Whether you’re a marketer or affiliate, you want to make an impact with your affiliate efforts. Make sure your links get seen and increase your affiliate link click through rate with these SEO tips.
Intro to SEO
When you search something online, results pop up in a list. SEO, or search engine optimization is how we move links up higher on the search engine results page so that our audiences can find our business.
Google is the number one search engine and they have formulated algorithms that search, or crawl all the information on your website to rank your business and what you do among the many indexes of information online. Then once information close to what Google has crawled is searched online, Google and other search engines will rank your information accordingly and provide them to the user based on how they rank.
So if you have an affiliate link to your business, but it’s not optimized for SEO, your chances of getting that info in front of your customers is low because Google will rank you lower if you’re not optimizing your website info.
How to Use SEO to Increase Web Traffic
Start by optimizing your current website based on Google’s Guidelines. This will include information like how to structure your content for relevancy, what information is imperative you provide, what categories you’ll want to tell Google you are, adding meta data, alt tags and more.
Create an online presence using social media including reputation sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor. Studies now show that people will trust a stranger’s review as much as they would trust the same information coming from a friend or family member and 4 out of 5 people will not do business with you if you have a low review ranking.
Stay social on social media. The purpose of these sites is to engage and get social with your audiences. Don’t just think about posting your links and affiliate links. Care about your customers and build your brand on all online platforms with their feedback in mind.
SEO Tips for Increasing Your Affiliate Traffic
Google is constantly changing how it allows us to use their algorithms to determine our rank. Their main focus is the user’s experience and providing relevancy. They will penalize you for not staying up to date on their guidelines even if they allowed and encourage a particular strategy prior to the update because people have abused the algorithms with fake data in order to up their ranking. Google wants to make sure they are providing the most relevant info, so make sure to stay up to date on all search engine updates.
Localize your SEO efforts. When we think about doing SEO we are looking to position ourselves within a niche market because we now know if we’re in too large of a market and we’re not a large conglomerate company, we’re most likely guaranteed to get overlooked.
Local SEO is the perfect way to show relevance to online searchers. This works only if you have a storefront location or you serve a specific geographical location. A good way to do this is to include your NAP, name address and phone number on all pages. Embed Google Maps, but not just with a pin and your location, include the brand and review information as well. Also, look how you’re a part of the community in your location and use that to increase how you’re relevant to that location.
Look for apps for your social media that enhance your user’s experience to keep them coming back. Check out Wistia for videos because they contact informative data on who is looking at your videos. Try sites like Open Markup that allow you to determine how your links look no matter who shares them.
Utilize beacons. Yext has teamed up with app companies so that when a customer gets within reach of your location and your beacon picks up their signal, Yext will work through their apps to alert them of your location. This allows you to connect with your audiences and create specific ads that target people who have actually been at your location.
There are many ways we can make sure our online efforts and affiliate marketing strategies are impactful.
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