Why does an affiliate marketer need SEO training?

Affiliate marketing is not only social media advertising, push or pop-ups. You can literally row traffic with a shovel if you carry out SEO optimization of the resource that you are promoting. This method is not fast, but attracting leads will be almost free of charge. In our article, we talk about why it is worth going through an in-depth study of SEO mechanisms.

What is SEO

SEO optimization is a series of procedures aimed at improving the position of a website in search results. The goal of SEO is to rank as high as possible in the search results. However, there are many aspects in this work.

In addition, search engines take into account the preferences of users. If you often visit some sites, then, upon a certain request, the mechanisms will show them higher in the position. Also, the results may be different for a computer and a smartphone. And inside the mechanisms of search robots, which, by the way, no one knows for sure, everything changes quite quickly. A site from the top 10 results in a day can fall by a couple of dozen positions.

The task of an SEO specialist is to make sure that your site is displayed in the right geography, at the right time and on the right devices.

How SEO Works

Generating traffic with SEO is not easy. Optimization is best done before creating a site. At least think about the domain and readable page addresses.

Search engines look primarily at original content. If you took it from another resource, the search engines will not give you a high ranking in the search results. In addition, algorithms pay attention to the readability and usefulness of the text. Those algorithms seem to try on the role of a person and evaluate whether it is easy  to read these materials. This behavior of search engines is a relatively new, because 8 years ago it was possible to generate traffic by simply pushing keywords into the text in large quantities. Nowadays, the page should correspond to the user’s request as much as possible.

For SEO optimization, it is useful to have links to the desired site from other resources. Previously, this problem was solved by the usual purchase of links on aggregator sites. They were nothing but a collection of mentions of thousands of different resources.

Today the search engines have become smarter and require real references – for example, articles from local media.

In addition, SEO-optimization involves a lot of technical difficulties. It is necessary to register meta tags for each page, check the resource for broken links, speed up the site loading time, and do internal linking. All this is a global and complex work.

Why You Should Get SEO Training

SEO optimization is not something that can be learned from YouTube articles and guides. Now this is not even a single set of knowledge that will always come in handy regardless of time. Rather, the specialist receives some reference points from which to build on and take into account the constant changes in search engines. SEO texts and videos become outdated within a year of their release.

Another argument in favor of SEO training is saving on relevant specialists. If you yourself have such skills, you will not have to spend money on an SEO specialist. The average SEO specialist in the US earns about $62,500 a year – you will save about this amount.

A well-designed SEO site will generate traffic for years. And this is a profitable investment. You undergo training once in order to do everything yourself and correctly. Banners, push notifications, social networks – all this will cost an order of magnitude more expensive.

Best SEO Courses

Semrush Academy

The creator of one of the most useful search engine optimization tools has launched his own SEO school. Semrush has several courses: basic SEO, keyword research, content marketing, and more. Moreover, all training at Semrush Academy is completely free.

HubSpot Academy

This is a small overview course on SEO, consisting of several video tutorials. It gives the most basic understanding of search engine optimization and is suitable for beginners – experienced specialists already know all this. The course is also free.

Moz SEO Essentials

It is a quite a large and detailed course. There is a total of 8 hours of useful content. Knowledge is enough to start doing SEO on your own. The course is paid – to get a certificate, you have to pay $595. However, this certificate is highly valued among Western SEOs.

Directive Institute

If we take the Directive Institute, SEO is only part of the course. But  there are 10 modules with videos that will tell you how to learn search engine optimization from scratch. From SEO audit to link building, it has everything you need. The remaining four subsections of the course will also be useful. They are devoted to PPC, CRO and analytics. All this for $99.

Google Digital Garage

This course is not exactly about SEO, but also extremely useful for an affiliate marketer. This is the Fundamentals of Digital Marketing course with 26 modules and 40 hours of useful content. The course is designed for beginners and covers topics such as SEO promotion, contextual advertising, web design, analytics and more. All this is free.

For specialists with experience, such a course will not be very useful – it is better to choose something more narrowly focused.

Yoast Academy

Yoast is the most popular SEO plugin for WordPress. They also have their own SEO academy containing as many as nine different courses, from SEO copywriting and working with keywords to working on search engine optimization in international markets. Each course has 8-16 hours of video lessons. Yoast Academy opens them with a 1-year subscription for $299 each, but it’s more profitable to buy everything at once for $499 for all 9 courses.

Detailed SEO Blueprint

This is one of the largest and most extensive SEO courses in principle. It is constantly updated with each new change in search engines, additional sections are added to the content. Now the Detailed SEO Blueprint contains 175 videos and 27 hours of content. Moreover, comments are open for each video so you can ask a question right there if something is not clear. This course costs $597.

eMarketing Institute

Among other things, the eMarketing Institute, one of the most popular online learning sites, has its own course on SEO. This course was created in the format of a book with 156 pages, which describes in detail the work with keywords, buying links and much more. The course is completely free and even gives a certificate. To get it, you need to pass a test of 50 questions. It is enough to correctly answer at least 25 of them.

Coursera

Coursera has also launched its online course in partnership with the University of California, in Davis. The training has a large-scale approach. The time for completing the course is expected to be around 5 months. The course covers all the main aspects of SEO promotion and requires a certain amount of business experience. The training itself is free, but to get a certificate, you will have to buy a subscription for $49 per month.