Search queries: the key to increasing income from affiliate marketing

What does “search query” mean

Search queries are the words and phrases that people type into Google or another search engine to get a list of results. For example:

How to get USA visa for Indian citizens;
Cheap flight tickets;
Delta Airlines carry-on baggage allowance.

Queries are a great tool for predicting intentions of a visitor. Based on the knowledge obtained from an analysis of SQ, webmasters can create remarkable articles for good quality audience.

Types of search queries

There are three different types:

Type	Example
Navigational	“Travelpayouts”
Informational	“What do hotel stars mean”
Transactional	“Tickets from London to Paris”

Some SEO experts divide this into one more type: commercial investigation search queries. With such queries, users are looking for use cases, best-of lists, and other articles that will help them decide on further actıons. For example, Travelpayouts Reviews is a commercial investigation search query made by people who want to start working with Travelpayouts. A navigational query includes the words entered into a search engine to find a certain website, like the Travelpayouts affiliate program. However, an informational query includes the words entered into a search engine to get information about a topic, such as “Shanghai weather” or “time in London”. Both of those queries are hard to count as a probable source of income. They will not easily result in a conversion to money when partners earn through the CPA model. They are better for earning from contextual advertising like Google Ads or promoting other pages of your own website. On the other hand, transactional queries (TSQ) can more easily be converted into money for partners who use CPA affiliate programs. TSQ show an intention of the visitor to engage in a transaction, such as buying products. It may contain terms like “buy”, “book”, “purchase” or “order.” Also, TSQ can include brand and product names, for instance, “Air France” or “Hilton”. These queries can also be generic, like “5-star hotels in Milan”.

Long-tail search queries

Long-tail keywords are not well known among webmasters, yet they are one of the best ways to direct more visitors to your website. First, let’s describe what the long-tail keyword is. Long-tail keywords are search queries with a low search rate which includes two or more words. It is very specific for a small audience, but generates a considerable amount of visitors for your website. For example;

Buying travel power bank in Aliexpress
Transfers or taxies in Europe

The important point about long tails is that there is a low competition in long tails, while almost all keywords have high competition now. Therefore, it is very important to consider including long tails in the content of your website to generate more visitors. Here the question arises “How can I find long-tail keywords?“ If you are using the manual way, you write a keyword in Google, and it shows you closest variations of the keyword in the bottom of the search results page called “Searches related to…” You are then able to determine which long tails are related to your keyword. For example, for “Europe travel,” the keywords here are the long tails which are shown in the “Searches related to…”:

Manually, finding good long-tail keywords can be tiring and time consuming. Therefore, you can use some programs such as the SEMrush program to find long-tail keywords. Nowadays, it is hard to find a keyword which is not competitive and will generate more visitors to your page. It is important to be creative and different than other website owners. Therefore, finding long-tail keywords with low SEO difficulty can help you increase your amount of visitors and conversation rates.

How to check competition

While choosing keywords for new content on your website, you need to examine if the keywords have high SEO competition. Knowing about the competition of keywords helps you understand where your content will be in the search engine results page (SERP). You need to understand whether you will have a good amount of visitors or not, and keywords with high competition may not generate a enough visitors. Therefore it may be a better strategy to work with a mix of low and high competition words. You can search the competition in Google Keywords Planner for free, and SEMrush can help you in this point as well.

How to check search volume for free

Another point to consider while choosing search queries is the search volume for each keyword. Search volume is the monthly amount of visitors each keyword gets. Therefore, checking keyword search volume will help you understand how many visitors you may get for that keyword. For example, the keyword, “famous destinations” has a search volume of 1,000 for one month, indicating that you may get a maximum of 1,000 visitors from that keyword monthly. There are programs available for free that check search volume such as SEMrush. However, Google Keywords Planner will give you the best information by showing monthly statics of search volume for each keyword. Check keywords search volume for free to develop a better understanding of the amount of traffic you can get.

How to find high conversion search queries

Considering the amount of trafficalone is not enough to increase your income while creating content. You also need to understand which keywords have a high conversion rate. Having a lot of visitors does not mean that you will earn a good income. You need to attract visitors who have a high possibility of converting. Using high converting keywords can generate quality visitors who are ready to buy the products you are offering. Google Analytics will help you to find high converting keywords to boost your earnings. This high conversion keyword strategy is as important as the amount of your traffic, so don’t neglect attracting quality visitors to your page.

How to target search queries

It is reasonable to target TSQ with organic content such as optimized travel blog pages or SEO strategies. You can use the official Google service as a professional TSQ research tool. However, you should also consider using the PPC (pay-per-click) model to target these query terms. Sponsored results cover several locations on the results page for commercial keywords. In addition, Google presents many advantages in terms of sponsored ads and product listings. Therefore, you can sometimes pay per click to sponsor advertisements and have more visibility. In some cases, this will help you collect more revenue from Travelpayouts than your expenses for sponsor ads.

Increasing income

As mentioned before, it is important that you have quality visitors to enhance your earnings. For example, a travel webpage may receive 300 visitors but only one of them buys a ticket. On another page, 10 of 300 visitors buy tickets. To get a better conversion rate, a webmaster can target the articles/pages to TSQ. Obtaining a quality audience must be part of a webmaster’s strategy. However, webpage owners also should not forget the importance of informational articles. Webmasters should always seek to provide useful information and help their visitors. This is the fundamental part of any website project.