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If you are Affiliate Marketing and using Article Marketing as a means to promote your products, search engine optimization (SEO) will be important to you.
In fact, it is absolutely central in getting your article ranked on the first page of google or yahoo. To become ranked on the first page of a particular niche, or even #1 on page 1 is the holy grail of SEO.
You see whilst SEO is virtually free, it does cost a lot of time to get the strategy right. That said, you can achieve #1 ranking when the sponsored pay-per-click (PPC) ads on page 1 can be costing up to $5 or more per click, to be where you are for free!
This is the attraction of SEO, if you don’t want to, or can’t spend a lot of money with google adwords, then SEO is your only alternative. Because if you are stuck down on page 5 or 10 or 20 your marketing ability is severely limited.
So, what are the 5 key factors necessary to achieving a page 1 ranking in the search engines when using SEO?
1. What Doesn’t Work In SEO To Improve Your Ranking
A lot is said about having a keyword rich title, where your niche keyword is included, and then again in the body every 100 words or so.
Nobody knows exactly how googles algorithm works, its complex and robotic in nature. It does however, pay less attention to what’s actually in the article, than to who is linking to or voting for it.
Ranking wise, it has as little as 2-percent to do with the reason for a sites rank, so you can’t spread your keyword all over the place and leave it at that!
2. What Your Competition Is Doing
You need to look at the existing top 10 ranked listings for your niche keyword(s) in google, and analize why they are where they are. Are they content sites, blogsite articles, or directory articles.
You need to know what their exact keywords are. How many pages have links and where do they link to. Is anchor text being used, and what is it. How many backlinks do they have from other sites.
This leads us neatly onto the next important factor.
3. Who Is Linking To Them
Are they authority sites, what is their pagerank (PR), how many are .com’s, .gov’s, or .net’s etc.
What are their names and are they relevent to the niche or not. What is their relation to each other, and how does this help to achieve their current ranking.
4. What You Have To Do To Your Article To Get It Ranked #1
Put simply, you have to emulate them, but to rank over them, you have to be a little smarter.
If your article is posted on your own blogsite, chances are that your site doesn’t have a pagerank (PR), which means that without SEO it will rank poorly in the search engines.
That’s why you have to get your own authority links, more than your competitors have. Link to high PR sites, to high PR competitors, to relevent directories. Ensure your links are higher ranked, more relevent, and in greater number.
If you place your article in a directory like EzineArticles then you benefit from that sites ranking. Ezine in fact have PR6. This alone won’t get your article onto page 1 though. To achieve this you will need to submit your article to 100 other article directories, and link them all back to the original ezine article. This creates backlinks that the google spiders will follow thus giving the original article greater importance.
A note here about duplicate submissions. A lot has been made about google duplicate content penalties, but I have not found it to be the case and neither have some of my more illustrious associates. Read This to clear up any concerns you have.
5. Find The Most Highly Ranked Authority Websites To Link To Your Blogsite
This is the hard part. Searching for the types of links mentioned above, maintaining relevency, actually obtaining the backlinks, this is all very time consuming.
It is an art which takes time to master, but is very rewarding as you watch your site’s ranking climb until you are ranked #1!
There are 2 ways to conduct your SEO; you either pay for it done by professionals, or you do it yourself.
If you pay for it, then you must deduct it from your return on investment (ROI), as in PPC marketing. If however you do it yourself, then it becomes FREE, except for the SEO software you will need to purchase, but this can be spread over any number of projects to limit the impact on your ROI to a few dollars.
Oh yes, you will need some specialized software for the task of accumulating knowledge on your competitors, to formulate your stategy, and to find and implement the high PR website backlinks you are going to need.
On paper it doesn’t look so easy I grant you, but with the right software it becomes less of a task, and you may enjoy the art of SEO!
Making money on the internet through affiliate/article marketing isn’t the quick way to make a buck. It does however grow slowly at first, then with increased momentum as your articles populate around the internet. 
Sincerely,
P.S. Website marketing and SEO is an integral part to succeeding online. You can discover more on search engine optimization marketing here, and how to apply winning strategies. 
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- Internet and Businesses Online With Article Marketing Emphasis For Online Profits | Article Marketing
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thanks for the inspiration, your blog looks excellent! I have been having trouble getting motivated working on mine but this definitely pumped me up!
Hello. Great job. I did not anticipate this. This is a great story. Thanks!
I couldn’t agree more…thanks for your post.
[...] What your competition is doing You need to look at the existing top 10 ranked sites for your niche keyword(s), and analize why they are where they [...]
[...] What your competition is doing You need to look at the existing top 10 ranked sites for your market keyword(s), and analize why they are where they [...]
[...] What your competition is doing You need to look at the existing top 10 ranked sites for your niche keyword(s), and analize why they are where they [...]
[...] What your competition is doing You need to look at the existing top 10 ranked sites for your market keyword(s), and analize why they are where they [...]
[...] What your competition is doing You need to look at the existing top 10 ranked sites for your market keyword(s), and analize why they are where they [...]
[...] What your competition is doing You need to look at the existing top 10 ranked sites for your niche keyword(s), and analize why they are where they [...]
[...] What your competition is doing You need to look at the existing top 10 ranked sites for your niche keyword(s), and analize why they are where they [...]
[...] What your competition is doing You need to look at the existing top 10 ranked sites for your market keyword(s), and analize why they are where they [...]
[...] What your competition is doing You need to look at the existing top 10 ranked sites for your market keyword(s), and analize why they are where they [...]
[...] What your competition is doing You need to look at the existing top 10 ranked sites for your market keyword(s), and analize why they are where they [...]
[...] What your competition is doing You need to look at the existing top 10 ranked sites for your niche keyword(s), and analize why they are where they [...]
[...] What your competition is doing You need to look at the existing top 10 ranked sites for your niche keyword(s), and analize why they are where they [...]
[...] What your competition is doing You need to look at the existing top 10 ranked sites for your market keyword(s), and analize why they are where they [...]
[...] What your competition is doing You need to look at the existing top 10 ranked sites for your niche keyword(s), and analize why they are where they [...]
[...] What your competition is doing You need to look at the existing top 10 ranked sites for your niche keyword(s), and analize why they are where they [...]
[...] to 600 words long and you submit it to a directory like GoArticles, and you do a little SEO to it (see this SEO related post), to get it on the front page in [...]