By John Sifferman

One of the long-time beliefs of would-be SEO ninja's is that SEO is a mysterious subject that website owners have little or no control over. Well I'm here to tell you that's not entirely true. The truth is that there are actually many things you can do to improve (or maybe even guarantee) your chances of ranking well in the popular search engines - maybe even the top 5 results! With that kind of exposure, major opportunities abound. Let me show you what I mean...

Not long ago, I was approached by the editor of Shape magazine (yeah, the one that you see in all the tabloids - THAT Shape magazine!) To make a long story short, I have an interview appearing in an upcoming issue. The crazy part is that I did absolutely nothing to seek out this opportunity. They found me! All it took was a few SEO strategies intelligently employed on a high value content piece.

As it turns out, the editor contacted me because she had read an article I had written about the Pro's and Con's about CrossFit. She had searched Google for the phrase "crossfit dangers." An article I had written and published was indexed as the number 1 result. She clicked through, read the article, and contacted me shortly afterwards.

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Now, if a few targeted SEO strategies can get the editor of Shape magazine to go out of her way to request an interview, do you think those same strategies could be used to make some affiliate sales? And did I mention those sales would be coming from FREE, targeted traffic?

To show you how truly powerful SEO can be for affiliate marketing, take a look at this screenshot of a Google search for "burn the fat feed the muscle" (without quotes). You'll see that with the exception of BurnTheFat.com in the first result, every other listing is an affiliate who gets FREE traffic every single day. Not only that, but this traffic is actually searching for our product's name. Do you think some of them might be buyers? We know they are!

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Of course, you don't need to see a screenshot to know that many of our affiliates make sales every day using SEO as their primary source of traffic. Just do any search for BurnTheFat-related keywords and you'll see many more examples of SEO-savvy affiliates ranking extremely well in search engine results pages.

How To Get Your Burn The Fat Review Page Ranked Well in the Search Engines Using SEO

A lot of things are involved in the indexing of webpages into a search engine like Google, Yahoo, or MSN, but the most important thing is relevance. I can’t stress enough that the quality of the content that you are publishing is more important than any SEO trick’s you can experiment with. If you are publishing low quality content, then you have a very poor chance of getting pages indexed well.

Before You Start - Keyword Selection

The two main keywords you will want to focus on for a Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle review page are:

burn the fat feed the muscle
tom venuto

You will have the greatest chance of getting higher conversions with a good profit by using either the product name or the author name as your main keyword. This is because these two keywords indicate that people are already searching for the BurnTheFat product itself. They are in the buying frame of mind and are probably researching the program. Often, they are looking for reviews to see what people are saying about the product quality. Also, these will be some of the highest searched keywords that customers are looking for. So, your time will be best spent creating a review page using the keyword burn the fat feed the muscle OR tom venuto.

There are many other product-related keywords that can be used for a review page. However, these keywords have a much lower search volume (less people typing these into the search engines). So, while you may have a higher chance of getting indexed really well on one of these keywords, you won't get nearly as much traffic

alternate burn the fat feed the muscle keywords:

alternate tom venuto keywords:

Every one of these keywords has created sales for BFFM, but only the main 2 keywords have potential to make a lot of sales on a consistent basis.

5 Ways to Get Your Burn The Fat Review Page Indexed in the Search Engines

After you’ve decided on a main keyword for your review page, you can begin with these strategies:

1) Write your own original, high-quality review – The importance of this cannot be under-stated. Every SEO strategy hinges on the requirement that each page of your website must provide some level of value to the Internet. Your BurnTheFat review page is no different and absolutely must provide value to prospective customers, and the best way to do that is to write your own original review. When publishing your review, it’s important to ensure that you’re not posting content that is solely meant for search engine robots, but also for real people, too. Whether you're a fitness professional or just an average consumer, let your review reflect your true perspective on our program. Just write what you think people need to hear about Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle.

