Affiliate marketing is an incredibly useful marketing strategy that can help businesses and even companies who are operating in silos boost their reach massively. Just take a look at any of the best affiliate programs out there.
Adding SEO into this mix can not only increase your online reach further, but it can also boost your website traffic. This is something that all businesses should look into, but many are hesitant to take the first step as it can be a difficult process to master, similar to navigating a hosted PBX service, but it all comes down to taking the time to understand it.
That’s where this guide comes in.
We have created a quick and easy-to-follow guide to help you make the most of SEO affiliate marketing.
So, let’s begin.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
To understand SEO affiliate marketing, it’s important to ensure you’re up to speed with regular affiliate marketing.
Essentially, affiliate marketing is an advertising process in which a company will pay third parties to create affiliate programs for your website for digital bloggers or influencers to advertise their product and/or service in order to boost sales.
Affiliates (the people being paid to advertise for the company) will publish ads in the company’s favor, and market the product or service on their online platform.
Adding SEO Into the Mix
SEO (which stands for ‘search engine optimization’) is the practice of optimizing website content to boost its ranking on online searches. When done correctly, SEO agency services can help a site be found more easily and increase its popularity in searches. In turn, this can help businesses reach their kpi website goals. For instance, SEO can boost conversion rates, if that’s a particular target that a business is trying to achieve.
SEO affiliate marketing is the perfect blend of two strategies that allows businesses to bring more traffic to their website in a natural manner.
How to Use SEO for Affiliate Marketing
You now understand the importance of an effective SEO strategy, but how do you put it into action?
Here are five steps to help you get started right away.
1. Select Your Niche
Before sitting down to write your optimized content, you first need to huddle about how to choose a niche for affiliate marketing in your huddle room with your SEO team. It can be anything you like; most affiliate marketing software suits many different niches, so take your pick.
And if you have a genuine interest in it, that’s a bonus! The more you know about the topic, the easier it’ll be for you to produce well-rounded, informative content that sells.
2. Choose the Right Keywords
Keywords are the phrases that people will search for in order to find your website, so it’s really important that you choose them carefully.
All keywords must be relevant to the content. This will help your website be found by interested readers.
It’s also a good idea to consider using long-tail keywords. These are longer, more detailed phrases that allow searchers to find a specific product or webpage. The more specific your keywords are, the higher your page will rank in searches.
A good way to incorporate keywords into your content in a seemingly natural way is to first write the copy without purposefully trying to insert them. Once the writing is done, skim through it and determine whether certain words could be replaced with keyword phrases.
The aim is to have your work sound as organic as possible.
3. Choose an Effective Domain Name
Your domain is an essential part of your website, so it’s fundamental that you choose it wisely. When choosing a domain name, you can go down one of two routes.
Firstly, you can choose a domain name that will be useful for creating a big, powerful brand. Something that will resonate with your customers.
Alternatively, you can choose a name that’s short, precise, and describes exactly what you offer. This will result in an exact match in online searches. The choice is yours.
There’s no right or wrong way to name your domain; it’s purely down to preference. Just remember that this name will be stuck to your business. Put your creativity (yet professional!) thinking cap on when brainstorming ideas.
4. Focus on Producing the Best Content
The content you choose to create will largely be determined by your previous choices.
If your domain name is ‘affiliatemarketing101.com’, your content should be focused on affiliate marketing and you’ll want to avoid random topics. For instance, a blog post titled ‘What is an affiliate program and how does it work?’ will most likely attract appropriate clients who may end up purchasing your product or service.
However, if you add in unrelated topics such as painting techniques, you may not necessarily attract the kind of customers that you’re looking for. Although this may generate more site visits, your sales figures won’t benefit from them. It all has to make sense.
5. Be Original
This probably goes without saying, but when optimizing your website it’s important to be 100% original.
This isn’t just to keep your integrity intact. Many search engines, Google included, penalize duplicate content. Heavily plagiarized content could be pushed further down the search ranking or even removed from the results page entirely.
So, ensure all website content is completely original and unique to your business.
Tips to Advance Your SEO Affiliate Marketing
Now that the basics have been covered, you should be well on your way to creating a structurally sound SEO affiliate marketing strategy.
However, there are a few things to keep in mind that could boost your success rate even further.
Consider Mobile Users
When thinking of website usability, mobile users are often neglected. This is a serious issue. After all, 56% of worldwide website traffic is generated through mobile phones.
This means that most of the visitors to your site will be using their phones. Why wouldn’t you make their experience as good as it possibly can be?
There are guides to follow when enhancing your SEO strategy, reflecting on how this will translate to a mobile phone. Does the content format work on a smaller device? The navigation of your website is important. Your SEO efforts may be able to lure visitors in, but if they struggle to find their way around your site they won’t hesitate to click away.
So, cover all your bases and think of all the digital experiences of customers across multiple devices.
Remember Social Media
The influence of social media is a powerful thing and there are many brand-shaping strategies suited for social media platforms.
Social media users are usually the first to know about breaking news, new hashtags, trending topics, and scandals, so it would be beneficial for your business to get involved.
Check your socials regularly, and set up alerts to ensure you stay up to date. If you know what’s popular in the world, you can use this in your SEO strategies. You’ll know exactly what people are searching for and can update your keywords accordingly.
You could also get a social media influencer involved by allowing them to promote your products for a commission. Or maybe you’d be interested in taking on a brand ambassador to boost your sales and market reach.
Offer Exclusivity
It’s clear that your content needs to be original and unique, but that will only get you so far.
Once you’ve captured the attention of potential customers, it’s crucial that you keep that attention by offering them something they can’t find anywhere else.
You can do this by taking a new angle on a well-covered topic (one that nobody else has thought of) or producing something entirely new.
Whatever you do, it needs to be creative and spark a conversation.
Mistakes to Avoid
Knowing what to do to construct a successful SEO affiliate marketing strategy is one thing, but do you know what not to do? Here are some common mistakes you should avoid at all costs:
Keyword Stuffing
Sticking keyword research for seo at the beginning, middle, and end of your copy is ideal. Overusing keywords can reduce the quality of your work and negatively affect your rankings.
Baiting Your Readers
Of course, the whole point of an SEO strategy is to increase traffic via keywords. But, you shouldn’t use keywords as a way to bait readers. Doing this will lead to your site being penalized and could increase your bounce rate.
Getting too Comfortable
Once the optimization is done, don’t fall into the habit of believing that all your work is done as well. You still have to review it regularly to ensure it’s relevant and fresh. Keep an eye on your ranking and never stop trying to improve it.
Getting Started
It can take a while to get the hang of all the ins and outs of any marketing strategy. Just keep in mind that this is a long-haul journey and don’t expect to see results overnight.
You may also come across some myths and misconceptions about affiliate marketing along the way, but as long as you stick to this guide you’ll soon see success.
So, start thinking about what your niche could be, and what keywords would be relevant. And always keep your topic in mind when writing to ensure every word is relevant. You don’t want to mislead your readers!
