Onpage SEO for Affiliate Marketing Sites

In this video I'm gonna be showing you how to do some on-page SEO. Now, on-page SEO is where you go through your website optimising each piece of content, making sure that all your keywords are in the right places and that you've got your structure right and you've optimised all your images and loads of other little things, just to make sure that when Google comes in and takes a look at your site, it knows exactly what your articles are about and ideally you get indexed and you get ranked for the keywords that you want to rank for.

So I'm gonna be showing you exactly what you need to do from installing the plugin to optimising some content, and finally we're gonna be submitting an XML sitemap up to Google. So let's get started.

Hello, it's Alex here from WPEagle. I hope you're all well. So, yeah, on-page SEO. It's a really important thing to do. You wanna make sure that you do it as well as you possibly can, because it's gonna really improve your chances when it comes to getting ranked on the search engines. Now do keep in mind the on-page SEO is only half of the SEO equation, as it were. The other half is attracting links on to your site and I'll be covering that in another video, which hopefully I'll get up next week. We'll just see how the schedule goes. So the plugin we're gonna be using today is Yoast SEO. It's a free plugin, there is a premium version available, but I've never really had a need for it. So we'll be using the free one today. So no costs to optimise your site, which is good news.

The site I'm gonna be working on today is rapid weight loss tools which is a simple affiliate marketing blog that I set up about a week ago. And, in fact, there's a full tutorial on how I made the site from start to finish. If you've not seen it, then please go and check it out. There's a card, give that a click and you better watch it. It's about an hour or so long, though. So make sure you got some time. But if you if you don't currently have an affiliate marketing website, definitely gonna want to check that out first.

Anyway, I think that's enough chitchat from me.

Let's get started and to start off I'm gonna explain exactly what makes up a well optimised page and all the elements of on-site SEO. So let's go. So let's just start by explaining exactly what on-page SEO is and what makes a well optimised page.

So this infographic I've borrowed from backlinko.com which I recommend you check out it's a great website all about SEO and building links and all that kind of stuff and on there you'll find this great infographic. So let's just scroll down and it's going to show us exactly what makes up a good page in terms of an SEO optimised page. The first bit is the title tag and that's basically the name of the post when it comes to WordPress. You're gonna want to include your keyword in here and because it's the first thing that Google looks at when it comes in and starts to index your pages. Now the plug-in I'm gonna show you in a few moments allows us to set all these things really easily. So you don't worry about the technical side of it. I'm gonna show you that in a second.

The next thing is to leverage SEO friendly URLs. So rather than having kind of an ugly URL with numbers and the word category and stuff in it, you want 'em nice and clean and you want them to include your keyword. Here's a tip here to add modifiers to your title. So adding modifiers like 2016, best, guide, and review help you rank for long tail versions of your target keyword. That basically means you insert your keyword and then add a few other extra words. The next point is all around H1 tags. So H1 tag generally makes the font look a bit bigger in most themes but it's also the second most important part of your page after the title tag. It's the bit that Google looks at next to try and figure out what your article or your page is all about. The next part is all around multimedia. So if you add things like images and videos and diagrams you can reduce your bounce rate, which could be a factor when it comes to your rankings.

Next point is all around H2 tags. So it's again, just adding more header tags and ensuring that you've got the keyword within those H2 tags. Next thing we've gotta do is insert our keyword into the first 100 words. The next tip is to ensure that you've got a responsive design. Now all the themes that I recommend in my tutorials are responsive, so you shouldn't have to worry about that. Responsive basically means that the site changes its look and feel depending on the size of the screen that it's being viewed on. Next tip is to use some outbound links. Generally I'm sure your content will have outbound links, probably affiliate links, but you should include other outbound links, as well. As well as outbound links, you want internal links. So linking through to other pages on your site. Now this is all about site speed which I won't be covering in this video. I do have some other videos on site speed but basically you wanna make sure that your site loads as quickly as it possibly can. Next tip is to sprinkle some long tail keywords.

