Complete Guide to SEO Affiliate Marketing to Help You Make More Money

All marketers know that affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways to make money from a website. On the other hand, most marketers view search engine optimization (SEO) strategies as the only way to increase visibility.

However, smart affiliate marketers know that SEO affiliate marketing, a blend of the two strategies, can help you drive quality traffic to your website. At the same time, an affiliate program can help you generate more revenue.

Simply put, you get the best of both digital marketing worlds!

Strategies for SEO affiliate marketing focus on finding the right products and affiliate programs to promote. The best products are the ones that attract huge search traffic and can offer a good commission for every sale through their affiliate program.

To make the most out of this strategy, it is important to have a solid knowledge of SEO. You need to understand what makes content climb up to the top of the SERPs.

8 of the Best SEO Affiliate Program Tips and Tricks

If you’re looking to get started with SEO affiliate marketing, here are some tips and tricks for you:

SEO Affiliate Marketing Tip #1: Find The Right Niche

To get started, pick a niche that you’re genuinely passionate about. Remember, just like search engine optimization, even SEO-focused affiliate marketing is a long-term strategy. Before you step in, make sure you’re in it for the long haul. Chances are, if you genuinely care about your niche, you’ll be more motivated to stick around.

But that’s only half the battle won. Next comes keyword research…

Once you pick a niche you like, you need to see if people are actively searching for content in that specific niche. If nobody except you is interested in the niche, you aren’t going to get any traffic.

What is keyword research?

Pick a few popular products or keywords in your niche and check their search volume. For this, you can use keyword research tools like KWfinder or the Google Keyword Planner.

If the search volumes for your target keywords are high, you can bet on the niche to do wonders for your offers. If that’s not the case, you may want to explore other niches that you’re interested in and conduct further keyword research.

SEO Affiliate Marketing Tip #2: Find The Right Product In Your Niche

Once you are clear about the niche you want to work in, it’s time to find the right product to promote. For this, you can browse options in Amazon, eBay, and other marketplaces. But that’s a fairly basic strategy.

Another way to find the best products for your SEO affiliate marketing campaign is to register on ClickBank. For the uninitiated, it’s an affiliate marketplace where you can find thousands of products to promote across various niches.

Image via ClickBank

To get started on ClickBank, all you need to do is set up an account. The marketplace allows you to sort products by niches. So, it’s easier to find a product that can match the content you are planning to write.

In ClickBank, look for products with a higher Gravity number. These are the products that have high conversion rates. List products in your niche with a high Gravity number. Also, read reviews of the product and check the landing pages. Only after a basic background check of the product, finalize a product for promotion.

SEO Affiliate Marketing Tip #3: Find The Keywords You Want To Target

A significant part of most search engine optimization strategies focus on finding the right keywords. So, it’s evident that keywords are also an integral part of SEO affiliate marketing campaigns.

As mentioned before, the Google Keyword Planner is one of the best tools to find suitable keywords for your product. The best part is that the tool is easy to use and absolutely free. The only downside of using it is that you only get to see terms that are closely related.

But there is a way around it. For this, you need to go to Google and find the blogs that are the most popular in your niche.

For example, if you have a fitness blog, you could search for “health and fitness best blogs” or “blogs for weight loss.” List the top 10-15 results that you find in the SERPs and note down their URLs.

Next, go to the Google Keyword Planner and enter the URLs one by one. As you can see in the screenshot below, the Google Keyword Planner will give you a list of keywords. These are the keywords that Google thinks that the URL you entered is targeting.

Image via WebsiteMagazine

Most top blogs spend a lot of time finding the best keywords in their niches. You can benefit from their research through this SEO affiliate marketing hack. Usually, the keywords that have more than 1000 average monthly searches are considered good. Those keywords can fetch decent traffic.

Find such keywords and list them separately. Repeat this process for all of the URLs of the best blogs in your niche. When you combine all of the keywords, you’ll have a list of keywords that you can target.

SEO Affiliate Marketing Tip #4: Focus on Long-Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords can boost your own site traffic because they are less competitive, yet have higher conversions. Long-tail keywords are easier to rank for because the search volume for them makes up a huge chunk of Google searches.

By focusing on long-tail keywords, Backlinko was able to boost their organic traffic by 19% in just two months.

Image via Backlinko

The best part is that finding long-tail keywords in any niche is very easy. All you need to do is to go to Google search and enter your primary keyword. At the bottom of the page of search results, you will find related searches which will give you popular long-tail keywords.

Image via Google

For example, if you search for “healthy food,” you can see what the related searches are in the above screenshot. Through a simple search query, you found that users are looking for “healthy foods to lose weight.”

Furthermore, to validate this, you can go to Keyword Planner and enter the long-tail keywords. Pick the long-tail keywords that get the most traffic and target them for your SEO affiliate marketing campaigns.

