Link Building for Electrical Wholesalers

Posted on by Greg Carter in Search Engine Optimization | Comments Off

One of my goals has always been to build affiliate referrals, keeping it between 6% and 15%. In the advertiser/publisher model of affiliate marketing, I’ve usually been the advertiser. So when I’m seeking Publishers to place ads on their websites, I usually find affiliate publishers by searching on a keyword that we optimize for (or would like to be optimized for). Competitors will usually appear in the natural listings alongside my position. So I use the link: [domainname].com method to see who is linking to them. Next, I type site [domainname].com where the domain name of the site is the site linking to our competitor. This suggests which of the sites linking to our competitors are most heavily indexed by Google. If Google likes them, they must be good, right? These sites get on my target list of publishers where I might want to place links with a tracking cookie.

Electrical Contactor Set Landing Page is sending 4 Visits. Page needs Calls To Action to Convert. (Click Image To Enlarge)

Payment is made to the Publisher when an agreed upon goal has been met by the shopper, such as a purchase or filling out a form. The link that the shopper clicks on at our publishers’ sites is tagged so that the transaction can be tracked and rewarded. For example, the advertisers may pay 25 cents when a form is filled out to generate a lead. Or, the advertiser may agree to a 25% commission paid to the Publisher… very reasonable considering the customer might now be with the advertiser for a “lifetime.” The payment transaction is usually managed by a third party such as Commission Junction. Or, the tracking can be done in an analytics program where the link from

the ad is also tagged. This is just one of a number of strategies you can deploy to build your affiliate program. Think carefully about which side of the affiliate model — advertiser or publisher — suits your business. It may suit both sides, or you may be content like I am to focus on our core e-commerce business while our publisher affiliates send traffic my way. I give up a substantial piece of the profit due to paying a commission on the first sale, but if we play our cards right we keep that customer for life.