Need some good pointers for your affiliate site?
I have been an affiliate web designer for the last two years so i know what works with design and seo and what doesn't.
Design:
1. Do not over complicate your site. Your site has to look like an independent site and not a product site. It also should be written as 'we' recommend and not 'i'.
2. Use good lifestyle imagery for your site to help the visitors relate to your content and recommendations.
3. Use good source of product imagery. Show the product you are affiliating and try and boost up the levels to make the product look of high value. The customer will not purchase something they cannot see no matter how well you describe it.
4. Use standard/default colour text links in your site. These work best and more clicks will be made from a default blue text link to a style that you may create yourself.
5. Do not much emphasis on your site name or title. Remember the visitor is there to learn and purchase the product your site is promoting. They are not looking at your site due to its url.
SEO
1. Adwords are a great way to guarantee target traffic. You only have to spend 50p a day which on some keywords can get you up to 6 clicks.
2. Fresh content in your site and new content is loved by google.
3. Use header tags, alt tags, picture title tags etc. Again these are liked by google and will help your rankings.
4. Write and post lots of articles. Articles are a great source of traffic and a good way of gaining organic traffic.
5. Link exchange with high ranking sites is an extremely great way to get traffic.
6. Set up some analytics for your site, ie. google and/or robotreply. This will show you how many visitors you will get, their location, time on site etc.
Hope these tips are of some use, i am always free to offer more. You can email me at route609@hotmail.com and subject the email affiliate info.
Remember though, affiliate sites can take a long time to get good google rankings and good affiliate sales. Only few people set up a site and start to generate sales within the first 3 months.
It's more about how you market a site and the amount of fresh content you can constantly add.
Good luck
