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The information gathered from pay-per-click affiliate marketing campaigns can be worth thousands in your pocket if you know how to use it correctly. In my article about expanding affiliate campaigns, tip number seven talks about creating SEO landing pages to rank in the natural search results for keywords that you know are profitable. In this article, I am going to outline that process with a series of steps.

Prerequisite: Developing A Profitable PPC Campaign

Because this technique relies on gathered information, you will need an already successful pay-per-click campaign in order for it to be highly effective.

You could technically follow these steps to rank for any low competition keywords, but without knowing how many impressions each keyword generates and how well each of them converts, you could have a high rate of failure.

Step 1: Choosing Keywords With The Most Potential

Simply picking the most profitable keyword is not going to work here. The reason is that because it is so profitable, it is probably also the hardest to rank for. What we are going to do instead is analyze a handful of top keywords and choose the ones with the most potential.

Start by gathering all of the keywords that have generated a relatively decent amount of sales. You don’t want to waste your time trying to rank for keywords that have no search volume and/or do not convert.

After you have chosen your top performing keywords, plug each one of them into Google, Yahoo, or MSN (whichever you are primarily trying to be listed in) and study the top 10 listings. The SEO for FireFox add-on can help you get a quick snapshot of your competition.

By analyzing the competition, you are trying to develop an understanding of what it will take to outrank them. Here are some signs (in order of importance, based on my opinion) that you can dominate the keyword:

1. none of the pages use the exact phrase in their title
2. none of the pages have a high PageRank
3. none of the pages use the exact phrase in their text

You don’t have to have all three of these points for the technique to be successful, but it does make your job much easier. Basically, you need to make your decision of which keywords to target based on how much effort will be needed to rank for them and how much reward will follow as a result.

Step 2: Buying A Keyword Rich Domain Name

I like to buy a new domain name that basically is the main keyword I’m trying to rank for. Unless you already have a well established site with search engine authority in this niche, buying a new domain will probably be your best bet. I don’t think it matters much if the domain has hyphens, or what TLD (com, net, org, info) it is.

The nice thing about having the keyword you are trying to rank for as your domain name is that it is very easy to get targeted links. Directories will list your site by its title, so having that title be your keywords is a great benefit.

Step 3: Creating Quality Content That Still Converts

Your goal is to rank for a certain keyword or set of keywords, so make sure you include them in your page content. This means using your target keyphrase as the first words in your title, using them within heading tags, using them in the main text, and even using them in the footer area. Just make sure your page looks natural, has useful information, and cannot be considered spam.

You might also want to create additional pages so that the site is more substantial. All you really need is a few unique article pages, a site map, a privacy policy, a contact page, and possibly a resource page.

At the same time, you need to include affiliate links so that you can make money from your traffic. I usually model these pages after my ppc landing pages because I already know that they convert. The only difference is that I include a little extra specific keyword optimization.

Step 5: Finding, Trading, and Buying Links With Anchor Text

We all know that the number one method for achieving search engine rankings is to build targeted links. Fortunately, you won’t need that many in order to rank for the low competition keywords.

Your first step should be to find link exchange partners. Asking popular sites to exchange links with your little mini site will probably be a waste of time. Instead, contact smaller, newer sites that are desperately looking to get links. Because your domain name is your keyword, it will be very easy to get the keyword rich links that you desire.

I would advise against buying links from brokers like Text-Link-Ads because they could be flagged as paid links and most of them are bought on a monthly basis. Instead, look on webmaster forums and email webmasters in your niche to buy permanent links within their content.

A third method of building links is to submit to directories and write content for article directories. These links might not be as valuable as the others, but they should still count for something.

If you do a handful of link exchanges, buy several permanent links, and get listed in a few of directories, you should start climing the serps for your low competition keywords.

Step 6: Waiting For The Results

Search engine optimization doesn’t provide instant gratification like pay-per-click. You will need to give the search engines time to find your site and all of your links. Even then, it will take time for those links to be counted, for the rankings to be adjusted, and for your domain to build trust.

The good news, however, is that assuming that you did get a lot of links, you should see results eventually. Potentially in as little as one week.

Conclusion

I don’t do this as much as I should because it takes a fair amount of effort to seek out the links. I haven’t tried outsourcing that yet, but it could prove to be very valuable.

The latest set of keywords that I did this for were (and still are) brining in about $100-$150 revenue per day (high paying leads) from the paid results. I am now listed in positions 4-7 in the natural results for 3 closely related keywords and am seeing an additional $40-$60 per day revenue from this traffic. The great thing about it is that unlike the pay-per-click listings, there are no recurring expenses for these listings.