Curious how to do affiliate marketing after the HCU? Or has your affiliate income dropped and you need some ideas on how to recover from recent Google updates?
In this post, we explain how affiliate marketing works for bloggers as well as what strategies you can use to optimize affiliate content as Google makes huge changes to its algorithm.
We also go beyond just the HCU and pull ideas from Google’s May 2024 algo leak.
How affiliate marketing works for bloggers
Affiliate marketing is a monetization strategy that involves promoting another business’ product via a unique affiliate link in exchange for a commission of each sale you generate for that product.
Amazon Associates is a popular affiliate program. You can join it and earn commissions by recommending Amazon products on your blog.
When you join the affiliate program, you’re assigned a unique affiliate ID that gets applied to any affiliate URL you generate for Amazon.
When you add an affiliate link to your blog, and a reader clicks on it, then makes a sale, you receive a portion of what they paid (at no additional cost to your reader) as an affiliate commission.
This is the gist of affiliate marketing.
Many bloggers use affiliate links within product reviews, tutorials that feature products, product-based list posts and product comparison posts.
What is the HCU?
The helpful content update (HCU) is a change to Google’s algorithm that has had a negative impact on almost all blogs on the web.
It was first released in mid-2022 but had its biggest and most influential update in September 2023.
Once that update hit the algorithm, a lot of blogs lost rankings that caused substantial drops in traffic. Some sites reportedly lost 90% of their organic traffic, traffic they worked hard for and had for years.
Nobody knows exactly what the HCU is or what attributes these sites had that caused Google to nix their rankings.
What we do know is that blogs are going to have to change the way they approach search engine optimization if they want to remain competitive.
We do have some solid theories, however. One of those involves Google demoting smaller sites that “don’t stay in their lane” and cover content across a wide variety of niches. This is based on discoveries from the May 2024 algo leak. Specifically, an attribute called “siteFocusScore.”
The idea is that a score is assigned based on how topically focused your site is. Go too broad and you’ll get a low score which will lead to a site-wide demotion in search.
But if you stay focused on your niche and you’ll get a higher score with a site-wide promotion in search results.
Adam talked a bit about this in his video on the leak:
Too much review content is another factor
Google has developed separate algorithms for handling product reviews in search.
This got a lot more serious in April 2023 with a product review update that expanded the definition of a “review”. So, not just were straight up reviews going to be looked at more closely, but also other kinds of content that could be considered a review. Think “Best X” and “versus” posts.
There was a lot of documentation that came with this update. Plenty of it was useful best practice advice for publishing review-style content.
Although how they’d handle that algorithmically was another question entirely.
Then, in Google’s May 2024 algo leak there was a specific part about tagging sites as review sites and demoting them in search.
We don’t know exactly what is causing the review site tag to be applied to sites. But it’s likely Google is categorizing content and applying the tag when review content reaches a certain point.
So, if you’re publishing a lot of affiliate content for product reviews, product-based list posts, and product-based “best X” type of articles – you could have a problem.
As Affiliate marketers, we need to be a lot more strategic and consumer friendly in our approach toward affiliate content because of this.
3 ways to mitigate the effects of the HCU for your affiliate marketing blog
So, if you’re doing affiliate marketing on your blog, there are a few ways we believe you can mitigate the HCU and other problematic Google updates.
These include:
- Balancing out affiliate content with informative & topical content
- Reoptimizing affiliate content
- Dealing with old and/or irrelevant content
Let’s discuss each of these methods.
1. Balance out affiliate content with informative & topical content
Based on what we’ve learned from Google’s algo leak, there are two primary issues some sites will be facing:
- Too many review-style articles (inc. Best X, versus, etc.)
- Too many articles that aren’t relevant to your core niche
You can balance both of these things out by publishing more informative content that’s focused on your niche.
As an affiliate marketer, here’s an approach you could take:
- Determine what your most important affiliate product is.
- Determine that product’s main topic.
- Use keyword research to find low-competition keywords for that topic that can produce informational content.
- Publish at least 30 informational posts in as little time as you can manage.
Determining your most important affiliate product
Your best affiliate product is the one you earn the most commissions from. This product has already proven its value to your blog, so you as well as increase its influence within your content.
If all affiliate products you target contribute equal amounts to your affiliate income, choose the affiliate link that receives the highest number of clicks as well as the highest amount of traffic for affiliate-based content.
Here are other considerations to make when choosing your affiliate product:
- The product that belongs to an affiliate program that offers the highest commission.
- The product that’s offered by the company with the most positive reputation.
- The affiliate product you feel your readers need the most.
Determining your target affiliate product’s main topic
Your blog already has a niche, but there are still probably a few different subniches you can break it down into.
Your affiliate product has to relate to at least one of these subniches.
Finding low-competition keywords for your affiliate topic
Come up with a few seed keywords for your subtopic, then input them into your favorite keyword tool.
Here are a few seed keywords we can use for the subtopic “fishing rods:”
- fishing rods
- fishing rod
- fishing pole
- fishing poles
- rod
- rods
- pole
- poles
We can then input one of these keywords into our keyword tool, change the keyword difficulty maximum to 30 and the Search Intent to Informational, and see what comes up.
This screenshot is from SE Ranking.
Only choose keywords that directly relate to your subniche.
For example, our research for the term “fishing rods” returned keywords that relate to video games that have fishing within them.
Since our affiliate blog is not about video games, we should not focus on covering these topics at this time, especially if we’re hoping to recover from the HCU.
Performing keyword research in this way allows us to find keywords users are searching for that aren’t getting as much attention.
