How to Optimize Your Website for Affiliate Marketing Success

Optimize Your Website for Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular methods of making money on your website. You don’t need a whole lot of things to start earning with affiliate marketing. You don’t have to worry yourself about creating a product nor about customer service.

Even if you are not good at selling, you can do very great with affiliate marketing because it is not really about selling but simply recommending a product or service to your target audience just as you would do a friend!

Unfortunately, because of the ease of entry, the competition is rife. It is not uncommon to find thousands of affiliates promoting the same product or service. Despite this competition however, you can grab a slice of the affiliate marketing pie if you would develop a working strategy for your website.

Recommended: Proven Affiliate Marketing Tips For The Home-Based Business Entrepreneur!

No matter what you may have heard, affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Your income will depend greatly on how much work and dedication you put into it. The following are strategic steps to optimize your website so you can maximize your income by being an affiliate publisher.

1. Content

Having relevant and engaging content is a requirement for many affiliate marketing programs. The more content your website has, the better off you'll be in more ways than just affiliate marketing. Many successful affiliate publishers will add three to five articles per day on his or her website to keep the content fresh and regular. The more you add, the better the site will perform.

2. Match the Niche

Matching your website content to the advertiser's products is one of the best methods of getting attention. For instance, if you sign up for an advertiser for dog-care products, you would want to create several articles pertaining to the usage of these products. You will need to provide tips and tricks, and anything else you can think of. Try not to feature the advertiser's name in the articles, however. You don't want it to feel like an advertisement.

3. Keywords

You should feature keywords optimized content on your site. Keywords are very important in nearly everything you do on the Internet. They are how search engines categorize and rank your website's content. Through a bit of research using Google's Adwords Keyword Tool, you can determine the best sets of keywords and phrases regarding your advertiser's products.

An example of this is to run a search for “delicious dog food”. Under the expandable window for the “Diet Dog Food” suggestion from Google, you can see that “Diet Dog Food” is a phrase that has more than 60,000 global searches per month on average (at the time of writing this). This tool can give you an idea of what content to write. In the article for a dog food advertiser, you could feature the types of food available and the benefits from using “Diet Dog Food”.

Don't Miss This: Affiliate Income Strategy: How To Quickly Double Your Income In 2013!

4. Rules

A very important aspect of affiliate advertising is following the advertiser's rules. Some advertisers are very strict when it comes to how you place their advertisements. If you use Google Adwords to market an advertiser's goods, some won't allow you to “bid” on certain keywords or brand names. If you are caught, they will pull the account from your website. Read all of the guidelines before signing up for an affiliate publisher’s account.

5. SEO Practices

As in any website development, proper search engine optimization will help increase traffic to your website. When it comes to affiliate marketing, more visitors could mean more income. Above, we covered keywords and content already. However, there is more to SEO than that. Make sure your sitemaps and websites are submitted to the search engines. One of the best ways to do this is through Google Webmaster Tools. This tool will allow you to add your website to Google and submit your sitemap in one location. Besides, the structure of your website is important. Use CMS platforms like WordPress that lets you easily SEO optimize your site. If you are not familiar with the technical details of setting up a website, do not hesitate to get the help of professionals.

6. Analyze

Keeping an eye on the progress of your website can help you determine what methods to implement next. Most affiliate firms will have information such as banner clicks, impressions, and more that can show you how successful your campaigns are. Monitoring your website's progress through Google Analytics can show you what pages on your site are the most viewed and how long visitors are staying on your site. With this information, you can adjust your content, add to it, create similar articles for additional interest, and anything else you can think of.

There is still quite a bit of money to be made through your website by being an affiliate publisher. As smartphone and tablet users are spending more money online than in the past, you could be capitalizing on some of it. Be vigilant in maintaining your website and the money will surely start to flow.

So, are you an affiliate marketer? How are you optimizing your site/blog as an affiliate marketer? Share your thought in your comment below.

12 Comments
  1. The affiliate program seems like it would be a nice extra income for anyone!. Great Article and a wonderful Idea, thanks for the post you guys are the best!

    • @candice michelle,

      Promoting affiliate products is one of the biggest ways that many bloggers are using to earn some extra income from their blogs. In fact, many do nothing but affiliate marketing and so if you are not yet utilizing it i think it is time to look into it.

      Thanks for joining the conversation.

  2. Well, I haven’t worked on affiliate marketing as yet. But what I’ve heard so far here and there, no body can deny the important of relevant and useful content. It not only help you to build confidence among visitors but also increase your chances of sales and earning income.

    • @Aasma,

      You are right there Aasma. Affiliate marketing is really about the affiliate positioning his/herself as someone ready to help others get what they want. The affiliate works by recommending the product and not coming outright to sell. The affiliate merchant does the selling. And so, the affiliate must work to gain the trust of the target market if they are to accept his recommendations as something worthwhile.

      Thanks for the comment. Wishing you a great weekend.

  3. Hi Sara,

    Affiliate marketing is a great way to add extra income. A lot of people seem to just add affiliate banners which in my experience don’t seem to work that well, but if you write a good product review or do product comparisons and add valuable content this can really work well.

    All the best
    Roger

    • @Roger Weavers,

      I agree with your idea here. Product reviews will work wonders anytime. But you know writing a review takes time and effort and that may be why many simply go for the banners!

  4. Great tips on affiliate marketing. I’m certain that it’s a great way to make money on a website, even though it’s definitely not the easiest one. I must confess that some of the bloggers out there are doing so good in it that I perceive their affiliate posts like friendly advice. Sincerity and readiness to help are the key to succeeding in affiliate marketing.

    • @Diane Clark,

      Oh yes, nothing on the net is really easy. You’ll need to master the art if you want to make any head way. And come to think of it, you must understand that the more difficult it takes the better the results. You may want to go for those easy ways like clicking on ads every and I wonder how many ads you will need to click on every day to earn a living wage!

      But that does not mean affiliate marketing is really hard. You simply need to have your own strategy and not concentrate on doing just what others are doing.

      Thanks for the comment.

  5. You’ve made solid points here, Sara. I’d like to add that it is important that you move your readers first to an email list. This way, you will have a better chance of converting them than you would when you direct them away to a merchant from your posts.

    Email marketing gives you several shots at pre-selling your readers. It really does make a big difference.

    • @Chimezirim Odimba,

      I agree with you on this point of building a list for your affiliate promotions. Promoting affiliate products without building a list for yourself is not just a wrong tactic bu one of the biggest mistakes one can make as an affiliate. I did this sometime ago but now I try to find a way of building either a targeted list or a general purpose list for all my niche sites.

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