Keyword Marketing Best Practices for Affiliates - 10 Tips for Keyword Selection and Optimization

Best practices have always been a taboo word in the affiliate marketing industry. That's because a large percentage, perhaps the majority, of affiliates use Black and Gray Hat SEO techniques to drive traffic to their offers.

Practicing good SEO habits usually requires more work but will pay dividends in the long haul. Trying to break bad habits or convert from Black Hat affiliate practices is even harder. It's best to start an affiliate promotion off correctly by complying with search engine guidelines.

Complying with the keyword guidelines of Google, Yahoo, and Live search engines can help your affiliate promotions:

• Rank higher for your targeted keywords
• Drive more lifetime traffic and subsequent commissions
• Avoid getting banned from search engine indexes
• Enjoy long term success

Properly optimizing your page with keywords will help you stay in the good graces of search engines. Implementing "White Hat" SEO techniques will drive short and long term traffic to your affiliate offers. Below are 5 tips to help you keyword optimize your affiliate marketing content, pages, or articles.

1. Avoid hidden keywords in text or links. Don’t use the same color text on the same color background, place text behind an image, hide text with CSS, or set the font size to 0.
2. Don't load pages with irrelevant keywords
3. Don’t stuff pages with an unnaturally large number of keywords
4. Avoid stuffing your HTML (meta) tags and attributes with irrelevant and repeated keywords
5. Avoid high keyword densities that are over 9%

Choosing or selecting the proper keywords is critical for a successful affiliate marketing campaign. Targeting the most profitable and effective keywords will help you rank high in search engine results. Ranking high in search engines will drive traffic to your offer and grow your affiliate commissions.

Below are 5 tips to help you select the “best” keywords for your affiliate marketing campaign.

6. Choose keywords with high KEI or low R/S scores
7. Choose keywords with at least 3 or more words in them
8. Select long-tail keywords with a lower number of search queries
9. Avoid keywords with a higher number of search results
10. Use keywords that your target audience would use to find your offer