SEO and Affiliate Links

There was a time when SEO friendly affiliate links used to be a great rage.  They still are but there are various shades of success and failure when you try to improve your search engine rankings using SEO friendly affiliate links.

What are SEO friendly affiliate links?

SEO friendly affiliate links are URLs that contain recognizable and preferably keyword-rich words rather than tracking IDs and cryptic alphanumeric strings. These are supposedly good for your search engine rankings (as they contain actual words).  Besides people are more prone to clicking links that contain familiar words.  SEO friendly links will also pass ‘link juice’ and add SEO value as with standard link building.

Is it really worth it creating SEO friendly affiliate links?

It may or may not but the whole point is most of the links that track affiliate performance use 302 redirects rather than 301. A 301 redirect tells the search engines that it is a permanent state of affairs and the 302 redirect signifies a temporary state. This is the reason the search engines might not take such links seriously and hence you may not get the desired SEO effect no matter how SEO friendly your affiliate links are.

Can search engine friendly affiliate tracking URLs be created?

Various affiliate marketers are trying unique methods of creating affiliate links that are not penalized by Google or other search engines.  For instance Google happily ignores the # symbol and it can easily be used in a URL, something like http://actualmerchant.com#thisaffiliate. The # tag is commonly used to links to other areas of a page or solve AJAX problems, but also works well for affiliate links.  Later on using some server side scripting language this URL can be turned back into the usual affiliate tracking URL. If using this method, it’s also adviseable to 301 redirect the # url also.  This is also difficult to track 

Another method is using the actual website of the affiliate partner to track traffic.  For instance affiliate traffic can be measured from the referring URL rather than the tracking IDs.  


Of course it can generate problem if multiple affiliates use the same domain.

Both these methods can become cumbersome if a merchant is going to have thousands of affiliates and hence they are not feasible (the merchant may have to accommodate various affiliates manually). Besides, these methods can suddenly generate a ton of incoming links to your website and the search engines might think that you are trying to spam your way to higher search engine rankings.

Google authored patent application takes into consideration the age of your incoming links.  

A legitimate website gradually grows the number of incoming links it has and most of these incoming links come from trusted websites.  

When you try to maneuver your URL links it might create a sudden flash of incoming links and this may send a message to Google that you are trying to spam.

Therefore, instead of spending your energy on creating the so-called SEO friendly affiliate links you must invest time in building affiliate relationships and educating your affiliates on how to improve their search engine rankings by legitimate methods.

Adsense Link Units Optimizing

Publishing AdSense link units on your website or blog is a great way of generating revenue provided you know how to optimize them.  If you’re managing a blog or website that gets a decent amount of traffic daily there is a good prospect for you to leverage AdSense link units and make lots of money.

What are AdSense link units?

The AdSense link units are small boxes you may have come across on various websites, and you may already be using them on your own website or blog.  They are small units of advertisements from Google that appear like links.  

After opening a verified AdSense account you get a small code snippet that you can copy/paste on your blog or website, whenever you want the AdSense link units to appear.  In about 10-15 minutes the ads start appearing and whenever somebody clicks on a particular link appearing within that box/unit you get paid for that.

(This screenshot is taken from my niche affiliate pico projector reviews website)

The constitution of an AdSense link unit

As the name suggests, an AdSense link unit contains just links, compared to normal AdSense displays that contain other information and sometimes images and videos too. You can have 3, 4 or 5 links in a square unit.  These links can also be arranged horizontally in the form of a banner.

Why choose AdSense link units?

They are easier to incorporate into your overall layout.  They are nonintrusive so you can easily put them wherever there is some blank space available on your website.  Of course, it doesn’t mean you should put them anywhere: there are some hotspots where you should put your AdSense link units. When you are creating a new AdSense at your AdSense dashboard gives you an option of choosing between “Ad Unit” and “Link Unit”.

Optimizing AdSense link units

To be frank there are conflicting opinions on how to optimize AdSense link units but there are some rules that can be universally applied.

Use the heat map: Your AdSense link unit must be easily visible as soon as a visitor comes to your website or blog.  

He or she shouldn’t have to look at extreme left or extreme right or scroll down in order to come across your AdSense link unit.  The preferred way is making it left-aligned within your main content unit. You can also put the AdSense link unit at the top of the page — above the fold — so that it immediately becomes invisible.

