One of the quickest and easiest ways to make money online is by selling other people's products. However, there is also a lot of competition so it is important that you stay on top of the latest and greatest affiliate marketing techniques and tips to ensure that you stay ahead of the game.

One of the most important things that you can do on a regular basis is make sure that your websites are very search engine friendly - in fact, loved by Google - right from the word go when promoting the best free online affiliate programs.

Here are some simple but very effective methods that will have you outranking your competitors fast.

1. Make sure that your webpages are optimized for low competition phrases. There are a number of ways to find these phrases. You can use a free tool or a paid tool.

The free resource that I use for this method is http://297dollarebooks.com/research.php. Simply refresh the page if you get an advertisement first.

2. Make sure that you have a header 1 tag first on your page, and that your title, description and meta keywords tags all contain your main keywords. Learn more about this at http://www.onlineseohelp.com

3. Ensure that you link to your other pages and websites using anchor test.

4. Become proficient at being able to read your web stats. If you don't have a web stat program then simply use http://www.statcounter.com. This will show you where your traffic is coming from, if your visitors are getting there from search engines and the keywords they've used to come to your site, plus a lot more. This is a free and very useful tool.

5. Make sure that every page on your website links back to your home index page by using anchor text links.

6. Ensure that you have at the very minimum a basic understanding of search engine optimization. Some tutorials can be found at http://www.sitepoint.com and http://www.onlineseohelp.com and http://www.seochat.com

7. Do what is needed to build quality links to your website. This can be achieved by submitting articles or by contacting webmasters personally who have websites related to your niche. Also, in your anchor text don't just have one set of keywords in your anchor text as Google may think it's a little spammy; two or three different anchor texts promoting your website is the best way to go.