Search Engine Optimization for Affiliate Stores

There are 3 key components to every website that the search engines look for. They are:
1- Page Title
2- Description
3- Keywords

On any website, you can see the HTML detail by going to “View” and “Page Source” in your browser. This will bring up a page of code and near the top you will (should) see these 3 items shown. These, along with text found in the website, are how every website becomes ranked in Google, Yahoo, MSN, and all other search engines. An example of how this should look is as follows:

<title>The title information gets entered here</title>
<META NAME="Description" content="The description that you want to show up on a search engine results page goes here. ">
<META NAME="Keywords" content="The keyword phrases go here separated by commas, the keyword streams go here separated by commas">

Page Title:
For the website surfer, the Page Title tag appears as the tab title for this page. It's right next to the “x” where they'd close this tab of the browser. Usually only about 30-65 characters show up, but the search engines will look at up to 350 characters here.

Usually its not ideal to put a company name in the Title tag, and instead use descriptive terms that show what you do and what you offer. Don't be too vague, to be found you're going to need to be specific on what you do.

** Don't forget to click the blue “update” box after making your changes or the information will be lost.

Keywords:

Here we need to list the key phrases or “streams” that people will type when they search on Google and the other search engines. Don't be too general... rather be very specific. By “streams” I mean the specific terms (in order) as they would be typed, all separated by a comma. For example... it not good enough for us to only list {online, shirt, stores} as these 3 terms on their own are too vague. Instead we need to add things like {online, shirt, stores, online shirts, online shirt store, online shirt stores, etc} to the list of keywords. It is best if the keywords tie well to the words used in the Page Title.

Keyword lists can be up to 1,000 characters long. Enter each phrase followed by a comma. We prefer to type out my list in a word processor so its easy to see the whole list, and then copy and past the list into the website field. Don't repeat the same keyword multiple times, or the search engines may perceive this as spamming which can hurt your website.

Since there are many websites that sell t-shirts, it will be important for you to enter keyword streams that are very specific to the niche or style of shirts that you offer.

** Don't forget to click the blue “update” box after making your changes or the information will be lost.

Description:
This is the way your website will be described on a search engine results page. Not all of what you type will show on the search results page, but its still important to make this description a nice long paragraph of up to 1,000 characters that includes many of the same terms used in the Title and Keywords.

• Other important to-dos:
  Add text to your pages. The search engines want text that relates to what your site is all about. The best designs, and a cool layout can't be seen by a search engine. What counts is the right text that ties into your Title Tag, Description, and Keywords.
• 
  Add internal links from some of your page text to other pages in your site.
  
  
• Submit your website to the search engines: