Although I have covered this topic in previous posts, there is always more to say — that’s the nature of the beast. It’s inexhaustible.
Let me go over this issue by dividing it into form and content. However, let me tell you that this division is a matter of convenience — form and content at some point become indistinguishable.
Form
Right off the bat, let me say that put your reader first over merely ranking for keywords, although the latter is also important. In other words, write with the reader or audience in mind, above all else. What is generally called adding value comes from this quality of the writer — how well they serve their community; how well they address concerns; how well they can anticipate anxieties.
Write content for affiliate marketing thinking about the affiliate marketing community — especially the beginners. Everyone starts somewhere.
Don’t Just Write, Feel Through Your Words.
Exude empathy through the gestures of writing — rhetorical structures such as, “I understand what it is . . . ” Those gestures will, however, ring hollow with what you say next. In other words, be sincere in your expressed intentions when you use such rhetorical structures. Don’t just use those gestures, feel empathy — imagine, actively, what it might be for someone starting out. How it would be if it were you? Empathy like creativity cannot be taught. However, I believe writing is as a remarkable process which allows us to enter many states of mind. Simply exploring an emotion can lead to entering into it. One exercise I could recommend is starting with a sentence such as “If I were in this situation, I’d . . . ” This could be the overarching framing of your statements throughout your content. Let me clarify, however, that I am not suggesting that the phrase accompany every statement but is broadly implied — that’s what overarching means. Also, make sure to delete that phrase in your final edit — it is meant for you as the writer as a guideline — it’s not for your reader.
Think of a piece of writing that resonated with you. It may be the voice of the writer. Empathy is feeling with not just for somebody, as in sympathy.
Another way of developing empathy in your voice is to take something you found valuable as advice but wished it could have been more empathetic and then rewrite it. This is an exercise not only in editing but also teaching yourself to write effectively — all without having to take an expensive course. How about that?
Understanding Writing
Ultimately writing is a creative act — an art. There are no formulas for producing it, except general principles. Writing instruction is also generic — you have to think what best suits your purposes in a specific situation and execute accordingly. Try to develop a general idea — that’s your broad horizon — and then keep moving in that direction. In the process, you might find that your ideas change, while others suggest themselves.
Do outlines help? Only to a certain degree. (One of my students was brilliant in outlining but came back the next day with another outline — an outline of an outline). To produce a piece of writing, you need to actually write — engage in the process — and let the process of writing lead you to discovery and ultimately your destination. Actually, even what the destination is — what you really want to say — is, I believe, subject to the writing process. And, that brings me to say that by all means make an outline, but rather than holding yourself to it rigidly, be prepared to be spontaneous. The outline emerges with the writing.
Occupational Hazards
Sometimes when we write, we can get writer’s block. Too many ideas in a stampede for the gate — as I like to describe it.
One way of getting around it might be to follow the rhythm of your typing or writing. The fingers have a mind of their own, believe me. Rather than tying to find a solution in a writing manual (there are millions) start writing — an activity you might enjoy in itself. At least writing down our thoughts embodies them, thus moving them from the abstract to the concrete. It is easier to deal with our ideas in writing than just in our head. This is a simple exercise that you can extend to other areas of your life, too. Keep a journal.
Another related exercise is: automatic writing. (I have actually tried this with students in my workshops). Take a blank A4 sheet and fill it with your thoughts — as they come, on anything that’s going through your mind. Don’t stop until the sheet is full.
Writerly Etiquettes
Do you like a braggart — that person at the party who is constantly reminding everyone how superior they are than the rest of the herd? What about someone who is condescending? Or, arch? Would you be crazy about spending the evening with someone who overwhelms you with information? Equally, how would you feel about someone who is aloof? Or, someone who is over friendly, at the other end of the spectrum?
Somewhere in the middle of too distant and too close lies the sweet spot — balanced sociability. Aim for that.
The first person singular, “I” is a real treasure. Feel free to use it . . . “I feel that I need to point out that . . . .” I feel that it works in most situations and has a generous range from the most formal to the informal. How about, “Tell ya what? . . .”? Nah, I’d keep that for the pub. Let’s try this one: “I should be amiss, sir/madam if I were to suggest that . . .” Too R2-D2-ish, don’t you think?
Deliver information, deliver value in a neutral manner — that’s the standard advice I’d give you.
Techniques
Writing requires what is called a persona — an assumed identity, or a voice that the writer uses to engage with their audience. When someone says that, “Hmm her writing has personality” what they mean, I believe, is that someone’s writing has a distinct persona — that the author has developed in and through their writing. And, this persona may or may not actually coincide with their actual personality — or, another way of putting it might be, persona and personality have vary degrees of convergence. These words are used interchangeably, in a loose way these days.
Strictly speaking, however, I reserve persona for writing and personality for the person themselves.
For affiliate marketing content the persona that might suit you the best might be the voice of someone who wants to be informative about a chosen topic, nothing more. How much of your ow personality you want to inject into it is entirely up to it. Bear in the mind this guiding question: What does my audience want?
As in real life, so in writing — people like to listen to an interesting voice — a voice which rises and falls as opposed to a voice which remains static and therefore boring. A voice that rises and falls with the content is what we cll a cadenced voice.
