Affiliate sites, which make it easy to get a commission off clicks that result in purchases, are very popular among people trying to get their feet wet in the field of ecommerce. Two of the top affiliate networks, which offer commissions on just about anything sold online, are Commission Junction and ShareaSale. Google even has an affiliate network of its own.

Affiliate sites are sometimes very difficult to get ranked in search engines. There are a variety of reasons for this including:

• Lack of original content, or content that exactly matches text on other websites.
• High potential for black hat SEO behavior and spamming.
• Overall low quality of the user experience.
• Association with automatically generated content.
• Obvious links to affiliate networks.

It doesn’t take much to lose rankings in engines like Google with an affiliate site. Even with highly trusted affiliate sources, search engines can decide that your site has “low quality” and remove it from the listings. Even when you replace all your affiliate links with actual content and file a reinclusion request, your site may still be banned, so it is important to follow some guidelines that will prevent penalties and get you the search engine rankings you are looking for.

Google Webmaster Guidelines cautions affiliates to “add value.” Here are some tips on search engine optimization that will increase the value of a site:

• Choose a relevant domain name. A URL that matches the top search term for your product or service goes a long way toward search engine rankings.
• Create useful original content. Many sites include reviews and comparisons, which also solicit customer contributions. By turning the product or service into a topic, you can rank for the keywords related to the topic.
• Don’t just paste in an iframe. Several big affiliate sources allow you to create a “store” that includes products of your choice. It does not take too much time for search engines to discover these, and if the frame for the affiliate store is the primary item on your site, you may never rank at all. Search engines have a blind spot for iframes, except that they may see where it is coming from and decide to take you out of the index.
• Build a complete site. A complete site may only have 5 pages, but you should have a clearly delineated structure including a home page, about, privacy, and contact pages.
• Use javascript links instead of HTML links, if possible. Search engines apparently know which HTML links are being filtered through affiliate sources, and these sources could potentially be considered “bad neighborhoods” because of fraud perpetrated by other affiliates. An affiliate link tells a search engine to be careful, and rightfully so.
• Become the best resource for your topic, or do something viral. Some of the most successful affiliate marketers on the internet got that way because they created something people wanted to see. For dating affiliates, some of the top moneymakers created quizzes that brought people to the site. This also ends up creating links to your website, which is vital in the world of SEO.

The key to staying in the good graces of search engines involves showing content that people will actually want to see, as opposed to wholesale copying. It is possible to make several thousand dollars a month running affiliate websites that sell everything from shoes to identity theft protection. However, it is essential to have a site that stands out among similar offerings, especially other competitors in the affiliate arena. An affiliate site using advanced SEO tactics can find itself beating established brick-and-mortar or ecommerce sites in the same field, but only if it has unique aspects that keep it from getting marginalized in the search engines.