Search Engines 101: An Introduction

This article is provides an introduction to Search Engine Optimization. So listen up, class. Today’s lesson will cover the topic of search engines. What are search engines? How do you use a search engine to ensure your website is visible to your clients? How do you tweak your website to make it more ‘findable’?

By now you’ve certainly heard about search engines. The names “Yahoo!”, “Google”, and “MSN” should be well engrained in your head and you should know that they have acquired a large amount of money by having people pay to show up as results on their sites.

Using search engines is extremely simple. Once you get to the site, you type certain keywords that you want to find and the search engine does the rest. But how can you make sure that your site will be found by other users? As it turns out, it’s all about the keywords.

When a site like Google or Yahoo searches the Internet to come up with results from a web query, it takes the number of keywords on a site into consideration. It also takes particular keywords or phrases into account, too. If someone is doing a search for “The Cheap List” a site that has that phrase or a phrase similar to it 10 times is going to come up higher than a site that only mentions it once. That’s why its so important to incorporate keyword text into your web content so that when someone does a search for, say, “Technology discounts” and that just happens to be what your site sells, your site comes up high on the list, not buried on the bottom.

The trick is to incorporate these keywords or keyword phrases into your web content, and still have your content make sense. This is a super-tricky obstacle to get around. Experts say to simply read other sites and see what other affiliate marketing sites have done. Remember that your content is a huge part of your site. If people don’t stay on your site to read your content, they will never click on any links you have or buy any products you’re selling. You must find the balance between a heavy use of keywords and well-written text.

The use of keywords to optimize your search engine results is a big part of affiliate marketing. You can write the best content, the most relevant links in your site and the prettiest graphics but unless your site is findable, you won’t be in business very long. Learning how to incorporate keywords in your site is the concept that you have to understand; it can make the difference between selling products to your friends and acquaintances and being the guy who quits his job and buys a Ferrari because he’s a good affiliate marketer and knows how to make money online. Which kind will you be? Go on, make some money! Class dismissed.

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