Affiliate Sales and Your Site
Before November, I was enjoying good traffic from my targeted key phrases used for my marketing strategies for the search engines. Recently though, those traffic dwindled by half although I keep on producing good and quality content according to what you taught in the SEO classes.
Many reports say that the search engines have changed their algorithms. On the marketing side, I would want to know what to do now in order to regain the traffic I lost. The previous traffic volume helped me to get some sales in one of my affiliate programs.
With the less traffic due to the changed algorithms of the search engines, I will lose opportunities to make better sales. What to do now with the changed algorithms?
Dennis
Catholic Internet Mission
Hi Dennis!
There is a fine line between producing income from an informational site and allowing affiliate marketing to overwhelm the content of your site. Take a long hard look at every page, one by one. Mentally remove anything related to affiliate programs and advertising, and see what you are left with. I think you will find the remaining content to be very limited.
Often in our zeal to add some advertising, we allow that advertising to blur the actual purpose of the site. As this happens, instead of seeing your income increase, you will see it begin to dwindle down to virtually nothing. You may also find yourself forgetting to focus on incoming anchor text links which will further reduce your effectiveness in the search engines.
The first thing you will begin to notice is that your position in the search engines begins to falter. This is because the actual focus of the pages becomes diluted in excessive advertising unrelated to the primary purpose of the page.
As search engines become more stringent in their quality guidelines, you will see this becoming much more apparent, making it far more difficult to place high in the results without substantial quality content.
Often, less is more. Your visitors will notice an ad and pay attention to it when the use of advertising is limited. When a page begins to get so much advertising on it that separating the content from the ads is difficult, your visitors will leave rapidly.
As in all things we teach, you must find balance. Although I feel that programs such as Adsense or Amazon do not belong on a business website, I see no reason for these types of programs not to be used on informational sites. However, they must be used in moderation and blend into the design of the site.
When it comes to affiliate advertising, you should never advertise a product or service that you do not yourself personally use and recommend. Once you begin to advertise products that you know very little about, your credibility comes into question. When this happens, you lose the confidence of your visitors along with their trust in your recommendation.
The placement and selection of programs must also be considered. Every advertisement must be for the specific benefit of your visitors, not the income that might be produced for the site.
If you are discussing designing sites, there isn’t a problem when you make a recommendation for quality programs, as it is relevant to the topic. If you believe in the product though, consider writing a straightforward review, including your specific recommendation.
When you use these guidelines, you will find that your income increases naturally, and you can feel good about it.
I WILL DEFINITELY SEE YOU AT THE TOP!
Ask Cricket Small Business Marketing Consultant and SEO Training Specialist
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