Course 5, Lesson 7 - Big Lesson Learned Today

bydonco6

1.3K followers

Updated 10 years ago

Watching Kyle's video on subtle linking and action items really cleared up a lot of fog for me. I know he mentioned it before, but I think I lost track somewhere along the way. I was creating lots of content posts about recipes, baking tips, reviewing some baking products, etc., and within those I would place an affiliate link for a hand mixer, or a set of baking pans. Relevant to the article, yes, but just sorta laying there, hopefully attracting a click.

What Kyle says here is that placing affiliate links on every page - or even just MOST pages - will be frowned upon by the Google Gods. It's better to create some clean content posts, but always have some sort of Call to Action within those posts. This might be a link to another post in your site that actually DOES have affiliate links. In my case, I could be talking about how I use a hand mixer to mix natural food colors into my icing for cakes - a hand mixer just works better than the large, heavy-duty Kitchenaid stand mixer I usually use. While I'm talking about that, I could slip a subtle link into the paragraph, like "Why a hand mixer? Because of this." Or, conversely, I could put a text callout just below the paragraph that says,

==>You'll find a small hand mixer is super-handy to have in baking. See my review here.<==

And the whole thing could be a link to another post where I review a hand mixer. And the fact is, I really believe you need a hand mixer! It's not something I'm just making up to make money. So it's an easy sell for me.

I learn something new at least twice a day here. I make notes in my notepad on my desk and check them off as I clean them up. Today I have "Review structure of site. Beef up product review pages with affiliate links. Make sure content posts have relevant action items built in that refer to product reviews." So you know what I'll be working on today.