In any gathering (online or off) of affiliate marketers, the conversation always seems to come back to one topic: SEO (search engine optimization). SEO has always been cussed and discussed by affiliate marketers but it seems to be growing more and more important as the affiliate marketing industry grows.

Use these three tips to evaluate the current state of your sites’ SEO

1. Source Code: You can view the source code of your web page by simply right-clicking on the page and choosing “View Source” or “View Page Source.” This is the unique coding for a web page. You’ll see the meta title, meta description, and meta keyword tags. These are (ideally) targeted for each individual page on your site.

If you’re using more than 5 or 6 keywords, and if the keywords are “generic” rather than specific to the page, you need to make a change. The same thing is true of your meta title. Generic is bad; specific is good. The meta description should describe the exact content of the page.

2. Content: Take a realistic look at the content on each page of your website. The most important pages on your site should each contain 150-200 words of text. You should target no more than 5-6 keywords and those keywords need to be sprinkled throughout the text. Remember that the spiders see the keywords. (Don’t engage in keyword stuffing. It won’t work.)

*NOTE: Copy on your website should be written for the humans who visit your site. Don’t ever write content to try to impress search engines.

3. Images: Take a look at your image URLs. Are the URLs long and sloppy? The URL structure of your image should neatly and cleanly describe exactly what your image is.

When you hover over your image what does your alt tag show? What it SHOULD show is a factual description of the image. A good alt tag will cause your images to start to rank when people search for images.

These three areas are often overlooked by affiliate marketers. But they’re all important, and they all do impact the position at which your site appears in natural search results.