SEO Explained For Affiliates

It happens 90 billion times per month…

90 billion searches a month, each conducted by a user with the intention to click on something… It is like an aquifer for traffic, which you can capitalize on. Why not to build your own aqueduct stemming directly from the source? A website with legitimate content, be it a blog, reviews or whatever; as long as you can use the content to somehow promote your own campaigns.

While it is a good idea to have your own website, it is essential to be found in a search. We know that only 0.63% go beyond the first page, and this is the crucial point — the sweet spot of the aquifer that you need to get your aqueduct into.

So… how do you get on that first page of search results? And is it worth it to invest in building your own traffic sources? Read on and learn about how to optimize your website, so that the traffic will flow heavily into your funnel.

What is SEO and organic traffic

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A high SEO rank is important for attracting organic traffic, which is somewhat free and of higher quality compared to paid advertising — the users come pre-engaged and are easier to convert into customers.

Roughly speaking, SEO-related activities can be divided into three categories:

• On-page SEO — all the visible activities you do on your websites: writing posts, optimizing titles, pages, and descriptions, working with internal linking, data structuring, website mapping, and much more.
• Off-page SEO — all the visible activities you do outside your website: guest posting, outbound linking, various marketing activities, etc.
• Technical SEO — the invisible work, aimed at smoothing the way on top of the hill: crawling, indexing, meta tagging, fixing 404 errors, fixing duplicating pages, etc.

Via: Shutterstock

Key terms of SEO

Before explaining the nuts and bolts of SEO, let’s sure we’re on the same page. Here is a set list of SEO-related terms. Let’s get to know them first.

• SEO — Search Engine Optimization, a set of actions to score higher in SERP, which is important for generating organic traffic.
• SERPs — Search Engine Result Pages; in layman’s terms, it is the entire list of results you obtain from a search engine after making a request.
• Organic traffic — the opposite of CPA traffic, which comes from unpaid sources — free traffic in terms of money; it can originate from Google, Yahoo, Bing, and some other Search Engines. 
• Robots.txt — a text file, telling search engine crawlers which pages to index.
• Meta tags — snippets of code that indicate to search engines what a website is all about; only visible in HTML code.
• Long-tail keyword — a very specific query, which is why it is longer and very specific in meaning, e.g., “sports games in geneva october 2023”, compared to a short-tail keyword. 
• Short-tail keyword — a generic query, which tends to be short, inexact, and very competitive in terms of SEO, e.g., “sports betting easy”

Now that you know the terms, let’s talk about the pros and cons of SEO, so you can decide whether you want to do it at all.

Organic traffic explained

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Organic traffic is the most crucial top black soil for website traffic. By investing your time and efforts into generating it, you can start bringing in even more traffic, and the ecosystem will just repeat itself once it gets going — spend more to earn more. Despite requiring a lot of time and effort to get it up and running, this traffic can boast many advantages:

• Highly qualified leads
• High consumer engagement, which in turn leads to:
  • Higher Click-Through-Rate
  • Higher Conversion Rate
  • Exceptional Retention Rate
• Unparalleled cost-efficiency (highly effective after the work is put in)

These benefits will come if you remember to keep your content fresh — make sure to use the hip slang words, keywords, any words that other high ranking websites use. Mimicking is just a part of the game.

Even though Google SERP is now essentially endless with its new continuous scroll feature, users still tend to only click on the first few links they see at the top of the page. And to put things into perspective: traffic-wise, the 11th link in SERP gets 1.5 times fewer clicks than the 10th, while the first link gets on average 91.5% of all clicks.

Via: Poll The People

However, keep in mind that all the gains SEO has to offer are offset by the sheer amount of time it requires to set up a SEO-friendly website (which most likely won’t generate a penny while doing so). SEO is a long-term game, requiring patience, discipline, time, and careful planning.

How SEO works with different verticals

SEO can be executed anywhere, but some verticals are easier to begin with:

• iGaming — gamblers and bettors of all sorts make the vast majority of your potential audience. Moreover, this audience is prone to strong emotions and impulse-buying. Write a review website, showcasing casinos, share yet another “how-to-win” strategy, create a forum dedicated to discussions between gamers, and don’t forget about doorway websites, sports forecasts, some casino, and sports-related chat rooms, etc.
• Nutra — this vertical is marked by adequate competition and evergreen demand. Beauty & health offers attract a wide audience of those, who want to stay fit and good-looking every day. Whenever a new beauty product enters the market, consider promoting SEO reviews on your website to skim the cream. People start looking for the info on the product online, and your job is to create a couple review sites, explaining all the bolts and nuts of the offer. The beauty for the marketer is that this approach works with any GEO.
• eCommerce — similar to Nutra, this vertical also is largely based on wow-effect (impulse-buying). Remember to pander to the needs of people, instead of bragging about a product’s unique characteristics. Your target audience consists of housewives, gardeners, car enthusiasts, travelers, and many more consumer types — enough space to find your perfect segment.
• Finance — the opposite of Nutra, this vertical is marked by stiff competition & generous payouts and focuses on cold hard figures. Banks and credit organizations have enough money to spare to pay for new clients, but assess your own capabilities in this field, the users will be reluctant — this vertical can be tough, similar to Tier-1 GEOs. But nothing is impossible if you’re ready to learn and with Yep Ads by your side!

