In order to run a successful SEO Fashion marketing campaign, an affiliate has to ensure that they are using relevant and high traffic keywords.  Why is this important? Because you want the visitors to your site to not leave immediately; rather, you want them to be interested in your content and engage with it.  Not only will relevant keywords drive the targeted audience to your website, they will help generate better sales and higher conversion rates.

There are 3 steps you can follow to ensure your fashion keywords get you the audience you want:

High Traffic Keywords

Research and find product related  “long tail” fashion keywords with high volume but importantly with low competition. For example “keen shoes for women” and “wide width Adidas shoes.”

There are many options available, and one of these is using paid professional Search Engine Marketing teams, like the SEM expert services offered by Share Results. As experts, they are able to perform the necessary research on your behalf and differentiate the high traffic keywords with low competition through tools specifically designed for this purpose.

You can also use keyword tools such as Google Adwords or the SEOBook. These tools will help you build relevant keywords targeting your niche. Discussion forums and articles are other great ways to research keywords. Search your keywords through fashion blogs or online magazines and relate the results to building your keywords. You can also harvest relevant, high-volume low-competition keywords through Google Trends and visiting your competitors’ sites.

Relevance of your Website

You now have thousands of product related keywords, what do you do next? Work on building relevant content with these keywords on your site.  You want to have content that is helpful and describes your site clearly and accurately. Add blogs and user generated reviews to your website so you can further integrate your keywords through helpful content.

Keep the content of your website fresh and update it frequently. Do not duplicate content on your site, as this tarnishes its quality. Incorporate unique titles and description tags.

The relevance of your site will help get your website a high page ranking on Google. A high page Google rank ensures the success of your SEO and SEM marketing campaigns.

Join an Affiliate Program

By joining an Affiliate Program or working with a fashion merchant, you have access to product feeds which you are then able to apply to your site. This will help you get a high search rank by utilizing keywords that are more likely to end in a sale. Through product feed optimization, you get a high increase in relevant traffic from customers with the intent to buy, your Google page rank increases and you get a source of backlinks that increase the relevance of your site.

There are many other things that can be considered to make your fashion keywords work for you, but getting product-specific high traffic keywords with low competition, building relevant content on your site, and joining a product feed site are three plausible ROI-increasing approaches to getting the most out of keywords

Any thoughts on other things to consider on how to make your fashion keywords relevant? Please comment below, we’d love to hear from you.

Well, it’s been a very long while since we’ve updated the BAMroll here on Share Results, but we felt it necessary to get the word out about another site that is quickly becoming a good affiliate marketing resource website. CPA Network Reviews has already kicked off their launch with a great deal of content for you to check out.

We recently posted about an affiliate network interview that was conducted on that site with our COO Nicole Fortunaso. To read the actual interview, click on this link. The site was recently purchased and relaunched this year with the hope of educating an array of beginner-to-moderate level of affiliates looking for the best offers and advice on how to best promote them.

It’s a great resource for anyone that wants the best cpa networks reviews and affiliates reviews by the most experienced cpa marketers from around the world.

To check out CPA Network Reviews, click here. 

Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Travel is one of the more lucrative and exciting verticals in affiliate marketing that can be promoted. And with reason: What human being doesn’t like an escape their hectic life for several days or weeks of rest and relaxation? Because of the need for getaways, affiliates and merchants alike recognize that online travel is a continually growing sector to service the general public. As such, a variety of marketing techniques are needed to attract internet users, and SEO is a great option. Here are a few ways in which your online travel offers can be a little more SEO-friendly. With smart, quick implementation, you can garner more substantial results for your online travel campaigns.

Go big or go home with keywords
One of the biggest challenges for affiliates and merchants using SEO to promote their travel offers is using the right type of keywords. A focus on high traffic keywords will better pique the curiosity of search engine users. When researching keywords, make sure to explore high traffic terms through your go-to tools (like Google Adwords Keyword Tool for example). The higher the search volume and the lower the competition for your keywords, the better it is, because you will have found the right balance between search volume and competition.

Also, your keywords should be tailored terms that are relevant to your travel offer. This would include details like the best seasons for customers to take advantage of travelling (i.e. best travel spots in winter), or terms like car rentals or hotel and accommodations in congruence with the destination of the travel offer you are promoting. These are just a few strategic methods for helping your keywords and content have the most relevance.

Develop genuine relationships with bloggers
In one of my previous SEO affiliate marketing blog posts I mentioned the importance of building website authority. Back linking is part of this and makes for a great marketing component that can be added to your travel campaign. Back linking is great because Google actually rewards websites when the link is of high authority. To increase the number of back links, all you have to do is engage with people on other sites that are already publishing excellent content.

