SEO is a very profitable traffic-generating channel when it is worked in a ROI perspective.
Though, the main issue is that SEO results may take a while to be seen.
On particular tough requests to work on, it is common to wait 3, 6 up to 12 months, if not more, to see results.
Moreover, many websites structures are too stiff. Therefore, the slightest modification to increase conversation rates is very hard to implement.
If the “worked keywords/efficient landing page” combo does not show good results, you just lost some precious time. It is a lot more complicated to re-work on your landing page which got ranked in SERP’s without fearing losing some of those precious results already earned through G Square…Yes…God Google. You will feel like you have just wasted all your time.
This lack of efficiency is not allowed on an affiliate-based business model. You have to be able to test, as quickly as possible, both the strength of your landing page and your conversion rate, to see if your infoproduct actually sells well.
If it does not sell well, you need to try other products in a similar niche. You also need to be enough creative to adapt your landing pages accordingly.
There is a rather quick and diabolically powerful way to work on a certain amount on requests for a certain type of landing page (that you would have to isolate beforehand). This might be one of the most efficient ways of seeing quick results in SEO affiliate marketing.
It will allow you to make sure that your SEO work was worth it and to minimize the risks of trying positioning an affiliate product.
The aim is to work on a certain number of requests, on a specific topic, and to deliver the appropriate answer to the search engine, with the appropriate landing page. The game consists in precisely identifying the request that will prompt a conversion action, and work its optimization in terms of natural traffic and conversion.
Therefore, the aim is to quickly identify the requests that have the biggest conversion potential and to just focus on these.
For instance: most companies will try to position themselves for the keyword “lose weight” which is a very hard keyword to work on. If we would go for this keyword, it would probably take years to see any result.
A much simpler SEO technique would be to focus on other requests. Ones that are a lot less used and looked for, aka the long tail.
Of course, this sounds easy, but there is a good number of reasons to this and this is what we are going to see next.
Obviously, most people say “I’d rather work on fewer bigger requests for more traffic instead of dedicating my precious time on lots of smaller requests that generate less volume”
To us, this thought process in somewhat wrong.
What is the question you should ask yourself?
- “Should I rather work 15 days on a generic request that will bring 1000 visits a day with a 0,1% conversion rate?”
or
- “Should I work on a long tail request for 5 hours that will bring 10 visits a day with a 15% conversion rate?”
- In the first case, you work for 15 days to make 30 sales a month.
- In the second case, you work 5 hours to make 45 sales a month.
See what I mean?
The nice Google Analytics traffic curves are only here to make your ego shine J
A smart affiliate – and a lazy one too – will do everything in his power to make sure the time he spends is as profitable as possible.
We have a high traffic request with very few sales versus a long tail request that sells a lot. And why is that? Simply because specific long tail request usually carry a lot more purchase intentions.
What are the benefits from using a long tail for your infoproduct?
Infoproducts are part of the most profitable affiliate programs for one reason only: they are cheap to produce and the maintenance and shipping costs are low or innexistent.
The seller can therefore give away a large part of his commission. Sometimes up to 75% of the selling price!
However, even though an affiliate finds great financial compensation on these kinds of products, one must be aware that these products are harder to sell.
The difference from traditional e-business is the persuasion aspect. What brings someone to buy e-books, not even printed on paper, often above $30, when a printed, nicely bound book only costs $10 at the nearest bookstore?
You will have to go through the basics of copywriting and convince people!
But you shouldn’t think that this might be a problem, especially if you are not a naturally gifted copywriter. This is precisely where SEO comes into play to help you a great deal.
Selling an infoproduct is bringing a solution to a problem. And this goes for all products sold. But the stronger the problem the more money you will make as an affiliate! For example, take universal problems like relationships, being good looking, being desired, feeling healthy, aging well… Those are key to high volumes!
And the more you are focused on a specific problem, the more chances you have of increasing your conversion rate!
SEO fits perfectly for this strategy, as the “search engine” is the tool where everyone will try to find a solution.
How to work on the requests that carry the strongest purchase intention?
Rather easy to find, they are those starting by “How to…”
The Google keyword tool is, as always, a very good way to start listing them. You can find a lot of them of forum boards, websites like Yahoo Answers or special interest magazines.
