Article Marketing Strategy: If You’re Doing Affiliate Marketing, Do You Need A Real Website?

I get some of the best questions from readers–here was one that came from an affiliate marketer:

I’m doing affiliate marketing with my articles, and I am using my own URL (a domain name that I bought) that is redirected to the merchant’s site. I am not noticing my URL in the search engines. Is it because my URL is redirecting to the merchant’s website? Do I really need a website with a landing page and content?

Answer:

Great question. So, currently at your URL there is not really a website–it just redirects to the merchant’s site. Yes, that would make it so that Google would not include it in the rankings. There is no website at the location of your domain name (it simply redirects somewhere else), so it’s not going to show up in the listings – i.e. there’s no content for Google and others to attribute to this website.

The Solution:

The far better approach would be to develop proper content on this site. You do need a website so that Google and the other search engines will have something to evaluate and include in their rankings.

Consider including content like this on your affiliate website:

• A review of the affiliate product you’re marketing.
• Other related content, for example you could rework the articles that you’re submitting for your article marketing campaign and then publish them on your site. I would not recommend that you publish your article marketing articles verbatim on your own site. It is best if the content on your own site is unique.
• At your website, provide an opportunity to sign up for an email list where you provide further content on the topic of this product that you’re marketing. You can forward your affiliate link via your messages to the email list. So, if your product has to do with green tea, then you would send information about various aspects of green tea, and then occasionally recommend the product you’re affiliate marketing.

You see, there is a strategy here. It is not just including an affiliate link in your resource box or using a URL that redirects to the merchant’s site. It is even more than having a sales page for the product. There is a bit more work involved with this approach, but it is much more effective.

This current article marketing strategy you’re using is not going to achieve very much, because you have no way to follow up with the people that click the link in your resource box, and you are not going to get traffic from the search engines (because you don’t really have a website yet).

Article marketing’s biggest benefit is improved search engine ranking for your website, which results in more traffic from Google, etc. If you don’t capitalize on that, then you’re just depending on people getting to the merchant site directly from the articles, which has much less traffic potential.

So, you do need a real website. The website should contain content that is related to the topic of your affiliate product. This should be quality content, and it ’s a good idea to keep the content on your website unique and frequently updated.

Start developing a newsletter list, and of course that means that you need to put together a newsletter that goes out regularly. You will be developing a relationship with your list subscribers and providing genuinely helpful information to them. Then when you make recommendations, your readers will be more inclined to listen to you.

Here is a resource that may be helpful:

6 Tips For Getting More Newsletter Sign-Ups From Your Articles

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