Explore different voices — serious, semi-serious, relaxed, professional, informing, interpretive. Explore different scenarios — be creative. Be diligent. But don’t overthink it either. Enjoy yourself.
Content
Generating Topics
What am I going to write about . . . next? That question is on every affiliate marketers mind. Luckily you’re in a niche that is in perpetual growth. There’s a reason for that. As products and services keep emerging everyday — almost every minute — somewhere in the world, there will be topics to write about.
If you have a particular interest, a passion, say, travel, then it is even easier. If you have chosen an evergreen niche, then even better.
Understanding Keywords
Apart from the technical issues of writing that I dealt with above, the main issue in content creation is keywords. These can be single words (healthy) or longer formations, phrases (healthy eating). Their function is to enable people to search for information online. Someone searching for information on, say, healthy eating, will type those words in their browser to find the relevant information. The interesting part is that one word can proliferate into many — healthy can lead to healthy eating; it could also lead to healthy cooking.
Keywords come with other associations — search intent, for example. Through the keyword we can develop an understanding of the person and what their inclinations are — which, in turn, for us means which niche they fit into — and also, more importantly, which sub-niches they also fall into. This means more topic for you. And since keywords travel with their won retinue of keyword clusters, you will be in the business for a long time as far as topics are concerned. Chill.
Keyword Tools And The Keyword Tools Industry
You can find keywords simply by typing in your browser and recording the results on a spread sheet (Google Sheets; Exel). You’re probably wondering how much of your life will go into that project alone. Will I have the energy to write after that?
The pioneers hacked a path through the wilderness checking keyword manually and recording it in a spread sheet. Adversity gives rise to innovation. Affiliate marketers developed their own tools. in turn, an entire industry grew up around it and companies such as Semrush and Ahrefs now specialise in it. Individual affiliate marketers developed their own proprietary search tools — Jaaxy for instance owned by Wealthy Affiliate — which come integrated with their programs and is available to their own subscribers and possibly to others independently. Specialised companies such aa the two mentioned, on the other hand, only offer just keyword search tools. Both types of business typify what is called SaaS — software as a service. They own the software and allow you access to it for a subscription. It’s their ball park but the game is ours.
So, you can hope to go into affiliate marketing without having to buy or your own software which is indispensable in this enterprise. The providers do their own maintenance and so you don’t need to every worry about the software breaking down which would otherwise paralyse you. True, that the providers may have some downtime for maintenance. But what is that minor inconvenience compared to having to do all that on your own.
Apart from that negligible downside, its all upside with providers — primarily, because they make money from your success; they want you to succeed. They have the experts who can answer your questions and provide solutions to the problems you may encounter. Every keyword tool user’s paramount question, for example, is: how can I get more conversions? This comes down to curated audience — an audience which is known to have converted for the same keywords you want to use. How cool is that?
Content writing in affiliate marketing has never been easier.
Creating Content With Keywords
First generate a keyword list which includes single words but also phrases which may be suggested by the tool, as most are AI-driven these days. Get as many as you can which have high ranking. Jaaxy provides key metrics in columns headed as: average search volumes; monthly traffic; keyword quality indictor (KQI). KQI is also colour coded — a green “Great” is the highest endorsement. These keywords can also be saved within the platform for export as CSV file (spread sheet).
After collecting a decent amount of keywords, choose the highest ranking ones. Set some aside for topics (titles; sub titles), the rest as content. Then the write content around these keywords.
Let’s try an example. Imagine you’re in the beauty niche. Say, you found “natural beauty products,” as a high ranking phrase. Think how else it can be used — by, perhaps, shortening to “natural beauty.” And after checking you find this is “Great” in Jaaxy. Now make “natural beauty” the title and “natural beauty products the sub heading. Equally, it could be the other way around depending on your own priorities — are you promoting natural beauty or natural beauty products? Either way, since both are related, they can be useful: beauty and beauty products go naturally together. Natural beauty — the concept — can easily lead to the question of beauty products, a niche within a niche. Next, add “organic”, “bath”, “fragrance”, “skincare,” and see what results you get.
Wait, don’t stop there. Think of some commonsensical statements you can formulate using the rest of the keywords that fit the intent of your proposed content: “Natural beauty requires natural skincare.” Could we say that? Yes?
Now one for the blokes, who might be into automobiles and automobile care. Same method. Keep trucking. “Red truck owners” comes to mind immediately as a niche within a niche within a niche . . . You get the picture.
This is how to write good content in affiliate marketing.
The strategy is simple: find seed words; build keyword list form it; write content for affiliate marketing by forming sentences (I prefer statements) around them that are logically connected to your niche and topic — this is called semantic relevance, which is also another metric search engines such as Google use to rank keywords.
In this regard, overdoing keyword embedding is easy and you need to guard against. The best advice I have received about it is that a “density of 1-2 % is ideal”( Carson ), but anything over that is likely to lead your content to be consigned by the search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo) to the spam basket.
A Final Word
Quality content is a complex product, a synergy of various elements working together in a cohesive manner. Think of these as the various systems of a high-performance engine working together to produce a smooth ride.
This is the core of your business — take it seriously; devote specific time to it; be consistent.
Catch you in the next post. Cheers.