Wordpress SEO Tips | Search Engine Optimisation For Wordpress

Now it has to be said word-press possesses a lot of search engine optimisation power straight out of the box, it’s a great platform for affiliate sites on the whole and is packed full of useful tools and features. There have been lots of posts on how to use wordress to start an affiliate blog (Kieron wrote an excellent post here) so I thought I would write a quick guide on how to make your blog more seo freindly, this in turn should help gain you more traffic and more sales.  These are the things I do when I set up a new blog and it works for me, it is by no means the definitive guide so please feel free to add any tips I may have missed.

Firstly: Sort out those permalinks

When you install wordpress you will notice that the links that are shown are ugly and include little or no words. They are of little use to the search engines and also offer very little value to your readers.  Thank fully wordpress is here to help, to fix your permalinks open your wordpress admin and click on options>permalinks. You will see an option for custom, if you want to display the post title as your permalink (this is what my pages use) then add /%postname%/ in the box and click update.

Next you need to update your ht access with some relevant code to make your new permalinks work, again word-press makes it easy for you as it is shown at the bottom of the page. Just copy the code at the bottom of the page and paste it into your htaccess. Now go and check your site - you should have pretty looking permalinks on your site that are search engine friendly, well done.

Now you have sorted your permalinks it’s time to tackle titles, meta tags, descriptions and duplicate content issues (one of the downfalls of blogs in the past!).

Thankfully there is a plugin that sorts all of this important wordpress seo in one go, it is called the All in one seo plugin. This clever plugin automatically optimises page titles, meta tags and sorts duplicate content on its own. The added bonus is you still remain in control as you can add your own page title, description and meta tags in a box that appears below your writing box in the admin section of wordpress. This plugin is a must if you want to optimise your blog for the search engines.

Next it is time to think about internal linking, wordpress already has interlinking through the categories, archives and through the inbuilt navigation but this is still not good enough for seo or your users. Wordpress has a tendency of being great for new posts in the search engines but poor for older posts, therefor it is important to bring older posts to the attention of your readers and the search engines. For this purpose I would recommend the related posts plugin by Alex King. This will add up to 5 relevant post links at the bottom of each post on your blog, this is great for seo and readership of your blog.

The final tip I can give you is ….

create link worthy and origional content that people will want to read. Your blog will not receive any extra traffic if no body links to it! So start writing good quality content and the links and traffic will follow.  This will also help you rank higher in the search engines! Best of luck and feel free to add your tips, comments or add a question

Popularity: 49% [?]

Prepare For Valentines Day, An Affiliate Event Is Upon Us

For many of you this will come as no surprise and you will probably think I am going mad, but for some of you this post will hopefully be the wake up call you need to start making money today from valentines day.

Valentines day is 15 days away, so in the online world of affiliate marketing this means you have 14 days to promote the event on your site. I am talking gifts, flowers, chocolates, romantic breaks, cosmetics, jewellery, singing telegrams, balloons etc etc.

Now, you should have started these preparations a few weeks ago but it is not too late to make some affiliate income if you double your efforts today, thankfully most of the networks and affiliate programs are here to help!

I have been sent various emails from the networks with the latest valentines offers (including codes from IWOOT, bunches and flying flowers), hot items and commission increases. This info is also clearly available on the networks sites (affiliate future have a valentines sections, as do Affiliate window).

The main thing to remember is that nearly any affiliate niche can convert around valentines day, IF you pull your finger out today. If you have a retail based website of any kind then you can find products to promote - just log in to your chosen affiliate network and get promoting now before it is to late.

P.S you may find it useful to know affiliate window do have a valentines content widget ready to use.

Popularity: 60% [?]

Sun Bingo Affiliate Program

Sun Bingo has just launched their affiliate referral program exclusively on Market Ace! As the UK’s number one online bingo community, with over £100,000,000 already won and £300,000 won each day, Sun Bingo players are winning big! Get in on the action and become a Sun Bingo affiliate today and start earning fantastic revenues.

Sun Bingo offers affiliates two commission structures to choose from – CPA or a Revenue share option ensuring that affiliates are rewarded for choosing to run the UK’s most popular bingo affiliate programme.

Join the UK’s most popular bingo affiliate programme! Sun Bingo No 1 Online Bingo portal

Popularity: 89% [?]

An Affiliate Flyer Through My Postbox

I was going through my post on Saturday and was pleased to discover a leaflet from an affiliate site specialising in insurance. They had listed all the deals from the major Insurance companies which included both their URL and offline discount codes realting to their domain.

This got me thinking about offline marketing stategies and whether they could work with any affiliate site. I could definetly imagine comparison sites using this technique and I think I may well give it a try. There are so many avenues that could be used including newspapers, magazines and even radio (this one could be more difficult). Ill let you know how I progress.

Online affiliate programs

Popularity: 78% [?]

Affiliate Window Improve Content Widgets

Affiliate window have had content widgets for a while now and more and more affiliates are making use of them, in the past however some people have reported problems with the widgets and have also found them a little difficult to use or set up. This is the reason they have decided to give their content widget platform a complete overhaul. Here is a snippet from their site:

“Here in the Affiliate Window offices we have declared 2008 as the year of innovation. In deference to this we have overhauled our ContentWidget application to bring you improved functionality, making it even easier to profile products on websites and emails.”

So what’s new? Well for starters they now have content widgets that are branded with the companies name. This new function allows you to quickly display the most popular items from your chosen merchant (where supported). Here is an example:

They have also added themed widgets with products relating to your chosen niche. Current themes include toys, music, gadgets and valentines day.  The most clever aspect of the new content widget is that you can design your own to include things you want to promote, this in my opinion is a powerful marketing tool. I will certainly be using the content widgets more in 2008.

Affiliate window have promised to be innovative in 2008 and this is a great start, keep it up guys!

Popularity: 38% [?]