If your website content looks too similar to other websites, search engines could filter it out. Image: Flickr/ oskay / CC- BY

When you are trying to optimize your website for search engines, it is worth it to make sure you’re not using duplicate content in a way that will degrade the popularity of your site. Duplicate content can be put to work for you, but it can also harm your search engine optimization if used incorrectly. Understanding how search engines see duplicate content, how it is indexed and the effect of duplicate content is important when you are responsible for or concerned about the rank of a website.

How search engines see duplicate content

Search engines include filters for duplicate content for a multitude of reasons. Search engines are in the business of providing the most relevant search results to users. When multiple websites have the exact same content, a search engine runs the risk of showing multiple results that don’t give additional information. This could be multiple websites that have the same publisher’s description of a book, different URL styles for the same website (www.url.com vs. url.com) or a website that uses copyrighted content. In short, a search engine sees two websites with duplicate content as two websites that should not appear in the same list of search results.

How search engines index content

Indexing the entire internet is a huge task. Search engines do this by sending out robots – programs – that read websites and categorize them according to the keywords they find on sites. This text is stored on the search engine’s servers for comparison with other websites. When the search engine finds two websites that have content that is the exact same or very similar, it flags both websites for filtering. Only one of these filtered websites will likely ever be displayed on search results. Depending on the search engine, which of the filtered websites will be displayed could be a matter of which site gets more traffic, which is more trusted or which had the content up first. Either way, most of the duplicate content websites simply will not show up on search results.

The effects of duplicate content

If your website is found to have duplicate content, a search engine may very well filter it out. While some search engine optimization experts call this the “duplicate content penalty,” it is not a true penalty. It is a filter – which means it is much easier to avoid and work around. Most simply, just avoid putting duplicate content on your website. Even if you get an e-mail or RSS content feed, find a feed that you are allowed to make edits to, then edit the articles. There are also content feed programs that provide unique versions of articles. You can also avoid the duplicate content filter by creating and posting unique content. If you are not sure whether your content is unique, run it through a duplicate content checker to ensure it isn’t seen as duplicate.

Plugins are designed to fill very specific functionality niches in WordPress. Image: Rennett Stowe / Flickr / CC-BY

WordPress is an incredibly powerful content management system and blogging software. It’s search engine friendly, easily editable and even open-source. We’ve sung the praises of using WordPress for your affiliate website in the past and think it’s a great program for affiliate marketing.

There are reasons, though, that you may need to expand or improve on the built-in functionality within WordPress, and there are some plugins that we  recommend on a regular basis. If you are setting up your own WordPress blog, you should check out these plugins to make it even more useful. Adworkz has not created any of these plugins and does not offer support for them; they are simply third-party resources we have found useful.

Content plugins for WordPress

Trying to keep fresh, relevant content on your website can be tough, even on the best days. There are plugins that will help you receive content feeds or even post from your smartphone.

• Postie helps you receive and post content to your WordPress blog via e-mail. It’s a powerful, supported plugin that is compatible with the latest version of WordPress.
• Feed WordPress automatically creates posts on your WordPress blog using an RSS feed.
• Akismet SPAM checker will check comments posted on your website against the Akismet spam service.
• Contextually related posts Will help display posts that are related to the one on-screen. This will not only help direct your viewers to more information on your website, it will help search engines index your site as relevant.

Traffic plugins for WordPress

These are WordPress plugins that will help you monitor, track and make the most of the traffic that comes to your website.

• Google Analyticator Integrates your WordPress blog with Google Analytics, including the tracking methods that give real-time feedback.
• Download Monitor provides tools for uploading and managing links, documents and information.
• ShareThis social sharing plugin gives your visitors a way to immediately share your website on just about any social networking service.

Functionality and SEO plugins for WordPress

These WordPress plugins will help your site run faster for customers, get indexed by more search engines and perform all-around better.

