Keyword research for affiliate marketing is incredibly important, as it is what allows your audiences to organically find your content when they need it most. Putting all of your efforts into affiliate marketing, website building, blogging, and promotion won’t have the type of effect you’re looking for if you’re not visible, and keyword research ensures that visibility. By finding the right words to use, and using them in your content and social media promotion, you’re setting yourself up to be placed right where you want to be in terms of your audiences.
First Find Your Niche
Before taking on any keyword research for affiliate marketing, you’ll first need to find your niche. Your niche is the type of product you’re going to promote, and you’ll want to stick to one type of niche in order to gain an expertise on it and become a trusted person to recommend such products. Once you’ve found your niche product, and you have deals in place with companies looking for affiliate marketers, you’re only then ready to begin the keyword research for affiliate marketing process.
Your niche will determine what types of audiences will be looking for your product, age ranges to cater to, interests to incorporate, or other factors, which makes this an important first step. For instance, if you’re affiliate marketing is going to be focused on a baby car seat product niche, you’ll want to cater to parents first and base your keyword research on that. If your affiliate marketing niche is women’s fashion products, like shoes, you’ll be researching different products and catering to a different type of audience.
Brainstorm Manually First
A manual brainstorming session can be one of your most important tools in getting that great foundation in keyword research for affiliate marketing. The right training can give you tools to begin your manual brainstorming session if you find you’ve hit a mental roadblock, or you can simply start with the basics and work your way from there. For instance, using the car seat example, think yourself what you would look for and the terms you would use if you yourself were searching for car seat information online. These general search terms will often be the same others will use when looking for that same information, so use them in your content to be sure it will be found by those seeking the answers and the product recommendations you provide.
Take Your Manual Brainstorming And Create Seeds
Once you’ve finished your manual brainstorming, take your list of general search terms you’ve come up with and use them as seeds to create more in-depth keywords that branch off of them. One really great and simple way to do this is to go to a website like Amazon.com or similar, research your niche, and dig through the review and description sections to see related words or phrases that frequently come up when using these search terms. Using the car seat example, you may see “comfortable”, “easy to install”, or “lightweight”, and you can add these terms to your already brainstormed keywords to attract audiences by providing certain aspects of the products they’re looking for. This bit of research will really lead you down a path to see what aspects of your niche product, whatever that product may be, that consumers really value and place above competitors.
Other great places to look for these seed type keywords are related forums for your niche products or desired audiences or question and answer websites related to your desired product category. These will show you what gets people talking about your product, and what they’d most like to know, so you can use this information to make your website and your content more visible to audiences looking for answers. Even affiliate marketing communities can aid in joining you with other affiliate marketers where you can share your sources and any information you’ve found.
Keeping Up With The Keywords
The sources you use to find your keyword seeds should be saved and re-researched fairly regularly. Consumer tastes, affiliate marketing styles, and keywords tend to change with the times, and keeping up with your sources can help you to keep your finger on the pulse of what your consumers want, and how they can find you both now and in the future. Successful affiliate marketing is an effort that one must keep up with, and keeping up with your keywords allows you to maintain that momentum.
Keep Intent In The Picture
Keyword research for affiliate marketing should also keep intent in the picture. Rather than simply talking socially about your niche products, and answering audience questions, make sure to include actual suggestions and keywords that imply intent for buyers. If a person is simply looking to have a question answered about a car seat, but not necessarily buy, their keyword search terms would reflect that, and this works for the other way around as well. Rather than simply talking about the product, include keywords and phrases that recommend or suggest readers purchase the product, and have your affiliate link ready and connected to the keyword to send them to your suggested choice.
An example of intent in your keyword research for affiliate marketing using the car seat example would be “best car seats to buy” over leaving the keyword at “best car seats”.
Eliminate The Highly Competitive
With your long list of potential keywords, you’ll also want to eliminate the highly competitive keywords that don’t really give you that edge you want. Ideally, you want your website to be more visible than all the rest, and these highly competitive keywords aren’t going to be those that put you in front of any others. The most competitive keywords are typically the most general or common keywords, “best car seats” would be considered a highly competitive and very difficult keyword to use, so you’ll instead want to be more specific with something more along the lines of “best car seat to buy for my sports car” instead.
Finding the right keywords to use and conducting the best keyword research for affiliate marketing will really put you on the path to visibility and success.
