After you have found a niche and want to determine who the Super Affiliates are, there are a number of extremely simple SEO techniques you can use to find out which offers, competitors and/or referrer sources are worthwhile to pursue.
Applying Commercial Tact
It’s not like your competition is going to say, “these are the products we are pushing as affiliates and here are our most cherished traffic sources that make us money“. But if you have a little “SEO know how” and a few minutes to spare, then it’s not too difficult to put on the sleuth cap and figure it out yourself.
While there are many ways to identify successful products – like using broad level search phrases, refining search signals from gleaning the most active PPC, organic and blended search results ( including reviews, videos, etc.) and in turn acquiring a pulse in minutes to determine which products are moving the most volume.
Since websites like Google and Amazon has sophisticated algorithms to determine freshness, trends, traffic spikes and popularity, you may as well use them as barometers to weed out the lackluster performers from the start.
For example, you can (1) ask Google using search operators or (2) find which products are the “best sellers” at Amazon.com. We will use the Google method for now and save the other tactic for another post.
Using Targeted Search Operators
I have covered tactics like this in the past, but you can never underestimate the power of search operators or using a wildcard * search and letting a search engine fill in the blanks and feed you THE most relevant data, based on the topic of your choosing.
The SEO tip is simple, for the straight forward-method (cutting to the chase), type in the keyword you want to find a program for:
I used “Plasma TV” as my search phrase, which I could use later to triangulate data in SEM Rush (more on that in a minute).
Google knows their search engine better than I do, and since they are after all the Master Affiliate of the web (the traffic broker of epic proportions) why not let their algorithms tell me which product have the most PPC, organic or affiliate value.
The first brand I see in PPC makes an impression, so I make note of the make and model – which I can use later to zero in on competitors (to once again reverse engineer metrics to determine what percentage of traffic or which referrer sources are passing them the most traffic, and business).
Next, I look at the blended search result a little further down the page and “low and behold” it has more information on this brand “which means there is lots of citation” and this brand/make model is hot and Google knows it (making it an opportunity worth pursuing).
Now, I want to find out who is the king or queen of traffic for that model number. So, I conduct another search and (1) use the Make and Model Number AND “affiliate program”
(2) After I found the affiliate SERP champion from “Sears” for the keyword, I dug in even further with.
Sears AND “affiliate programs”
And within 10 results I have several opportunities to (1) sign up with the 500 pound Gorilla on the block and (2) start marketing the make, model and brand on high traffic authority sites that allow me to create landing pages, build a site tailored to the topic using a “premium or keyword-rich domain” or use other traffic sources to pre-sell this product.
Now, after I found the offer, settled on the product and signed up, when I am building a website, I need to know which topics are floating to the top regarding the conversation “what people actually type in” and not what a keyword research tool tells me – I use this method.
Using the Wild Card Method for Trend Analysis
Add the Make / Model and then type *
In this case it was:
Panasonic TC – P50C2 *
After typing that in and clicking search, what showed up next prominently were the keyword modifers “deals” and “reviews” as primary modifiers (that were the theme aside from the keyword) on the page.
I could take it a step further and dig into the related search method, wonder wheel method, or any number of tactics or just move on to the next tip.
Assessing Competitors Referrer Traffic
It used to be as easy as using www.compete.com to view the referrer percentages for traffic sources, but since they upped the price on that data to over $400 for a PRO subscription per month, you have to find other ways to find accurate representations of referrer traffic sources to assess the foothold of your competition.
A few alternatives are:
One of my favorite multi-purpose tools SEM Rush using the (competitors in) feature (such as competitors in organic search) or competitors in Ad Words. Alternatively, you can look at Alexa.com and use the “sites linking in” link to look at sites linking to the affiliate’s site.
Conducting an old fashion link sweep never hurt as well using Yahoo Site Explorer. Unless someone is cloaking, then their links will show up in a traditional backlink search (using the tool of your choice). You can also do the same for the commercial landing pages (in this case for Amazon or Sears) or whoever is moving the most product (based on the product and market).
Other quick takeaways to find smaller players are (1) look for the reviews or sites ranking in the top 10 from article sites, sites like Hubpages, Squidoo, Xomba, EzineArticles, etc. then look at the author name and find the author’s box to see which site they are promoting.
