I hope by now everyone has a niche website created to sell their affiliate products. If you haven't started using SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to make your website more attractive to Google and other search engines, this tip is for you.

First, let's talk about what we mean when we say we're going to "optimize" our affiliate web pages. In a nutshell: optimizing a website is the process of making it easy for someone using an Internet search engine to find your site. Search engine "spiders" are constantly out there, crawling across the Internet, looking for content to index under search topics. If you play by the rules, they add you to the list. If you don't, good luck ever showing up in the top one hundred pages!

There are a lot of things that go into your "page ranking" inside a search engine (how close you are to the top when someone performs a search), and one of the more important ones is how often people have linked to your page from other websites. But having great webpage content also carries a lot of weight, so let's focus on creating the best niche site content possible.

How do we do that? Here are a few things to remember while building a website that Google won't ignore:

Use Accurate Page Titles: If the titles embedded in your HTML code for each webpage don't reflect what's really on that page, Google (and the other search engines) aren't going to add you to their search indexes as quickly.

Choose Popular Keywords: Keywords are the Holy Grail in search engine ranking. The key is to find the search words most likely to be used by people looking for the information you have. Google the phrase "Google keyword tool", and use their free tool to find out which search queries related to your content people are likely to use. Here's another way to select your keywords – consider your intended audience and what they're looking for. Then include those words naturally in your webpage content.

No Keyword Stuffing: Once you've chosen the keywords to highlight, avoid the urge to use them in every sentence. Keyword stuffing makes search engines cranky, and you're liable to find yourself on the last page of search results!

Make Content Relevant for Site Visitors: Ever been lured to a site, only to find it has nothing to do with the searched-for topic? If you want to draw visitors to your site, provide the relevant content they're looking for. The bottom line is that your niche website is supposed to help sell affiliate products by offering useful information to your readers. Keeping the search engines happy is a means to that end, not the end goal.

Keep Your Content Original: Copying someone else's content to your website is a sure way to draw the wrath of Google! Write your own web pages, or hire someone to write them, but don't get caught with duplicate content.

Make Sure Links are working: Search engine spiders stop dead at dead links, so check frequently to make sure your webpage links actually work!

If all this talk about SEO is making your head spin, don't panic! You can actually gain a lot more knowledge about SEO from the search engines themselves. Google has a whole set of free webmaster tools available to help optimize your web pages. Start by "Googling" Google webmaster tools and let the experts help make your niche website more attractive. After all, you've taken the time to build a great site, so let the search engines go to work to help build your affiliate income.

E. Alan Cowgill