Keyword Research for Affiliate Marketing Sites [3.2]
Hey, it's Sam Oh and in this lesson, I'm going
to show you how to do keyword research for your affiliate marketing site. Now, keyword research is the first step in
our flowchart in our journey to a consistent income through an affiliate site. And it's basically going to set the foundation
for the topics you'll create content on. So simply put, keyword research is
the process of finding search queries people use when looking for products,
services, or general information. Now, because we won't be selling products or
services directly to consumers with an affiliate site, we ideally want to find topics where
it's easy to organically recommend products. But before we get into the techniques to
find topics, it's important we talk about one foundational thing that's
massively important in SEO. And that's search intent. Search intent tells us about
the purpose of a searcher's query. And by understanding the intent of a query,
you'll be able to determine whether you can easily recommend products or not.
For example if someone searches for
"best protein powder," chances are, they're in the market to purchase a product
but they want to weigh out the pros and cons, look at different brands, and assess
variables like price, quality, and so on. As a result, you actually need
to recommend products. And the people who read this article may
very well click affiliate links to the products and make a purchase. Whereas a topic like, "what is protein
powder," is more informational in nature. Based on the keyword alone, we don't
know whether the searcher is writing a research paper, exploring the world
of supplements, or wants to know which type of protein powder to buy. Simply put, this topic probably wouldn't
generate many clicks to protein powders because the majority of people
aren't in the market to buy any.
So adding product recommendations
would probably be unnatural. Now, in general, there are four types of so-called
affiliate keywords we'll want to go after. And these are: general comparisons; branded
comparisons; product reviews; and T&A keywords. Now, before we get into how you
can find these types of keywords, I'm going to choose a niche and
do keyword research with you. So to set some context, I'm choosing
baby products as my main niche. And as I taught in the previous lesson,
I'm going to choose a sub-niche to start. Let's go with car seats. Alright, so let's talk about the four
different types of affiliate keywords, how they fit into an affiliate marketing site,
and how you can find them for your site. The first type of keywords
are general comparisons. These are your typical "best
[product name]" keywords. For example, "best car seats," "best
booster seats," "best strollers," etc.
It's super easy to recommend products in posts
targeting these keywords because searchers are looking for product comparisons. After all, the keyword, "best" implies
that a comparison needs to be made. On top of that, people searching for these "best
product name" keywords are likely in the market to purchase something in the near future. They just don't know which product. So to find these keywords, you'll
need a keyword research tool.
And I'll be using Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer. Alternatively, you can follow along with this
tutorial using Ahrefs' free keyword generator. To get started, I'll search for a few broad queries
related to my sub-niche like "car seat," "car seats," "booster seat," and "booster seats." Let's run the search. Next, I'll head on over to the Matching
terms report to generate keyword ideas. Now, since we're looking for general
comparison keywords, I'll click the "include" filter and type in "best." Apply the filter and you'll see over 18,000
keyword ideas that include at least one of our seeds and the word "best." Now, since there's probably too many keywords
to filter through manually, let's narrow this list down to just low-competition
topics to get started.
And to do that, we'll set a maximum keyword
difficulty filter to something low like 20. And there are some great topics
here that are worth considering like "best rotating car seat" and "best
car seats" for various different ages. So from here, you can jot down some keyword
ideas that interest you or if you have an Ahrefs' account, you can actually add these
to a keyword list which is what I'll do. Now, if you don't have an Ahrefs account, you can
still use our free keyword generator and search for something like "best product name." You'll have limited data, but it should be good
enough to set you off on the right track. Now, a quick but important sidenote: you
shouldn't just go after keywords with low Keyword Difficulty scores. Higher competition often indicates
that there's more popularity and/or commerciality to a topic. For example, the query, "best car seat"
is significantly more competitive than the ones we were looking at. And according to Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer,
the top-ranking page for this query, gets around 38,000 monthly organic
visits from the US alone.
