OK, you need to keep adding blog posts to your site, maybe the odd article. You want to keep publishing articles to Ezine, etc.

You must NOT leave your site static. At least not if you want it to rank well in the SERPS.

This is where it obviously helps if you are into the niche yourself. But even if not there are a number of things you can try.

First, you could just repeat your initial information gathering exercise periodically. Check out fresh articles on Ezine, etc., go back to the library, buy more books.

And I’d certainly urge you to do that to some extent. I mean why not? If you spot a good relevant book on a second hand stall, grab it!.

Why not subscribe to some relevant magazines as well, both online and off.

But how about getting the information to come to you?

This is really simple to set up but does require an initial bit of effort.

Google Reader

You could use any RSS feed aggregator but Google Reader is as good as any.

You probably already have a gmail or Google account. Just select ‘Reader’ from the top menu. Type in some relevant keyword phrases and then find half a dozen sites that post 4 or 5 times a week.

Have a look at the information. Is it any good? Worthy of comment or reference?

I wouldn’t pick a site that posts hundreds of times a week or you will be swamped with information.

Once you have identified a few sites that regularly provide good relevant content all you need to do every few days is scan through the information.

Then you can either re-write it in your own words or just reference it (i.e. link to it) and make comments on it.

Don’t just have the RRS feed displayed. You must add some original content (and therefore value) around it.

Post from: AffiliateNicheClub Blog

Gathering More Website Content

Related posts:

1. Gathering Information For Your Website Content
2. Constructing Your Website
3. Website Structure

Let’s just look at the site structure again and then populate each page. This is quite a long post and there’s quiet a lot to do here but if you have already done the prep work you should be able to do this in a few hours.

Just knuckle down and crank out those pages!

The About Page

This one is easy and was covered in Wordpress Wonder Modules #1 & Module #2, your Contact Form at the top followed by your Privacy Policy.

Depending on the type of site you have you may need a Disclaimer, etc. Have a look at what other sites in your niche are using and if they are using any kind of Disclaimers, etc. consider using them and if you need to, just copy and amend them to suit your specific needs.

The Information Pages

Make an individual page for each article you have written. Use your chosen keyword phrase as the title (and therefore url). Use your keyword phrase in the article introduction and summary and once or twice in the article body. Write naturally and never force in a keyword phrase.

At this point your article urls will look like this:-

yourdomain.com/your-keywords-article-one

yourdomain.com/your-keywords-article-two

(After the ‘/’ is your article title, got that? Don’t title your articles article one, two, etc.)

Next create your information summary page. This page is going to be the parent of your individual article pages as per the diagram above.

The title for this page will be something like ‘Sausage Making Information’

The url for this page will be:-

yourdomain.com/sausage-making-information

And this page will appear in your main menu.

Now go back to each individual article page and set it’s parent page to be your information summary page. You do this under ‘Attributes’ when you are in Page Edit.

The urls for each individual article page will now look like this:_

yourdomain.com/your-information-summary/your-keywords-article-one

yourdomain.com/your-information-summary/your-keywords-article-two

These pages will now only appear in your sub-menus.

But we haven’t finished with the Information Summary page yet.

Add a couple of introductory paragraphs to this page about how you are putting together some helpful articles on the niche, etc.

Then put the title of each article and just a sentence or two that describes it.

And make the title an anchor text link to the individual article page.

You can see what I mean from the demo site here:-

http://bigcatskillz.com/information/

The Review Pages

You populate the review pages in exactly the same way. Write a review for each individual product and then on the Review Comparison page set it out like a standard 3 -5 product review page.

But link each mini-review on the comparison page with the more detailed individual review pages.

Again, check out the demo site here:-

http://bigcatskillz.com/reviews/

Hang on, Hang on!!!

How do you write your reviews? This is the hardest part!

I know, I know… let’s see how I do it…

Bottom line. The single best way to write a review is to buy the actual product, particularly now with the FTC clarification of their guidelines.

But that’s not always really practical when you are starting out, right?

So, improvise. Find as many reviews as you can on a product, read the sales page and that of competing products.

After a while you almost develop a sixth sense as to what constitutes a good product but in the meantime try and come up with your own objective review based on your research.

Refer back, in your reviews, to where you found your information such as relevant forums, etc.

You can always modify it down the line in light of sales and refunds, customer feedback, etc

And ultimately, we strongly recommend that you do buy any products that you review.

