It’s valuable to figure out how you’re going to turn visitors into money before you even start SEO. Applying a SEO technique meant for ad-supported sites to an affiliate site could be disastrous.These are the top three SEO business models:
SEO Business Models #1—Retail Or Affiliate
Do you want people to buy something? Then your business model is either retail or affiliate. Retailers sell directly to customers, although someone else may handle inventory and shipping. Affiliates get paid when the customer buys from someone else.
In either case, it’s your job to convince visitors to your site to buy something.
Convincing buyers on the Web starts before they visit your site. The top mistake made by retailers and affiliates is trying to attract everyone to their site. What you really need is qualified traffic.
Qualified traffic, called qualified leads in the sales industry, are people who are qualified to buy the products you promote. The most important qualification is interest—someone who isn’t interested in your product will never buy. Conversely, people who are interested in your product will often move heaven and earth in order to buy.
The two most important jobs of a retailer or affiliate marketer are figuring out who’s qualified and how to get qualified buyers to your site.
Finding qualified buyers can be easy—anyone who searches for “buy ford 08015” probably wants to buy a ford vehicle near the 08015 zip code. But these pre-qualified search queries are highly sought after precisely because of their pre-qualification.
An easier way to find a good SEO keyword phase that attracts qualified buyers is to ask, “what else would someone interested in buying look for?” For example, before I’m ready to buy a car, I do a lot of online research. A site with articles about car reliability could attract qualified car buyers and avoid people just interested in looking at pretty cars. For the best results, make sure you search Google incognito as Google always serve you customized results according to your location and preferences,which is not good for research.
It’s essential for retailer and affiliate marketers to focus on buyers, not just visitors. You could make a million dollars a year from just one visitor a year, if you could convince each visitor to buy a million dollar item.
SEO Business Models #2—Ad-Supported
I’d guess that more than 90% of the sites I visit every day are supported partially or fully by advertisements. Ads are big business on the Internet—they’re what made Google huge and they prop up almost all of the top 100 sites on the Internet, except volunteer-run Wikipedia.
The simple rule for ad-based sites is to attract as many readers as possible. Some people even go so far as to use scam methods to increase traffic to their ad-supported sites.
But anyone who focuses too hard on attracting traffic risks forgetting that they also need visitors to click on the ads. The less time people spend on your site, the less chance they’ll click on an ad.
One powerful technique I’ve seen used is focusing on keeping people on your site longer. The longer they stay on your site, the longer they’ll spend looking at the same ads, and the longer they stare at those ads, the greater the chance they’ll actually click on one.
Ad-Supported SEO Business Models
Ad-supported sites come in several varieties. The hardest to build but usually most profitable is the news site. If you can keep readers up to date better than anyone else—if you can scoop the competition frequently—you can reap significant profits, even if you only cover a small niche.
Other ad-supported sites cover evergreen topics like productivity and saving money. SEO can help these sites gain new readers by focusing on questions people ask. For example, a save-money site should focus on keywords like “credit card bill,” “coupon,” and “how to make ____.”
SEO Business Models #3—The Agora Model
Agora Financial built a hundred-million dollar business on the Web doing one simple thing: getting people to sign up for their free daily newsletter.
From their free newsletter, they made offers for additional products and services—products and services that often cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, much of it pure markup.
The Agora business model closely follows the system employed by Agora Financial—everything on your site tries to convince people to sign up for your newsletter. You don’t try to make a single sale until you’ve got the customer’s email address.
People who use the Agora model give away free articles, reports, ebooks, contest entries, and even physical stuff—all of it at a loss—because they know they’ll make it back over time selling to their mailing list.
The techniques for the Agora business model are similar the the techniques used in the two business models we discussed previously.
Like the retail or affiliate SEO business models, you want to attract qualified traffic. If your newsletter covers cars, you probably don’t want to waste money attracting kids. It is important that you have the right audience to increase email open rates.
Like the ad-based SEO business models, you want to attract as many visitors as possible, but you also want to keep them on your site as long as possible. The better visitors get to know you and the more times they see the offer to join your mailing list, the greater the chance they’ll sign up for it.
The top SEO technique for attracting lots of qualified leads is simple: emphasize all the free stuff you’re giving away. Write articles with free in their headlines, offer free reports and ebooks. You can’t go wrong with the Agora SEO business model if you never go more than a few paragraphs without mentioning the word free.
