You can’t just build an affiliate website and assume that people will flock to you and give you their money. Putting your site up is only one part of the equation.
You will need to find a way to make your site attractive to search engines if you want to get a steady flow of high-quality traffic without having to constantly pump money into paid advertising methods.
You also have to maximize your site’s conversion rates so that this traffic doesn’t go to waste. Let’s take a look at a few ways that you can optimize an affiliate website.
Become a Resource
You should spend most of your time educating your visitors instead of selling. Spend on content and make sure that it’s highly relevant and valuable. Having a site that is content-rich will help your business in all sorts of ways.
For one, people who come to your site will be more likely to stay, which will give you more opportunities for conversions. When people learn something from you, they’ll start trusting you more, which will make selling to them much easier. Educating visitors will also better prepare them to make a purchase.
Search engines love sites with relevant content, and visitors do too. Your posts will start to get linked to, which will signal to Google that your content is valuable, and they will reward you by pushing your listings up. Having a few of your pages appearing on the first page of Google for popular searches could be enough to open the floodgates and send tons of free traffic to your site.
Another reason why having lots of organic traffic is important with the affiliate model is because of its effect on valuation. If you ever decide to sell your site, organic traffic will boost its value. Buyers prefer organic traffic because they know that they’ll be able to benefit from the SEO efforts you’ve made way after the purchase. This is why SEO and content creation should be a priority for you from the very beginning.
Have an Aggressive Email Marketing Strategy
Don’t focus on making sales on-site only. You need to have a newsletter and it has to be very visible. Have a pop-up appear a few seconds after people land on your site prompting visitors to sign up to your newsletter. Consider offering them a free report related to your niche to incentivize them.
Once you have a good list, you can start promoting offers on the back end. You could announce special deals on some of the products you’re selling on your website, for instance, or notify them when you post a new review. Or you could give them a teaser of some of your blog posts to get them to your site and hopefully convert them.
Use A/B Testing
If you want to improve your site’s conversions and engagement metrics, you’ll have to do some testing. A/B testing is the best way to know which elements you need to change and the impact your changes are having.
A/B testing is when you alternate the versions of the site you show visitors and monitor their reactions. You can use it to test different calls to action, for instance, and see which one is having the best results. You could also change your header, pictures, or the colors that you’re using. Make sure to only test one element at a time, however. This way, you’ll know exactly what’s affecting conversions positively or negatively.
These are just some of the ways that you can optimize your affiliate website. There is always a way that you can improve a site, so work every day to make yours better and it will reflect on your bottom line.