Be very careful how you word your reviews if you have not actually used the product.

The Home Page

The home page should be an overview of what the site is all about.

Mention on there that you have some articles and some reviews and add links within your text to those summary and comparison pages.

The Initial Blog Posts

The first blog posts are easy to do. Just do a post on every article and review you have added to the site and link to it.

There are some example posts on the demo site here:-

http://bigcatskillz.com/blog/

Just remember, always use an anchor text link using the article or review title.

And voila! Your mini-site is now content rich and ready to go. And what’s more all those internal links will help boost your sites rankings in the SERPS given time.

But what about ongoing content, how do you keep finding that? We’ll look at that in the next post…

Post from: AffiliateNicheClub Blog

Constructing Your Website

Related posts:

1. Website Structure
2. Gathering More Website Content
3. Gathering Information For Your Website Content

There are lots of ways you can find information on a niche, indeed you should already have gathered quite a bit during your niche research.

Online

As you do your niche research you will come across websites, articles, blog posts, review, etc. I hope you stored copies of some of those article, posts and reviews somewhere.

Grab half dozen of the best performing articles from Ezine and ArticleBase or anywhere else that takes your fancy.

Offline

I do this a lot!

Go to your local library and take out 2 – 4 books on your niche. Go to Amazon online and BUY some. Books are cheap and are a fantastic way to really get into a niche. Read ‘em on your way to work, in your lunch hour, before you go to bed.

Get the “.. For Dummies” book on your niche. There must be one (or more) that covers your niche. These are fantastic and are written in a way that totally fits in with those “5 steps to” articles that you will want to be writing.

Next, create a campaign folder on your hard drive (or you could use Google Docs) and just take a copy of pretty much everything you come across. That’s the beginning of your reference library.

Let’s start straight away and say that it does you no good whatsoever to just copy the stuff you find and plonk it straight on your site.

“Plagiarism is a sin against scholarship” as my old college teachers would say.

“But how many people have truly original thought?” was what I thought in response.

And that’s the thing, unless you are a Shakespeare or a Da Vinci, you are going have to get your content from somewhere, right?

So, what I do is gather up a reference library… maybe 10 – 20 articles and a similar number of blog posts, anything really and just read through it all a few times.

Then, armed with my keyword lists, I identify which keyword phrases I want to target and write optimised articles around that pulling the knowledge from what I’ve just read.

Write 5 – 20 articles. I like to do 5 – 10 what I call “How to” articles covering the very basics of your niche. Articles that anyone could read and get a very basic understanding of what it’s about.

These will form the basis of the content of your website.

In the next post I’ll tell you how to construct your website pages. And like I said I work backwards…

Post from: AffiliateNicheClub Blog

Gathering Information For Your Website Content

Related posts:

1. Gathering More Website Content
2. Constructing Your Website
3. Website Structure

Before we add any content to our websites let’s first remind ourselves of the website structure.

The pages in level #2 will form part of your main menu and appear in your header Nav Bar

The pages in level #3 form your sub-menu and will appear in you side-bar navigation only.

You have to fill all those pages with content before you even begin to get your site indexed or point any traffic at it.

I can do this in under two hours but how do I do it? Simple, I cheat!! And I go backwards…

In the next post I’ll look at how you can gather up some relevant information…

Post from: AffiliateNicheClub Blog

Website Structure

Related posts:

1. Constructing Your Website
2. Gathering Information For Your Website Content
3. Gathering More Website Content

I’ve shown you the basics of the mechanics of creating a website in Wordpress Wonder module #1 and module #2. And I’ve shown ANC members the more advanced techniques in Wordpress Wizard.

Now I’m going to tell you how to easily populate all those pages and how you can keep adding fresh original content to your sites.

We’ll start though, as you always should, with Niche Research so look out for that post.

Post from: AffiliateNicheClub Blog

Creating A Website – Some Practical Steps

Related posts:

1. Constructing Your Website
2. Wordpress Wonder – Module #2 – It’s FREE!
3. Gathering Information For Your Website Content

Forget about what topics can and can not be written about… forget about if you previously had some money making lenses and they are now toast.

Fact is, you should only ever use third party sites like Squidoo on your OWN terms!

That means using them for testing.

And then, once you have some traction in a campaign you can breakout and grab your own domain and start building your own site. You can then return to your lenses and switch them to point at your own site.

