The affiliate marketing industry is fast growing, and while that means it can be a competitive one, there are some benefits to its maturity. One of the main benefits of entering the industry today is that you can learn from the efforts of those who came before you. Here are some important tips that will help you achieve affiliate marketing success.
Optimize Your Site
On-site SEO is critical to the success of any affiliate website. A well-optimized website is one that loads quickly, has a reasonable URL structure, includes meta tags for the title and description, and contains unique, keyword-rich copy. Don’t worry about keyword stuffing or extensive link building. Focus on making your site clean, fast loading and informative. If you have it, the rest will come.
Use Topical and Evergreen Content
Topical content is great for short term traffic. If you can attribute your niche to the latest hit movie or controversial celebrity goof, then do it. You will get good traffic from social media and news aggregators, at least for a day or two after your post. However, the biggest traffic gains will come from evergreen content.
How-to guides, product reviews, and even opinions on topics that never go out of style are brilliant for bringing in “long tail” traffic. Examples of good subjects include “How to lose weight for the summer,” and “How to get your child ready for their first term at school.” You can even modify the post and link to other topics like “How to lose weight for a wedding,” or “Preparing for your child’s first school trip.” Be sure to revisit your perpetual posts to update them, so Google, and your visitors, know the information is up to date.
Track Everything
Today’s affiliate marketers have access to far more information than industry pioneers ever imagined. You can find out where your visitors are coming from, who sent them to your site and what browser or device they are using. You can even target ads based on age, gender, marital status and more. Don’t waste that knowledge.
The next time you change your site or run an advertising campaign, track everything and run regular reports. Compare the report with past data and use that information to find out what your visitors like, and what turns them away. Take advantage of funnels and goals in Google Analytics to see where you’re losing visitors, and improve your conversion process. With the abundance of information available to webmasters today, there’s no excuse for weak sales pages and poor conversion rates.
Build Engagement
During the early days of the web, extensive link building and large-scale PPC campaigns were all you needed to produce a successful website. While you can still achieve a moderate amount of success with PPC alone, you’re wasting your resources if you take that approach. Social media is a powerful, low-cost marketing tool. Take advantage of it to build a community around your brand, and turn your users into supporters of your product.
Crispin Jones is a self-confessed affiliate marketing addict and has written for several publications in the past. He currently works with the team at ClickSure in producing them support content on their various sites.