Basically long tail keywords are variations around your main keyword. So you need to kind of sprinkle them throughout the post. If you've got images in your post, which hopefully you have, you need to make sure that you set a good alt tag on those images. And again, I'm gonna show you how to do that very shortly. By adding social sharing buttons, you can increase the number of shares that you get on your content and the more shares you get, the more signals that you give to Google that your content is good and that it should rank well on search.

The final two tips are that you should post long content. Now, we've spoken about this before in previous videos. My recommendation and Doug's recommendation is that you should have at least 1,000 words in order to really rank well. The final tip is around dwell time which is basically the amount of time that someone spends looking at a piece of content and obviously the longer the content the more time they spend on it and Google, in theory, measures this and uses it as a signal when it comes to your ranking on search engines. So there're all the main kind of key points when it comes to optimising an article. As I said this infographic was created by Backlinko, their website is there, do go check them out and thanks for letting me borrow it. Though I didn't actually ask but I'm sure they'll be fine with it, as I mentioned their site.

Okay, so I'm over at the site that I'm gonna be optimising today. As I mentioned in the introduction, this site I created about week or so ago. There is a tutorial on the channel on how I made it, so be sure to check that out if you haven't done so already. I've not done any optimization on it just yet. There is a couple of articles so I'll be optimising one of those in this video, as well as kind of getting the rest of the site ready for search engines. In this other tab I've got Google Adwords Keyword Planner. I've done a quick little bit of keyword research around rapid weight loss and losing weight fast and losing weight quickly. It's given me a few ideas for some keywords. So I'm gonna be using these within the title tags and header tags and those other areas that I just showed you on that infographic.

So let's get started. I'm already logged in. I'm gonna instal the Yoast SEO plugin, first off, 'cause that's gonna enable us to do all the SEO things that we need to do. To do that gonna go to plugins and add new. Then in the search box type in Yoast SEO and it's the first one that comes up. just gonna click instal. It's done, then click activate. Okay, so the first thing I'm gonna do is just go into the Yoast settings. It's added this SEO section to my toolbar down the side here. If I go to the dashboard, the first thing I'm gonna do is enable the Advanced Settings 'cause we're gonna need them and to do that I'm gonna go into features and then go here where it says advanced settings pages and click enabled and down to the bottom and click Save Changes. That's it and it's added a few more things down the side here. So the first thing I'm going to setup is the kind of titles. I'm gonna set up a template so that when I create a new bit of content it automatically gets the page title and everything and sets it out as I want it to. So to do that lets go into titles and metas. We can adjust the title separator. We don't need to do that. The next section is the home page.

Now this is gonna vary depending on how you've got your site set up. If you've got a static home page then you're just gonna wanna go into the actual page and set the title there. If you've got like more of a blog front page like this site has, then it's set in here. So in here is our template for the home page. So at the moment it's gonna insert the site name which is Rapid Weight Loss Tools. I'm gonna adjust that in a second. It's then gonna insert a page number. If, for some reason, the home page went across two or three pages it would have page one of two or something like that, but that's a bit weird to say. We're not gonna need that. So you're gonna insert a separator and then it's gonna insert the site description which is like the strap line that you set within settings in general in WordPress. So this is obviously the template for the page title, which as I mentioned while we were looking at that infographic, is the most important part of the page.

So we wanna make sure that we get this as good as we possibly can and make sure that we've got the keywords in there that we want to rank for on the home page. So if I go back to my keyword planner, I think I'm gonna go for rapid weight loss looks pretty good. It's got 14,800 searches, medium competition. So let's just take out this first part. I'm gonna leave, I don't need to separate, I'm just gonna type in exactly what I want. So rapid weight loss guides and tutorials. No, let's go for tools, as it matches a domain name and then I can add a separator. Then you might just want to add the name of the site, especially if you've got the keyword in your domain name. So I'm just gonna put rapidweightlosstools.com and Save Changes Let me just open the site in a new tab so we can just have a look at what's happened now we've done that. We can now see that if I hover over the tab up here that the page title is Rapid Weight Loss Guides and Tools and then it's got domain name as I just entered, so that's working perfectly. So I can close that for now.