Set the right link color: The color of the links of your AdSense link units must be same as the overall color of the links on your website or blog so that the AdSense link unit appears as an integral part of your website or blog.  This is how you maximize your CTR rate, although some people feel it’s deceptive.  

The example above is the standard adsense color #0000FF, I then made the rest of the side navigation the same colour, same font and same font size…though it’s quite hard to get them to match up exactly.

Remove the borders: Removing border also helps you integrate the AdSense link unit with your design.  When you have borders — the default AdSense setting — people can easily perceive it as an advertisement (although we shouldn’t mislead people into believing that these links belong to your website or blog) and develop a blind eye towards them.  

When there are no borders it is a bit difficult to develop a habit of ignoring those links.

There are many vertical and horizontal arrangements that you can experiment with.  

It depends a lot on the behavior of your visitors.  

For example many publishers also publish their AdSense link units at the footer of the blog post or the article because they are completely sure that their visitors scroll down to the last sentence.

Make them a part of your navigation scheme: It is a good idea to place your AdSense link unit in such a manner that the links there seem like a part of your fundamental navigation.  It really increases your clicks.

Make them a part of your main content unit: AdSense link units placed within the main content area perform better than the links placed elsewhere because they are bound to be seen by people reading your article or blog post.

Surround them with targeted content: The text around your AdSense link units decides what sort of ads appear on your website or blog.  Try to create keyword-rich content at least around the place where you place your AdSense link units.

Use section targeting: Section targeting is a great way of telling Google what text to focus on while generating links for your website or blog.  Not all content on your website relates to the AdSense link units.  For instance your primary content with almost all of your important keywords resides in the main content area and this is the place that should be used to decide for what keywords the AdSense link units must be generated.  

Optimizing within your AdSense dashboard

You can decide what links are displayed in your AdSense link unit by changing a few settings within your AdSense dashboard. For example the “Competitive Ad Filter” allows you to stop your competitors’ websites from advertising on your website. 

You can also decide for what search terms and keywords links shouldn’t appear within your AdSense link units.

Conclusion

Although there are some rules that almost always work everywhere, every blog or website is unique and hence has its unique characteristics when it comes to people’s response to AdSense link units.  So you will need to gradually learn.  

For example you can experiment with placing your AdSense link units at various places and see where they generate the most response.  

You can also perform split tests (Google analytics allows you to do that) by creating multiple versions of the same page and checking which version performs the best.

As An affiliate the Benefits Of Using Google Analytics

As an aggressive affiliate marketer Google analytics can give you a precise picture of where you’re coming from, where you presently are and where you are heading to.


Affiliate marketing on the Internet is an ongoing activity.  You are always racing with your competitors in order to get more targeted traffic.  


The problem is not with traffic; the problem is that there are thousands of affiliate marketers competing with you from all over the globe and in order to beat them you need to know what they don’t know.  


This is where Google analytics can help you.

Data that paints the real picture

For an affiliate marketer data is everything.  It tells you

• Precisely where you are getting traffic from
• What are the keywords being used when people come to your website
• How many among these people actually convert
• What are the pages that draw most of the traffic
• What are the websites that send you most of the traffic
• What pages distract or turn people off and send them away from your website
• How much time people spend on your website exploring various options
• What paths your visitors normally follow when they are exploring your website
• What geographic regions they mostly come from

Besides these details you may also find a plethora of Google analytics data that may help you tweak individual pages and increase the inflow of targeted traffic to your website.And it is not just data

Google analytics also allows you to set goals

Setting goals in Google analytics means instructing the program to track certain behavior of your visitors.  


Suppose you want them to click on a particular affiliate link.  You can submit that link to the goal-setting section and from then onwards Google analytics will keep track of all your visitors who click that link.  


You can also use AdWords links in order to set and measure goals.

Google analytics is totally free

Well, there are particular sections organizations, people and companies have to pay for, but all the features mentioned above come free to you and if you use Gmail you can already use Google analytics.

How do you benefit from Google analytics as an affiliate?

