What are we trying to accomplish affiliating ? If we can’t answer that question then we will never be successful.

Affiliating is about having control over our visitors and their actions to accomplish a goal. How do we gain control over our visitors ? The list below covers this process. I will explain every point, including “keyword equity”.

1/ Drive targeted traffic using keywords that have high equity
2/ Use this narrow keyword range to understand visitor intent
3/ Help visitors accomplish an action based on this information

[point 1] When I started in this field, my goal was to increase traffic by any means. When you rank for tons of random long tails it’s hard to understand visitor intent. Ranking for stuff like “durrrr” gives you absolutely no control over your visitors.

[point 2] Focusing on a narrower keyword range like “play at easy poker sites” allows you to define visitor intent. Now “how to play pocket aces” also defines visitor intent very well. But two sites focused on only one of these will have widely varying results.

[Keyword Equity] This is were keyword equity comes in. Some keywords are worth a lot more than others. I remember someone  creating a site focused on starting hands in poker. He had a domain that included “hands of poker” and was excited to rank for tons of related long tails. But his results were disappointing. Although he could easily understand visitor intent, his keyword equity was low. Examples of long tails with very high equity would be “full tilt poker real money”.

[point 3] At point 3 you understand why your visitors came to your site. You carefully selected a narrow range of keywords with high equity. The result is that the actions they are trying to accomplish will be profitable. They may have typed in “rakeback percentages comparison”. Your next step will be to connect the dots for them, basically write content to convert them from a visitor to a customer. The work you did at points 1 and 2 will help you convert a lot better.

People often say to beginners to pick a niche like Omaha high lo and focus all their efforts on it because there is less competition. I think this is bad advice. The results speak for themselves, 90 % of affiliates never make it.

Basically these people are all excited about the prospect of affiliating. They write tons of content on Omaha and drive traffic. But then they give up because “Omaha high lo strategy” has very low keyword equity.

For a beginner I would recommend this: focus on something like ” poker sites that accept Walgreen debit cards”. If you do this, you automatically pass steps 1 and 2 and NONE of your efforts will be wasted. You won’t need to write strategy stuff that will never convert and be embarrassed by your results.

Sebastian