Try developing relationships with travel bloggers and resource sites. It’s not just important to have sites with good content linking to your website, but it is especially crucial to have partners online linking to your landing pages that are the most relevant and have the highest Google PageRank. As an added benefit, commenting on your partners’ blogs, offering free content through guest blog posts, and offering to do interviews can only help the back linking and overall website authority you will eventually want to build.

Acquire user reviews
Tailored keywords are a must have for original content, but remember that user-generated reviews are an excellent SEO tool for helping you generate more sales. Reviews are depended on very heavily by travelers; therefore, this type of original content can assist in both SEO and increasing sales conversions. Reviews generate organic traffic and encourage visitors to publish their own experiences, which makes the content on your site more relevant and have greater SEO value through having a higher keyword density.

Are you interested in learning more SEO travel marketing techniques? Keep reading the Share Results affiliate marketing blog for more information and part two of this blog post.

Question: I just launched an education portal and am having trouble finding edu offers to promote. It’s not that the offers aren’t there, it’s that I keep getting all these questions about what kind of traffic I drive and how I get my leads. I thought schools were in need of affiliates like me to get them students. But, it seems like a lot of the networks are making it really hard to send them traffic. Why is this?

According to the 2012 Education Advertising and Marketing survey, many schools are not satisfied with the level of transparency in the leads they receive. This is a challenge that is industry-wide. In recent years, schools have been pushing for additional transparency from their lead vendors as a result of new policies/legislation handed down by various levels of US government. Transparency, accountability and good communication between schools, lead aggregators, agencies and affiliates are now mandatory for optimizing the online education lead gen area and allowing this vertical to flourish.

Lead buyers and lead aggregators have strict advertising guidelines and require affiliates like yourself to adhere to them. In order stay compliant it’s important that you’re transparent in the way that you’re generating leads. This means informing your affiliate manager or lead buyer how you generate leads. For example, what creative you are using, where the ads are being placed, the exact source of every lead (were they organically generated using SEO, PPC, email marketing), what keywords are being bid on, etc. Many lead buyers define “proof” of compliance as full transparency of their lead sources. Compliance will continue to be an ongoing battle to avoid legal hurdles, and the downsides of non-compliance can be a huge expense for all parties, including the affiliates.

My advice to you and any affiliate with an online education website would be to make sure you clearly outline to affiliate managers and networks the methods you’re using to generate your traffic. You should also do your best to get as much demographic information about your traffic as possible. This type of data is key for you to know so that you fine tune your promotional methods to attract the right visitors who are your potential students. The better traffic you generate, the better the leads you acquire, and the better the leads, the more affiliate managers and networks will want to work more closely with you.

Today, at almost every organization large and small who spends money online, you will find a lead quality officer if not an entire compliance team dedicated to monitoring lead gen practices especially at companies whose main source of revenue comes from either the generation or purchase of leads. By implementing these and other transparency guidelines, affiliates can generate ROI while conducting campaigns in a simple, ethical and effective way.

How do you ensure that you comply with guidelines and regulations in the education lead gen space? Would you like to ask an affiliate manager a question? Let us know by leaving your comments below!

Yesterday, the newly re-launched website CPA Network Reviews was kind enough to shine the spotlight on Share Results. Our COO Nicole Fortunaso agreed to do an interview with the website and gave visitors some great insight into what we do and our business philosophy. For anyone that wants to dig a little deeper into what Share Results is all about, we encourage you to go over to CPA Network Reviews to view Nicole’s thoughts on the affiliate marketing industry.

CPA NETWORK REVIEWS

Q. What value does your company provide versus the hundreds of others in the space?

A: We are based in Montreal, Canada, and as anyone who has ever been here knows that our market is a distinct mix of primarily French and English languages. In addition, Canada has a stable economy with good growth potential. We see our location as an advantage, because we have developed excellent insight into both the US and Canadian digital marketplace, and can help clients groom their businesses to be better positioned on both sides of the border.

I would also emphasize our belief in the value of transparency as the key to any relationship; it fosters trust and growth. Affiliates and merchants alike can use the information provided in our tracking software to measure success and look for opportunities to create additional revenue.

Q. Are there specific regulations occurring for certain types of offers? Not too long ago, free trials and even download offers were receiving a lot of scrutiny.

