It's closing in on my 25th anniversary of SEO and pioneered (with others) a few of the more common SEO strategies and theories, some obsolete and others still used today.

Based on all of my experience and research, here's my advice if you want to actually make money with SEO:

• Traffic - How many people search using that keyword
  
• Value - Some keywords are worth many times what others are.
  
• Competition - How easy is it to actually rank for a given keyword?
  

• Resources - How easily can you create content based on the keywords? Your knowledge? Can get a good domain name with an SEO edge?
  
• Value to YOU - How can YOU convert traffic to cash? Your own products and services? Affiliate programs?
  

• 200 searches a month
  
• $10 per sale
  

• Affiliate options for maximizing your SEO - Comprehensive list of affiliate options, check if you can make money from the traffic.
  
• Free Keyword and SEO Tools for 2021 -
  
• The BIG list of premium marketing tools that offer free trials
  

• Your Invitation to Join the Pheeds Leads Xtreme - Join here if you're not a member.
  
• Some advanced keyword concepts - Huge list of "pheed" keywords. These are like treasure maps. Just paste one in your favorite keyword tool and see where it takes you.
  
• Plus tips and techniques for using my favorite AI writer for content. AI makes this strategy with a history of working even better.
  

One of the cornerstones of good Pheeds SEO is to be able to make money from the keywords you select. If you've been around IM for a while, you're probably aware of many of the affiliate options below. IMO it's always a good idea just to browse the options every so often to come up with new ideas and possibilities.

If you're new, you really should dedicate some time to routinely check out these resources. You MUST know if there's revenue potential for you and how many options there are for any given keyword niche.

When brainstorming, think of what keywords you can use to match people with products and services that will help them that will also earn you a good commission and can easily rank for.

Don't pick keywords. Let your keywords pick you. Use these revenue options to BEGIN your keyword research, looking for the easiest keywords to rank for that have a bit of traffic and are relevant to things you can make money from.
 

The "ALL in One" Affiliate Sites - These affiliate programs let you sign up for an account and allow you to promote all their products and offers. Generally, these are the most versatile affiliate options, but your revenue may not be optimal.

Clickbank.com - The easiest for newbs to join, but can have low conversions.
https://www.clickbank.com/

Ebay Partner Network
https://partnernetwork.ebay.com/

Google Adsense
https://www.google.com/adsense/start/

Amazon
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/

AliExpress
https://portals.aliexpress.com/

Sites like Amazon, eBay and Aliexpress usually deal with physical products with lower profit margins than digital goods and services. If using these programs try to think of keywords people may use to buy in bulk.

For example:
home bath towels
vs.
towels for motels

In this example, you would want to break down "towel" keywords even further in your research. But for this discussion, note that the "bath towels" keyword will likely create sales of 1-4 items while "towels for motels" could sell 100s of towels, also with a single order.


Major Affiliate Platforms - These sites are third-party affiliate management systems and work with multiple companies. You'll need an account with the platform, then you need to apply and be approved for each individual company's affiliate program.

Very generally speaking, software and digital services (like hosting) will pay the best. I suggest starting with them in your searches.

https://cj.com/
https://shareasale.com
https://pepperjam.com/
https://rakutenadvertising.com/
https://avantlink.com/
https://awin.com/us
https://commissionfactory.com
https://flexoffers.com/
https://impact.com/
https://linkconnector.com/
https://skimlinks.com/
https://viglink.com/

Mostly Internet Marketing Related - I put these in the "Major Platforms" because you will need to join the plarform, then apply for approval to each affiliate offer. One thing to note is many products are marketed as "launches" with "planned scarcity". What this means for affiliate marketers is that for these platforms an existing audience is usually needed, such as an relevant email list or good social following.

If you're using SEO, product launches can be less effective as by the time your pages rank the special launch deals will have ended. However, if you are using SEO you should also be building email lists.

JVZoo
https://www.jvzoo.com/

WarriorPlus
https://warriorplus.com


CPA - Cost Per Action programs pay when you get someone to call a phone number, fill in their eamil address or download some software. They can pay very well, but have a few drawbacks:
They change often. As soon as you get an offer up, you get an email saying the campaign has ended.
You're not always giving your folks the best deals.
CPA platforms can be pretty picky when it comes to approving affiliates.