• WP Super Cache must be used carefully, but if your website begins receiving a lot of traffic, this plugin can reduce the server load of your website. Just be certain to disable caching on any page that includes application information or personal user data. By helping your site load faster, you will improve your page rank.
• All in One SEO Pack does all the heavy lifting of optimizing your website for search engines. The pack automatically rewrites your meta data, headers and even link titles to help search engines find and index your site just as you want them to.
• Wapple Architect is a plugin that will make your website mobile-friendly for people trying to access it on their smartphones. With a mobile-friendly website, mobile visitors are more likely to stay on your site and convert.
• XML Sitemap Generator creates a Google-friendly XML sitemap in moments, helping search engine crawlers find their way around your site quickly and easily.

Make sure your blogging does not land you in front of an FTC court. Image: bloomsberries/Flickr/ CC-AT-ND

Since the 1980s, the Federal Trade Commission has required paid advertisers to disclose their relationship with the company paying them. In 2009, the FTC updated these guidelines to include bloggers and other social media marketers. The issue of proper legal disclosures is incredibly important when you are working as an affiliate marketer. Ensuring that your blog, social media accounts and websites comply with FTC requirements for disclosure can save you time, money, and stress in the future.

Content that requires an FTC disclosure

The Federal Trade Commission issued a new set of recommendations regarding online content in 2009. While these guidelines are not a change to previous policy, they clarify the disclosure requirements for online content. A good rule of thumb is that if you will be possibly making any money off of your online presence, you should disclose that. Any endorsement, review or article that you might make money on requires a disclosure of some kind.

How to integrate a disclosure statement

Integrating an FTC disclosure statement can be very simple. The form and function of the disclosure depends highly on what type of website you have. Personal websites and commercial websites need to be treated differently, though both require a disclosure statement of some kind. The ultimate goal of FTC disclosure recommendations is that endorsements, marketing campaigns and advertisements are identified as such, and that customers know the marketer stands to benefit from the material.

FTC disclosures on personal websites

If you have a personal website where you run advertisements that are obviously and visually separated from the rest of the content, such as a sidebar banner advertisement, then a disclosure is likely not be required. If, on a personal blog, you occasionally write a review or post an advertisement with the rest of your content, then you need to disclose if you have received or might receive something of value in return for that content. A simple statement such as “(Company name) sent me a copy of this book, and when I read it, I…” or “(Company name) gave me a free ticket to the theme park, and…” should be plenty.

FTC disclosures on commercial websites

If you have a website where the major goal of the content is to drive traffic to an affiliate offer or advertisement, then the disclosure issue is more important. Generally, the easiest way to cover the disclosure requirement is to include a general disclosure on your website. In the footer, on a separate page of your site or in some other obvious part of your site, include a general disclaimer. A statement such as “everything on this page should be considered a paid advertisement for (company name)” may cover you.

Consulting with a lawyer

As always, if you are going to be making money or trying to make money with your website, it is prudent to consult a lawyer to ensure that you are in compliance with federal, state and local laws. Some municipalities may consider your blogging a “business activity” that would require a business license. Either way, you should make a clear and consistent effort to keep your readers informed of what you are trying to accomplish on your website.

Further Reading

FTC Endorsement press release
Lawyers.com

E-mail autoposting is a quick and easy way to create new posts on your blog. Image: Wikimedia Commons

E-mail auto-posting, or e-mail syndication, is a service that sends complete articles directly to your blog, and they appear in the dashboard for you to edit and post as you wish. Some content services offer this as a way to syndicate previously published articles, while others use it as a way to provide completely unique, fresh content for your blog only. You can also use post-by-email to update your blog without having to ever log into WordPress, once it is set up.

Built-in WordPress post-via-e-mail

WordPress has a built-in system that will let you post to your WordPress blog via e-mail. That system, however, does not necessarily accept HTML or have built-in functionality that may prove useful. In order to get around this, we recommend that you use a plugin called Postie to get posts via e-mail.

Setting up your autoposting e-mail address

Before you set up Postie, you will need to create an e-mail address that you will use for nothing except receiving posts for your blog. We do not recommend using a free e-mail service to set up this address. Everything that is sent to that e-mail address will be posted to your blog, so you should not share this address with anyone except content syndication services. Instead, you should use an e-mail address attached to your domain address. When you purchased your web hosting, e-mail addresses were most likely included. Find out from your web host how to set up an e-mail address. You should create an address that is relatively random and difficult to guess – a combination of both numbers and letters.

You will need four pieces of information about your e-mail address to set up posting via e-mail. Write down this information while you are setting up your e-mail address:

• POP or POP3 mail server – this will either be mail.yourdomain.com or, if you are on shared hosting, it may be server.domain.com.
• Mail server username – this will either be address@domain.com or address+domain.com
• Mail server password – the password to access your e-mail address.
• Mail Protocol and Port – Most often, this will be POP or POP3, with port 110.

Installing Postie

• On the Postie website, click the “download” link, then “save file” in the download box. Remember where you save the .zip file – you will need it for later.
• Log into your WordPress admin panel. You should see a navigation menu in the left hand sidebar.
• Click on “Plugins” in the left hand sidebar to open up more menu items.
• Click on “Add New.”
• Chose “upload” in the list of options.
• Click “browse” and find the .zip file on your computer.
• Click “install now.” WordPress will inform you when installation is complete.
• Go to your “Plugins” menu and activate the plugin

Setting up the Postie plugin

Under your “settings” menu in WordPress, “Postie” should have been added to your list of options. Click that option. A screen with eight different options should appear.

• Under “mailserver”, enter the four pieces of information you wrote down while setting up your e-mail address.
• Under the “user” option, we recommend that you leave “allow anyone to post” at no. You should also choose “draft” as your post status, so you can review all the posts before they appear on your blog.
• Finally, under the “message” options, choose a default category and a set of tags you would like attached to every e-mailed post. You should also set the preferred text type to HTML, allow e-mails sent to your autoposting account to include a subject line and allow HTML in the subject and body.
• While the rest of the options allow you further customization, you do not have to change any of these settings for post-by-email to work.

Post by e-mail can be a powerful tool for keeping fresh content on your blog. The setup takes some time, but it will help increase your affiliate commissions in the future.

There are often a huge number of searches for a single keyword, but the combined traffic from low search volume keywords is powerful. Image: Dave Duarte / Flickr / CC-BY-SA

Deciding on keywords is usually half art and half science. There are two basic types of keywords in internet marketing: high-competition keywords and longtail keywords. High competition keywords are keywords that get a lot of searches and are often the easiest, simplest ones to remember. Longtail keywords, on the other hand, may not get as many searches and can be more difficult to remember. The big secret to affiliate marketing, though, is that longtail keywords can be the source of your success.

Defining a longtail keyword

A longtail keyword, by definition, is any keyword that is not high competition. “Reality TV,” for example, would be considered a very high traffic and high competition keyword. While there is a lot of money to be made in high-traffic keywords, it can be very difficult to build consistent, profitable traffic. Lots of competition means it takes a lot of work to get and keep your website near the top of lists of results. A longtail keyword, on the other hand, has very little competition. Usually, longtail keywords are very specific phrases. “Winner of Dancing With The Stars Season 24″ is an example of a longtail keyword. The name “longtail” comes from the long, tail-like end of the bell curve that graphs search volume.

Choosing longtail keywords

The process of identifying your longtail keywords can take time, but it is very important process. Once you have decided what type of offer you are going to target with a longtail, identify three or four high-traffic keywords as a jumping-off point. For an offer advertising a college scholarship search, for example, you might want to start with keywords such as “college scholarships” and “money for college.” Once you have the basic high-traffic keywords go to Google Insights for Search. Enter your keywords and look over the results. The top searches and rising searches will give you the keywords you should use to find your longtail keywords. Select a few of these, and run them back through the keyword tool. Arrange the search terms in Google Keyword according to Global Monthly Searches. Select a few phrases that are three or more words long and have lower Global Monthly Searches results, and you’ve got your longtail keywords.

Putting longtail keywords to work

Longtail keywords can be put to work for you very easily for one very simple reason – there isn’t much competition. Consider each longtail keyword a niche that is just waiting for you to fill it. When you target a longtail keyword, you are attempting to fill the online niche of the few people each month or year that will type that exact phrase into a search engine. You can target a keyword with your whole website or just one page on your website. Either way, there are several places you should include the longtail keyword.

