Content is king – every affiliate marketer knows this, but it can be all too easy to compromise quality content and focus instead on other aspects of affiliate marketing. This should be avoided at all costs – quality content effectively advertises a brand and promotes it, which is exactly what affiliate marketing is all about. Good, high ranking content will not only help with marketing, but result in higher conversion rates, increased sales and happier readerships!
Therefore, content marketing is one of the cheapest and easiest tools you can use to take marketing to another level – but for it to work for you, you should aim to include relevant related websites and resources. By doing so, you’ll be enveloping yourself in your online niche and finding the right audience to promote your services and/ or goods.
Content marketing is a good advertisement for any brand – affiliate marketing works by using different content platforms to attract the attention of the audience to your site, service or product. It works like this: visitors to a website read a few articles, usually due to a striking title and engrossing text that makes them want to read on. Any products or goods linked in such an article will surely be clicked through, because the content of the original article is so good the reader expects to find products, goods or services of equal quality through the link. This is how content marketing works – by using a platform to attract the attention of an audience to your website, service or product.
When writing content for affiliate marketing, bear in mind a few things: your content should always solve problems and answer questions that users may search for in search engines like Google. You’ll need to perform keyword research, specifically the kind of research that will find out how to rank highly on SERPs (search engine result pages). By doing so, you will be performing SEO (search engine optimisation) and will thus be ranking your content higher in the results pages.
However, content should still be high quality and useful for readers – keyword ‘stuffing’ will only drive away readers.
Your content should be sprinkled with keywords but still be highly readable and engaging content that your readers will value. Don’t forget the value of returning readers and site visitors: not only will you make income from affiliate marketing, but from readers who will continually visit your site, generating traffic and revenue via other means such as viewing advertisements or subscribing to your mailing list.
If you’re looking to write great content for use in affiliate marketing, these tips should help you out!
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1. Create a Plan for your Article
The structure and plan of your article is very important and is the first thing you should do before beginning to write content. Remember that in affiliate marketing, you need to lead your reader on a journey through a few steps: introducing a problem, solving the problem (via affiliate links) and then concluding once again why these affiliate links (to a product or service) will help your reader.
All articles should therefore contain an introduction, main body, and conclusion. To make your article more readable, you might want to use bullet points, lists or step by step instructions. Breaking down the information you are conveying and selling to readers is a good idea, as nowadays most people reading articles online skim rather than scan for information. In other words, no one is going to want to read a long-winded, drawn-out explanation of why to use a particular product: they want information to be succinct, to the point and bite-size!
Keep paragraphs short and sweet. Each paragraph should have one main point and should connect logically onto the next paragraph or section. Use introductory sentences and concluding sentences – these are basic principles of writing for a reason, as introducing ideas and summing up points helps readers know what they will learn and what to take away from any one paragraph or section of an article.
2. Create Valuable Content
When posting content that is truly valuable, it will be easy for you to fulfil the basic need in content for affiliate marketing: to attract the attention of the target audience. Obviously, the easiest way to make your audience pay attention to your content is by writing an article on a topic they want to read. So, you want to ensure your content has a practical value to the reader – give them some tips, tricks, thoughts and ideas that will help solve their problem (which you have spelled out for them) and improve their quality of life, whether it’s in a particular niche like online marketing or general lifestyle.
For example, if you are selling language courses in your affiliate links, you might want to write content about learning a language and how this specific course will be truly useful to them, all the while including tips, tricks and secrets behind successfully learning a language. If you are selling pet care products, you’ll want to first write at length about the pet, a bit of a background to the animal, what conditions they need to thrive and then drop in the affiliate links about truly useful products for the pet. Readers are not, at the end of the day, stupid – we all know when an article is designed to sell us things and only for that purpose. The key with quality content for affiliate marketing is to first write a useful, interesting article, and then to add in the affiliate links as an add on. You don’t want the main purpose of your article to be directing readers to affiliate links.
If you are struggling to create high quality content, you may want to consider using the services of a freelance writer.
A professional writer will ensure that content is high-quality, well researched and interesting, all of which will help drive readers to your site!
Related: A Complete Guide to Creating Website Content That Wins Customers
3. Data, Data, Data!
We all like facts and figures. Including the right data and statistics will help your audience see real, tangible effects of your chosen product or service, or in general relating to how to solve a particular problem they are having.
