One of the best ways to find long-term success with affiliate marketing is to leverage SEO & build up a solid foundation of laser-targeted organic traffic.
But to do that, you need to know how to conduct affiliate marketing keyword research to find the best keywords you can actually get ranked for.
So, in this blog post, I will share the best keyword research tool for affiliate marketing and show you step-by-step how you can find the best keywords for affiliate marketing.
By the end of it, you’ll be an expert at affiliate marketing keyword research.
Let’s dive in then & begin by taking a look at the best tool for the job.
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The Best Keyword Research Tool For Affiliate Marketing
There is no doubt about it. For people looking to get started with affiliate marketing, Mangools is hands down the best keyword research tool available.
Why?
Well, firstly, you can get your first searches for free.
But on top of that, it has a super easy-to-use interface that’s very newbie friendly & it has very affordable pricing plans when compared to other tools.
Plus, from our own tests, Mangools’ data seems to be more accurate than other tools when it comes to longtail keywords, which are the best keywords for affiliate marketing.
So, for those reasons, Mangools has secured our spot as the #1 keyword research tool for affiliate marketers who are just getting started.
Down the line, you may also want to invest in Ahrefs for competitor research & additional analysis but to begin with, all you need is Mangools. 💪
And that’s the tool I’ll be using throughout this post as I explain how to conduct affiliate marketing keyword research, so be sure to grab a free account if you wish to follow along.
Before we dive into doing the actual research, though, let’s take a look at what types of keywords we actually need to be searching for.
What Are The Best Keywords For Affiliate Marketing?
If you’ve read any guides on SEO, you’ll know that there are a bunch of different types of keywords, but thankfully, for affiliate marketing, there are only a handful you need to focus on.
The best keywords for affiliate marketing are:
- Low-competition longtail keywords
- Product review keywords
- How-to keywords
- Comparison keywords & best-of list keywords
And more specifically, when it comes to low-competition longtail keywords, what we’re ideally looking for are KGR-compliant keywords.
Those are the true hidden gems that’ll see your organic traffic skyrocketing in the shortest time possible.
So let’s take a closer look into each of those different types of keywords before I walk you through the actual step-by-step process of finding them.
Low-Competition Longtail Keywords
When it comes to SEO keywords, you have 2 primary types of keywords.
You have top-level keywords that have really high search volumes but also really high competition, such as “affiliate marketing”, “gardening”, or “fitness workouts”.
And then you have longtail keywords which dive deeper into topics, such as “best affiliate marketing course for beginners” or “best kettlebell workout to build glutes”, etc.
Now, when it comes to longtail keywords, the search volumes will be lower than that of the top levels, but this means that, more often than not, so will the competition.
So even though the traffic volumes may be lower, longtail keywords have 2 main advantages, which are:
- They’re easier to rank for
- They’re easier to convert
You see, if somebody is searching for “affiliate marketing”, they could be looking for anything related to affiliate marketing, meaning that particular search query would be challenging to convert.
Whereas if somebody was searching for “best affiliate marketing course for beginners”, you know exactly what they want, making it much easier to convert.
All you’d have to do is send them here to Commission Academy 😉.
And then there’s the holy grail of low-competition longtail keywords, which are known as KGR keywords.
KGR stands for Keyword Golden Ratio & it’s a formula that was devised by Doug Cunnington that helps you find longtail keywords that you’ll have a surefire chance to rank for, even with a brand new website.
To determine if a keyword is KGR compliant, you first search for how many results contain all of the words in their titles by running a search like this:
As you can see, that particular keyword has 57 “allintitle” results. This means that only 57 pages on the entire internet contain all of those words in their title.
So then we head over to a keyword research tool, like Mangools, and grab the search volume for that keyword, as shown below:
As you can see, the search volume is 160 searches per month.
So, to determine if that keyword is KGR-compliant or not, we simply divide 57 by 160.
57/160 = 0.35625
And here are the thresholds:
- <0.25 = Great
- 0.25 to 1 = Might Work
- >1 = Bad
So given that our result was 0.35, you can see that it falls into the “might work” category.
This means that once our website has gained a bit of authority, we’ll likely be able to rank for it. But overall, it’s not a perfectly KGR-compliant term.
Aiming for terms that fall into the <0.25 category is ideal & you could potentially find yourself getting ranked for those terms in just a few days, even with a brand-new website (providing the site is indexed).
So longtails themselves are great, but KGR longtail keywords are the best longtail keywords you can get.
Product Review Keywords
This is likely self-explanatory, but product review keywords are exactly that. They’re keywords targeting the reviews of products or services.
And there are 2 main reasons as to why product reviews are so great.
Firstly, they’re generally very low competition & secondly, they’re probably one of the easiest types of keywords to convert into a sale.
After all, if somebody is searching for a product review, chances are they’ve already got their credit card in hand & are just looking for the final nudge.
What’s more, is that if you keep track of product launches in your niche, you can actually leverage a method known as launch jacking to rank instantly & generate huge amounts of affiliate income overnight.
In short, this involves producing product review content prior to a product launch or just after it before anybody else so that you can easily bag the top spot & sip all of the traffic.