So these types of keywords are worth adding
to your keyword list too to tackle at a later time when your site is a bit more established. Alright, the next type of keywords
are branded comparisons. These are keywords where a searcher
wants to compare the differences between two branded products. For example, that might be
"chicco car seat vs graco". These types of keywords usually have lower
search demand, but they typically convert better than general comparison keywords because
the searcher has likely narrowed down their purchasing decision to a few key products. The easiest way to find these keywords
is to create a list of brands or products in the same category. So assuming I wanted to find branded car seat
comparison keywords, I could search for a bunch of car seat brands and run the search.
Next, I'll go to the matching terms report. And again, I'll go to the Include search box,
and this time, I'll type in "vs" and I'll also add the phrase "car seat" since these companies
make all sorts of baby products. Apply the filter and we now have a list
of keywords that would work perfectly for branded comparison blog posts. Now, if we do the same thing but instead of brands as our seeds we use a list of specific car seat models, you'll find even more great
branded comparison keywords to add to your list. Now, if you don't have an Ahrefs account,
you can do something similar with our free Keyword generator tool. Just type in something like "product
name vs" – and run the search. Jot down any keywords that are of interest to
you, then rinse and repeat for the next brand. Alright, the next type of keywords
are detailed product reviews. These queries will typically follow
the format "product name" review. And people who search for queries like this
are likely very close to making a purchase.
They've researched multiple products,
something caught their attention about a specific model, and now they
want a more in-depth review on it. Now, just like the branded comparison keywords,
search volumes will be lackluster to say the least. So if you're going to buy these products and
actually review them, choosing products that people are actually searching
for may be a smart way to do it. A simple way to find brands and models worth
reviewing is to go to a popular ecommerce site and look through the different categories
and brand names in their navigation. So right now, I'm on buybuybaby.com and
I'm looking at their "shop all car seats" page. Now, if I click on the dropdown for Brand,
you'll see a list of brand names that you can jot down.
So I've already gone ahead and done
that and saved a list to my clipboard. So I'll paste a bunch of these into
Keywords Explorer and run the search. And let's head over to
the Matching terms report. Again, we'll hit the Include filter but this
time, we'll search for the word "review" and add an asterisk at the end,
which will act as a wildcard. And just like that we know exactly which
brands we'd want to review, and some specific models which we now have keyword metrics for. So take some time to add more keywords
to your keyword list and when you're ready, we'll move on to the last type of
keyword which are T&A keywords, which stands for "Trust and Authority." Now, in order to rank your pages, you
need to have some kind of page-level and website authority.
Meaning, you need backlinks. But since all of the keyword types we've
discussed so far are commercial in nature, it'll be tougher to get links to these pages. I mean, would you rather link to
a post about 10 random car seats or one about car seat safety? Probably the latter, right, seeing as it's
non-commercial and provides more objective value for your audience. Now, while these keywords may not
directly contribute to your revenue, it'll still serve two important purposes. #1. You'll build trust with your audience
since you're creating helpful content. And #2. You'll build authority through
links – hence, "trust and authority." So to find these keywords, let's search for a
few seeds that are related to car seats like "car seat," "car seats," and "booster seat." Next, I'll go to the Matching terms report
and then I'll hit the Questions tab since we're looking for informational topics. Let's set a Keyword Difficulty filter to
a max value of 20 and we now have a list of relatively easy-to-rank-for keywords.
So I'll add some to my list until
I'm satisfied and you should too. Now, if you don't have an Ahrefs account,
you can use our free Keyword generator. Just search for a seed keyword
and then hit the Questions tab. Then you can rinse and repeat
to build out your keyword list. Alright, so by now, you should have
a nice list of keywords from each of of the four affiliate keyword categories:
general comparisons, branded comparisons, product reviews, and T&A keywords.
But all we have at this point is
a brainstormed list of topics. There's no real order or structure to
the content which is important in SEO as it helps to build out that huge web of
related content that I showed you earlier. So in the next lesson, we'll take your list of
topics and actually plan out specific content pieces we'll need to create and start building
out what SEOs often call "topical authority." I'll see you in the next tutorial..
