100 Days Until Christmas

Charming? Is That You?

Yes affiliates, it’s time to ramp up your product reviews and pages because Christmas season is upon us.

So in the spirit of giving, ‘tis the holiday season after all, it’s time I wrote another post on this here poor neglected blog of mine.

Okay then, let’s start at the beginning shall we?

Once upon a time there was a princess named Tracey. She was a lovely girl who liked to write. One day a handsome prince arrived at her door, he was gorgeous and told her that he could make all of her desires come true, he started unbuttoning his shirt to reveal a smooth .. Oh shit, wrong story. Sorry about that.

Where was I?

Oh yes. Promoting stuff.

So what do you promote? How do you find the right products?

Firstly head over to Amazon. This is where you’ll be doing all your research (no keyword tools required).

There are three lists that you will need to look at, they are the Bestsellers List, Hot New Products List and Movers & Shakers List. Each main category on Amazon has these lists. Most people just stick with the Bestsellers List because it’s easy. That’s fine. But I tend to concentrate on the Hot New Products and Movers & Shakers lists – just to be different.

Great, now you’ve got a list of the top 100 or 200 products that you know are selling well on Amazon. You could choose any one of them and do fine. However you want to find the really hot products don’t you? Of course you do.

Then it’s time to have a closer look at the lists. What you are looking for is the products that people are TALKING about. If they are talking about it, it’s a good sign that they are searching online for it as well rather than just randomly buying it from Amazon.

Have a look at the listing for this Vtech Mobigo toy:

See that little “8 Customer Discussions” link? That means people are TALKING about it. This is a very good sign of a hot product. And it’s also got lots of positive reviews. Another plus. Oh and you also know that it’s selling well because it’s moving UP the movers and shakers list.

Are your fingers burning yet?

Ok. So you’ve chosen your product. What do you write about it?

There are two areas where you can get your info – the Amazon page for the product (where most people go and still a good place for the basic information).

But remember that this product had discussions right? Well let’s see what people want to know about this product. Click the “Customer Discussions” link.

Very interesting. People want to know if it’s appropriate for 5 year olds, the comparisons between this product and the iXL and so on. Bet most affiliates won’t put this GOLD information in their reviews. Can we say long tail keywords baby?

Oh and while we are here and talking about keywords. What keywords should you be using?

Look at the customer reviews and the discussions. What are people actually calling this product? You know, NOT the manufacturers description but the actual words people use when they talk about it? Seems most people just use the word Mobigo. So that’s the keyword you want to target with your “Buy Mobigo” “Cheap Mobigo” “Mobigo Review” etc. Of course put the whole product name in your content, but your main keyword to concentrate on in this case is just Mobigo.

Alrighty then. You’ve got the product and have written a review. Oh and I forgot to mention that yes you’ll need to write it yourself. Don’t just cut and paste the text from Amazon – lazy boys and girls don’t win in this game. Try and make it long and juicy. Never below 300 words. I try and aim for 500’ish words. Just so I can get more long tails in there.

So now what? Where do you put the review? On your own site? On a web 2.0?

Let’s look at these starting from best to just ok.

BEST: Your own website that is already ranking well on G.

GOOD: Web 2.0 sites (squidoo, hubpages, etc etc) << because these will rank quicker than a new site that you put up even if you don‘t own the domain.

OK: A new site that you’ve just started. Probably won’t rank as high as quickly, but will be great for next year or the year after.

Cool.

Now let’s get that baby ranking.

Onpage SEO. Let’s start here because it’s the easiest. You want your main keyword in the TITLE, CONTENT, URL (page/post name not domain name), IMAGE ALT TAG, at least.

You also want to add some internal links using both exact and partial anchors. (Don’t use too many exact’s as it can work against you).

That will give the page a good boost on it’s own.

Now external SEO aka backlinks. If you can afford a link building service such as Build My Rank then do it. If not then you are going to have to spend a bit more time finding links yourself. You can use web 2.0’s and other sites you own etc for backlinks. Don’t bother with directory submissions or blog commenting. Not quick enough and fairly worthless for seo juice anyway.

I like to send around 10-20 backlinks directly to the money page, then write a web 2.0 which points to the money page and send IT 10-20 backlinks, then other web 2.0 property that points to the money page and send IT 10-20 backlinks. And so on and so on.

These are not going to be quality links like guest posting (which is a better way to build up your authority sites but not really relevant here for ranking quick product reviews for Christmas).

Again you want a teeny tiny few exact match anchors, but mostly you want partial anchors. Partial anchors are those that have one or two keywords plus some other words. So if your exact match you want is “Mobigo“. Your partials would be “mobigo review”, “new vtech toy mobigo”, “read about mobigo here” and so on. Also throw in a few non anchors here are there. “read the review”, “click here”, to keep it natural. So MAINLY you want partial anchors, and then sprinkle a few exact match’s and non match’s as well.

Keep your content original and useful even those that you are just using for backlinks. I don’t use spun content (yeah I know it can work, I just don’t do it, ‘k)

Oh if it’s YOUR site then use only TWO or less affiliate links per page. One up the top and one down the bottom. I’ve found reducing the amount of aff links on the page helps it rank better. Doesn’t matter as much with the web 2.0’s but still don’t overdo it and make it look spammy. ‘k?

And that’s it really.

Summary:

• Choose products that people are talking about
• See WHAT they are talking about it
• Write a good original review with long tails thrown in
• Good onpage SEO and some internal links
• Backlinks to the page using mainly partial anchors.

Merry Christmas!