To generate revenue through affiliate marketing, it is essential to direct your audience to your partner sites. You receive a commission if they take the action for which you are being paid: purchase, form fill-out, sign-up, software installation, etc.
With a good conversion rate, the more traffic you drive, the more money you make. However, you must first attract internet users to your own site. If you have read our article on how to build a stable audience on your site, you know how to set up an editorial strategy and maintain your audience. It is also important to follow certain rules in order to rank higher in search results, and to check the technical performance of your site to ensure that you are well positioned.
The need for a performant website
Google owns 91% of the search market on all devices in 2022. The company has defined best practices for ranking well in search results. Among these, the need for a performant website, meaning pages that load quickly.
On a search engine, the result pages are called SERP (Search Engine Result Page). Everyone wants to be positioned first in Google's SERPs, but the positions are expensive and in competition with sponsored results that occupy strategic positions. To determine which site to display at the top of the page, Google is based on many data:
Behavioral data of users who use its search engine: for example, if 90% of users click on a second link after clicking on the first, this means that the first was not adequate. It will then be quickly replaced.
Data collected daily by Google's robots: these robots scanthe sites and, for example, check the content update date or the presence of backlinks (when a site links to a page on your site, it means that it considers the content of that page to be relevant for its visitors. Backlinks are important for your site's SEO, as they indicate to search engines that your site has quality content and is relevant to users.)
Content quality: a diversified lexical field and a rich vocabulary are quality indicators for Google and can help your site to rise in search results. Furthermore, using precise vocabulary allows you to target specific search queries and attract qualified traffic to your site.
These examples are just a sample of the criteria used by Google to determine the results that appear on its search engine. They do not reflect the complexity of its algorithm, but they give a concrete idea.
⚠️ Bad practices: many sites have tried to mislead the Google algorithm, but in the long run, it's not worth it. If you follow good practices and publish quality content, traffic will naturally come to your site in a few months. It's tempting to use quick traffic generation techniques, but keep in mind that the Google algorithm is frequently updated to prevent cheating, penalizing sites caught in the act, in order to provide the best results to users.
How to measure and improve website performance?
Although Google sets its own criteria, it also provides the necessary tools to meet these criteria, for free. These tools are relatively easy to use, and Google offers tutorials to set them up and learn how to use them. The 3 main tools you should know are:
Google Analytics: This audience measurement tool provides statistics on your website's traffic, such as the number of visitors, the most visited pages, bounce rate, user paths, length of time visitors spend on your pages, and demographic data such as the country and departments from where your visitors are coming from, the type of device they are using, and much more. It's a standard tool in the audience measurement market. You can create exportable reports, schedule them, or even compare them to previous periods. The data provided is directly usable, and if you take the time to analyze it, you can learn a lot about your visitors and your site. Although Google's tool is free, other tools such as At-Internet/XiTi or Matomo (Open Source) exist.
Google Search Console: previously called Google Webmaster Tools, this tool focuses on SEO (Search Engine Optimization). SEO involves optimizing the content of your site and its performance to improve your natural search ranking. In contrast, SEM (Search Engine Marketing) involves paying to appear in Google Ads. To help you, the Search Console monitors your site and alerts you to technical issues that Google encounters when it crawls your site: 404 pages, incorrect structure, poorly formed sitemap, etc. These checkpoints help you improve your site's technical performance.
PageSpeed Insights: The loading speed of your pages is crucial. Google provides a tool to help you check the speed of your site. After the diagnosis is completed, a list of actions to be taken is displayed to improve the loading speed of your pages. Here are a few examples:
Your site must be accessible on both smartphones and computers. In recent years, mobile traffic has surpassed that of traditional computers.
Too many scripts can slow down page loading, so it's best to remove or load them after your page content.
Correctly size your images and choose the right format so that they adapt in size and weight to the viewing device.
Use caching to eliminate redundant element loading on your site.
💡 If you are not a webmaster, know that there are proven all-in-one content management systems (CMS) on the market. They will quickly allow you to put your site online while being able to customize its appearance. The most well-known of them is Wordpress but Drupal or Dotclear can also be cited.
Key points to remember
Google represents 90% of the search market
It is important to have a high-performing website to rise in Google
Free tools exist to know your improvement areas
Summary
To attract traffic to your site, it is important to offer quality content on a high-performing website. Using measurement tools will help you achieve good results, as long as you spend time evaluating and analyzing your site's results.
