ch#20 How to come up with blog topics to promote affiliate links

How to come up with blog topics to promote affiliate links

 

Once you’ve decided on your niche and found some good affiliate programs, you need to decide what topics make the most sense to cover on your blog.

Luckily, there are a few tactics that make this really easy. 

 

 

Study competitors to find what’s working for them

The first and often easiest tactic is to spy on your competitors’ content. You can see what affiliate programs they’re a part of and how they promote those affiliates just by browsing their websites.

For example, coffee affiliate Homegrounds displays its top affiliate products right at the top of its page in the navigation:

And if you want to see exactly which keywords it’s ranking for on Google and how much traffic it’s getting from those keywords, you just have to plug the website into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and go to the Organic keywords report.

As you can see, this brought up a lot of keywords—104,603 to be exact. Luckily, you can filter this down to show only the most relevant keywords.

Personally, I like to target keywords with a KD (Keyword Difficulty) score of less than 30 and a volume of at least 500—guaranteeing you only see keywords with decent traffic potential that aren’t too difficult to rank for.

This whittled down the list to 3,360 keywords. That’s still a lot, but it’s much more manageable. You can filter it down further if you like, but I personally like to just start looking to see what came back from this first filter.

Peruse the list of keywords and check the URLs that rank for keywords you like to see how they’re promoting their affiliates. Add any promising keywords to your content calendar.

For example, you can write about the best “coffee roasters” and promote them using affiliate links, just like Homegrounds does.

Do some basic keyword research

Keyword research is the starting point of any good SEO strategy.

Ahrefs has a free keyword generator tool you can use to make this process super easy. 

Simply type in a broad keyword related to your niche, like “coffee” or “coffee maker,” and you’ll be shown keyword ideas:

Then, use these ideas to come up with blog topics. For example, you can write a review of the “bunn coffee maker” or a roundup showcasing the “best coffee makers.”