Naturally, the data should be interesting and useful, rather than just thrown in – data can also be useful in drawing in readers, so you may consider having stats in your introduction. By promising the results of some study, you can also motivate readers to read on and finish your article!
As always, remember that a few choice statistics or studies that back up your main points are far better than a billion included in the article just for the sake of it. They can add to the value and credibility of your article, causing your readers to trust the article more and so click through your affiliate links.
4. Keywords
Adding keywords is the first step to SEO and ensuring your content ranks high on SERPs. Do your keyword research using sites like Google’s keyword tool or sites like infinitesuggest.com, and make sure to add them into your article.
When adding keywords to your article, they should always be relevant and added in naturally – don’t engage in keyword stuffing, when you try to cram as many as possible into an article, as it will look obvious and also search engines like Google can detect this. If you stuff keywords, it will actually negatively affect your ranking on SERPs.
What’s more, readers will see that the keywords are added in unnaturally and will not want to read your article!
There are a few rules of thumbs concerning keyword placement in articles: try to make sure that titles and heading always contain keywords, as this will automatically drive more traffic to your article and website. Use keywords in meta tagging and use keywords when introducing key ideas into your article. Try to use long tail keywords – that is, phrases that are relevant to your subject, and fit them into your text. Look for phrases and words that people will actually search for in search engines, and that are relevant to the topic of your article. Don’t stick to one keyword but try several synonyms of the word to ensure your article covers all bases.
5. Other SEO tricks
Some other tricks to bear in mind: according to the latest studies on search engine optimisation, the perfect length of an article is around 2000 words.
You should ensure your pages are optimised for mobile viewing, too, and check that any websites that are not your own are optimised for SEO if you are planning on posting on them.
Inserting links to other reliable sources will improve the ranking of your article!
Use anchor phrases. Anchor phrases refer to interesting phrases that will attract the attention of potential readers.
These should not be limited to the standard phrases like ‘click here’ or ‘read more’, and instead should be points from the text that are interesting and relevant.
Related: Optimize Your Website to Avoid SEO Issues
6. Post Frequently
If you are not regularly updating your site with new content, readers will naturally stop viewing your site and lose interest. Posting frequently with high quality content ensures that your readers remain engaged and will create a reputable, authoritative site – all key things for affiliate marketing. By posting good articles weekly, your readers will trust you and your expertise, thus increasing your traffic conversions into sales.
By posting regularly and maintaining a schedule, your readers who register for your website’s mailing list and updates about new posts will know when to expect new articles and information. They’ll come to expect it and become habitual in checking your site to read it.
Great affiliate marketing sites are regularly updated with high-quality content. This kind of content can obviously not be written last minute – by using freelance writers or sticking to a strict writing schedule yourself, you can ensure that great content is posted regularly. Sticking to a frequent posting schedule will cause your website traffic and readership to grow steadily!
7. Use Reputable Affiliate Websites
Last, but certainly not least, you need to offer quality goods and services to your readers. There is no point writing amazing content only to direct your readers to faulty or low-quality goods via your affiliate links.
You can also write for other websites in your niche and sell your affiliate links that way. To do so, check out the best affiliate sites to find niche portals with the same audience as your blog. This way, you can find audiences that share your niche’s interests, and post in these sites with your affiliate articles. You then simply contact the editors of the site and ask if they accept content for affiliate marketing.
There are also marketing solutions out there for affiliate markets: Ominstar is one such solution which helps you develop a strategy for affiliate marketing if you are new to the game!
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to monetize your blog or website out there, and can be genuinely useful to your readership, too. It’s a win-win approach to advertising that doesn’t involve littering your blog with display ads or ad networks. You can also post on other sites with your affiliate marketing articles, if your own site doesn’t have enough traffic to make it worthwhile.
It’s not easy, but once you get started you can make a steady income via affiliate marketing. By following the tips in this guide, you’ll be well on your way to creating quality content for affiliate marketing that ranks high in SERPs.
Remember to experiment with different techniques and strategies, different writing styles and different affiliate links. Always aim to create quality, useful content first, and then add the affiliate links afterwards – they should be in addition to a fully formed, stand alone article, not the main basis for a piece of writing.
Learn about the best statistics to add in, how to use keywords and other SEO tricks, and the best schedules for posting on your blog. Lastly, always use reputable affiliate links or post on reputable affiliate sites. Never compromise quality and your reputation for fast cash!
All good things come with time and experience – quality content is no different! Put the effort in now and soon you’ll be writing amazing content for affiliate marketing. Good luck!