Can You Mix SEO Business Models
Of course you can, but do this carefully as we know that it is better to have less goals for the website visitors. If you concentrate more on one business model you will more likely to be successful.
Conclusion
Almost all successful Web-based businesses fall into one of these three models. So, what are you waiting for? Get started by choosing one of the SEO business models today.
I’ve done ad sites, product sites and affiliate sites. Products sites win hands down, but you need a bit of imagination to come up with a good product.
vishvast recently posted..Top 5 best Alternative browsers for iphone
I’ve seen businesses who have been using Agora business model. I guess its pretty effective considering that people are after of free useful information about a product first before they choose to buy something. In that way, they can be sure that they are making the right choice.
Stan recently posted..Canon EOS Rebel T3i Digital SLR Camera Review
When I read your post, I have come to realize how important and relevant this is to us who wants to start our business online. I am certain that many people who will be seeing this will also have similar feedback about this due to the profits that it has. This will really create something that is different yet very effective for every business whether small or big.
Quilmy recently posted..Electric shock treatments can perk up romance
I want to try the Agora model.I know that this model first getting loss and after that it will cover up all the loss that is been get in the business.I would like to give it try.
I’ve done ad sites, product sites and affiliate sites. Products sites win hands down, but you need a bit of imagination to come up with a good product.
Brett recently posted..Documenting Python Application Source Code
I’d think i’ll go for 3 ways as well, utilize every possibility there is out there.
Ricardus recently posted..Domain Name Promotion Only at $10.99/year
A very interesting and informative post, Mtiz. I’m happy to see you emphasize “targeted” traffic in SEO Business Model #1. Many people approach me simply wanting more traffic without understanding that it’s like moving their business to the sidewalk. A lot of people will pass by, but it won’t result in many more sales. I prefer a hundred targeted visitors over a thousand browsers anyday. Thanks for the great post!
That’s right… I can have 100 people go to a page and on 2 buy…Or I can have 10 people go to the page and most buy… It is amazing when you hit on the keyword that will do that for you!!! That is the gold!
Monitoring your online marketing efforts is the most important aspect of the process regardless of which medium you are bringing traffic to your site. Then the only rule is fairly simple; if it makes money – do it.
Obviously you need to be careful that you are not cannibalising sales of organic (free) traffic through paid adverts so it is important to monitor visitors and conversion from each.
Retailers get a bigger percentage compared to an affiliate marketer. If you want sell a variety of products, i would suggest to go for affiliate marketing since you need not focus on one thing and you are not bound by any rules most of the time and is not that hard to do. Retailers are complex and you will need to study many things for your business to work.
Edward recently posted..Jigsaw Uses simPRO to Solve Business Puzzle
if i’ll implement one of the models you mentioned, is t a hundred percent guarantee that it will work?
It seems like the affiliate model is getting tougher because of all the competition. It’s much harder to just slap ads on crappy content and make money. We might see a contraction of websites in 2012 if it keeps up.
I am very happy about that as I have built solid websites with great foundations.
mitz recently posted..Elegant Themes Versus Thesis for WordPress
In my portfolio site, I have a variety of methods to gain.
Some sites earn only through advertising, others only through sales, others a mix between the two possibilities
What made me lean towards one or other is the type of niche.
Yes same here Albert.
I also choose my is this model is according to the type of your niche and also according to what works!
mitz recently posted..5 Things you Should Look for in Premium Themes
Users will always continue to evolve but I think the core principal behind monetizing a site will always remain the same. Only the techniques will change. Very nice post and it gives a lot to think about.
Richard Brown recently posted..Tips on How to Prepare a Budget
Very true Richard..
The basics will stay the same but everything else will always change. We have to keep our eyes open and move with the times.
mitz recently posted..How Did I Increase Adsense Earnings By 500%
Hi Mitz,
Great post, full of ideas, definitions, instructions and all the details for each. This is a great guide to follow for the beginner or for that matter, for the pro! As a newbie, I am always amazed by an article like this one. It is so easy to understand and implement. Thanks for the information.
Ann recently posted..Paying Off Credit Card Debt
I am not that technical…In fact I hate technical jargon. It just makes things more difficult. If we can get these models clear in our heads we will understand the direction our businesses are meant to be going.
mitz recently posted..Build a WordPress Website from Scratch
Hi Mitz! I learned a lot of things about SEO.
You rock!
Milena recently posted..Come Far Conoscere Il Proprio Blog? Aumentare I Visitatori Con Commentluv
It is the best technique to get the qualified lead by providing training material to others.
