Affiliate or partner marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) are amazing combinations that can help you drive traffic that is not only organic but also premium.

This is because with these two you get the best of both worlds. With partner marketing, you can make money because you are using one of the most popular avenues. SEO is viewed as the only strategy that can increase visibility.

In order to benefit from these two tools, you need to put in a lot of effort and practice because trial and error is the best teacher.

Affiliate marketers must leverage social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to bring in a lot of traffic. They can also incorporate email marketing into their strategy. A well-developed and structured SEO strategy is advantageous in partner marketing because it helps you secure a win.

1. Taking a Keyword-Focused Approach as Opposed to Solution-Focused

Keywords are a crucial part of any website. At the same time, Google also ranks websites according to user experience. This means the content should be authentic and satisfy a user’s needs. It should also be appealing to the eye with a simplified design.

Lastly, the visitor should be able to easily find the content they are searching for on the website. Simply put, the visitor must be able to accomplish the task with ease.

Even if your website has the best and most reasonable keywords, it will rank lower than it should because of the poor experience.

Keywords are crucial, not because they are words that match the user type on search engines, but because they are seeking solutions.

That is the intent of keywords, it is not so articles become common but so that they give reliable and valuable answers and reach the intended audience.

This also highlights the importance of picking a niche that you are interested in and passionate about. Providing value helps you build long-lasting relationships with your audience.

2. Publishing Low-Quality Content

One of the common SEO affiliate mistakes marketers make is thinking that producing a lot of content guarantees high-ranking positions.

Content that is written by amateur writers without considering the factors that influence the content’s lead and value will not perform well on search engines. It is crucial that you consider the user’s experience when producing content and what sort of value it will provide to the end user.

Google prioritizes high-quality and original content. These are some of the elements you should consider when producing your content:

  • Can the information provided be trusted?
  • Are there any factual errors or spelling errors?
  • Does the website give reasonable value in comparison to other sites
  • Is the site a recognized and valued source in relation to the topic?
  • Is the article well-edited?
  • Does it have insightful content with good analysis and information that is interesting?
  • Are the articles too short and unimportant?
  • Could the article be published in a magazine?

 
Content is key when it comes to SEO. Content that is not well-written lowers the ranking of a website even when the right keywords are used in the articles.

3. Not Optimizing for Mobile

It is important to make your website and its contents mobile friendly. This is because at least 50% of website traffic comes from mobile devices.

If your content is not optimized for mobile devices, it is highly likely that you will miss conversions. This is because, as the years go by, the number of mobile users will increase.

When using CMS such as WordPress, selecting a theme is the most crucial step. An affiliate marketing mistake you should not make is neglecting your website’s theme. This is because it is important that the design is responsive.

Because Google implements mobile indexing, which means they index the mobile version of your website and use it to determine its ranking, it highlights the importance of having a good mobile-friendly website.

Google has a testing tool that allows you to check whether your website is mobile-friendly. Making use of this tool will give you the opportunity to fix your website by making its mobile-friendly experience excellent quality.

Here are some pointers to make your website more mobile-friendly:

  • Use large and readable fonts;
  • Test your website regularly;
  • Improve the placement of your buttons;
  • Resize your buttons where necessary;
  • Get rid of pop-ups.

 

4. Getting Cheap or Free Web Hosting

It is understandable to want to save or spend less with the intention of being savvy. However, this can sometimes hurt your business.

Opting for cheap or free web hosting is another one of the most common affiliate marketing mistakes. Inexpensive hosting will cause you to come across multiple issues that will affect your business. The most common issues you may encounter are:

  • Terrible Customer Service

    • It is a common experience that services that have many issues, hardly have the resources to provide reasonable solutions. This will have an impact on your business because some, if not all your queries will be unattended which will give a visitor a poor experience.

  • Slow Speeds

    • Many free hosting sites use old hardware which increases the frequency of slow responses. In most cases, when a page takes over two seconds to load users are most likely to move to a different one.

  • Server Downtimes

    • A website that struggles with constant server downtime is hosted by an unreliable web host. If a search engine is unable to detect a website, the glitch that occurs causes the website’s SEO to downgrade. Furthermore, most cheap, and free website hosts never guarantee a lot of up-time which is why it is better to opt for the best.

  • Instability

    • When a company offers free or cheap hosting services, they are most likely to close because of its lack of resources and inability to service every website. In a case where this happens, you will lose all your data and your website will go offline.

    It is crucial to view getting a good web hosting as an investment. Do some research and find a host that will be suitable for your business and money.

    5. Using Irrelevant Backlinks

    Websites with a higher number of backlinks are said to rank higher on Google. That is why backlinks are so important for your affiliate marketing site.