Let's go back and have a look at the next section which is post types. So these are the templates for the different sorts of posts that we're gonna be adding. So you know posts or pages, if you've got products, they would be in here, too. Generally these are fine as they are because we're gonna be using the keyword in the title of our articles and so that's gonna be inserted automatically using this title variable thingy. It's got that page stuff again so that's never gonna show unless, for whatever reason, your content is going across multiple pages. Then it's got a separator and then it's got a site name, which is fine. So I'm going to leave that as it is and when we have a look at one of the posts, you'll see how it's kind of pulling that together. But if you wanna make any adjustments there in here but as I say, generally, it's fine as it is.

Can do it for your taxonomies as well if you want to You might wanna remove the word archives possibly but that's entirely up to you. We don't really need to worry about the other two tabs. Let's move on now and actually optimise a piece of content. So I'm gonna go into posts and I'm gonna optimise this one here which is the 10 ways you can lose weight fast. Let me just open it in another tab so we can take a look at it. And if we look at the page title, it's inserted the title of the post which is 10 ways you can lose weight fast. Then it's added the separator and then it's added the name of the site, which is Rapid Weight Loss Tools, so that's fine. That's following the template that we just looked at.

Now, let me just close that and then I'm gonna go in and edit that post. And here is our article. So if we scroll down past all the content, there's a new panel that we've got which is the Yoast SEO panel. And it gives us some information about how well we're doing in terms of optimization. So we'll be going through this in a second. But the first thing we need to do is add our focus keyword. So this is the keyword that you want this particular article to rank for. And for this one I'm gonna go back to my keyword planner and what I want to go for is how to lose weight fast. Which is searched for a lot. It's probably very competitive but hey we'll go for it. So I'm just gonna copy that and go back and I'm gonna paste that in here. Now the first thing it said is it contains two stop words and the two stop words in this phrase are how and to and it's saying that that might not be a good idea.

So I'm gonna take this advice and let's just take them out and go for lose weight fast. That'll be fine. All right, let's scroll back up to the top. And what we can see is we've got this little SEO box over here to the right and it says our SEO is okay. So we're doing all right straight off the bat and the reason for that is because we've already got the keyword in our title and we've already got the keyword in URL. Just here. I mean we could probably reduce that down if we wanted to and just change it to lose weight fast.

That would be good, so let's do that. Take that off and then press OK and that's done. Now we want to actually start optimising the content and if you remember going back to that infographic, one of the tips was to include the keyword in the first few paragraphs. So let's see if we can do that and if we have a read, I'm sure, genetically best, da-da-da. Okay, not all techniques are meant to work for everyone but find one that works. You see changes, you progress and you desire. So I'm gonna just change this bit but find one that works for you should help you lose weight fast. So I've just inserted the keyword. I'm not kind of forcing it into the copy. I want it still to look, you know, read well but if you do look through your copy you'll be able to find opportunities where you can insert the keyword without it turning into a load of gibberish. What I might want to do is add another header up here.