Launch jacking is by far one of the best strategies for seeing fast success as an affiliate.
How-To Keywords
How-to keywords refers to informational & instructional types of content, such as “how to fix an unblocked sink without a plunger”.
These are generally great keywords because they’re often low competition, easy to create & result in product recommendations.
For example, in the example that I just used above, you may instruct the reader that in order to unblock their sink, they need to purchase product X, Y or Z at Amazon.
As you can imagine, the conversion rates from guides like that can be very high.
Comparison Keywords & Best-Of List Keywords
It’s very common for buyers to narrow their search down to a few products & then head to Google to look for comparisons.
This means that comparison keywords, such as “Product A vs Product B”, can be fantastic keywords for affiliate marketers.
Similarly, a user may know what they want but may not have yet started any research into actual products & that’s where best-of lists come into play.
So, let’s say somebody knows they want to buy a drone & they only have £300 to spend. They might search for “best drones under £300”.
Therefore, by creating best-of lists, you can rank for those keywords as well.
So now that you have a better idea of what the best keywords are for affiliate marketing, let’s take a look into how you can actually find them.
How To Do Affiliate Marketing Keyword Research
To carry out our affiliate marketing keyword research, we’ll be starting at Google because we’ll be taking advantage of their autosuggest feature.
So the first thing we’ll do is head to Google & input a seed keyword, which is a top-level keyword that’s related to our niche.
For example, if our niche is robot vacuums, a seed keyword could be “robot vacuums”.
Immediately, you’ll see that Google’s autosuggest feature begins to give you keyword ideas, as shown below:
And to get even more ideas, you can add variations of the seed keyword. For example, I could change it slightly to “do robot vacuums”, and then I would get all of these extra ideas:
Next, we will take some of these ideas & use a keyword research tool like Mangools to determine what sort of search volume & competition they have.
In the example above, you can see that I’ve run a search for the term “do robot vacuums work on carpet” & in the results, there are 2 columns we want to focus on.
Those are the “Search” and “KD” columns.
The search volume gives you an estimation as to how many searches per month the keyword receives, whilst the KD column gives you an idea of how (or easy) it will be to rank for.
And you can see immediately from the above example that Mangools believes it will be quite difficult to rank for the keyword “do robot vacuums work on carpet”.
Yet directly underneath, you’ll notice that there’s another suggestion which is believed to be easy to rank for & that’s “do roombas work on carpet”.
So, is that a keyword worth creating content about & trying to rank for?
Well, the answer is that it depends.
The reason I say that is because although it’s rated as easy, you will notice that the search volume for that keyword is quite high (1,500 per month).
And when it comes to ranking, Google works on trust.
So if you have a brand new website, then it will be unlikely that Google will rank you for such a high volume term, even though it may be technically “easy”.
But if your website is established & already getting traffic, it could be a great keyword to target.
Let’s imagine your website isn’t getting traffic, though…
In that instance, you should initially focus on trying to find terms that have an “easy” keyword difficult score & also have a volume of between 10 & 100 searches per month.
This may seem a counter-intuitive strategy at first, but it will enable you to build trust with Google much more quickly & then, once you’ve got traffic & trust, you can start gradually going for higher volume terms.
Think of it this way;
If you met somebody for the first time in the street, you would be unlikely to let them borrow your car because you don’t know if they’d take care of it.
But if that same person had been borrowing other things from you over a period of time, such as tools & always returned them in good condition, you’d then be more inclined to agree to let them borrow your car if they needed it in an emergency.
Well, Google works the same way.
Start by targeting the smaller volume terms & prove to Google that if they rank those pages, you won’t just suddenly take your website offline & then, over time, you’ll be able to rank for higher & higher volumes.
So, as an example, the following keyword would be absolutely perfect for the first post on a niche affiliate website about robot vacuums:
With a volume of 30 & KD of 12, you’ll be sure to rank for that keyword providing you create high-quality, engaging & relevant content.
And if we run an “allintitle” search for that keyword, we can actually see there are 0 results:
So, even without doing the formula that I explained above, I can tell you that this is a KGR-compliant keyword which is the best type of longtail keyword you can get.
And affiliate marketing keyword research is as easy as that. 🙌
Unlimited Keyword Ideas: Rinse & Repeat
Now that you know how to conduct keyword research for affiliate marketing, finding more keywords is a simple case of rinse & repeat.
Head back to Google, find more ideas by inputting seed keywords into the autosuggest feature & then run them through Mangools.
Filter the results based on volume & difficulty, build out a keyword list, create a 6-month content plan & then get to work on creating the content.
Before you know it, your website will be thriving with traffic. 📈
And alongside that, be sure to actively seek out products in your niche & target those keywords as well through product reviews & comparisons.
So, I hope you found this guide for finding the best keywords for affiliate marketing helpful & hopefully, it taught you something new.
If you’d like to learn more about affiliate marketing keyword research, traffic generation or increasing conversions, be sure to sign up for our free affiliate marketing course before you leave.
And if you have any additional questions or comments, feel free to leave them below.
