Building links for household brands is tough, building links for affiliate websites is even tougher. In this guide I’ve asked two of the leading affiliate and SEO experts how they approach link acquisition for affiliate websites. I’ve also added my answers too.
1. Day one of link building for a brand new affiliate site. What do you do?
Aaron Wall, SEO Book
I try to throw up a blog and add a few posts that make it look informational, such that it is easier for me to get links from directories like the Yahoo! Directory and Business.com. I think submit the site to those 2 and maybe a couple other directories.
Marcus Tandler, Mediadonis
Scanning the Top200 sites for my keywords
- Identify the common backlinks of those sites
- Finding the Hubs & Authorities in my niche
- Identify the key bloggers / forums / directories in my niche
Patrick Altoft
My first step would be to ensure the site doesn’t look like a typical affiliate site, this increases the success rate and ROI of any link building tasks you do in the future.
Day 1 is to look at all the sites that are ranking and figure out where they get their links from and why. Check which blogs are linking regularly to your competitors and subscribe to their feeds. Basically just get to know the link patterns in the industry.
2. Can you summarise your strategy for the first 2 months link building?
Aaron Wall, SEO Book
If I have any nepotistic linking opportunities I try to add those. Sometimes I actually throw up a site and let it sit for like 6 months before promoting it seriously though…just get it a few links and let it age for a while. That way while I am actively working on the site I am likely to see some results rather than the frustrations of grinding it out for minimal returns off the start. It makes it easier to put effort into promoting a site when you know the site will be making a hundred or a couple hundred a day by the time you start monetizing and serious link building.
Marcus Tandler, Mediadonis
Basically go after all of the identified links 
I’ll also be pretty active my niche, contribute to the community, build up a good social profile - since it’s a longterm approach, rather then a quick-win situation, it helps getting to know the community slowly, rather then be to pushy (and therefore spammy).
Patrick Altoft
During this time I would be working to create a popular blog, submitting to perhaps the top 5 general directories and ten of the best niche directories and getting as many of the same links as my competitors as possible provided they are half decent.
3. How would you approach link building for an established site where the traffic seems to have plateaued?
Aaron Wall, SEO Book
I would use any nepostic linking opportunities I could - interview others I know, ask my audience to link to me, etc. The other big piece is to look for linkbait ideas and software you can give away to get the link juice and reach needed to take the site to the next level.
If the site already has tons of link equity but few pages it might be a better strategy to work on adding content and making sure the on page SEO is done well then it would be to keep working on links…the return is best if links and content are built together, rather than relying on either one of them too heavily.
Marcus Tandler, Mediadonis
Identify good traffic keywords (and longtail keyword kombinations), I´m ranking on pretty ok, but not great (maybe like a page 2 or 3), and focus on those. Test a couple of keywords and keyword-combinations by exact-matching them in AdWords, and see how much traffic they´re getting, and then include those in my linkbuilding strategy.
Patrick Altoft
See my posts on Googles Glass Ceiling and Breaking Through Traffic Barriers
4. How successful do you find linkbait to be for affiliate websites?
Aaron Wall, SEO Book
It is huge. If you and 1,000 other people are selling the exact same crap, it can be hard to differentiate and hard to build a sustained competitive advantage (especially if you come to the market later than competing sites). Linkbait creates editorial links that competitors can not duplicate…them creating a similar piece of content and marketing it to the same people who liked your content might not generate any links for the competitor since the people already linked at your site.
Another big plus with linkbait is that it creates an organic traffic stream that is not entirely driven by search…this offers you another promotional avenue for future linkbait/content ideas.
Marcus Tandler, Mediadonis
I really don´t like the term “linkbait” anymore - that term has really gotten a negative connotation in the last couple of month. Just create compelling content, and be active in your community / niche - don´t worry that much about baiting!
Patrick Altoft
Affiliate sites don’t have to worry about branding so you can take huge risks with your linkbait. It’s also a lot less worrying when you are just linkbaiting for yourself rather than a client who might have paid a lot of money for the service.
Any site can get good results from linkbait as long as you don’t rely too much on social media sites such as Digg - go directly to the people you want links from.
What are your top link building strategies?
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Link Building Strategies For Affiliates
