The lines between cause, effect and tactful causation are blurred in context to SEO and promoting products and services with affiliate marketing. The web is a conglomerate of intersecting paths driven by curiosity, purpose and intent and at the fulcrum is opportunity and conversion.
Monetizing Traffic using Affiliate Marketing
At the helm of search engines are streams of landing pages, tactful videos, articles and websites designed to corral visitors to the ultimate utilitarian destination. The premise is to provide useful information or offer a specific problem / solution modality to common ailments of all sorts and in the process, the middleman makes a profit.
These pages silently sell products and services day in and day out and doubling as news sources, entertainment, social media and the like. Now a days, affiliate SEO offers and affiliate landing pages have evolved and may not be that easy to label like the cookie cutter squeeze pages of yesteryear.
While search engines are savvy enough to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to distinguishing content quality from noise and somewhere in between random occurrence and deliberate (contextual and sponsored advertising) affiliate SEO landing pages are raking in thousands of dollars daily.
Aside from search engines there are other mediums to drive affiliate revenue such as:
Video Optimization – Video provides the ability to position your pain killer and elevator pitch over time. People who may be less apt to engage your offer as a result of reading, may have less resistance and more emotional appeal as a result of using video as a promotional tool.
Depending on the production quality, the angle and the pitch, if they user takes action, it was time well invested in creating a focal point for conversion. Video also has the ability to rank well in search engines as a result of blended search, which can instantly separate your SERP listing from the 9 others on the page.
Social Media Positioning – Under the guise of social media and url shorteners like bit.ly, tinyurl.com and others affiliate links have now infiltrated all layers of content delivery, news, breakthrough products, educational formats and professional services.
If there is a need, there is an affiliate offer selling something or positioned to monetize that node and stream of traffic. Affiliate SEO is all about finding the “pain killer” and packaging it in a palatable format based on the intersection of supply and demand. The notion is to find trendy topics and /or emotional hot spots to herd traffic.
Buying Old Domains – Keyword rich domains with age sometimes have an added advantage of trust and trust rank (allowing pages to appear rapidly in the SERPs with little effort).
Sites that suffered from stagnation take time to create familiarity with search engines, but often through layering content (through creating a consistent post schedule) allows you to revive aged domains and convert them into a haven for topical articles laced with solution-based intent, videos, resources and “of course” links to your affiliate offers that allow you to monetize traffic.
The art of profiting without having a product or website is now a genuine possibility online. Regardless of the method you use, there are always people looking to buy or sell something, so, it’s all a matter of prospective, positioning and propositions to facilitate the perfect solution for the present tense problem at hand.
However, just keep in mind, if you are an affiliate marketing or selling affiliate products, the FTC has now made changes to policies which can fine you heavily for unethical practices.
For more information, Russell Wright discusses some of the takeaway points from Super Affiliate Mastermind Jerry West from SEO Revolution as he discloses some intolerable affiliate tactics such as Flogs (fake blogs, spoofed testimonials, or elements of disclosure like a vague privacy policy or TOS) that are no longer acceptable as common practices.
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4 Comments
Jeffrey, you mention domains with trust and trustrank in this post and I’ve been thinking about another post where you mention trust and authority too. I was wondering, how is it possible to determine whether a site has authority? I have a site that ranks ok, but it’s hard to tell how much authority it has with Google. Is it the size of the site (pages), links or another factor that determines authority?
Affiliate Marketing is sometimes difficult task in my opinion. You basically are in competition with people selling the same product as you are with the same name brand. However implementing tactics and strategies will sometimes put above that competition. Because Google implements that duplicate content is weeded out, you need to make sure your product stands above the fray.
Just my 2 cents.
Great article Jeff
Thanks for the great post. This is exactly where I’m heading. With your input I expect to be successful. I’ll call for a consultation.
Thanks for the very helpful information. I enjoyed reading your article and I have learned a lot about SEO. Staying tuned for more.
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