A good review should not only provide a thorough overview of the program and the benefits one can receive from using it, but also should be easy to navigate and scannable. We have a review tutorial page with tips for writing an original review here:

http://burnthefat.com/affiliate_area/reviews.html

*The best use of your time is on the actual content of the review itself. If you're hoping to get a review page up and running as soon as possible, feel free to upload one of the four copy and paste pre-written reviews until you're ready to write your own. These reviews can and do make sales consistently (especially the "Professional Review"), and they can also serve as examples of a well-written review and the quality expected of a high ranking review page.

That being said, it will be difficult to get your review page indexed on the first page of Google, Yahoo, or MSN (like in the above example with the stars) if your page isn't as valuable as the competitors. Naturally, there are a lot of product reviews for Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle. If you want to compete with the best, then don't expect to do so without having a webpage of equal or greater quality than those which are already ranked in the top 10 results. One of the best things you can do before you create your review page is to take a little time to research what other affiliates have already done. Then make it a goal to create something better, or perhaps to share a different perspective or highlight something specific that nobody else has.

Note: one thing that the major search engines do NOT like is a thin review site. This is a website that was created solely for the purpose of posting a review page. It may be a one-page site or a site that is clearly being used for making an affiliate income. Take care not to post your review on a domain like this, since your chances of ranking well will be severely limited. It's better to post your review on an older domain name that has plenty of other original content on it, too.

2) Distribute your main keyword appropriately throughout your review page – Making sure that you actually insert your keywords into the content sections of your webpage is pretty important. The search engines send out tracking robots called “spiders” that will look in several specific areas to determine what a webpage is about.

You should include your main keyword in the:
a) title of your review page (most important)
b) introductory paragraph
c) sub-titles and sub-headlines
d) throughout the body of the review
e) domain URL (ie www.tomvenutoreviewsite.com, www.yoursite.com/burnthefatfeedthemuscle)

Note: if you own an older domain name, you can put your review on that domain for a better chance of getting indexed in the search engines. They like "aged" domain names.

These key areas are like real estate for search engine spiders that track and record what your webpage is about. So, make sure that you take advantage of each of these spots with your main keyword, but also make sure that it’s easily readable and not overly-focused on keywords. A big mistake is having a review page that is so keyword dense, that it makes for an awkward reading experience.

3) Choose Meta-tags carefully – Meta-tags are a search engine’s best friend because they provide a universal code that is easily read and understood by tracking spiders. The main three meta-tags that your review page should contain are:

a) title tag – This is, by far, the most important meta-tag you can implement! This should be identical or similar to the actual title of the webpage and should contain your main keyword. Another important note is that the title tag text is what will appear in large print on search engine results page (the first line of a page listing will usually be taken from the title tag). So, you’ll want to think of a title that will attract the kind of visitor you’re trying to attract. If someone is searching for Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle or Tom Venuto, then they're probably looking for information about the product itself. So, you should think of this tag as a headline for sales copy. Title tags should generally be less than 60 characters because most search engines won’t display more than that. Also, title tags should be unique - try to avoid copying another title that is listed in a search engine result.

Example title tag HTML format:

<title>Burn The Fat, Feed the Muscle - The Official Review</title>

<title>Consumer Review of Tom Venuto's Nutrition System</title>

<title>Tom Venuto - Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle</title>

<title>Tom Venuto Burn The Fat Ebook Review</title>

b) description tag – the text in this tag will usually appear underneath the title in a search engine results (the smaller, plain print right above the URL). The best thing you can do is take advantage of the space for sales copy to encourage a click-through. Leave absolutely no doubt about what your review page is about and briefly explain how visiting your site will benefit the reader. Tell them exactly why visiting YOUR review page would be their best decision, instead of visiting another review page. Description tags should generally be less than 160 characters.

Example description tag HTML format:

<meta name="description" content="Read this official consumer review to learn who should and shouldn't buy Tom Venuto's fat loss ebook, Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle">

<meta name="description" content="Tom Venuto's Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle could be the last fat loss nutrition system you ever need to buy.">

<meta name="description" content="The only flaw with Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle that everyone should know before they buy.">

c) keywords tag – this tag is simply a listing of all the relevant keywords on your page. This meta-tag is less important than the title and description tags, but it should be included as part of a well-rounded SEO strategy. It’s best to only include those keywords which are most relevant to the webpage you are creating - the fewer, the better.