So our top tips on how to lose weight fast. Again I've inserted the keyword just there and I might just wanna make that H2 or something that's, let's do that, so I'll just highlight it and then let's drop down. We can set our heading so these are the H1s and the H2s that we were just talking about on the infographic. So there we go, keyword there and we've got the keyword there. Let's have a look down here, see if there's any other opportunities to get the keyword in. So what we might want to do is insert the keyword into one of these headers. So we could do it like this. So now I added the keyword there. Again, the heading still reads fine. Just going to scroll down and see if we can make any adjustments. So here's an image. Let's check the alt tags. So to do that we're just gonna click the image and then click the little pencil. That doesn't currently have any alternative text. So this is about fasting but obviously we wanna try and include the keyword too. So I'm gonna put lose weight fast. In fact, I'm just going to use a variation, just going to use lose weight with fasting That! Okay, let's have a look at some more text. Is there any opportunity, ah ba-ba-ba-ba, nope. So the next one is about carb cycling. I'm not gonna put the keyword in every heading 'cause I think that could be too much but if I can see good options to use. Make your meal plan. I'm going to change this heading to L-whatever that is I can't pronounce. There we go, got that keyword in again. I'm gonna add the word rapid. So I'm trying to get variations and sprinklings. Again, referring back to the infographic of variations on the keyword. So rapid fat loss is probably similar to fast weight loss. Okay. So that's all looking good, you see we're on orange here in terms of our score, we really want to get that green. So let's just have a look at some of the tips here. So it's happy with that and it's happy with a number of words. It's happy with the focus keyword. It says try and use it in one more subheading. so let's try that. Let's put it in this one, mastering the energy balance equation can help you lose weight fast. There we go. It still says one more but I'm not gonna force it. It's green, let's go for it. The images in the page don't have alt contributing. So let's add one here, another, lose weight fast with fish oils. There we go. So that's gone green now. The SEO title contains a focus keyword but does not appear at the beginning. So let me just see if we can adjust this title. We could do it like this if we just. So I've moved the keyword now so that it's at the beginning of the title. Just update.

Sometimes it doesn't always show the changes until you've saved, but yeah, we are green now so that's good. Then scroll down, see what else we need to do to make this even better. Keyword density is 0.4% which is too low. So we need to kind of get the keyword in here somewhere another couple of times if we can. Maybe we get it in here like this, to lose weight fast it's best to, the most reductive nature of this I need to rewrite this. It's best to… adjust your calorie equation. I think that makes sense now. Here we go, so we've got another keyword in there, it still says it's a bit low, so I should probably get it in another time if I can. Here we go, after all it takes just one giant binge to completely erase a week's worth of effort and prevent you from being able to lose weight fast There we go. Again, you've got to be creative in terms of getting these keywords in the content. So I was happy with that. It's up to naught 0.5%, so it's gone green. So no internal links appear on the page. So let's link to another piece of content.

What other pieces of content have we got. Let me just have a quick look on the site. I've only got a couple of bits on this particular site. Where's the other one. So we've got nine of the best books, we'll link to that. Maybe I'll add it to the bottom, actually. Let's scroll right down to the bottom. I can add the keyword again. Be sure to… check out these fantastic weight-loss books. Then I'm just gonna highlight these words here and then click on the chain to add a link, I'm gonna paste the URL in and click apply. There we go, we've got an internal link. That's gone green. Focus keyword doesn't appear in the first paragraph of the copy. Oh, okay, I thought I added it. Maybe it wasn't the first paragraph. In this article, we share our top tips on how to lose weight fast. There we go, put it in that way. So just got one more to go green which is the Meta Description. So the Meta Description is this bit here and it's the bit that sometimes appears on Google, when your site is showing on Google which hopefully it will do after you've done some SEO. So if we click on it, we can edit it and I'm just gonna, I think I'm just gonna use this first paragraph that I just added, 'cause it's got the keyword in it. It might need to be a little bit longer. So I'm just gonna copy that in. Exercise, fasting, and supplements can all help aid rapid weight loss I'm gonna use a variation of the keyword as well there. Make sure I spell everything right. It doesn't know what that word is, it's exercise. No, I think that's fine, we've got enough words, that'll do. So if we scroll down, we're green perfect. So let's save. Now we have a well optimised piece of content. Now, of course, on-site SEO is only part of the picture. When it comes to SEO, you are going to need to start building some links to your site and that could involve sharing this article on social media, for example, or making comments on other people's blogs and forums and referencing articles on your site.