You could also use the same tact and run those sites through a battery of tests to (1) find their highest percentage of Traffic (SEM Rush Again) or find other phrases they rank for that have relevance to your theme.
As a final tip, you can also use Technorati to do some Trend Tracking and subscribe to the RSS to check the stats.
I hope these tips have been helpful, if you like what you have read, then (1) subscribe to our RSS feed (2) Twit this post or pass it along in the Social Media environment of your choice or (3) join the conversation by leaving a comment below.
“I just came across your blog about SEO Search Engine Optimization and wanted to drop you a note telling you how impressed I was with the information you have posted here. I also have a web site & blog about SEO Search Engine Optimization so I know I’m talking about when I say your site is top-notch! Keep up the great work, you are providing a great resource on the Internet here!”
What I said this is the the best seo site was I found thnx admin for all always i found the best ^^
Great tips guys, TY for share them!
Excellent.
Thanks, glad you all enjoy the content, it is becoming more difficult to dedicate 1-2 hours per day into these posts, as you may have noticed there has been a lapse and I have never believed in posting sub par content with a few hundred words – glad you are all patient enough to dig through it, read it, reread it again and apply some of the tactics.
All the best
Really it is very helpful, i am really greatful that some like u are getting along side.There are certainly many more details to take into consideration about the concept of seo, As a reader, it is really good that i am always learning something but thanks for sharing this post.
I’m new at finding ways to earn money online. I’m leaning towards affiliate marketing. I’m learning a lot from reading posts like yours. Thanks!
I really enjoyed these SEO tips. I agree that you can actually find out a lot of information from Google about your competitors if you know what to look for.
I especially like the tip about using the wildcard operator. This is a great alternative to finding keywords. It’s something I will use going forward. Thanks for the great info!
Amy
What a great post. I never thought of using the wild-card to find what people are actually searching for. Thanks
The good thing about this is Google will always show you what is most popular (based on demand and search volume). Who needs keyword research when you can use real time mash up data aggregated based on demand?
wow the content of the blog is too good so i really appreciate the effort of the blogger.
3) I found some really quality work at your site, please post these type of information in future as well,
3) I found some really quality work at your site, please post these type of information in future as well
A lot of great tips here. You should consider making a video because there was a lot of information and by producing a video to share this you would increase the traffic to your blog exponentially. Most new affiliate marketers are looking to be shown how to make money on line and you just gave them a great starting point.
Wow this is amazing. I have know to do keyword research using Google keyword tool and competitor ranking. Never knew keyword researches can be done this way. This is top share.
Regards,
SEO Sri Lanka
This post was supper helpful I’m going to use some of these tips myself.
This is a lot of help to those who are new to Affiliate Marketing and also will apply to marketing itself. Seo has to deal with a wide option of do’s and dont’s and sometimes may cause us much time and money. In relation to your post here is a tool that I would like to suggest, http://www.hotnichesrevealed.com this will help you to find the right niche and suggest you keywords that are easy to rank on search engines particularly google
Cool and outstanding site! Thanks for the knowledge also, especially the affiliate info. There are not many sites worth looking at these days, especially with so much trash getting written in comments! Anyway, thanks again! ;-)
Very comprehensive tips. Trend analysis and Assessing competitors is a big one for me. That’s what’s so great about the web, your competitors and what they are doing is so accessible.
One down side is that Google has dropped the Wonder Wheel. They’re also dropping blogger.com. Interesting how they create these great tools, then drop them :-(
The loss of the wonder wheel bums me out. It was a great way to explain visual theme clustering of related keywords. Thank god there is http://www.Themezoom.com for this…
Kudos to the author on this post. I haven’t seen somebody give an in depth analysis like this in a long time. It’s good to see there still are people out there who like to give value to their readers without a hyped up sales page with a price at the end of it.
Thanks a ton.
hi.. thanks for your info . it is really valuable for me as i wanted to find out …
I am about to go over your post a third time, so that I can absorb up all of this good SEO information. You are now crowned the new SEO Wizard! I really enjoyed the post, please keep up the good work. This information has shortened my workload. I think that I will take a closer look into your company.
I would like to know why SEO techniques become more frustrating as it grows virtual community?, Thanks
WOW just what I was looking for. Came here by searching
for Affiliate Marketing Opportunities