How Important are Keywords to the Affiliate Marketer?

Keywords are an important tool for any Internet marketer and that includes those who do affiliate marketing. While it’s tempting for some marketers to place too much emphasis on keywords and not enough emphasis on creating quality content, not realizing the value of keywords is just as dangerous.

Keyword Searches

Beginning affiliate marketers can use free keyword search tools to help them ascertain what people are searching for but most successful affiliate marketers recommend one of the more sophisticated keyword search subscriptions once you can afford it. While it’s not necessary to spend money on keyword subscription lists to get started in affiliate marketing, it might be something you want to consider after you get your feet wet and have come up with a budget for related business expenses. After all, if your keyword subscription results in more traffic to your website, it could mean more revenue for you, especially if that traffic results in paying customers.

Keywords in Content

Once you have nailed down your keywords, then you must tackle the strategic placement of them in your content. This is a critical step in the affiliate marketing process that must be handled with a great deal of care. You have no doubt seen essentially useless websites that are little more than keyword stuffed, built not for customers, but for the search engines. Don’t fall prey to this form of affiliate marketing as it will likely fall apart in the long run and it won’t even serve you well in the short term.

Internet and affiliate marketers have different ideas of what the appropriate keyword density is; that is, the number of times a keyword appears for every 100 words of written content. Some think a keyword density of 1% is best and others believe that a keyword density of 2% or 3% is even better. You will need to decide the keyword density that is best for your content. The most important thing is to fill that content with relevant information that your customers and potential customers will find useful. Keyword stuffed content that has no useful information to offer may initially drive traffic to your website but if that traffic, that is potential customers, don’t hang around long enough to make a purchase, then you’ve wasted your time and efforts. Furthermore, search engines won’t rank your site very high, at least not for very long with content that is obviously keyword stuffed.