If you truly want to gain traction as an affiliate marketer, you first need to have a thorough understand of SEO. Implementing it on your site is an incredibly powerful way to reach a wider audience looking for exactly what you offer, including the services and products you advertise. Many people think that SEO is incredibly easy, and while the concept isn’t terribly hard to understand, it’s a lot more than using a couple of simple keywords.
What Is SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is basically a way of your site gaining visibility in search engines like Google via unpaid results. These organic and natural views happen when people go to search engines and type in the words that show your pages as the results.
VIDEO: What Is SEO And How Does It Work?
Obviously, making Google (and other search engines) love you is wonderful—that means you earn page views simply for providing your content. But how do you get to this point? Here are some tips…
Tip #1: Focus On White Hat SEO
You’ll hear about a few different types of SEO, but the one you’ll want to focus on if you’re in affiliate marketing for the long haul is White Hat SEO.
White Hat SEO improves your search engine performance while still keeping your site’s integrity in tact. When many people learn about SEO, they think it means that they need to put lots of keywords in their articles. While keywords certainly help your SEO, too many keywords will end up hurting it. Not only will search engines pick up on this tactic, but your writing will sound unnatural and like it was written specifically for a search engine and not for a person.
For the purposes of this article — and for making sure you adopt the best SEO practices possible — when we refer to SEO, we are talking about White Hat SEO.
VIDEO: How To Perform White Hat SEO The RIGHT Way!
Tip #2: Write Great Content
One way to rank well in search engines is to consistently write good articles that are relevant to your audience. Spammy content that is focused solely on selling won’t make the cut. Additionally, throwing in keywords wherever you can (called “keyword stuffing”) won’t do wonders for your SEO ranking either.
People love new, fresh posts and content on your site, and so do search engines. Give them informative posts and only include links that apply directly to what you’re discussing.
Tip #3: Create Descriptive URLs
Before publishing a new page or post to your site, edit the hyperlink to include a good description. It’s a small act that can help to boost your SEO. For example:
https://affiliatemarketertraining.com/article123
Should become:
https://affiliatemarketertraining.com/improve-your-seo-game
If the keywords you put in there are relevant to your site content, this helps to make search engines like you a little bit more.
VIDEO: How To Set Up Hyperlinks In WordPress For The Best SEO Results
Guest blogging also helps to legitimize you and sets you up as an authority in your field. Obviously, people who have been published on multiple sites, and not just their own, appear as experts as opposed to people who have only ever been published on their own website. While this doesn’t necessarily mean much for SEO, it’s still an added benefit to note.
VIDEO: Guest Blogging Strategies
Tip #5: Get Set Up With Google Publisher
All search engines have their own pros and cons, but there’s no denying that Google is the most widely used one. If you want to rank well in the most popular search engine out there, then it’s useful to set up your site with Google Publisher.
The first thing you’ll need to do is set up a page on Google+ for your company. Make sure to link your website in your Google+ profile page.
Then, on your website you should have some sort of link to your Google+ page, and you simply add this code to the end of the link: rel=”publisher”
This allows your photo to show up next to your listings in search results and ties your company website to your company Google+ page, resulting in a larger Google+ summary appearing on the right column in branded searches.
While this is most effective for branded searches and company name searches, it’s still useful. Additionally, being consistent in Google+ and proving to Google that you are the original author of your work certainly can’t hurt.
Tip #6: Make Your Site Friendly On Any Device
More and more people are accessing sites from their mobile phones, and if your site loads slowly on a mobile platform, you’re hurting yourself. Not only will you lose potential visitors who would have been interested in buying something, but you can actually hurt your SEO ranking as well. Google has stated:
“Google recommends webmasters follow the industry best practice of using responsive web design, namely serving the same HTML for all devices.”
Basically, pages that have issues loading on any platform can hurt your SEO, which is a much bigger and overall issue. Ensure that your website is up to the highest standards so that you can appear higher in search engine rankings.
