If you’re writing content, you want it to rank well in search engines, right?
But at the same time, you also want to earn money from it by adding affiliate links too.
So you might be wondering, how many affiliate links per post is too many?
And is there even such a thing as too many affiliate links per post?
Well, you’ve landed in the right place to find out.
In this blog post, I’m going to share the TRUTH about how many affiliate links you can add per post, and I’ll also share with you a trick that’ll help your content to rank.
How Many Affiliate Links Per Post Is Too Many?
If you’ve already read any articles about how many affiliate links you should add per post then you’ve probably heard all sorts of different things from different people.
A common theme is for people to suggest the 80/20 rule.
But is the 80/20 rule right?
I don’t believe so (and I have proof).
The right answer with regards to how many affiliate links you should have per post is that there isn’t really any set limit.
80/20… 70/30… None of that matters.
Instead, it’s a simple case of value vs promotion.
And as you’ll soon see, affiliate links can actually add value to your post (meaning that in some instances, more affiliate links can actually help your content to rank).
You see, search engines like Google have 1 simple goal.
They want to provide the most helpful content to the person searching. They are not really in the game of helping you to make money.
But, if you DO provide helpful content, search engines don’t mind if you’re making money from it.
This means that if the search engine believes your content is the most helpful, it’ll still rank at position #1 regardless as to whether you have 2 affiliate links or 200.
Here’s An Example
As an example to prove that there isn’t really such thing as “too many affiliate links”, take a look at this website that’s currently ranking #1 for the term “Wealthy Affiliate review”:
That website has been sitting at the top spot for at least 2 years.
Why?
Because it provides SOLID value. It provides everything you could ever want to know (and everything you didn’t know you wanted to know) about Wealthy Affiliate.
Google, therefore believes that it’s the best result to show for the term “Wealthy Affiliate review”.
Now, the review itself contains around ~6,500 words, thereabouts.
Guess how many affiliate links?
Over 300!
That works out to be approximately 1 affiliate link for every 21 words.
Affiliate Links Won’t Stop Your Content Ranking
Many people, even people who’ve written articles that are well over 1,000+ words, find themselves worrying about adding affiliate links to their posts.
They think that by adding affiliate links, their posts won’t be as likely to rank.
Search engines hate affiliate links, right?
Wrong.
The truth is that search engines don’t really care.
How high (or low) your content gets ranked has nothing to do with how many affiliate links are in the post. It’s all about how valuable the post is, and most importantly, how helpful it is for the query it’s intended to rank for.
So if you’ve created a post on your blog & you’re wondering whether the affiliate links are playing a part in its low rankings, then the answer is most likely probably not.
In reality, the post probably just isn’t as helpful as you thought it was.
This means that rather than counting affiliate links, what you really need to do is step into the shoes of somebody that’s just viewing your content for the very first time.
Would they say it’s been created with the intention of helping?
Or would they say it’s been created with the intention of promoting something?
If it’s the latter, then the post probably isn’t going to rank very well.
You should never create a post with the intention of promoting. You should always create your posts with the intention of helping, then consider adding promotions.
As Zig Ziglar once said;
If you help enough people get what they want, you will get what you want.
And that’s the exact approach you should take with your posts.
Affiliate Links Can Actually Add Value
When it comes to SEO, affiliate links often get a lot of bad press.
But affiliate links aren’t all bad.
In fact, despite what most people think, adding affiliate links to your post can actually help your content to perform better in search engines.
Why?
Because done right, it improves the user experience.
For example, let’s go back to the Wealthy Affiliate review post that I mentioned earlier in this post.
That post shows up number 1 for the phrase “Wealthy Affiliate review”.
So put yourself into the shoes of the person searching for that query, what do you think they’re looking for?
The answer is that they’re looking for more information about the Wealthy Affiliate platform, but the majority of people are likely looking for that information because they’re also considering joining.
So let’s compare 2 posts side by side.
If we had the exact same post with NO links vs the exact same post with 300 affiliate links, which do you think would provide more value to the searcher?
The answer is the post with affiliate links because, on top of just providing the searcher with the information they want, it also helps them to sign up, if they decide they want to join.
If the post didn’t have links, the searcher would likely have to go back to Google & then search “Wealthy Affiliate”.
Not good.
Google (and the other search engines) want to help people, not make things more difficult than they need to be.
Therefore, the post with the affiliate links wins, because it’s completely satisfied all of the searcher’s potential requirements.
A Tip For Good Practice With Affiliate Links
Whilst it’s not necessarily “wrong” for every single post on your blog to be jammed with affiliate links, it’s not necessarily good practice either.
Instead, what you should do is leverage something known as cornerstone content.
Cornerstone content is basically just a really solid piece of helpful content.
So as an example, if you have a website about lawnmowers, you could create a piece of cornerstone content outlining what you believe to be the best 10 lawnmowers.
Then, rather than adding affiliate links to every post you publish, you could simply link visitors through to your cornerstone content, and keep your affiliate links to that 1 post.
The reason that’s best practice is that it does two things;
Firstly, it prevents your website from looking like an all-over promotion to the eyes of a search engine.
But secondly, it also makes your life easier when it comes to running updates. If you need to switch a link out or change some info, you only have to edit the 1 centralized post.
The Bottom Line
Hopefully now after reading this blog post, you can see that in reality, it’s not the number of affiliate links per post that affects your search engine ranking. It’s your post’s intention.
Has the post been created to help?
Or has the post been created to post?
So from here onward you can safely stop counting your affiliate links & instead you can just put a focus on creating content with a genuine intention to help searchers.
Do that, and you’ll be able to add as many affiliate links as you desire.
