As affiliates trying to make a living, it’s hard to not put your time and energy into those products and services that stand to convert the best and make the most money. This is especially true when we’re talking about products and services that do not necessarily meet your own standards, whether environmental standards or just straight up morals.
To PPC or to Search?
In today’s world of online affiliate marketing, both (Pay Per Click) PPC and natural search, aka SEO, are two effective ways of generating traffic to your website. And not just any traffic – targeted traffic. Getting people to visit your site is one thing. Turning that traffic into money generating clicks is another matter. While one may work better than the other, depending on each affiliate’s budget and skillsets, the best operandi modi is to master both.
Of course, there is no rule that says you can only do one or the other. Above all else, just be sure that you do it right. Designing a strategic game plan, whether it’s a PPC campaign or SEO campaign, may require more time put into the project, however, said time will pay for itself (and then some) if it is thoughtfully planned from the ground up.
One of the advantages of good SEO is that once desired rankings are achieved, ROI drastically rises. While SEO should be a steady practice, most of the hard work is in the beginning. PPC, on the other hand, comes with a higher risk, and will always cost something for every click. This is why it’s utterly important to choose your bidding terms carefully and give your campaign daily spending cutoffs.
Either way you look at it, both types of campaigns take time and money. If you have more time than money, it is probably within your best interests to put more energy into SEO. There is plenty of free information and tutorials floating across the Web. Do your research and take the time to study up. If you have a large operating budget and currently are lacking in SEO, taking on a PPC campaign is certainly a viable outlet to generate revenue.
For the eco affiliate, there are many niche keywords that can be ranked for with just a little bit of SEO – namely some good content and couple of good links. In other words, it doesn’t make sense using PPC bidding to go after keywords with just a few hundred search cues per month. Even the most basic SEO can get ranking for non-competitive, niche terms in just a couple of months. However, the more competitive terms with good conversion rates require a bit more SEO and a bit more patience. This is where a good PPC campaign can achieve positive results.
With an increasing number of marketers doing SEO, and the knowledge of which to do so being more readily accessible (nothing at all like it was in the late nineties), PPC may very well be the future of affiliate marketing. It certainly isn’t going anywhere, and certainly has the potential of giving the little guy more of a leg up.
In summary, putting all your stock into either PPC or SEO is death to the affiliate marketer. Start learning both now, and whether or not you are dependent on one more than another at any given time, be sure your overall game plan includes both PPC and SEO in the equation.