    One of the most common mistakes affiliate marketers make is having unnecessary backlinks. An irrelevant backlink would be having your website linked to a niche that has nothing to do with the content you serve. Backlinks that are relevant would be ones that are related to your niche.

    It is vital to aim for backlinks from the preeminent website or ones that have high domain authority in your niche. This is because, to Google, your website will become relevant and start ranking higher. If you are unsure of what backlinks to have or use, you can always observe your competitors to see what kind of backlinks they have.

    Alternatively, you can look for backlinks. This way you can use the obtained information to improve your website.

    There are tools available for this such as Semrush and Ahrefs. Lastly, to find the page ranks within your niche you can use Moz.

    6. Not Having a Fast Website

    The speed of a website is its first impression on a user. A website that is slow is unappealing to visitors. Any business website that has a slow website is likely to have less web traffic.

    A website’s speed determines how the audience views the business and brand web. Any website that disadvantages a user experience is ranked low by Google. This then affects the SEO rankings of the website.

    Page delays lead to a great amount of reduction in conversion. Not keeping track and continuously making sure that the speed of your website is up to par would be an affiliate marketing mistake. To get insights into your website speed you can use Google’s PageSpeed tool.

    7. Not Migrating to HTTPS

    It is vital that, as an affiliate marketer, you put the customer’s safety first. Migrating a website to HTTPS, which stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, informs the user that the website is safe for them to use.

    Unlike the usual HTTP, HTTPS has an SSL certificate which stands for Security Socket Layer. The purpose of an SSL certificate is for its technology to create an encrypted connection between a browser and a web server.

    Simply put, it ensures that the data shared between the two remains private. HTTPS is also a contributing factor toward ranking, the goal is to make the web safer for the user.

    8. Skipping or Duplicating Meta Descriptions

    A meta description is the brief informative writing about your page. Meta descriptions are found in the search results below the URL or title of your page. Although it does not directly impact your search engine results page, it does determine whether the user will click on your page or not. The idea behind it is so a user can see whether if the page answers their questions.

    Meta descriptions are typically 155 characters for desktop searches, but they are 120 characters for mobile searches.

    It is in your best interest as an affiliate marketer to not make the mistake of writing sloppy meta descriptions. This is because effectively written descriptions improve the click-through rate from your listings.

    The things to keep in mind when writing a meta description are as follows:

    • Stay within the character limit;
    • Write accurately and produce quality;
    • Be consistent and original.

     

    9. Using Undefined Canonicals

    Canonicals tell the search engine that there are similar URLs. Defining canonicals eliminates the issue of having content that is duplicated.

    If the content is duplicated, search crawlers could miss your original and unique content, which is an affiliate marketing mistake to avoid.

    In circumstances where there is a large amount of duplication, you may be at risk of being ranked extremely low. If your content does get a proper ranking, if there are no canonicals in place the incorrect URL may be determined as the correct and original one.

    10. Ignoring SEO Best Practices

    Apart from other issues that may prevent your progress, it is crucial that you do not produce low-quality SEO. Google prioritizes giving the best experience to its users. To produce useful content requires a lot of time and effort, but the results will improve your ranking.

    Here are some SEO practices that will help improve your ranking:

    • Write sturdy meta descriptions;
    • Use good and effective titles and headings;
    • Create content according to the target keyword research;
    • Make sure your design is user-friendly on both mobile and desktop.

     

    11. Prioritizing Selling Over Helping

    According to the 7 Most Common Mistakes Made in Affiliate Marketing plr ebook, it is important to avoid joining the cause of affiliate products for major promotions. The e-book also highlights the importance of releasing a thorough review of the product first.

    It is a common affiliate marketing mistake, if, as an affiliate marketer, you assume that focusing on sales alone will produce an increase in conversions or sales even if the content is poor.

    Clicks and shares only increase because of high-quality content. Showing your audience that you have sufficient knowledge and experience in using the product will make your content reliable and honest.

    Forming a relationship with your readers will encourage them to not only continuously come back to your blog, but also to share it on their social media platforms.

    12. Not Utilizing Evergreen Content

    Evergreen content is described as content that will constantly remain fresh and relevant for readers. This means that the content is expected to stay relevant way past the publication time. The idea behind this is so that the traffic continues to increase over time.

    Evergreen content are topics that are sustainable and general. Examples of evergreen content article ideas would be:

    • Finances;
    • Love and relationships;
    • Food;
    • Jobs and careers;
    • Parenting;
    • Weight loss.

     
    Of course, it is important to observe sustainable content that is relevant to your niche. If your niche is food, you could write about the 5 diverse ways to make breakfast or how to bake cakes without an oven.

    Evergreen content is valuable as a marketing strategy, but it is even more valuable when it is combined with SEO tactics such as basing evergreen articles on high-ranking keywords. To make it more sustainable it is crucial that you do the necessary research on the best keywords to use.