The best way to actually do it is to build a relationship with a similar site or a site that complements your site and ask them if you can submit a guest post which would obviously include one of your links or a couple of links to your site. That is a good way to do it. So do check out some of my other videos on the channel where we talk about getting links and that kind of thing. But today in this video, I do just want to talk about the stuff that you can do on your site. So we've got this content nicely optimised, it's all green which is good to go. So the final thing I want to do with our site is submit a sitemap to Google. Now a sitemap is a great way to tell Google all about your site and the posts and the pages that you've published. And it just helps Google index your site which has gotta be a good thing. So to set up our sitemap, we're gonna go back into the SEO options and go to XML sitemaps. And it's created the sitemap for us automatically. We do just want to check the settings. So if we go into post types, we see that it's included posts and pages and not media, which is, that's fine. We don't really want it to index all our images on their own. If you've got products or other types of posts they will appear in here too and you can turn them on and off as you wish. I'd imagine you want to leave them on especially things like products. Here we can exclude certain posts. So maybe you've got a few pages or posts that you don't want Google to index or you don't want Google to include in the sitemap, then you can put the IDs in here. It won't guarantee that Google won't index it, by the way, if you want to do that, then you need to set the post to be a no-index post.

And you can do that within the Yoast SEO settings on that particular post or page. Finally on taxonomies again, it's turning on and off what we want to include. I don't think I'm gonna include tags. I don't think I'm gonna include post format. That won't make much sense. So just gonna include categories and save changes, and then we're ready to submit our sitemap. So let's go back to general and then just click on here and here is our sitemap index. It's got a link to the post sitemap and the page type and the category sitemap and then if we click here, there's all our posts. So what we need to do now is submit this to Google. So let's just go to this tab. I can close the keyword planner now. I'm just gonna do a search on Google for Google Webmaster Tools. It's the first one that comes up, give it a click, and then I'm gonna click Sign In.

You're gonna need a Google account in order to do this. I've already got one. Okay, so in here I'm gonna click Add Property, gonna type in the domain name or if you're really lazy you can just copy and paste it. So I'll do that, there we go. Click Add. And now we need to verify that the site actually belongs to us. You can do this very easily with Yoast. So I'm gonna go to alternate methods. I'm gonna go for the HTML tag and we need to copy this thing, all of that, we're gonna clean it up in a second. Let's go back to clipboard, go back to your site and then we need to go to dashboard within the SEO area. Go to Webmaster Tools, gonna paste it into the Google search console box. Now what we need to do is actually clean off a load of this text 'cause we want the bit that comes after content equals and then the speech mark so I'm gonna remove all that stuff and then at the end we wanna get rid of this speech marks and the slash and the pointy bracket thing. So we're just left with that string of numbers and digits and squiggles, that's what we need. So let's click Save Changes. That should be done and then if we go back to Google and click verify, we're good, we're done.

Just click continue and we can now submit our sitemap. Now the Google search console is really good because it gives you loads of information about how well your site's being indexed, if there's any problems, all that kind of thing, so definitely worth coming back in here once there's some data which will take a few days and just seeing what it says. But, yeah, let's submit our sitemap and go to crawl and then go to sitemaps. Button up here it says Add/Test and we just need to paste a new URL. If we go back to our sitemap and let's go back up to the index the URL is generally /sitemap_index.xml. So I'm just gonna copy that, paste it in, and click Submit, and now that's done. Let's click refresh and it should be there. There we go, it's submitted and it's pending. It'll take a few moments for it to index it or whatever it needs to do. But yeah, that's all done and that's something that will automatically update as and when you add new posts or pages or make any changes to your site. You don't need to come and do this again.

That's it, it's all done for now and I say it will update automatically when you add new posts and pages to your website. So that's the end of this video. I hope you found it useful and you're now able to optimise your affiliate marketing site. You're now probably gonna want to go off and go through each piece of content that you've got on your site and go through that process that I just showed you and try and get as many green lights as you possibly can. If you have any questions or comments, then please leave them below. And if you liked this video, please do click the like button, that really does help me out. If you're not already subscribed, you can just click on the little Eagle up there and click the little bell to make sure that you're the first to be notified when I upload a new video. Speaking of videos, here's a video from the past which you might enjoy. It's been chosen specially for you. And if you've got a bit more time to kill, then why not check out my other two channels that I've got on YouTube. Until next time, bye for now.