Maja recently posted..Modern Hair Styles at Fantastic Sams
Good points. Qualified leads are what really matter for sure. You want to get target, attract and get the attention of the people are genuine would-be customers for your product. Getting a lot of traffic to your site becomes pointless when most of them don’t click on a thing!
-Jean
Jean recently posted..How to stay safe while driving on wet roads
I love it when I get the right traffic!
mitz recently posted..Build a WordPress Website from Scratch
These business models and product offerings have an impact on SEO success. if SEO is your business model then you may want to change your business or you need to be prepared for extreme risks.
Hey Mitz,
I’m familiar with the first two seo business models but not so much with The Agora Model. The concept this module uses with getting people to sign up for a free newsletter sounds similar to the CPA strategy. Thanks for sharing, Agora model is something I will start looking more closely into.
John recently posted..How To Play the Guitar By Learning The Basics
The Agora model is a way of getting very targeted customers at your fingertips. For example, dog lovers signup to a dog lover newsletter and therefore by doggy things.
mitz recently posted..10 Point SEO Checklist for New WordPress Webmasters
Even I would support the Agora Model keeping Adsense Priority and moving on..
Ashish recently posted..Lenovo Essential B570 Laptop Price in India-Feaures & Specs
i am just having google adsense not into all this affiliation trying manually inserting seo and all, but after seeing your post thinking about going into some affilation hope from this i can make money and able to make my blog sucessfull
rohit kothari recently posted..The Dirty Picture(Hindi movie 2011)-Download Song For Here
When you have Google AdSense and you see a page that is making a lot of money, you should try finding an affiliate product to suit that page. You could add it in as a link in amongst the content. If you make a few sales on a product then you know that this is a buying page. Sometimes I have removed AdSense from the page and just had affiliate sales as it paid better.
On the other hand I have had pages that make great AdSense income and also have affiliate products that sell very well. These are my favorite pages.
mitz recently posted..9 SEO Tips to Dominate Google Search Results
Wow! Too many information regarding SEO i couldn’t even digest everything. Let me read it again and take notes. Thanks a ton!
Ha ha..Sorry I gave you too much info…:)
mitz recently posted..5 Hidden SEO Problems Costing You Traffic Right Now
Thanks for this article 🙂 I think I will reconsider some of my seo tactics 🙂
Thomas recently posted..Droši žogi
Wanna know what? It is fair to say that I’m quite new to all of this. Anyway, despite that, I thought I know something about it. The more I read this and similar articles, the more I realize how little I really know. it is really nice to learn from somebody else experiences and i really appreciate it!
And now: Ben, learn! 🙂
BenKelsson recently posted..Lame pick up lines
Agora model is probably best, but many use it totally wrong and send every week several long email about a lot of junk products they want to try to sell. I usually block them as spam emails after a while and they have lost a customer. You must be very careful with what you are trying to sell. The right product to right customer.
Yes the Agora model is a lot harder than it seems!
mitz recently posted..My Daily Blogging Routine Exposed!
I don’t think that it’s a good idea to use mix SEO business models, because here can appear visitors’ misunderstanding as a result of a great number of aims.
Jeanie recently posted..Free TV Channel Video Facebook Template
Yes in most cases I agree. But I think that some pages can handle more than one business model as some people are blind to 1 and not the other.
mitz recently posted..Elegant Themes Versus Thesis for WordPress
You really have some pretty nice tips on how to get those conversions going and yes, I also learned a lot! keep up the good work.
briant recently posted..How to Get your Products in Google Product Search updated Thu Dec 30 2010 11:12 pm CST
Yes that is the name of the game, getting the conversions going. 🙂
mitz recently posted..5 Hidden SEO Problems Costing You Traffic Right Now
I think Agora business model is the easiest way which all you have to do is sign up for news letter or buy an item. And you just need an email from a visitors.