A: Specifically in the for-profit online education market, which is one of our specialties, affiliates, lead aggregators and universities are being forced to comply with new lead gen marketing guidelines when attracting students online. Affiliates promoting education should make sure that they are staying up to date on the latest government regulations. Affiliates and networks should also be using approved marketing tools and channels in their campaigns; otherwise they could risk valuable income or worse, be blacklisted.

Click this link to see the full interview.

The CPA Network Reviews site is a portal and directory of both CPA and affiliate networks in the affiliate marketing industry. They have interviews with networks, as well as some of the latest offers and news about industry events and news. You may be thinking that these types of networks are the same, but as our colleague Nicole Young emphasized in her blog on AffiliatePrograms.com: “CPA networks have a reputation for their affiliates having the capability of generating high volume traffic… Affiliate networks are seeking long-term partnerships with affiliates and it is understood that it may take longer for those partners to cultivate higher volume traffic.”

CPA Network Reviews has plans to offer more tips and resources to visitors, so head over to this resourceful affiliate marketing website now and don’t forget to add them to your RSS reader.

There is an unlimited amount of information available online to affiliates on how to succeed in affiliate marketing and what to look for when signing up to an affiliate program. However, not all verticals are the same and it is important to distinguish how your campaign will set you apart from competing affiliates. In particular, the fashion affiliate marketing vertical is highly competitive and requires strategic promotion and exposure with a long-term commitment. Today we will be offering fashion affiliates some advice on how they can be more attractive to a fashion merchant.

Passionate and eager to learn

First and foremost, it is important for an affiliate to have a passion for fashion! Fashion retailers want to partner with affiliates who are interested in the industry. Like anything else, fashion is a specialization and does not work in the same way as other industries. Try to show an openness to learn and move forward with ongoing fashion trends. Merchants will easily be able to spot the trendsetters from the followers from the moment they review your website and see what type of content you are publishing. Furthermore, fashion merchants are seeking affiliates that not only send sales, but run aggressive campaigns in the form of giveaways, contests and gift packages. Be creative with your efforts and show your passion for specific merchandise and/or brands so that a merchant can easily be convinced to work with you from the moment they land on your web page.

Invest time

Some beginner affiliates tend to underestimate the time that is required to succeed in this industry. Affiliate marketing is hard work and can be time consuming if you are not careful with time management. However, it can be very lucrative extra income when done properly! That being said, the fashion world is fast paced and trends are quickly changing. Merchants are interested in partnering with fashion affiliates that update their sites regularly with product feeds, blog posts, colourful images and current events, as well as have an active profile online. One excellent strategy for raising your profile is to actively maintain a presence on social media. Ultimately, you want to focus on generating website traffic, and to build this traffic things like strategic fashion-friendly SEO or community management are big benefits. Check out the presentation in the following blog post that refers back to community management.

 Loyalty

A big challenge many offline and online retailers are facing these days is customer and affiliate loyalty. Customers are looking for the best deals available and affiliates are looking for the best commission structures available. Affiliates are encouraged to set realistic expectations when it comes to earning extra income from affiliate marketing in the fashion vertical. Generally, unless products are high-end merchandise, average sales for one affiliate offer are not enough; however, by seizing multiple fashion affiliate offers, you increase your earning potential across multiple brands. Only with time will tell if you will be able to profit from your hard work, and with the right analytics you can optimize your campaign to perform and earn more. Successful fashion retailers strive for loyal customers, and you should strive for a long-term partnership with the affiliate managers of the fashion affiliate offers you choose to promote.

To sum up, a successful fashion affiliate will spend the time needed to work on their websites in order to generate more traffic, thus increasing sales. And with this ROI, you can be certain that the more you remain loyal to your merchant, the more they will value your partnership.

This spring, Montreal has been a hub of activity thanks to a number of technology and business networking events in the city. As you may already know, we just hosted the Affiliate Summit Montreal Meetup last month on Tuesday, April 24, which featured a presentation by Brendan Shera-Shriar. This past weekend, the TEDxMontreal event also took place on Saturday, May 5. Now, the 12th edition of the international conference Webcom Montréal is rapidly approaching and will be taking place on Wednesday, May 16. This will be an excellent opportunity for digital technology enthusiasts to connect with one another and Share Results will be attending this show, so we would love to connect with you.

The Webcom Montréal conference “is all about enabling Canadian businesses and organizations to integrate the full potential of new digital technologies into their business, while showcasing Canadian expertise abroad.” The event will have over 30 lectures, panels of experts, as well as case studies. Speakers include Nicolas Darveau-Garneau of Google Quebec and Rawn Shah, Social Business Strategist for IBM. In attendance and representing the Share Results team will be Marketing Manager Mylène Benoit.