• Page title
• Page description
• Text in the first paragraph of the page
• Titles of each page section and subheading
• URL of the website or webpage
• Metadata information

If you include this type of longtail keyword with your article or webpage, you can make longtail marketing work for you.

Receiving posts syndicated via RSS can help you keep fresh content on your blog. Image: Lumaxart / Flickr / CC-BY-SA

RSS, or “Real Simple Syndication,” is a form of content syndication that sends out a special type of text file – called XML – to readers. RSS can be used for everything from keeping up on the latest posts on your favorite blog or to linking social networking profiles together. When you have a blog, especially for affiliate purposes, you can use an RSS feed as a way of keeping fresh content on your blog. Most free blogging services have the option of displaying an RSS feed on the sidebar or footer of your website. To display these feeds, add the RSS widget offered by your blogging service and drop the feed address into the settings.

Even better than just displaying an RSS feed, though, you can use a plugin to make the RSS feed show up on your blog as posts. This is not unique content, but it can be used to augment the search engine power of your website. For WordPress websites, Feed WordPress is one of the most popular. Add this plugin to your website, add the feed address, and you’ll be up and running with free, fresh content for your website.

Posting via RSS

The Feed WordPress plugin pulls an RSS feed into your WordPress blog, which makes all of the content on the site you are feeding from appear as posts on your blog. Each individual RSS item or post becomes a new post on your WordPress blog. To set up WordPress post-via-RSS:

• On the Feed WordPress website, click the “download” link, then “save file” in the download box. Remember where you save the .zip file – you will need it for later.
• Log into your WordPress admin panel. You should see a navigation menu in the left hand sidebar.
• Click on “Plugins” in the left hand sidebar to open up more menu items.
• Click on “Add New.”
• Chose “upload” in the list of options.
• Click “browse” and find the .zip file on your computer.
• Click “install now.” WordPress will inform you when installation is complete.
• Go to your “Plugins” menu and activate the plugin

Setting up Feed WordPress

Once you have the Feed WordPress plugin activated, you can set it up to receive and post RSS feeds however you would like. Check with whichever website or feed you would like to receive content from to get the address of the feed. Copy it; you will need it later.

The options for Feed WordPress will appear in your left-hand navigation bar, at the bottom of the list of options. If you expand that menu, there is a wide range of options for you.

• “Syndication” is where you insert the URL of the RSS feed you would like to pull into your blog. Get the “feed URL” from the website you want to feed from, and insert it here.
• “Feed and Update Settings” will let you set the way the posts are updated to your WordPress blog. You can set how often your blog checks for updates on the feeds and how it checks for updates. We recommend you leave the default settings on this section.
• “Syndicated Posts & Links Settings” is where you will set the formatting, linking and comments settings on the posts that come from an RSS feed. These filters will determine how the posts act once they are on your blog. We recommend that you set new posts to be held for review so you can take a look at them before they post. Your permalinks should point to the local copy on this website, with the aggregator itself as the source of the posts. Formatting filters and URIs (which WordPress uses here to refer to URLs) should be left with default settings. Finally, you should allow comments, pings and local comment feeds.
• “Syndicated Authors” determines how your blog will treat authors it does not recognize. If you leave this as a default, WordPress will automatically create a user account any new author from the original feed.
• “Categories & Tags Settings” sets up how WordPress handles new categories and tags that come through with the feed. You should set your site to treat unfamiliar categories as tags or categories, to maintain the SEO power held within those organizational tools. You can also set a tag and a category that feed posts are automatically added to.

Setting up an RSS feed of content can take a bit of time, but it is a quick and easy way to receive a lot of content for your blog, quickly.

Search engines use keywords to index and categorize content online. Image: Danard Vincente / Flickr / CC-BY

When you are getting started in affiliate marketing, selecting and using keywords correctly is truly the key to being successful. Most affiliate marketing websites are based on targeting certain words and phrases in order to show up near the top of the list when people search for those words and phrases. To cover the affiliate marketing basics of keywords, we will discuss what a keyword is, how to decide on keywords and the appropriate use of keywords.