Use these third party sites as supplemental and complimentary silos. Use them for backlinks.

Do not base your entire business plan around something you cannot fully control.

(Inside ANC we have a guide that shows you how easy it is to get your own sites up and running. There is a post about the guide here.)

People will continue to feel the pain from Squidoo until they take matters into their own hands. Even if your lenses haven’t been slapped yet, they might, as soon as you amend them. If in doubt, copy the content now so that it can be placed elsewhere if necessary.

Should you continue to use Squidoo? Yes!

But like I said, use it as supplement for your campaigns, not the basis.

Post from: AffiliateNicheClub Blog

Squidoo Policy Updates – Still Feeling The Pain?

Related posts:

1. Using Squidoo For Marketing – Post July 2009
2. Squidoo Policy Update- What’s All The Voodoo Hoodoo!?
3. Squidoo 101 – A Great FREE Squidoo Guide from PotPieGirl!

OK, the guide isn’t exactly free. You have to be an ANC member to get it. I explained why on the post about the guide here.

But that wasn’t the reason we got a bashing. Lot’s of people have grabbed the guide and we’ve had nothing but positive feed back on it so far.

No, the reason we are getting bashed is people think we are bashing Squidoo!

Not the case… not the case at all!

Using Squidoo for marketing is just as effective now as it was before. You just have to change your game plan slightly. Well OK, if you have lenses in any of the ‘banned’ topics you are out of Squidoo full stop.

But otherwise Squidoo remains a great marketing tool if you use it as a supplement to your existing campaigns.

Here’s a little sneak peak inside ‘Squidoo Storm‘, one our bonus guides:-

I hope that doesn’t look too complicated. Basically what you should do is have a website as your primary base. Add a blog to it and create some complimentary lenses. Make your lenses what I would call ‘hobby’ lenses rather than ’salesy’ lenses. Just create great content on them and link them back to your website and blog.

Link your blog and website back to your lenses.

Create a sales traffic funnel… not only is it great for marketing but great for your visitors, for Squidoo and the SERPS.

Doing it this way is a great way to spread PR juice across your marketing network.

It takes a little effort to set up but it’s well worth it in the end.

PS. Our ‘Squidoo Storm‘ guide is a bonus for anyone who buys any of the recommended products listed on the right of this blog via our links.

Post from: AffiliateNicheClub Blog

Using Squidoo For Marketing – Post July 2009

Related posts:

1. Squidoo Policy Updates – Still Feeling The Pain?
2. Squidoo Policy Update- What’s All The Voodoo Hoodoo!?
3. Squidoo 101 – A Great FREE Squidoo Guide from PotPieGirl!

Anyway, there’s a huge fuss going down in the Wealthy Affilate forum and in loads of other IM forums and blogs about an upcoming Squidoo Policy Update.

More details here from the Squids themselves.

Whole topics (like weight loss) are gonna get canned. Yep! No matter how good your lens is, no matter how non-spammy you might think it is. Come mid July they’ll be gone. Poof!

So, what to do?

Well, first check out that lens about the changes and think about how it applies to your own lenses. Do it before the clampdown… and if in doubt pull the lenses. You do NOT want your whole account locked!

Next… I don’t think people should abandon Squidoo, etc… just make sure you create good quality original non-spammy content (but not in the ‘banned’ topics).

And remember the bigger picture…

The thing is, if you are making any kind of sales with Squidoo, you should already have started thinking about branching off, having your own site, getting other traffic sources…

I mean, Squidoo has got to the point where it’s almost as complicated to build lenses and get them indexed as it is to build your own site and SEO it, so start thinking about that.

Squidoo is certainly good to use in some ways, but to build an entire business and income source around it, is probably NOT a good long time plan anyway.

These so called ’slaps’ have happened before… at Ezine, at Squidoo, at Hubpages… and they’ll happen again!

So start preparing now!

I have to say that you’re better off in the long run creating your own sites and blogs on your own domains.

It is NOT that hard to do. Even with something like Dreamweaver, if you can do the HTML stuff on a Squidoo lens you’ll soon get the hang of it.

Ditto Wordpress. But with WP make sure you host those on your own domain and use Themes. There are plenty of free ones and some really good paid ones (for a one off fee).