Example keywords tag HTML format:

<meta name="keywords" content="burn the fat feed the muscle, tom venuto, burn the fat feed the muscle review, burn the fat feed the muscle reviews">

4) Get as many in-bound links as possible pointing to your new review page – One of the best things you can do is actively seek after incoming links for your new page. This is arguably the single-biggest determinant for how well your page will rank in the search engines. A link is like an endorsement, so if a page has a lot of links pointing to it, there's a good chance it will rank very well. Sometimes, this is a matter of simply telling your online contacts about it and hoping they post a link to it, but there are several ways you can be pro-active in the process of indexing your new webpage.

a) share the new link with your Facebook friends or Twitter followers to not only get traffic to your review page, but also to try to get it reposted or re-tweeted (remember to use a compelling title for your status updates and Tweets to encourage a click-through).
b) offer link trades with your friends, posting one link to their website in exchange for having them post a link to your new page.
c) submit your review page to social bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, and others.
d) use free press release services to get an inbound link.
e) create direct links to your review page on domains that you own personally. Sometimes, this is as simple as posting a link in the sidebar of your site or even hyper-linking some text on an old archived page. Every link helps!

Hint: when creating direct links to your review page, make sure to use your main keyword in the link format to encourage better SEO rankings. Example: Click here to read the official Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle Review.

5) Take your time with SEO work and focus on long-term improvement instead of short-term success – These SEO strategies are great for getting a new review page indexed well in a search engine results page, but as I said earlier, there’s a lot that goes into the formula for why one page gets selected over another. There are so many variables involved that it would be impossible to create a perfectly optimized page forever (though some of the pages ranked in Google have been there consistently for years). The market is constantly changing and SEO strategies will continue to change as well. It’s easy to get caught up stressing over the details, but the truth is that these simple strategies will put you well above most of the competition and will give you much better chances of ranking well.

It should be noted that it's better to have a steady stream of links being directed to your new review page, instead of 100 new links being posted on the same day. Major search engines like Google see this as unnatural, and may penalize your webpage from ranking well if it thinks you are trying to "trick the system." Instead, it's a better idea to get a a few links per week (2-3 is fine). Alternatively, getting 5-10 links to your page every few months will do just fine. So, it's important to come back to your review page periodically and see if you can send some more one-way links to it.

Wrap-Up

To recap the 5 strategies to get your review page indexed well in the search engines:

1) Write your own original, high-quality review
2) Distribute your main keyword appropriately throughout your review page
3 ) Choose meta-tags carefully
4 ) Get as many in-bounds links as you can to your new page
5) Take your time with SEO work and focus on long-term improvement instead of short-term success

These are the basics of getting a review page ranked well in the search engines, and they can go a long way to improve your rankings. Other than that, there are two main things that have a direct impact on the chances of ranking well in search engines. These are also the two things which you have the least amount of control over.

1) Age of the domain – the longer your website has been registered and especially contained valuable content, the better your chances are of ranking well.

2) The number of incoming links directed to your domain – the more incoming links you have, especially from domains that are hosted on a different server than your own, the higher your chances of ranking well in the search engines.

If you have any questions about getting your review page indexed or would like me to offer suggestions for how to improve your page, please use the Contact Form and put your question to the attention of John or the affiliate manager.

Sincerely,

John Sifferman
affiliate manager
Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle
www.BurnTheFat.com
Click Here To Contact Me

P.S. Every review site (and every website you own that uses affiliate links) should have an FTC disclosure, indicating that some of the links are affiliate links and will credit you with an income. Putting a short clause either on your review page itself, or linking to an Affiliate Earnings Disclaimer page from your review page is important. Please see our updated Affiliate Agreement for more details. You can use a short clause such as this:

"This website has an affiliate relationship with some of the products and services discussed on this website and may be compensated from purchases. This website has reviewed the products it links to, recommends or endorses, however you should always perform your own due diligence before buying goods or services from any 3rd party via the internet or offline."