For example, “losing weight” is hard to reach, but requests related to this topic are much easier to find. Among them, as examples…“How to lose my belly” “How to reduce hips” etc…
For every request that you found, make sure they have enough of a traffic volume via the Google keyword tool.
Then, make up themed categories to order your requests.
The best would be to create a landing page for each theme. For instance the same landing page will appear for “How to lose my belly” “How to lose belly fat” but not for other requests such as “How to lose hips”…
Writing the title according to the main keyword and having a few backlinks should be enough to do the trick for long tail requests. About 50 backlinks on content websites can show quick results.
It is often useless to issue Blackhat linkwheels for that kind of strategy.
How to increase your conversion rate?
Once all themes have been identified, it is much easier to work on an efficient conversion funnel.
Now that you have identified the specific problem that bothers the visitor, you can bring the perfect answer to his problem.
You could obtain results by proposing a product directly on your landing page. However, it is not the best way to operate for an infoproduct.
Don’t forget that you are selling information. The web user is above all else looking for an advice that will help him with his problem.
Your visitor does have a problem. And you should take advantage of this incredible opportunity to issue him a specific solution.
Unlike some SEO strategies aiming for volume by any means necessary, we direct our traffic obtained through SEO as we want to by gathering our effort on a specific request panel.
The best way to convert this kind of traffic is to convince that we are capable of giving away the right information.
A very good strategy to increase your credibility and having people think that you are the best person to talk to about a subject is to establish a close relationship, full of trust.
Build a landing page for each themed-targeted request. This landing page will allow you to collect emails. The incentive that will motivate the web user to leave his email address could be a small free guide, or the promise of delivering thorough information on a specific problem (lose fat, lose your belly, lose thighs…)
The opt-in rate on these kinds of operation is usually pretty high (above 25%) as long as the page is built in a proper way.
Moreover, as the response is perfectly linked to the question asked by the user on the search engine, the rebound rate actually lowers. Which sends a positive signal to Google in terms of SEO.
Then, an autoresponder, like Aweber, will allow you to go all the way through the conversion step.
Here is an example of a strategy that usually gives very good results over a 2-week period.
- 1st followup : quick presentation of the author + giving a free guide on identified problem (Day 0)
- 2nd followup : sending the first free advice. Don’t hesitate to give a strong added value advice. Give away a lot and you will build greater credibility and reassure your prospect (Day + 1)
- 3rd followup : sending a second free advice (Day+2)
- 4th followup : showing stories of people who actually used those advice to get rid of their problems + a third free advice (Day + 2)
- 5th followup : show figures (statistics) of people who successfully used those advice + 4th free advice (Day+3)
- 6th followup : warm up your prospect by explaining that the product that allowed others to solve their problem is now available “for a short period of time” at a lower price (Day +3)
- 7th followup : Remind that the discount expires soon (Day +3)
This conversion strategy shows good results because it is less “immediate” than a direct rebound on a website. You have time to convince a prospect that you are a credible expert. Furthermore, unlike general products, you answer regarding a specific need that HE or SHE expressed in the first place.
This type of strategy allows good conversion rates, well above 10%! While the average conversion rate on a direct-sale landing page is rather located around 1%.
And all of this is continuously fed by SEO traffic, which has been a lot easier to obtain J
Note: Infoproducts are still an extremely profitable sector within affiliate programs. However, latest tests have shown that Google is not very keen on opt-in (or double opt-in) emails collecting promotion methods.
In most cases, this can be explained with overpromising copywriting methods and fake customer stories. Plus, Google said they want to balance website which “above the fold” zone is too “ad” oriented.
Be creative when creating landing pages. Do everything in your power to distance yourself from traditional landing pages that we see all over the web.
First and foremost your goal is to reassure the visitor. You will end up having his attention anyway as your page is designed around the theme he is interested in, just like you would have done via a PPC strategy.
Don’t forget that all best practices of PPC can be applied to SEO.
In order for your landing pages to last as long as possible, don’t forget to implement all following elements:
- Legal notice
- Contact page
- A visible and clear anti-spamming policy
- Content pages, located elsewhere on the domain, even though they are not as optimized as the landing pages you care about
The more you will elevate your domain global quality, the longer your campaign will last. Even with affiliate products.