OfferVault isn't a CPA affiliate platform, instead it's a search engine for CPA platforms. Use it to find offers, then you'll need to be approved by the platform.

Here's the list of the PLATFORMS Offervault searches. Each platform has multiple offers. Sometimes the same company will pay better through one platform than another, so do your research.
https://offervault.com/networks/?search=&page=1
 

Local Services Affiliate Programs
I haven't tried these, but I came across them when writing this post and they got me thinking a bit...how can they be used for local SEO? If you flip local business domains, putting an affiliate offer on the site until it sells could generate revenue as well as adding some leverage to potential buyers of the domain in the form of competition.

Angie's List
https://www.oakdigitalagency.com/clients...ngies-list

Bark Affiliate program
https://www.bark.com/en/us/affiliates/

"Bark helps people all over the US find great local professionals for absolutely anything they want done. With over 1000 categories to choose from, we're the ideal destination for a wide range of affiliate traffic. We'll pay you up to $100 commission for every genuine Bark that gets a response from one or more of our pros."



Freelance/Gig Services
You can sell all sorts of affiliate services relating to tons of keywords.

Fiverr - Just go to Fiverr and think about all the different things you can sell. Then brainstorm and research keywords.
https://affiliates.fiverr.com/

Upwork
https://www.upwork.com/affiliates

Beesy.pro
https://beesy.pro/affiliate/
combines freelancing and job search site.

DesignBro
https://designbro.com/affiliates/
High quality design crowdsourcing marketplace

SEO Clerks
https://www.seoclerks.com/affiliate


Wordpress Related Niches - WP is a HUGE market with many niches. They need themes, banners, headers and plugins.

https://envato.com/affiliates/
https://elementor.com/affiliates/
https://www.elegantthemes.com/affiliates/
https://ithemes.com/affiliates/

In more general terms that specific, it looks like Google is finally cracking down/devaluing links that are easy to get. Over the years there's been tons of lists of footprints you can use to find places to post links. Sites that use pages like "guest post", "submit article", "Comment below" are easy enough for us to find using Google, we have to assume Google knows about them too.

This is definitely the trend IMO and I'm surprised Google didn't do this 10 years earlier. But what should we anticipate this means for us?

I think we'll see linking partnerships go underground. While "favorable" links will become harder to get, they'll also become more valuable. Teaming up with other webmasters and SEOers to discreetly link to each other will likely be beneficial.

The value of existing sites for sale with decent, solid backlink profiles will increase. This may be a good time to look into investing in buying sites before the demand catches up with the situation.

Expired domains are probably on the decline, or will be. If we can find them, Google probably can too. So the issue becomes if someone should get a linking advantage because of it's history? This is a tough one because there are plenty of legit reasons to redirect and rebuild sites.

On page SEO, including engagement, and content will be more important. Google was built on the principle that links are like a vote for quality. What people actually do when visiting a page is an even better way of determining the quality of a page.

Internal links sculpting may play a bigger part in the future. What pages of its own does a site think are the most important?

What do you think are some good ways to anticipate Google's trending anti-spam links policies?

Here's something to consider when using tools to help you optimize your content for SEO when focusing on low competition keywords. SEO "recommendations" are often based on the results they find in the Google SERPs for that keyword phrase. A big reason these keywords are "low competition" is supposed to be because their SEO is weak. IOW, they are using data from sites with bad SEO as advice on what is good SEO.

IMO, against "weak" competition for ranking, just use SEO basics, ask yourself how hard would it be for you to write longer (and better) content, add multimedia like videos and images, get a few more links buy an available expired domain with existing benefits?

Continuing on a theme that there's more than one way to rank on Google, here's a very good intro into different factors and trends for SEO in 2021 (and beyond). Note that Google is now also including podcasts in their results.

https://flyingcatmarketing.com/seo/seo-trends/

This is a really good idea if you have an interest or hobby in a fairly popular niche, which is to set up a system that easily and effectively broadcasts your favorite content to as many people as possible.

You can use the free version of IFTTT for things like:

Automatically share Youtube videos that you like to Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook. Let's say you like rap music...every video you like you can have IFTTT share it to your FB page, Twitter feed and Tumblr blog. All you have to do is set it up then literally just click a button to share your favorite, hand-selected content across social media.

