subject: Affiliate Marketing, SEO and Web Traffic [print this page] Affiliate Marketing, SEO and Web Traffic Affiliate Marketing, SEO and Web Traffic
Search Engine Optimisation is known to be an effective online marketing tool, and if used properly makes a great affiliate marketing strategy as well. Surprisingly, a majority of affiliate marketing agencies and advertising agencies do not entirely understand how to use SEO effectively as a marketing tool, this leads to massive lost sales opportunities and a loss in web traffic.
Affiliate marketing agencies take up the role of marketing and selling a products and services of their client's online companies. The client no longer sells to their consumers directly, but rather uses the affiliate agency where they make their purchases. The main website simply give the company profile, and product descriptions-what they deal with, to make a purchase the consumer must then click on links that take them to the affiliate site.
One major benefit of affiliate marketing is that it may have better access to your consumers. They are usually located nearer the consumer and hence simplifying the process of customisation and delivery. Advertising expense can be greatly minimised by having the affiliate site user friendly, where consumers can easily manoeuvre themselves and have access to the product or service they require, a well constructed site would thus go a long way and get you the targeted web traffic.
However, a major hurdle to an effective SEO plan is when the affiliate agency uses the exact same content as is found on its client's catalogue or main website. Since the search engine often filters similar or repeated content, the affiliate site may not appear on the local search engine's list. Companies should therefore, highlight the importance of giving unique content additional to that from the company. Good affiliates ought to know their customers well and hence able to adjust product and service descriptions without conflicting with the corporation's brand message.
A good source of unique and beneficial content can be utilised through the frequently asked question', customer service or a help section. Affiliates often have direct access to the consumers and will be in a position to know the questions repeatedly asked, having the answers to these questions, create additional content for the search engine and the user.
Information architecture is key to good SEO, affiliate marketers should know strategies to categorise and group information in a better way than their client's site does. This would increase the chances of the affiliate site ranking high on a search engine listing and avoiding being banned as spam and filtered out of the search engine's listing. For example the affiliate agency can do research on best selling products on a regional basis and then focus on marketing of this product or service for its particular region.
Sometimes legal agreements between the corporation and the affiliate agency can limit the type of search engine strategy that can be used. Prior to hiring an affiliate agency you should ascertain that the legal agreements allow the use of SEO plan, this would capture the traffic brought about by search engines.