Defining a keyword

When you’re getting started in affiliate marketing, you will hear the word “keyword” very often. The literal definition of “keyword” is “a term that captures the essence of the topic of a document.” When you are thinking about keywords, think about what you would like people to to type into their search engines in order to find your website, advertisement or article. That word or phrase is your keyword — your topic, your essence, your target.

How to identify your keywords

The process of identifying your keywords can take time, but it is very important for developing your affiliate marketing strategy. The offer or offers you are running will probably give you a jumping off point to identify your keywords. For an offer advertising a college scholarship search, for example, you might want to start with keywords such as “college scholarships” and “money for college.” Once you have three or four basic keywords as a jumping-off point, go to Google Insights for Search. Enter your keywords and look over the results. The top searches and rising searches, listed at the bottom, include the related keywords that you should consider. For full websites, you will want to identify at least 25 loosely related keywords that will be effective for selling your offers. For one article or advertisement, you should identify no more than four keywords to target.

When choosing your keywords, you should make a conscious decision about targeting high-traffic keywords and longtail keywords. High traffic keywords have lots of competition, but a lot of possible hits. Longtail keywords do not have nearly as many searches each month, but they also do not have nearly as much competition.

Using your chosen keywords

Once you’ve identified your keywords, putting them in the right places will help search engines and internet searchers find you. This is Search Engine Optimization — SEO — at the most basic level. You should use your chosen keyword or keywords in several places. If you are planning a comment or advertisement, put your keyword in a prominent position. If you are planning a website, there are many places you should use your keyword. The structure of the URL, the title and content of the pages, the meta information (tags) and even the images should contain some of your keywords. If nothing else, keep your keywords in mind while you are structuring and filling in your website. You can also read more about basic on-page Search Engine Optimization.

Website targeting can determine the amount and quality of traffic you get. Image: nostri-imago/Flickr/CC-BY

When you’re deciding to set up your own website, one of your first and biggest considerations should be the content you plan to put on your website. There are two major types of website content to consider, both of which have benefits and drawbacks. General interest websites have content on a wide variety of topics, while niche websites target more specific topic areas. Either way, the kind of information you put on your website will have a definite effect on the traffic you bring in.

Why targeting is important

Everything that is a part of your website – from the URL to the design and content – can be affected by the topics you choose. Search engines index and categorize your site on the basis of the keywords it finds in your site. When the keywords match throughout your website, it is easier for search engines to categorize your site correctly – a basic component of search engine optimization. Better SEO makes it easier for people who are looking for websites like yours to find your site.

Creating a general interest website

General interest websites are usually very broad sites (usually blogs) that cover a wide variety of topics. These blogs can be the easiest to maintain, because you can easily post and discuss just about anything on this type of website. Traffic to general interest websites may take longer to build, but can grow very large. The benefit of a general interest website is that you can run just about any type of advertisement on your website in any manner. Feel like writing about your favorite product? You can. Feel like writing about the latest financial news? You can do that too. General interest websites serve as great information hubs. General clickthrough rates on general interest websites tend to be lower, since the people who come to your website aren’t necessarily looking to click on an advertisement. News websites and personal blogs tend to fall into the category of general interest, as do “home page” style websites like MSN.com and Yahoo.com.

Creating niche websites

With so many hundreds of millions of websites on the web, creating a niche website can be your quickest route to building valuable traffic. A niche website focuses on one topic, keyword or area of interest. These websites may not get as much traffic as a general interest website, but the people who do find the website are more likely to take action on the advertisements or affiliate offers that you put on the website. There are two major ways to decide on the niche that you want to target with your website.

Personal interest niche websites

First, you can choose a niche that you are very interested in and will be able to easily write about on a regular basis. The topic could be just about anything — home building, experiences with insurance, researching Bigfoot, even your love of celebrity news. If you are truly passionate about your idea or topic, then keeping fresh and interesting content on your website should be easy. You can choose to run affiliate advertisements that have a topical connection to your website, which would increase the likelihood they will get clicks. You can also choose to run affiliate offers as pure advertisements. Either way, personal interest niche websites are likely to bring in traffic because they target one very specific topic – the essence of  longtail keyword marketing.

