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Undeniably, the best traffic source for affiliate marketing has to be SEO.
Some may argue email marketing is better at converting traffic than SEO, but to build up an email list big enough to even matter, you are going to need good ole’ SEO.
In this post, I am going to share with you a few hard-earned SEO tips for affiliate marketing that you can use which will most-definitely help you increase the organic traffic coming into your website and ultimately; your affiliate commissions.
So, without further introductions, let me give you my best 11 SEO tips which you can use to build up a thriving, profitable online business with affiliate marketing:
- Know What You Are Talking About
- The Longer The Content, The Better
- Use Buyer Intent Keywords
- Spread Your Net Wide
- Reviews Still Work
- Get There Before The Rest
- Look At What The Data Is Telling You
- Don’t Overuse Affiliate Links
- Don’t Stress Backlinks Too Much
- Build Your Email List
- Give It Its Due Time
If You Haven’t Made Any Money With Affiliate Marketing,
See My Secret Weapon To My Success:
Know What You Are “Talking” About
SEO algorithms are wiser than ever.
Every single day the search engine fine-tunes its algorithms to give users better content results for their queries.
One of their latest updates (which I’m willing to bet will be enforced more in the coming years) is trust.
Long gone are the days where you could just create a piece of content and it gets ranked just because it has the right keywords in the right place.
Google now wants to know why you deserve to have that special place in their top 10 results.
A perfect example would be affiliate websites which are in “sensitive” niches such as medical advice.
If you’re going to Google “what to do during an asthma attack”, you really want to find a reputable, trustworthy source of information as it could be fatal if you follow the wrong advice.
This is called the trust factor of Google and while it’s still in its infancy; it’s being referred to as EAT, which stands for:
- Expertise
- Authoritativeness
- Trustworthiness
Explaining them to you all here would be quite the challenge as it’s a very complex system and very dependent on the niche you are working with.
I’d advise you to look into this great guide for a more thorough explanation:
The Longer The Content, The Better
One great way to also build up your website’s authority is by writing longer content, many SEO gurus have different measures for this but a good benchmark to go for is at least 1200+ words.
Short, 400 word-type blog posts simply do not cut it anymore as you can’t possibly cover a topic in detail with so few words – this again goes back to building up expertise, authority, and trust.
Now some keywords may require you to do 5,000 words to adequately explain a topic, and for some a simple 1000 words would do.
That’s ok too; it’s better to keep it concise and fluff-free than try to push it to some imaginary benchmark and run the risk of providing low-quality content.
Speaking of keywords;
Use Buyer Intent Keywords
As an affiliate who’s eager to start making money soon, your only focus should be on long-tail buyer keywords.
Not only are these easier to rank for, but they also bring with them targeted buyer traffic.
For example:
“Yoga” is not a buyer keyword
“the best non-slip yoga mats under $50” have much more intent to it.
Sure enough, that latter keyword won’t get you much traffic compared to simply “yoga,” but you can best believe that the person typing in the latter keyword likely has their credit card in hand ready to buy.
Spread Your Net Wide
Now as I said, long-tail keywords might not have a lot of traffic coming in, so what do you do?
Expand your reach.
Write more content, do more case studies and target more keywords.
Some may disagree with this, but I am a big believer in publishing more and regularly.
As an affiliate who wants to make money, you simply can’t pull this off writing one post a month; it’s way too little to make a big enough impact.
It’s also my understanding that Google likes fresh, new and updated content from websites who have shown consistently in publishing great content.
Spread out your net and capture more traffic and authority as you go along.
Trust me; soon enough you are going to have more visitors and more income coming in than you think.
Reviews Still Work
A big (dark) secret of successful affiliate marketers is doing reviews of certain products, systems or tools that they are then able to make a commission off.
These types of posts have been used for decades and they are still being used today simply because they work.
They work every single time for just about every single niche.
However, certain review-keywords may still be overly competitive. In that case, an excellent way to go around this is by compiling multiple reviews into one round-up post, for example:
“20 Great Yoga Mats For Beginners Under $50”
Get There Before The Rest
One other good method to try is to get to the top page before the competition does.
Basically it involves picking keywords that you think will be searched for in the future.
It’s very hard to give you exactly how to do this but it is possible (although not for every niche).
it’s your job as an expert with authority and trust to know your niche better than others.
If you are deep into your niche – and with time and experience – you will start noticing patterns and if you keep an eye out on emerging trends in your niche, you can quickly rank for keywords that will be “hot” a few months down the line.
Once you get ranked and occupy and unshakable position on the top page for a keyword, it would be very hard in the future for tougher competitors to outrank you.
Look At What The Data Is Telling You
For any SEO campaign, you are going to need data – maybe not when you are first starting out, but eventually; you are going to want to move off “hunches” to decisions backed by data.
This is why having tools such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console and maybe even a premium keyword tool can come in handy.
Knowing your data means knowing what works and when you know what works, you only need to tweak your strategy just a bit to see exponential growth.
Way too many affiliate marketers disregard this entirely.
Remember; SEO is a tough game to crack (especially for affiliate websites) so make sure you are using everything in your arsenal to put yourself the best position to win.
Don’t Overuse Affiliate Links
Speaking of mistakes affiliate marketers do;
do not over-use affiliate links.
For search engines, when you do this; they will see you more of a “bridge page” rather than a trusted source of information.
This is why you should keep your affiliate links to a minimum.
The method I use is I only use one affiliate link per 1000 words.
Most often I don’t even use an affiliate link and instead, I simply point the traffic to the review of the product I am promoting (which will then have more than enough affiliate links to capture a new sale).
Affiliate links and SEO do not mix; the less, the better.
Don’t Stress Backlinks Too Much
Any SEO tips article you read will tell you how important backlinks are to get rankings.
Yes and no.
They are important – but as much as you think they are.
Backlinks are just one out of 200+ SEO metrics and their pull on the algorithms have been declining every year.
Do not think you have to go out and build backlinks – backlinks will come naturally if you publish great informative content and to be frank; that is what Google wants to see.
Can you rank with backlinks?
Absolutely!
Build Your Email List
I’m a big fan and a big advocate for SEO with the intent of building an affiliate marketing business but I also keep in mind that Google is a private company that can change their systems as they please.
For all I know, the above SEO tips I just gave you can be absolute by next week and then we’re all struggling to adapt and readjust to new algorithms.
To safeguard my business, I’ve built my email list – and you should too.
While as I said in the beginning of this article you do need traffic to build an email list, once you have that traffic; do not let it fizzle away – capture subscribers and start building your email list.
Of course, you can also use that list to promote your affiliate commissions for more sales.
Give It Its Due Time
One last thing I would like to add here is how important it is to give SEO its due time to find and rank your website in its deserved place.
For my own websites and niche projects, I always expect about 6 months of work before I start seeing any results worth writing home about.
I know that may seem long, but that’s just how it is.
It takes Google that much time for them to establish a deserving rank and although it can take much less, it can also take much longer.
This depends on the niche and what type of keywords you are using as well.
If you use the low-competition / buyer-intent keywords strategy mentioned above you should start seeing results fairly quickly but to be on the safe side it’s best to plan for 6 months.
In Closing
Thank you very much for reading – I hope these few affiliate marketing SEO tips have been informative to you and I wish you all the best with your affiliate marketing projects.
If you’d like to find out more about me and my own affiliate marketing strategies, be sure to visit my website and see some of my latest guides.
Thanks again.
Christian Lee.
BIO: I was tired of being told what to do, so I set out to create a passive income business online. I document my struggles and wins over at 3hundrd.com.