SEO Affiliate Marketing Tip #5: Pick A Relevant Domain Name

If you’re building an affiliate marketing site from scratch, you need to put some thought into the domain name. It can make a difference in determining the success of your website.

You can pick a domain name that is related to your industry. It can be a domain name that has “fitness” or “travel” in the domain name itself. Or you can pick a product within your niche and include that in the domain name.

Both of these strategies work differently. If you want quicker results, you should go for exact or partial match keywords. They are great when you are trying to keep up with a specific trend or want to promote a specific product or affiliate program.

For long-term results, an industry-specific keyword is better. You can slowly build your reputation and become an authority in your industry.

However, keywords in the domain name itself will not directly influence your search rankings. Google has emphasized that just because a website has a keyword in the domain name, they will not rank higher for it.

In most instances, the rules of affiliate programs state that you can’t use a brand’s name directly as a domain name. Keep this in mind when you are purchasing a domain name for your affiliate site. If you choose a branded name, it could negatively affect your SEO affiliate marketing strategy.

SEO Affiliate Marketing Tip #6: Opt For A Good Web Hosting Solution

Website hosting plays a crucial role in determining whether your SEO strategies are successful or not. If your website takes a long time to load, visitors may abandon it. Before you know it, your search engine optimization efforts will be in vain, and your sales will dip.

That’s why it’s advisable to pick a web hosting solution that is reliable and secure. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to choosing a web hosting solution. You need to keep in mind your usage, scalability, and budget.

SEO Affiliate Marketing Tip #7: Set Your Affiliate Links as “Nofollow”

Think of affiliate links as paid links because a commission is involved. In terms of search engines, any paid link is not considered to be a natural authority.

So, they would try to remove those links when evaluating your organic link authority. This is why it’s necessary for marketers to set all of their affiliate links as “nofollow.” It’s an SEO affiliating marketing hack that can make a huge difference to your campaign’s overall results.

For popular networks like Amazon, Google directly identifies affiliate links and tags them as “nofollow.” However, if you’re on a network which is not as popular, you might want to use a “nofollow” tag.

Since 2005, Google hasn’t made many changes to their nofollow links. Repeatedly, Google has affirmed that their nofollow link attribute is working well.

In an interview at SMX Advanced show, Google’s Matt Cullis said this about no follow links:

“We handle the vast majority of affiliate stuff correctly because if it is a large enough affiliate network we know about it and we handle it on our side. Even though we handle I believe the vast majority of affiliate links appropriately if you are at all worried about it, I would go ahead and just add the nofollow because you might be earning money from that.”

Image via SEOPowerSuite

An easy way to make sure that all of your affiliate links are nofollow, you should go to the Site Audit option in the Website Auditor. There, you should be able to see a list of all your dofollow external links.

SEO Affiliate Marketing Tip #8: Optimize Your Website For Conversions

If you aren’t getting conversions, it doesn’t matter which product you are selling for which affiliate program, or how much traffic you get. The main goal of all SEO affiliate marketing campaigns is to get conversions and boost revenue.

To get effective results, it’s important to optimize your website for conversions.

Here are a few things you need to keep in mind while designing your landing page:

• Use prominent call-to-action buttons.
• Write informative product descriptions and catchy subheadings.
• Use high-quality visuals.
• Use A/B testing to figure out what works for you.

Additionally, you can also set up paid ads before you optimize your website layout or keywords. You can set up your ads using the keywords that you plan to target. If they convert well, you’re on the right path. If they don’t convert, you can try different variations of the keyword.

If your pages don’t convert, you may want to change your website layout or change your keywords.

How Marketers Can Build Links For SEO Affiliate Marketing Campaigns

Writing great content isn’t enough to get better search rankings. One of the most important SEO factors is link building. Through high-quality links, you can make your website more noticeable to search engines.

1. Write Guest Posts

In SEO affiliate marketing, you’re adding a product link to your content. You can use the same strategy to get more traffic to your website.

Find a high authority website in your niche and write a guest post for them. This is an excellent way to reach out to a broader audience and get more traffic. And ultimately, it can help you make more money.

2. Link Building Outreach

Look for content that blogs in your niche usually link to. Looking at good editorial content can give you an idea of what people are linking to. Try to write a similar piece of content. That’s it. You have an asset that is linkable now. You can then reach out to other websites for link building.

Additionally, you can ask your affiliate partners to add links to your site. Don’t just look at your niche. Try to think of other related niches where your content can fit in well.

Ready to Get Started with SEO Affiliate Marketing?

Marketers often see affiliate marketing and SEO as two mutually exclusive strategies. But that’s not the right approach. Smart affiliate marketers know that through SEO tactics, you can improve your affiliate marketing campaign. With the right SEO affiliate marketing strategies, you can boost your affiliate site's visibility and revenue.

Which of these SEO affiliate marketing strategies have you used before? Are there any more that we missed? Please share your views in the comments section below.

And if you need any help with digital marketing,  SEO affiliate programs, or other SEO services, contact me anytime.