating SEO’ed content in the right way for free, it is worth checking out my review of wealthy affiliate.