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SEO specifics and requirements

SEO can take 6–12 months before showing any positive results. Over time, the results should become more noticeable, but if you are not ready to dedicate that much time in developing your website or to pay for outsourcing — you’re better off just buying traffic. Stopping halfway is akin to investing in Enron — a fool’s errand. Here is a rough approximation of SEO milestones:

1st month. Find your niche. Focus on R&D, website auditing, and the keywords that will draw in a well established audience. Low competition with big spenders, that’s the traffic you want to bring in with your website.

2nd month. Time to overhaul everything, so it is aligned with what you discovered earlier. Conduct SEO yourself or outsource it for $1,500–$5,000 — your call.

3rd month. Perfect your content, including blogging, FAQs, whitepapers, articles, product & company vision, or whatever is relevant to your niche. Realize your direction and take this content path.

4th month and so forth. Focus on content creation. Good content brings good traffic. Weed out the underperforming links embedded in your content. This is where ranking, clicks, and leads start to gain momentum. Then, explore new social media. Finally, perfect the tiny details, i.e., add “killer headlines”, gamification, and interactivity

Tips and tricks for organic traffic growth

As a marketer, you want your website to pop up on top of search results. Here’s how to get to SERP:

1. Decide on the website structure in advance
   A single page website is great for doorways and low frequency keyword searches. Websites with 10–15 pages are a solid option for starters. A full-scale website is ideal for long-term SEO.
2. Publish quality content regularly
   Since SEO promotion is a long-run game, you really have to invest in quality content and quality service, too. This means keeping things fresh for your readers, because their look on your website is what matters the most.
3. Optimize your content for your user’s comfort, and the search engines will follow.
   Users don’t like to wait, so lower your page loading speed, until you reach a blitz-like result. Thankfully, there is a tool to monitor how your website performs — Google PageSpeed Insights.
4. Invest in a high-quality hosting and domain
   Pick a provider with SSL, find a host that is near your GEO, request twice as much disk space for your needs, and get a good domain name for yourself.
5. Use long-tail keywords in your content
   Long-tail keywords are more specific than short-tailed ones, and they reflect the user intent better, therefore attracting more relevant traffic. This in turn improves conversion rates, user experience, and SEO.
6. Include internal links
   Internal links connect different pages within your website. When used strategically, they help distribute authority and direct users to related content, enhancing the overall UX, which lowers bounce rate and increases the time spent on your website.
7. Leverage social media
   When your content gets shared on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, it can generate more visibility and traffic to your website. Additionally, a strong social media presence can enhance your brand’s reputation and credibility, which can contribute to better search engine rankings.

Via: Shutterstock

SEO informational sources and tools

As promised in the beginning, we are providing you with some info resources on SEO, plus some handy tools to ease your work. Check them out to find the ones that suit your goals best.

Info goldmine

Here we have assembled some useful sources for those interested in understanding the ins and outs of SEO. 

• Google’s SEO starter guide — a guide to the search engine with 91.9% market share
• Bing Webmaster Guidelines — everything about Bing searching, the second largest search engine after Google
• Google + 10 alternative search engines — for those who want to expand beyond Google
• Ahrefs — everything about meta tags for SEO
• Yep Ads — our blog has an article about info sources for affiliate marketers, SEO topic included

SEO toolkit

A few tools to spur your SEO creativity:

• Google SERP Snippet Optimization Tool — for fixing non-existing or too long/short meta titles & descriptions
• Yoast — an alternative to SERP SOT above
• Ahrefs Site Audit — for eradicating multiple and duplicating meta titles & descriptions
• Google Trends — to monitor what are the most popular searches for a specific region
• Internet Archive — get to know the history of a domain or the outbound links you’re buying
• Google Search Console — a tool to check your website’s rank
• Google PageSpeed Insights — a tool to monitor the performance of your website; includes all the essential KPIs to make sure you deliver only the finest UX

Via: Shutterstock

Conclusion

It is a good idea to generate your own traffic. Hey, it’s free, why not? But free of payment does not mean it comes without cost. Water is so free that it falls from the sky… but you gotta go get it, and that takes work. The same could be said about getting traffic, it comes at 90 billion clicks per month, but you gotta go get it. Having your own website is your bucket to collect it. That being said, we recommend that you work smart, not hard.

Remember, these tips and tricks on how to get your website high up on the search ladder. Start with a strong base of content, something that people will actually want to read. If they are comfortable and entertained, they will be more willing to click. That being said, the website should be formatted so that it is optimized for search; this way, the users can find it in the first place. Shaping and forming the content so that it adheres to SEO is vital for your campaigns as water. It will take time and practice but try your best or simply contact Yep Ads for assistance. And if you are looking to boost your skills in any other niche, check out our list of info portals for marketers!