As a sector of online marketing, search engine marketing focuses on the promotion of links through search engine ads. These are ads placed in the search engines before, next to, or after the organic search results.

Affiliates are allowed to advertise their affiliate links through most channels available in online marketing, including search engine ads. In this case, an affiliate could create a search engine ad as a part of affiliate promotion. For example, Google Ads can be used to create search engine ads for Google or YouTube. The affiliate would be in charge of campaign settings, as well as campaign goals, keywords, targeting, scheduling, etc. Through the affiliate link in the ad, it is possible to track the conversions back to the affiliate who promoted the link using search engine ads.

Despite the fact that it is a paid campaign, affiliates might still find it profitable, which is the reason for them to choose this kind of promotion.

Merchants are not directly involved in this promotion, even though it is a paid campaign. However, most merchants are conducting SEM campaigns themselves. This is why merchants usually prohibit the use of specific keywords for affiliates in paid campaigns.

These keywords usually include company name, website URL, etc. as well as commonly misspelled variations of those keywords. If the affiliates were to use them, they would create direct competition for the merchant, thus increasing the price of the paid ads which work in a form of an auction. The prohibited keywords should be a part of the terms of service provided by the merchants and accepted by the affiliates who join the affiliate program.

Affiliate marketing and social media marketing (SMM)

Social networks have a great potential for online promotion, which is why affiliates have been using them to promote the links from which they earn the commission. Apart from sharing links on websites and blogs, affiliates who have a significant influence on social media can bring a lot of traffic through the affiliate links if they share them with social network users. There are two options when it comes to sharing links by the affiliates. Firstly, they can share the link to the post containing the affiliate links. Using this practice, they direct social media followers to their own website or blog, from which the visitors can choose to click on the affiliate links.

The second option is sharing affiliate links directly to the social media account in a post. This post is usually accompanied by relevant text and image(s). The affiliate can disclose the fact that the link is an affiliate. When sharing the links directly through social media, the publishers usually use shortening services to create shorter links.

When promoting affiliate links on social media, the affiliates can benefit a lot from knowing a thing or two about social media marketing. Here are the most important things to have in mind:
• Posts can be scheduled to appear at different times during the day
• Posts can be promoted to increase their reach
• It is advisable to make these posts personalized and adapted to your target group
• Images improve the post engagement and visibility
• Analytics enables you to see the performance of each post.

Action Point

PS: I know you might agree with some of the points that I have raised in this article. You might not agree with some of the issues raised. Let me know your views about the topic discussed. We will appreciate it if you could drop your comment. Thanks in anticipation.

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