Keyword niche websites

Websites targeted to specific keywords, or keyword niche websites, are the easiest type of website to make affiliate commissions with. These are the websites that integrate the keyword of your affiliate offer from bottom to top. These websites can be more difficult to maintain, because finding and integrating fresh, relevant content can be more difficult. Identify an affiliate offer that you would like to target, find the keywords that will send interested parties to that offer, and start there.

Once you have chosen what type of website you would like to build, you can move forward on building your affiliate commissions with a search engine optimized website. If you are building a general website, be sure to make it the type of site that you, yourself would love to visit. If you have chosen a niche website, try to build the keywords for your website in from top to bottom – everywhere from the URL you choose to the content that you put onto the website.

Unsolicited e-mails can get you, as an affiliate marketer, in big trouble. Image: dsf/Flickr/CC-BY

If you choose to use e-mail to promote your affiliate offers, it is incredibly important that you comply with the laws governing marketing e-mails. E-mail can be an incredibly effective way of marketing, but misusing the method can turn off customers and cost you money. In this affiliate marketing how-to, we will discuss the basics of complying with CAN-SPAM.

The origin of CAN-SPAM

The CAN-SPAM act was originally signed into law in 2003. The full name of the act is Controlling The Assault of Non Solicited Pornography And Marketing act. The Federal Trade Commission was given the responsibility of administering the act and its enforcement. Since 2003, only minor adjustments have been made to the act, mostly to clarify requirements.

Why your affiliate marketing needs to comply with CAN-SPAM

Not only does not complying with these regulations carry the possibility of invalidating any affiliate commissions you may earn from the e-mail, but you could be fined up to $16,000 for every individual e-mail that violates the act. An affiliate marketing e-mail that violates CAN-SPAM that is sent out to 100 people could cost you $1.6 million before it makes you any money.

How to comply with CAN-SPAM

If you do want to send out affiliate marketing e-mails, complying with the CAN-SPAM act is relatively simple.

1. Use accurate header information – the to, from, reply to, and routing information needs to be honest and accurate. You need to include a real e-mail address that the recipient of the e-mail can reply to. You also need to send the e-mail from a working email address that “accurately represents” who you are. If you had your own affiliate marketing website with the address www.adworkz.com, and were sending out an e-mail about an offer on that website, you would need to send it from an e-mail @adworkz.com.
2. Accurate subject lines – Your subject line has to be in a similar vein as the topic of your e-mail. You cannot use subject lines that are not related to your e-mail. If you are sending out an identity protection e-mail, for example, you could not use a subject line like “Your lottery winnings.” This is generally good marketing practice, as well.
3. Identify the ad – In the e-mail, you have to conspicuously and obviously identify the e-mail you are sending as an advertisement.
4. Give an address – You must include a physical address where recipients of the e-mail would be able to reach you.
5. Give an opt-out option – You must include a clear, conspicuous and easy-to-understand method for the recipient to opt-out of receiving e-mails from you in the future. The opt-out has to be through either e-mail or a website. This opt-out must include the option of opting out of all commercial messages from you. You must respond to these opt-out responses in 10 days or fewer. You cannot charge for the opt-out, and you cannot sell or redistribute the e-mail address after they have opted out.

This is by no means a complete list of the regulations in the CAN-SPAM act, and as always, you should consult a lawyer to ensure that your marketing complies with federal and state regulations. You can read more about CAN-SPAM on the FTC website.

Links are what get clicks and drive commissions. Image: ThinkStock

Once you have signed up for an Adworkz affiliate account, you can start making money by including affiliate links and affiliate banners. These links and banners can be included anywhere from your own website to articles that you write for other websites. Be sure to carefully read the terms and conditions of the website where you intend to post your offer (if it isn’t your own website). Once you are certain that you are allowed to post your offer, it’s time to get to work.

