One of the most important aspects of modern affiliate marketing is having your own website or blog where you can produce content related to the products you want to sell. When properly formatted, search engines will send visitors to your website, free of charge, who are searching for the products or services you are selling.
This tactic is called search engine optimization (SEO) and it is a free means of selling more affiliate products.
Optimizing your content
Content drives all search engine results. The words on a site and on a page tell the search engine, such as Google, what it is about. When people search for a particular topic, such as dog obedience training, Google provides search engine results pages (SERPs) with what its formula (or algorithm) determines to be the most relevant pages.
There are a number of ways to optimize your content to rank high and get free traffic. The first is to use keywords.
Keywords
Keywords are words that are usually related to your niche or topic. They are the type of words that your prospects would use when searching online for the type of content and products that you have to offer.
The title of your article, review, or post must contain at least one keyword. The content must contain that keyword and at least two or three more. All the keywords together offer what is called semantic support, which helps define what the page is about.
Some marketers try to “stuff” keywords, using them over and over again, but Google will penalize you for doing so. It is better to write naturally, as you would with a person, not just with a search engine.
File names with keywords
Use keywords in all your file names, such as keyword.HTML, .php, .jpg, .mp4, etc. These other files can be found on Google and you might get more than one listing on the SERPs.
Links to your site
Links from popular sites like social media sites can give you a little SEO boost.
Keyword links
When you’re hyperlinking to the affiliate product page, don’t just say “click here.” Use keywords that provide real information about the product.
Brand names and product names
Make sure to use them as keywords as well. There are many other affiliates selling, it is true, but your optimized content can put you ahead of the competition.