And before you dismiss the idea of investing in Dreamweaver or some of the better Wordpress Themes consider this…

How much would it cost you to set up an offline shop (or business)? An awful lot more than the cost of DW or a good WP Theme. And you can set up an unlimited supply of online ’shops’ with either.

Check out Affilate Theme for example. Couldn’t be easier to set up a really professional ‘review style’ landing page.

Building sites is just another learning curve…

And if I can do it, anyone can.

Hell, I’ve even got a lens on it.

Oh… before I forget the vid…

Don’t panic and blunder about blindfold…

Get a plan… stick to it… small steps… Into Action!

Post from: AffiliateNicheClub Blog

Squidoo Policy Update- What’s All The Voodoo Hoodoo!?

Related posts:

1. Squidoo Policy Updates – Still Feeling The Pain?
2. Using Squidoo For Marketing – Post July 2009
3. New Squidoo Themes – Easy Street or Purple People Eater!?

Niche Website Building Tips | Niche Reaper Lenses

Head on over there and let me know what you think, get voting, join in the debates and get:-

Top Tips On Website Building:-
> Why Use Websites?
> Getting Started With Website Building
> Website Building Basics
> The Customer Buying Cycle
> Landing Pages

Niche Website Building Tips | Niche Reaper Lenses

The next lens will be on ‘PPC‘…

And then I’ll work my way through the list. So, don’t forget to keep voting on the ‘home’ Niche Marketing Reaper lens for what you want to see next…

Post from: AffiliateNicheClub Blog

FREE Website Building Tips From The Niche Reaper!

Related posts:

1. FREE List Building Tips From The Niche Reaper!
2. FREE Article Marketing Tips From The Niche Reaper!
3. FREE PPC Marketing Tips From The NicheReaper

But we ALL know what’s coming right? And at ANC we are doing everything we can to help point you into those recession proof areas. (Oops! Even I daren’t use the the ‘D’ word now. LOL!)

Anyway, spotted an interesting article in the UK’s Daily Telegraph Business section a couple of days back. I’ve copied it below (I hope they don’t mind.):-

Businesses fail to grasp website search opportunities

Almost one in five small businesses remain invisible to their customers on the internet despite significant progress in the use of websites in the last three years, a poll suggests.

Fasthosts Internet, a website hosting company which conducted the research, said the percentage of business sites that are invisible to search engines like Yahoo and Google has improved from 49pc in 2006 to 17pc this year.

But the company found that one in three firms had not done anything to make their websites attractive to search engines, which would improve their chances of appearing near the top of a search query by a potential customer.

Many felt unable to try to do it themselves and believed hiring out help would be too costly.

Despite this, more than two thirds of the 400 small firms polled said that they thought consumers did rely on search results to find online retailers.

Steve Holford, Fasthosts’ marketing officer, said: “No business today can afford to neglect its position within search engines. In learning the basics of how internet search works, a business owner will appreciate what a powerful impact it can make on their sales function.”

Richard Tyler (That’s a direct link to the article.)

Mmmmm… makes you think doesn’t it?

As Affiliate Marketers (even if you haven’t been in the game for very long) I guarantee that YOU know way more than the average small business person on how to get listed, and listed on the front page, of Google and Yahoo.

So, there’s an opportunity here. The last thing any business should be doing at the moment is cutting back on marketing (although some may require convincing) so why not check out some local businesses in your area. Have they even got a website? How well is it optimised? Would a PPC or article campaign help them? What about some Social Marketing (Twitter, Facebook, etc)?

Could YOU help them?

OK, it’s not affiliate marketing but it’s another potential income stream. Think about it… I know I am and I know Thad has recently done some (paid) PPC work for a friend of his.

You may need to knock on doors… you may need to do a couple for free to build up a reputation… get some credibility… get testimonials…

Worth a try? I think so!

Travis Sago (BumMarketingMethod) has often been asked in the Wealthy Affiliate forum what he would do if he was starting out again / needed some quick cash / Google delevered an almighty big slap / etc. And the above is pretty much always his answer.

Like I said… think about it…

PS. There’s a great cartoon in the Telegraph as well by Alex… here’s a sample:-

Post from: AffiliateNicheClub Blog

Diversify In A Depression?

Related posts:

1. Recession Proof Marketing Ideas & Niches
2. New Bonus Report – Bailout Bonanza!
3. Recession Marketing – A Change of Emphasis