You can still register for this event if you haven’t done so already, so head over to Webcom’s registration page to check out the various passes available. If you are attending Webcom Montréal and would like to meet up with Mylène to discuss affiliate tracking software, SEM management and anything related to affiliate marketing, you can reach her by email at mylene@shareresults.com or phone her at 514 284 6789 ext. 306. Also, follow Share Results on Twitter to get the latest updates on which shows we’re attending next.

Happy Friday! We come to you with some exciting news: Affiliate Summit organizers are allowing the public to help them pick sessions for this year’s Affiliate Summit East conference. The show takes place August 12-14, 2012 and we are rooting for Share Results President Nicky Senyard to present at this year’s event.

Nicky’s session is called Tapping into Canadian Affiliate Marketing and will be a great opportunity for merchants, and anyone in the industry for that matter, to get the inside scoop on entering the Canadian marketplace and how entrepreneurs can optimize their business to attract more customers north of the border.

Today is the very last day to give your opinion, so cast your vote today! In order to vote, simply do the following:

Also, follow us on Twitter and Facebook so we can keep you up to date on the results!

Whether you are new to affiliate marketing or are looking to expand your portfolio of offers, there are many things to be taken into consideration before signing up to an affiliate program. Today, we will discuss what we think are the three most important factors when choosing an affiliate offer to promote.

The first must have is to always look for a merchant and/or network with a good reputation and references. Have a look at their list of clients, visit industry forums and take part in discussion groups. With today’s easy access to information, it will not take you long to find the network you are looking to join! Pay close attention to the details, if an affiliate program is offering a get rich quick plan, you are most likely entering a danger zone, therefore, beware! Affiliate marketing can be very lucrative, but it takes time and hard work. Remember, if you are willing to refer an offer to a close friend or family, then you most likely are choosing the right affiliate offer.

The second must have that should be taken into account is your earning potential from an offer. A good commission structure translates to excellent rewards for affiliates. Additionally, many affiliates forget to ask merchants or affiliate managers about the average sales of an offer. The higher the sales, the more commission you receive, and the greater your earning potential will be. We recommend that you also read the fine print. Terms and conditions of an affiliate program or a network allow you to assess how you will benefit from the payment structure. Things to look for are the number of times a month you will be paid, if there is a minimum amount required before receiving payment, as well as when or if you are eligible to bonuses or rewards.

The third and final must have is the affiliate program’s or network has the availability to offer client support, reporting and marketing tools. Requiring client support will not be an everyday occurrence, but knowing it is available will help with building your affiliate business. Let’s go back to our first must have for a moment. Signing up with a reputable and established network, in some cases, means that you will most likely have good client support! The success of good client support is dependent on whether or not an established affiliate program or network will have seasoned affiliate managers that can assist you if you have questions about an offer. The right program will have the right support and the right tools at your disposal. It will also make it easy for you to monitor your statistical data and marketing campaign performance.

As long as you put a little elbow grease into your choice and setup of campaigns, you have a great chance of succeeding. The affiliate network is a tightly-knit community, and there is always a fellow industry member available to pass on a little advice. With these three must haves checked, you are very likely signing up to a great offer!

Any other pointers you would like to share? Please add them below!

Last week Share Results hosted the second Affiliate Summit Montreal Meetup of 2012 and we were thrilled with the outcome. Not only did we have an excellent turn out of attendees, but our speaker, Brendan Shera-Shriar aka Digibomb, wowed everyone with his take on How to Monetize Your Community. If for whatever reason you could not attend this presentation, you are in luck. Digibomb has made his presentation public and you can view it via SlideShare. Don’t be afraid to offer him some comments on this great presentation. There are some refreshing ideas about how to better cater to your consumers in the digital market.

We are also excited to announce the winners of our Affiliate Summit East raffle. Last Tuesday, we offered attendees the chance to win two Networking Passes to the Affiliate Summit East conference, which will take place August 12-14, 2012 at the Hilton New York. Each Networking Pass is valued at $99 and offers admission to the Meet Market and Exhibit Hall, plus the three keynote speakers. After multiple business card submissions, we now have two winners.

The two Affiliate Summit East Networking Pass winners are:

Congratulations Bill and Eloise!

We also want to say a big thank you to the folks over at KOKO Restaurant & Bar in downtown Montreal for allowing us to hold the Montreal Meetup at their venue.

We hope that you will come out and join us at the next Affiliate Summit Montreal Meetup which takes place on Tuesday, July 31, 2012. Don’t forget to RSVP for this up and coming summer event.