How to Compete in a Competitive Affiliate Niche

So you've decided that you're going to be a gambling affiliate, or a web hosting affiliate, or you're going to be a credit card application guru. And you want to know how to compete with the big boys. Here are some suggestions:

1- Target longtail keyword phrases. Your keyword list should be a minimum of 500 phrases. 1000 would be better. And more than that would be even better. Unless you've got boatloads of cash, and you're some kind of SEO savant, you're going to need to be getting a lot of clicks from a lot of different searches.

2- If you use PPC, keep your bid prices low and your phrases long. Here's a strategy for bidding on PPC terms. Don't bid on any term with fewer than 4 words in it, and don't bid more than 10 cents per click. But bid on SO MANY terms that even though you're only getting a couple clicks per day, you're getting a decent amount of traffic, and you're generating a great ROI.

Using long phrases will improve your ROI in a couple of different ways. For one thing, long keyword phrases convert better than short keyword phrases. For another thing, the longer the phrase, the less competition. You should be operating on big profit margins at first so you can afford the more competitive words later.

3- Be the absolute best website in your niche. This one's a tough strategy, but here's how you do it. Search through the top ten results for "online poker" or "car loans", and look at each site carefully. Then go make a website that is more relevant, has better quality content, and that's more interesting than any of the competitors. Then start telling people about it.

4- When you're doing your SEO, focus on the same strategies in the PPC tip. Long keyword phrases and lots of them, that's the ticket.

5- Network, network, network. The internet is nothing but a giant network. The more people who know and like you, the more links you can get. The more links you can get, and the better you'll do in the organic search engines.

Those five tips will help you compete with the big boys in any competitive affiliate marketing niche that I know of, including online poker.