I just received a nice email asking if I would be interested in doing some SEO work for an affiliate site.  It is nice when I’m asked to work on projects, but 99% of the time it doesn’t make sense for me to do work on someone else’s affiliate site.  Why not just build my own site(s) for that industry. 

There are some exceptions to the rule like :  #1 If it is an established site that has a bug that needs temporary help, #2 It is a friend asking for a favor, #3 It  is a brick and mortar company with pre-built traffic that is looking to start an online presence. #4 You want to establish a long-term online presence and are willing to pay me a large sum of money to jumpstart it for you .

If your affiliate site project does not meet one of those exceptions and/or you do not have have a good reason why I couldn’t just build my own site here is some free SEO advice.

• Get links (you can post on several different forums that allow links in the signature)
• Get more links (contact relevant sites for reciprocal links)
• Get even more links (become a DMOZ editor, add your site to it & other directories)
• Don’t interlink all of the sites that you own
• Don’t host all of your sites on the same ip address
• Have unique content on every page (i’m talking text not different affiliate links)
• When writing try to include nouns, brand names - ya know keywords
• Use 1 or 2 keywords in your title tag and make the titles different
• Try to answer a question or need that users will be searching for
• Do something that no other site is doing, don’t be a cookie cutter site