Every year many thousands of individuals enter the world of internet and affiliate marketing without having any background training to assist them. Luckily there are many websites, books, and other resources to help them along with the tasks that will be critical to their success. Most new marketers will find that much of their time is spent writing content to promote their products or services. They will write webpages, articles, newsletters, e-mails, advertisements, blogs, and much more. To make this content appealing, having a knowledge of some basic code is important. In fact, this code can determine the effectiveness of such written content.
The most important code to learn in the beginning is some basic HTML. For the true novice, a bit of an introduction might be needed. HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. HTML code is an internet language that allows users to change the appearance of a page, to insert links to other pages, to include video, images and much more.
If a marketer isn't capable of controlling at least some of the way their content appears on a page or to enhance it with appropriate links, it will often be ignored or fail to produce the desired results. People who read on the internet prefer short pages, short paragraphs, bullet points, and even some type of highlighting to help them skim for the information they want. If the content written by an author is just a long stretch of unbroken text it may never be read. Because there is so much to learn when starting out, getting just a few HTML basics down is probably a worthy goal.
Here are just a few for beginners to start with as they begin their online endeavor.
Appearance
To add bullet points for a quick and easy read, the author can insert some very basic code before and after the content to be itemized. The code for adding bullet points is <li> and </li>. For example, to bullet point a list of states the HTML would look like this:
<li>Indiana</li> <li>Ohio</li> <li>Illinois</li> <li>Michigan</li>
If the author wishes to bold some text to emphasize it, the HTML code would be <b> and </b>. Thus using the same example, it would look like this:
<b>Indiana</b>
To italicize text, the HTML used would be <i> and </i> while underlining would use <u> and </u>.
Authors can even use more than one attribute at a time. So for instance, to bold and underline some text, the HTML would look like this:
<b><u>Indiana</u></b>
Keyword Text Links
When creating a webpage, the author usually chooses one or more keywords or keyword phrases for it. The page is optimized using the keywords in the tags and assuring that the keyword density on the page is 3% or better. This will help to assure that when searchers type in this term or phrase their page will show up in the search. However, there are other very important factors that determine how high a given page will show up in searches. Backlinks are extremely critical. The more links across the web that point back to the page, the more likely it is to show up high in searches. By having the targeted keyword or phrase in the link assures that it is more likely to show up when searchers are using those words.
Creating backlinks is often one of the goals of writing articles and blogs on the internet. To get the most out of this, it is critical to include keywords in those links. For example, when writing an article for distribution on the internet a marketer can insert keyword text links in their author resource or bio box. Let's say that the targeted keyword phrase is "girls pink gloves", the author bio box with the appropriate HTML might look like this:
The author is the owner of Girl Power, a website that offers <a href="http://www.mywebpage.com">girls pink gloves</a>, hairbands, and other popular tween items for girls. Visit today to find the perfect gift for someone you love.
The author would insert their URL rather than using "mywebpage.com". The code itself would not show up, only the phrase "girls pink gloves" which would be a clickable link pointing back to the targeted page.
No Follow
Another bit of coding that can help anyone who sells affiliate products is the "no follow" attribute. Google doesn't like pages with too many paid endorsements/affiliate links. Therefore, it is best to let Google know to ignore these links by adding a "no follow" tag. The link is still active for visitors to the page; they can still click on it to learn more or buy and the affiliate will still get credit for any sales.
Below is an example of an affiliate text link:
<a href=”http://traviscameras.com”>Travis Cameras</a>
Next is an example of the same affiliate link with the code for "no follow" added just after the URL quotes:
<a href=”http://traviscameras.com” rel=”nofollow”>Travis Cameras</a>
The inserted code is (space, rel="nofollow")
If an affilate link is an image, the "nofollow" code is added similarly, prior to the "img src" portion of the HTML.
Certainly, the above HTML code is very basic and only a starting point but knowing it can improve any internet marketers initial attempts.
