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While having a website with easy to use navigation and clear website design is important, a key ingredient to affiliate marketing is having good marketing copy! This article will illustrate key points on writing excellent marketing content for your websites and landing pages.

The hardest part of writing content is starting it! However with a little time spent brainstorming you will be able to create a brief outline of the points you need to focus on.

Questions that you need to ask your self include:

• What are you trying to get your visitors to accomplish? This is essential for your ‘call to action’
• Who is your audience? Write for your users not for the search engines!
• What information is needed to support your offer?

With an outline in place, you can work on putting a draft together so that you have your information on paper.  You can then go on to edit it ensuring all of the key ingredients of writing good content have been achieved.

Your visitors must be able to find the information quickly.
Keep your marketing text to less than 500 words; spend less time on creating flashy websites and more time focusing on the information, as this will interest the user in the product or service. Split your content into paragraphs so that it will be easier to read and hold the users attention.

Focus on targeted Keywords
Research has shown that people tend to scan webpages for matching Keywords and phrases they entered into search engines. Therefore ensure that your keywords are strategically placed (e.g. in the page title and dispersed in the content of the web copy) and emphasised (e.g. highlighted, bold text or bullet pointed).

Besides your Keywords being noticed they must be carefully researched and selected. Research popular search terms by using online tools to determine what phrases are most often used by your prospective customers.

Call to action
Your visitor should read your marketing text prior to them clicking your affiliate link. By pre-selling with quality text, you will achieve a higher conversion rate as the user is already interested in the item.

The marketing text must feature key "calls to action" that will prompt the user to complete the desired action. Banners by themselves do necessarily do this and therefore you should concentrate on creating eye catching links. I.e. Instead of the usual “Click Here” link a more attractive option is “Buy today with free delivery”.

Ensure that you do not use ‘spammy’ text within your call to action or Keywords as this could lead to your website being penalized by Search Engines.

• Having unique content.
• Having targeted introductory paragraphs.
• Utilising targeted Title Tags.
• Researching and applying targeted keywords.
• Optimising for 2-3 key phrases.
• Ensure that you have a good level of keyword density