So you have your site set up, your sales copy written, your graphics looking all fancy and then… Nothing! Where are all those people who were supposed to come from Google in their millions to read your information and click your affiliate link?

Welcome to business online.

Every day thousands of new websites are built by budding entrepreneurs who see the internet as a way to make an extra $100, $500 or $10,000 a month. They’re your competition, even if they’re in a different niche to you, as they fill up the search engines and other traffic senders with their "stuff" and push yours out.

So what can you do?

Well, the first thing you need to do is get your onsite Search Engine Optimization (SEO) right. You need to understand the basics so that your website is search engine friendly and optimized for your main keyword phrase.

Don’t be fooled by those people who say SEO isn’t worth it, it is. I have a site that gets up to 8,000 visitors a day and if I was to buy those visitors, it would cost me at least $3,000. That’s a lot of money in my pocket. Everything is profit if you aren’t paying for visitors. Yes, you do pay with your time but that’s no different to any real business.

In Niche Profit Classroom, Adam talks about having a series of keyword targeted articles/pages written to get high rankings on the search engines. This is an essential part of onsite SEO. There is no point in building a site that talks about 30 different topics if you’re trying to get rankings. Where possible, you should try to use your main keyword phrase through every article and page in your site. So if your website is about “chocolate fish” then try to have each article title contain the words “chocolate fish”.

• How chocolate fish breed?
• Where to find chocolate fish?
• Chocolate fish as a family pet.

What I like to do, is to do keyword research, using whatever tool you prefer, and make a list of around 100 phrases containing my main target word. Then I sit there with the list and I turn every phrase into a question. This is such a simple technique but many people don’t know about it. It is so much easier to create content from a question than just from a word phrase.

For example, what is easier to write from in your opinion?

1. Chocolate fish lights
2. Under what lights do chocolate fish grow faster?

Yes it takes time but it speeds up the end process. It also makes it easier for you to hire a writer through odesk and get them to write for you. All they have to do is research an answer (what Google is for) and structure your article. You get a better article and they can work faster saving you time and money. You can also build your affiliate marketing link into each article as you go.

On each page of your website you need to ensure you use H1, H2 headings, image names, keyword text links, paragraphs using your keywords, complete the meta description tag, etc. Don’t miss any of them.  DIYSEO will help you to understand what each of these is and step you through learning them if you’re unsure.

If you’re competing directly against another site, having everything right may make the difference between first and second rankings. That difference may be hundreds of visitors a day.

Another thing to remember is that good onsite SEO may also help with PPC quality scores so it could also lower your AdWords costs.

So that’s the first step I take when I build a site.  Improve my search engine traffic and focus the website at the same time. Once you have your affiliate marketing site’s SEO correct, you can then move on to the next step in traffic building – Link building.

Next week I'll describe how I do Link Building.