How To Combine SEO & Affiliate Marketing Strategy

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and affiliate marketing are both important for establishing your business in the online community. But even though the two might seem extremely different, they can actually work together to maximize the results of your digital strategy. Hence, here’s how to combine SEO and affiliate marketing effectively.

#1 Improve User Interface (UI) and Navigation

First of all, you need to think about your website’s UI and navigation. Of course, SEO is more about keywords while affiliate marketing is about backlinks, but this first step is actually much more important for laying the groundwork for everything else you will be doing. By focusing on your UI and navigation, you will ensure that your site visitors get a good experience while browsing.

For instance, the keywords you use in the content on your website will help your webpages to rank higher in Google searches. Once someone clicks on the link, they will find themselves on your website. However, if your web design looks bad, your navigation is complicated, and your UI is disappointing, the user won’t stay long, and you will lose a potential customer. The same goes for anyone who clicks on an affiliate link and gets on your website.

That’s why you need to pay special attention to your website’s UI and navigation. Make sure that your web design is in line with your visual branding elsewhere. Make browsing your website easy by including all the main links in accessible spots. Test your website to ensure that the page loading speed is good. If it isn’t, implement the right measures that will help you improve it.

#2 Perform Keyword Research

The next step is an obvious one: keyword research. The keywords you use on your website will determine how well your web pages rank and who finds your website. Likewise, using specific keywords in affiliate marketing could also influence your website rankings among other things. When performing your keyword research, follow these tips:

Use Professional Tools to Help You: There are many keyword research tools that will make your life easier. Instead of trying to guess which keywords you should use, just use those tools to help you. Besides, there are many pro-level tools that are absolutely free. Simply using Google Trends and Google Keyword Planner can already be of great help to you.
Diversify Your Keyword List: Try to make your keyword list as varied as possible. Choose both short-tail and long-tail keywords, both evergreen and trending keywords, both general and industry-specific keywords. In addition to that, optimize your content for voice search by using query-like keywords.
Update Your Keyword List Regularly: By keeping it up-to-date, you will ensure that the keywords you are using still have the kind of impact they had when you chose them in the beginning. Moreover, you will also come across new keywords that will be useful for you to achieve your goals.

#3 Set Up Content Creation

The next step is to set up content creation. By doing this before you start focusing on SEO and affiliate marketing, you will ensure that your website is always getting fresh content that you can publish to attract more traffic. Moreover, new content will also be necessary for attracting potential affiliates who will join your affiliate program and start promoting your business and products or services.

If you don’t have a team of content creators already, you can either hire in-house writers or work with freelancers. Check the writing services reviews site Rated by Students to find professional writers who will help you with your content creation. You can also use job boards, LinkedIn, industry events, and other methods to find reliable and experienced writers. Make sure that they know your niche well to be able to deliver value to your audience.

It’s a good idea to put together a set of content guidelines that your writers and content creators can consult to maintain specific standards across all the content they create. Also, create your own content strategy where you can add your keyword list, topic list, content format list, and posting schedule among other things. Once all the preparation is done, you can start creating content and keep up the pace in the long run.

#4 Design Your Affiliate Program

Your affiliate program plays a key role in the level of success of your affiliate marketing strategy. In other words, if your affiliate program is poorly designed, you can’t expect your affiliate marketing to succeed. That’s why you need to dedicate enough time and attention to set it up while taking into account all the variables at hand. Here are some tips to guide you:

Take a look at your competitors and learn from their successes and failures. If something works for them, it could work for your own affiliate program.
Decide which products or services you want to include in your program. Maybe you want to create special offers or boost the sales of a brand-new product.
Determine what your affiliate pricing and commission rates will be. These are of particular interest to your future affiliates, so be reasonable.
Find an affiliate management tool that works for you. You don’t need to invent the bicycle here – just look for tools that can be integrated into your website.
Outline the details of your affiliate program to inform potential and future affiliates of their rights and responsibilities.

You can already start recruiting affiliates if you want or you can first focus on other aspects of your digital marketing strategy. If your business is already relatively well-known, there will be people who will come to you on their own with the intention to become an affiliate. However, if your business isn’t very well-known, you might have to promote your affiliate program to attract potential affiliates.

#5 Build Your Link Profile

Perhaps one of the most important aspects of SEO is your link profile. Not only is your link profile important for your search rankings, but it also plays a role in how good your site navigation is and how good the experience of your site visitors and customers is. Moreover, if your UI is good (which is also related to your link profile), your site visitors will stay on your website longer which will increase the average session time and also positively impact your search rankings.

So, how exactly do you build your link profile? Here are the three types of links you need and how you can get them:

Internal Links: These are links on your website that direct users to different pages on your website. They don’t let your user leave your site and instead encourage them to keep browsing by checking relevant content, looking through your product catalog, and so on. Internal links are very easy to get. When you publish a new piece of content, make sure that you add some links to it that will direct users to pages on your website.
External Links: There are links on your website that direct users to other pages outside of your website. In most cases, such links are added to back up claims by providing sources for these claims, quotes, statistics, etc. Sometimes, you might want to direct users to valuable relevant resources. External links are equally easy to get – just add them to your content.
Backlinks: These are links on other websites that direct users to the pages on your website. These are by far the most difficult links to get because you often don’t have control over who links to your website. However, there are some common practices used to get backlinks. For example, you can hire a professional writer from the custom writing reviews site Top Writing Reviews who can write regular guest posts for you and publish them on other relevant websites. You can also link to your website from your social media or email newsletter, but these links won’t have the same power that backlinks from other websites hold. Luckily, that’s precisely why you need affiliate marketing.

#6 Check New and Old Backlinks

Affiliate marketing is what will help you get more backlinks. However, you need to keep in mind that the backlinks you get from your affiliates still need to be checked. Moreover, all the other backlinks you get from being mentioned in media should also be checked. This is necessary to ensure that “good” websites are linking to your website and raising its authority in the virtual eyes of search engines.

What defines a “good” website is usually made up of two things:

The website where the backlink to you is placed is reputable and has good domain authority.
The website where the backlink to you is placed is relevant and exists in the same niche as you do.

Another point to remember about your backlink is that it has to be naturally placed. If it looks out of place in the content where it appears, there will be fewer people who will want to click on it in the first place. If you can get natural backlinks that come from reputable and relevant websites, you will definitely build a strong link profile over time.

#7 Track, Measure, and Grow

Last but not least, don’t forget to track, measure, and grow:

TRACK everything you are doing in terms of SEO and affiliate marketing as well as any other digital marketing activities you are currently involved in. Tracking your activities, the performance of your content, the sales from your affiliate marketing – all of it is important for achieving the goals you have set.
MEASURE the results of your efforts. Set realistic expectations about your activities and make sure that you measure the results you are getting. If you are able to compare, you will see whether you are achieving your goals and finding new ones to pursue as you move forward.
GROW your business and your digital marketing strategy. Don’t be satisfied when you reach a specific goal. You should always be growing, though which direction you grow in can vary over time. As long as you are trying to expand, you will be reaching new heights.

Conclusion

All in all, combining SEO and affiliate marketing can be extremely beneficial to your overall digital strategy. Use the tips in this article to help you make this combination more effective and achieve the goals you have set for your digital marketing efforts.