In affiliate marketing, it is links that ensure the success of the online business. Since search engine optimization is a vital aspect of any online business, planned link development is essential for the business to be viable. For long-term success with the search engines, link development must be an ongoing process.

Closely related to the search engine optimization process, the biggest benefit of link development is that it is tough to copy. One could probably copy content from a site, the design from a site and even the layout of a site even though duplication is an infringement of the copyright law. However, it has not deterred many online marketers from doing it. This has led to the concept of link cloaking by affiliate marketers to prevent people from stealing through their links.

A majority of affiliate marketing websites manages to be visible to the search engines and attract the traffic to their websites through good link development. Just keywords alone are not enough. Search engine optimization basically involves three things:

• The right keywords used by the target audience to reach the relevant websites.
• Allowing search engines and the website visitors access to the keywords on the website through links.
• How popular the link is based on the number of links that point back to the website. Here quality of links is also relevant.

When Is A Website Profitable

For a website to be profitable, there must be the requisite percentage of the right keywords so that search engines can spider the page and bring them up in the search results so that the users can get what they are looking for. The best thing about link development is that no matter what size a website is, unless it has useful content and links, it cannot keep up with the search engine rankings. This is because users don�t surf the web for ads � they look for information. When different websites link to a particular site it is because it has good content. As a result, the search engines also prefer websites with good content that link to other sites. This is why affiliate marketers go for link exchanges at the time of product launches for promotional purposes.

Link Popularity

Link popularity is another major aspect with link development. It is defined as the number of links, which point to a particular URL. So naturally it is the website�s home page that will usually be the most popular link since other webmasters link to this URL rather than any other. Another popularity factor is the click through popularity of a link. A visitor browses the website after arriving there via a search engine results page and finds what he or she wants and finds that they don�t have to look elsewhere for more � which means the link has high click through popularity. Alternately, the visitor is not satisfied with what he or she finds on the website and feels compelled to come back to the search engine results page.

Some Pointers To Link Development

Link development can be a time consuming process, but it is worth every minute spent on it. This is why affiliate marketers pay a lot of attention to links. Also, rather than number, it is quality that matters. Good quality links are preferable when it comes to inbound links. Almost every affiliate marketer promotes ClickBank products and in order to realize the maximum sales, make sure that they have viable good quality links pointing to their website so that there is targeted traffic.

Online web directories provide a good source for good quality links at a nominal annual fee. The website owner has the option of discontinuing to use them in case there is no advantage to using them for link development. One of the best ways to develop good links is through quality content in the form of tips, articles, etc. Another interesting way towards link development is through forums and blogs as they have relevant niche information.

Last but not the least, search engines can be a good source for link development. Even if tools are used to measure link popularity there is nothing like the affiliate marketer doing some hands on research to see what the competition is doing for good link development.