Posting text links

Text links are the links that appear underlined or in a different color in line with the rest of the text in an ad, article or page. Usually text links are used to give a reader more information or elicit an immediate response. While you are writing a piece of text, including a link, it takes just one line of HTML code.

1. First, go into your affiliate marketing dashboard (if you are signed up with Adworkz, it is at network.adworkz.com). Find the “tracking link” or “affiliate link” for the offer you would like to promote. Keep that screen open.
2. Highlight and copy this code, and paste it into the text where you would like to include your affiliate link. Make sure the field you are typing in accepts HTML, and is not in a “visual” editing mode.
   

   <a title=”TITLE HERE” href=”URL HERE”>TEXT HERE</a>

3. Go back to your affiliate dashboard. Find the tracking or affiliate link, highlight it, and copy the entire thing.
4. In your text editor, highlight URL HERE — without the quotation marks — and paste the URL you just copied from your affiliate dashboard.
5. Replace TITLE HERE with the “anchor title text” for your link. This is the text that appears when a reader hovers over your link and the text that search engines consider when “reading” your link. Your anchor title should include a keyword that relates to the offer. For example, a link to a credit report offer might have anchor text like “Get your free credit report today”
6. Finally, replace TEXT HERE with the anchor text that will appear for readers and become the link. For example, in this sentence, these words are linked to the Adworkz Blog front page. The code for that link looks like this:
   

   <a href=”http://www.adworkz.com/blog” title=”Affiliate marketing blog”>these words</a>

And there you go! You have a text link. Text links are especially useful if you are writing a blog post in which you discuss an offer or if you are writing comments on other websites. Make sure you follow the applicable laws and regulations on affiliate relationship disclosure for article marketing.

Posting image links

Posting an image link or advertising banner is very similar to creating a text link. You use the same tag, but rather than including “anchor text” to link to the page, you include an image instead. One thing to keep in mind is that when you see an image referred to with numbers like “250×250″, it is referring to the size of the image. Images on the internet are measured in pixels. A 250×250 image is a 250 pixel wide and 250 pixel tall square, while a 120×60 image is 120 pixels wide and 60 pixels tall. If you are planning to put in an image link, make sure the size of the image matches the space you have available. Before you go through the whole process for creating an image link, check to see if your affiliate manager provides the code for you. If, like Adworkz, its does, you should only need to copy and paste the entire chunk of code into the space you want the image link to appear.

To insert an image link manually:

1. First, go into your affiliate marketing dashboard (if you are signed up with Adworkz, it is at network.adworkz.com). Find the “tracking link” or “affiliate link” for the offer you would like to promote. Keep that screen open.
2. Highlight and copy this code, and paste it into the text where you would like to include your affiliate link. Make sure the place you are typing accepts HTML, and is not in a “visual” editing mode.
   

   <a href=”URL HERE” title=”TITLE HERE”><img alt=”ALT TEXT” src=”SOURCE HERE” /></a>

3. Go back to your affiliate dashboard. Find the tracking or affiliate link, highlight it, and copy the entire thing.
4. In your text editor, highlight URL HERE – without the quotation marks – and paste the URL you just copied from your affiliate dashboard.
5. Replace TITLE HERE and ALT TEXT with the “anchor title text” for your link and image. This is the text that appears when a reader hovers over your image, and the text that search engines consider when “reading” your image link. Your image alternative text should describe the image — it is what shows up if your image fails to load.
6. Finally, replace IMAGE SOURCE with the URL where your image is stored. This is a link that will usually end in .jpg, .png, or .gif. Try right-clicking an image and selecting “copy image location” if you are not sure what the URL is. You can also right click and select “properties” to find the image URL as well.
7. For example, the image below is linked to the Adworkz front page. The code for it looks like this:
   

   <a href=”http://www.adworkz.com/” title=”Adworkz Affiliate Network”><img alt=”Adworkz Affiliate Network” src=”http://www.adworkz.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/logo.png” /></a>

   

Once you have the basics of inserting text and image links down, you are ready to get started in affiliate marketing. These links are what will drive traffic to your offers and help build your commissions.