Here's some more ideas using Youtube likes and IFTTT:
https://ifttt.com/search/query/youtube%20like

You an also hook things up so you use a Wordpress blog and/or a particular social account to use as a social "central station". Set up IFTTT so that ANYTHING you post on your Facebook page is also posted on Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest.

Think about these big sites that let you have friends and followers like Facebook and Twitter, etc. Getting quality content on these sites is actually really easy if you put in the investment of "upfront effort". Then focus on building your audiences on the platforms that look the best for you.

IFTTT and other similiar tools aren't limited to syndicating content. They can do a lot more things to help your business and marketing you should check out.

First, there's some good tips in this video concerning SEO and affiliate programs and you should probably watch the entire video on 2x speed. A side note, I was one of the first folks that sold page-making software like he talks about  way back when.

But I take major exception with his demo of AI robot writing software...

7:07 - He starts his examples using his AI "robot". He says he writes a single sentence for each topic he was the robot to create a long form article.

11:55 - He starts his process of hiring freelance writers. This is my issue. I want to see what the results would be if he put the same effort into his AI writer as he does describing his job, submitting and paying the freelance writer?

Even the best AI writers probably won't perform well with just a sentence to create a long-form article, but put in the same effort (or even less) researching input for your AI robot as he did creating a job for a freelancer and you'll get much better results. Remember, he just mentioned researching sites, but didn't actually spend the time doing that in the video.

Again, I suggest not thinking of them as AI "writers" but more as AI "writing assistants". They speed content creation up greatly, but your own research, IQ, choices and work ethic still play a major role. Even if it was possible to get a great article only one click of a button, someone else will figure out that clicking the button twice works even better

It's still pretty common for many platforms to create RSS pheeds, like your Wordpress blog and many others. Once it's in RSS format it becomes easy for you to automate it being posted in other places using IFTTT.
https://ifttt.com/home

For example, just using Wordpress as your "content cockpit" you can set up IFTTT to post that content automatically to all of these:
RSS to Bitly
RSS to Blogger
Rss To Buffer
RSS to Delicious
RSS to Diigo
rss to email
RSS to Facebook Pages
RSS to Feedly
Rss To Flickr
RSS To Gdrive
RSS to Gmail
Rss To Google Calendar
RSS to Google Docs
RSS to Inoreader
RSS to Instapaper
Rss To Narro
RSS to NewsBlur
RSS to Nimbus Note
RSS to Notion (Beta)
RSS To OneDrive
Rss To Onenote
Rss To Pinterest
RSS to Pocket
RSS to Raindrop.io
RSS to reddit
Rss to telegram
Rss to Toodledo
RSS to Trello
RSS to Tumblr
rss to twi
RSS to Twitter
Rss To Weebly
RSS to WordPress

You can also set up IFTTT to do things like every time you like a video on Youtube it is posted on your Twitter feeds and Facebook pages. This is a great way to post interesting, quality content across your network, literally with a single click.

In poker there's a concept I like about the smaller your bankroll the more risks you can take. On the other hand, the larger your bankroll the more conservative and protective you should be. This is because it's much harder to replace a large bankroll than a small one.

This applies well in online business too. The more time, money and effort you've put into something, the less you should expose it to risk.

Adopting this strategy actually opens a lot of potential. Let's say you have no plans of ever using Instagram and don't have an account and have spent zero time on it. If this is your attitude (and actually it's mine), what do you have to lose? Spend an afternoon learning the basics and hooking it up to some sort of automation. You should still use "best practices" to protect your long-term investment, but you should be more aggressive with a new social account than one you've invested years on.

There's some big traffic sources out there that you probably have no intentions of ever using. In these situations, you're really not risking much just keep your investments of time and money to a minimum, giving you have an excellent risk vs. gain situation.

If you're not going to use something, what do you have to lose by using it?

Quite a few years ago I predicted that Google used a number of various "algorithms" and was criticized by a few...but the reality is that Google used multiple "formulas" and today has even more ways of ranking content in their results and some of these ways are called "snippets".

IMO this article is a must-read for anyone interested in Google ranking and traffic.

A Complete List of Google’s Featured Snippets Types
Learn about every type of featured snippet, what they look like in Google's search results, and a few best practices for winning them.
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/feat...907/#close