Zhyra Bonete recently posted..simple animation software
I am still learning with the Agora model but I actually think it is the hardest to master. 🙂
mitz recently posted..Speed Up Your Website Loading Times for Free
I think you’re quite right here, all businesses cover in three categories and mine comes under retailers. We offer travel packages to enjoy your quality time. We usually receive many visitors but only interested people convert into our customers. Really informative post. 🙂
Aaron recently posted..Goa Trip
Yes this is why we need to target the right keywords. For example you want to target people that are looking for a holiday destination. You want to catch them before they decide where to go. It is fantastic when you find a keyword that will attract buying customers.
mitz recently posted..Speed Up Your Website Loading Times for Free
I may be making a mistake with the multiple pronged strategy; however, I have fun doing all three models. For example, I love writing articles that are simply informative and attract traffic. | 😛
hunterX0506 recently posted..Personal Injury Protection
That’s great if you can enjoy the creating content! That is the biggest hurdle that people face.
mitz recently posted..5 Things you Should Look for in Premium Themes
Hi there mitz! can you tell me how and where SEO video belong to this kind of market? does doing SEO video affect much a page rank? Hope you can tell me.I will be going back here tomorrow. Please do reply. Thank you mam.
reginachang recently posted..first date with women
Hi Regina
Are you talking about video sitemaps for SEO?
I am sorry but I don’t know what video sitemaps is, sorry mam I am just a newbie about SEO, Once I made a video for Angry bird domain and upload it in you tube, my brother told me it is called a video SEO, sort of promoting that domain, am I right when I say it is a video SEO, is it really effective on page ranking. Thanks very much.
Submitting a video to a video sharing website is part of search engine optimization as you might get a link back to your website, and also you will get traffic.
The video is also good to place on your website as this will reduce your bounce rate and keep your visitors interested.
mitz recently posted..Speed Up Your Website Loading Times for Free
Great stuff Mitz. Maybe I’m making a big mistake, but I apply at least 2 to 3 models on my blogs (1 model on my offline business sites). For example, on my most profitable blog I promote products as an affiliate, have some Adsense, and build a list of subscribers. Some posts focus on affiliate sales, some on ads, and some on acquiring subscribers.
I may be making a mistake with the multiple pronged strategy; however, I have fun doing all three models. For example, I love writing articles that are simply informative and attract traffic where I don’t promote anything except some ads. Other articles I love to promote affiliate products. And then I like promoting my lists. Each day I have a fresh batch of articles to write.
It’s true that my list could be building faster and be more profitable. It’s true I could earn more in affiliate promotions (admittedly I do focus on affiliate promotions which form the largest part of my income), and admittedly I could place ads in much better locations for more clicks (Adsense).
Anyway, your article certainly provided food-for-thought.
Peter Lawlor recently posted..Best Website Builder Software for Your Business Website
Hi Peter
Just because you use all three models on a website, does not mean you are making a mistake. For example I do have a list for every website, then I might have AdSense, and also affiliate ad discreetly in the text. If the affiliate advertising makes a few sales, I’ve removed AdSense from this page and tweak it for the affiliate sales. I have some fantastic pages where I am not even sure which one to remove as they are both models are working well together.
When you are using all three models it is just best to not overdo any of them. It’s just like advertising in general, if you slap ads all over your website, it just does you damage. 🙂
This was a great post. We have been giving our news letter away for free along with free reports and didn’t even know we were following the Agora model. We have not tied to monetize the email list yet and are still in the research stage on how to present a marketing message without being ignored.
Mike McGill recently posted..Don’t Freak Out Over Gold & Silver Prices – Buy Instead!
You do not have to create direct marketing messages as people hate them. You just have to give good content and offer some links to go with it. It is better if you do not try to sell as your list probably already trusts you and if you do the hard sell on them now that would be betraying their trust.
mitz recently posted..Build a WordPress Website from Scratch
Sites with affiliate marketing are typically blanketed with random products that it can be disorienting to the point that I only last a minute or two on the site. The same goes with ad supported sites. If there’s too much, it’s detrimental. So, I guess a mixture of all three so that it’s not too much for the site user to handle. Thanks for the article!
Corey recently posted..Evolving Interactive News Open for Guest Blog Posts
I agree Corey, you need an entire balance on your website. You cannot have too much of anything!
mitz recently posted..Speed Up Your Website Loading Times for Free
well, my SEO business models are affiliate as well as ad supported. but i am not much into them!
Isha Singh recently posted..10 Free Apps for iPhone and iPad
I think whether you’re site is retail or ad supported, it’s always a good idea to use the Agora Model! Even if you don’t sell to your subscribers in your email, it can be a good way to get them back to your site and click ads or buy an item. Great post mitz!
Tory McBroom recently posted..One Little Known Secret To Get Backlinks From Authority Sites
hi Tory
I agree that using the Agora model is essential for most if not all websites. This is the way of the future, however people are shying away from signing up to e-mail lists, so we have to be that much better than everyone else. Those lists that continually sell something to people are on their way out.