Boost Your Affiliate Links CTR like a Boss! Make More Sales Today!

If you’re an affiliate marketer struggling to get decent click stats, then this post is written with you in mind.

Imagine:

You’ve joined an affiliate program (for example Fiverr’s);

you’ve put in a tonne of time creating useful and killer content; you’ve invested decent money into promoting your superb post. And you got visitors, you did!

Not just one, or two, but a whole slew of them. You were happy, and eager to see the results of your hard work; but then you saw that all of them leave after having perused your page and none of them clicked on any link, let alone those that earn you money.

Yeah! I know that feeling very well.

Terrible, right?

I know it because I’ve been there, once. Now I’m at place where people race to click on my affiliate links and below you’ll find 8 reasons why.

Let’s go!

Here are 8 Simple Ways to Boost Your Affiliate Link CTR

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#1- Put Your Affiliate Link At The Top Of The Page

It is important that you have your link at the top of the page. When I say “top of the page” I mean above the fold area. Your visitors should be able to immediately see it no matter the device they’re on and before scrolling down.

Links above the fold helps you in two ways:

First, you will get more clicks from drop-off visitors. These are the people that detest long articles and will absolutely not scroll down to read more. But they will click on your links if you give them the chance.

For example:

I promote Wealthy Affiliate as a best place for beginners to master affiliate marketing. And at the start of my review, in the first sentence even, there is an isolated affiliate link. It’s there because studies show that people are more trigger happy at the start of the page and I definitely want that link clicked.

The second reason are large SEO benefits. However, this only applies to internal links.

When folks click on your internal links to visit other parts of your site, it boosts user dwell time which is a crucial UX signal for Google. Basically put, Google hates showing bad sites to its users and if you can “prove” to Google that you site is worthy and that folks enjoy it, then that will give you a nice SERP boost for all keywords.

It’s a subtle effect for sure, but it works and is free, so why not do it?

And “I’m lazy” excuse won’t cut it with me.

Sorry 🙂

#2- Isolate Your Affiliate Links

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Affiliate links work best when they don’t have to compete for attention with other links. So whenever possible isolate your important links to get maximum CTR on them.

Pro tip: To put in more emphasis, you can boldface the anchor text. For example, this boldface-strengthened internal link leads to my article on external linking best practices.

Oh the irony!

#3- Make The Anchor Text Longer

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If you intend to use only one tip in this post, then this should be it.

Whenever you can make the anchor text longer. Longer anchor texts are highly visible because they contrast with the rest of the page. But they also help with your CTR because longer affiliate links are descriptive by nature and will always trump their one-word-generic-anchor siblings.

#4- Write You Anchors With SEO and Readers in Mind

It is important to note that while making a longer anchor text, you’ shouldn’t make it longer for the sake of it being long. It should also be contextual.

Make sure to include your keywords and make it descriptive.Just look at these two examples;

As you can see, it’s the same text, same link, but different anchor text. The first one’s anchor is just a noun “affiliate marketing scams” The second example’s anchor also includes the verbs “know” and “avoid”.

The second anchor is superior because it gives you more clarity about what to expect when you click on the link.

#5- For Special Links, Create Button To Really Draw The Eye In

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Creating a button to host your affiliate link is a great way to catapult your CTR for that link. To make the most out of buttons however, you need to make sure they pop out of the page and are unavoidable.

If you don’t know how to create a button in WordPress, don’t fret. I have an easy-to-follow, step-by-step guide that can teach you.

#6- Write Micro-Copy Around Your Affiliate Links

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What is micro-copy exactly?

Micro-copy is short additional copy placed strategically before and after the link. It’s purpose is to explain where the link leads, and to remove any click fear the person has. It’s a great little tool for boosting CTR because you only have so much room in your already descriptive link anchor.

Right?

Also, while you can still use micro-copy for text links, it makes sense even more to use it on your affiliate buttons.

Take a look at the example below.

You can see orange “buy now” button ,which by the way really stands out compared to that yellow one above it, and you can see micro-copy above and below the buttons. They’re basically telling me I can get it as fast as possible, and Amazon, the worlds biggest and most trusted brand guarantees my shipping.

So I feel secure and I click and buy.

Nice 😛

#7- Use in-Content Banners Sporadically

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Top affiliate companies in the world spend humongous amounts of time and money in designing and testing banners. By the time they are on the platform and available to you, they’re at the highest conversion rate they can be.

But that doesn’t mean you can use them anyway you want and still get the CTR you hope for.

Placing ad banners in regular intervals in your content will make your content predictable and conversion rates will take a deep dive. Instead, you want to be sporadic in using banners so as to ignite curiosity and this inspire more clicks.

In other words: Banner are old and stale news, but when used sporadically they’re a novelty just begging to be explored with a click

#8- Use Content Tables to Draw People in

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By using tables of content at the beginning of your post’s and pages,  you shoot two birds with one stone.

First, TOC’s improve user experience. Recent studies have shown that human attention span is plummeting day by day. That means most of your readers are in a rush to find a solution for their problems in your content. And content table neatly perched at the top of your page will help them get to the right place fast and also present to them the relevant links they need.

For example, on my SEMrush pricing post I made sure to put a large and helpful content table at the top of the page.

This TOC helps people dive deep into my SEMrush pricing post and earn how to save money on a SEMrush subscription.

And once they have money on a SEMrush paid plan, they feel grateful and like you even more.

Additionally, better UX easily translates to better SEO for your site.

Remember Google follows the people and if they love your site, so will Google.

Higher CTR for Affiliate Links- Frequently Asked Questions

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a) Why Should I Actually Care About Getting People To Click My Affiliate Links?

Let’s start with the obvious reason.

More clicks you get, the higher your conversion rate, and more money you make.

Simple!

b) Should I Add No-Follow Tag to Affiliate Links? How?

You need to cloak affiliate links. That is good for SEO and good for your bottom line as uncloaked affiliate links are extremely long and look like gibberish. No one clicks on those.

But by cloaking them you also automatically add the nofollow tag and the best way to do it is to use a simple cloaking plugin.

I reccomend either Pretty Links (read my tutorial) or Thirsty Affiliates (read my tutorial)

c) How Do I Shorten a Long Affiliate link?

Refer to the question above. You need a link cloak-er plugin.

d) Can I Have Too Many Affiliate Links on the Page?

Yes you can!

Having too many affiliate links is a bad things because of two simple reasons:

Moderation is key with affiliate link placement.

Conclusion

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Now you have eight ways to make your links more clickable. Using only one of these tips will bring in an incremental change. Which is good, nothing wrong with incremental growth.

But why grow slowly when you can explode?

Use all these hacks and give yourself a massive and compounding benefit that comes with more and more affiliate sales.

You deserve it 🙂

Also, while this post is dedicated to affiliate links on your site that’s trying to rank in Google, you can use these tips to boost the CTR of any link, internal, external or affiliate.

With that said, I’d like to know whether this post was useful to you?

And if there is a method that you’re using on your site and that I haven’t mentioned here, do tell me about it.

I too am looking for ways to increase my affiliate link CTR.

Let’s meet in the comment section below!

Thank you 🙂