Your success as an affiliate marketer depends upon

• Getting tons of traffic
• Getting targeted traffic

You must know what keywords attract the most traffic.  But you mustn’t be optimizing your website for the keywords that attract massive amounts of traffic; you must focus on keywords that actually convert your visitors into customers and clients.  


For these you have to track the performance of links that really matter and Google analytics allow you to do that as an affiliate marketer.  


It allows you to pinpoint exactly where is the problem and how you can solve the problem.  


For instance there is a particular keyword that isn’t performing well.  


Google analytics can show you what percentage of traffic it is able to attract. 


If that percentage is quite low you can start building content around that keyword in order to improve your rankings.  


You can follow this method with every keyword that is under-performing.


Google analytics also tells you whether most of your affiliate traffic comes from other websites or search engines.  


So if you notice that you aren’t getting much traffic from search engines you can pump up your optimization efforts.  


On the other hand if you observe you are getting very little traffic from other websites, you can contact the publishers and sort out the issue.


If you are investing money on Google AdWords Google analytics allows you to track the performance of your individual AdWords campaigns and this way you can lower your costs and increase your conversion rate.


Basically, online affiliate marketing is all about doing the right thing at the right time, and Google analytics allows you to do exactly that.

Tips for affiliate marketers on Social media marketing

 

The great advantage of social media marketing is that you can directly interact with your friends and followers without seeming too pushy as an affiliate marketer.


 An underlying problem with affiliate marketing is that you’re always promoting somebody else’s business and you make money by selling someone else’s products and services.


If you already have a strong personal brand over the Internet this is not a problem.  


There are some highly-rated bloggers, writers and consultants who promote various affiliate products and services through their blogs, websites and social media profiles without endangering their credibility.  


But it takes time to develop and strengthen your brand over the Internet.


Is it too hard to promote your affiliate programs, products and services using social media marketing?  It is not. 


You need to exercise patience, developed great interpersonal skills, and communicate with your friends and followers on a daily basis.  


Social media marketing primarily constitutes of

• Creating and maintaining profiles over Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media and networking websites
• Maintaining a blog
• Constantly sharing valuable content with your friends, followers and visitors

It takes consistency and hard work to create a result-oriented social media presence. 


Here is a list of steps you can take to strengthen your social media presence as an affiliate marketer:


Define short-term and long-term objectives: 


Defining and setting objectives gives you a clearer vision of what exactly you want to achieve.  Accordingly you can draw a roadmap.  Having short and long-term objectives also keeps you focused.


Define a consistent personal: 


Personal branding matters a lot on social media.  People prefer to identify with individuals rather than companies and organizations.  


You stand greater chances of getting success by being “you” rather than some “XYZ enterprises”.  After defining a personal you should be consistent with it and post content and interact with your friends and followers accordingly.


Identify your audience: 


Social media is full of noise and it is also very crowded. You run the risk of befriending everybody and this may dilute your influence to a great extent.  


Be very selective about whom you befriend and with whom you interact.  


Remember that 100 friends and followers who pay attention to what you’re saying are far better than having 5000 friends and followers who pay scant regard to your messages.


Seek mentors and become a mentor: 


Social media is a great place to seek wisdom and provide wisdom to those who want it.


Regular interaction with people who have had lots of success in affiliate marketing can be highly rewarding.


Similarly becoming an authority among your admirers can help you gain many affiliates under you and you can create multiple opportunities.


Avoid perpetually promoting yourself: 


OK, this should be the first step, frankly.  If there is one thing that puts social media users off it is self-promotion.  


Let your friends and followers discover themselves what you do and how you are earn your living.  It doesn’t mean you never promote yourself.  


Whenever you think you have got some information that can really benefit your friends and followers and in the process can benefit you too, go ahead and share it.



Develop a community around your blog: 


Publishing a regular blog not only improves your search engine rankings it also brings your visitors back to you again and again.  


Encourage your visitors to communicate with you and with each other via your blog. Let a community thrive.


Brand your presence: 


Twitter allows you to create custom backgrounds and you can use this feature to display your business offers and important contact information.  


You can also create pages on Facebook to make your presence more interactive.  


You can keep on changing your profile pictures to keep your friends and followers engaged and aware of your various offers.


In the end social media is all about constant communication in a productive manner.  


Be useful to people in a genuine sense and social media will work wonders for your affiliate marketing 
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