More importantly, it allows us to pad our affiliate content with informational content.
Creating informational content
The next step is the hardest: actually creating the content.
Since keywords that target informational topics aren’t that competitive and typically ask specific questions, you can get away with creating shorter articles for this project, as in 1,000 to 2,000 words.
Pick 30 informational keywords, then create content to answer them as directly as possible.
Of course, you can publish more than 30 posts, and you should keep going once those first 30 are published. You should also move onto creating informational content for additional subniches.
However, 30 gives you a good baseline to start with to see if this method helps you recover traffic from the HCU.
2. Overhaul your affiliate content
One way you can try to bring traffic back to your affiliate content is by reoptimizing each blog post you’ve written for an affiliate product.
You will likely see some indirect SEO benefits from doing this, not direct. This is more about scoring points with people that visit your site and making content better for them.
This will likely improve conversions and make it more likely for people to find the answers they need from your article. You may get a freshness boost in SERPs and you may eventually see ranking improvements from some of Google’s other quality-rating factors.
We have quite a few tips on how to do this.
The first is to actually test the products you include in reviews, list posts and comparison posts. If you haven’t already, that is.
For example, in a product roundup (or Best X post), be sure to include your own insights in sections like these:
- Our Experience with [product name]
- Pros & Cons
- Features/Specifications
When you target affiliate content for a specific keyword, avoid using the word “best” too many times.
When you do use this term, use it in your H1 tag if that’s the keyword you’re targeting, but use synonyms for additional tags, such as:
- Top
- Greatest
- Highest-performing
- Mind-blowing
- Most popular
This especially includes calls to action (CTAs) like “Check Best Prices.” Use simpler phrasing instead, such as “Check Prices” or “Check Latest Prices.”
We don’t have any data to support limiting the use of the word “based” but we’re suggesting it as a precaution.
You should also work toward using more original images in your content and rely less on images from stock image libraries or images borrowed from other websites.
Google wants authentic content, and if you include your own images in your reviews, you’re demonstrating that you’ve actually used the product you’re reviewing.
You should also add real testimonies to your reviews to increase their authenticity.
This can be quotes from experts who have tested the product, quotes from members of your team and even quotes from reviews on the web. Be sure to include links if the quotes came from external web pages.
Speaking of which, you should also include a few external links to credible sources or authoritative websites in your affiliate content.
Note from Adam: Chances are that Google won’t be able to distinguish between things like custom images and stock images. They’ll make it appear like they can in their documentation, but it’s really hard to do algorithmically. However, it is good practice to do regardless because it will improve trust with your audience. That alone is a good enough reason to do it.
3. Root out irrelevant content
Once again, no one knows exactly what the HCU is or why Google’s using it to demote so many web pages in search.
However, if you have been publishing content on broad topics and not focusing on your main niche, you may be able to recover by pruning your irrelevant content.
Exactly how you handle this content will depend on the situation.
Generally, when running a content audit, you’d delete the content and apply a 301 redirect to the next most relevant page. This would avoid 404 errors.
But we are talking about content that is completely irrelevant to your niche. So, you may want to just delete them or delete them & redirect them to your homepage.
If you want to preserve and backlinks, then 301 redirects would usually be the best way to go.
A quick word of warning…
You need to be VERY careful when pruning content from your site.
If you publish a lot of product review related content (including Best X style posts) and you prune a lot of informative content, you could end up with an entirely different problem.
Your site could be tagged as a review site and demoted in search for that reason instead.
Naturally, it’s best to avoid both types of demotions.
Affiliate marketing strategies for bloggers
One of the most effective things affiliate marketing blogs can do to maximize their success in search is make sure they choose affiliate products that are relevant to their readers.
Browse available affiliate networks for your industry, and choose the right affiliate programs for you and your audience.
Avoid over optimizing affiliate posts, and test products yourself whenever possible. Explain your testing process as well.
Create tutorials specifically for affiliate products as well as tutorials that feature affiliate programs. This strategy can help if your product-based target keywords were replaced by UGC and authoritative websites.
When you create list and comparison posts for affiliate products, include your own insights and experiences with each product you recommend.
You should include a buyer’s guide that explains features a particular product type has no matter which company makes it as well as unique pricing strategies sellers use, such as software having monthly or annual subscriptions.
For products that have multiple sellers, give your readers at least two different options to choose from, such as Amazon and an industry-specific ecommerce store.
This fulfills the consumer’s need for options, which is something your fellow affiliate marketers may not be offering in your niche.
Finally, improve navigation on your site by creating navigation pages.
These include resource pages, which you can use to list affiliate links for products you recommend.
It also includes niche-specific navigation pages that go beyond category pages.
For example, for the fishing niche, you could create one page called “Fishing Rod Reviews” and another called “Bait and Tackle Reviews.”
Diversify and go beyond Google
Earning a living as an affiliate marketer with traffic from Google is still viable, but you should also create content for a variety of different platforms to diversify your traffic sources.
Fortunately, promoting affiliate links is possible on social media, YouTube and podcasts.
YouTube is one of the most popular search engines aside from Google. And more people are using platforms like TikTok to search for information.
You may even be able to negotiate a better, specialized rate with an affiliate network if you’re able to bring more traffic to their product pages.
Final thoughts
Affiliate marketing got a lot harder after the HCU. There’s no denying that.
But it didn’t make things impossible.
Recoveries are possible when it comes to any algo update. The HCU is no exception.
We just have to get smarter with our approach and adapt to new circumstances.
And there will always be new circumstances.
Back in the day, it was all about niche sites and forums. Then niche sites and forums got thrown to the curb, and authority sites were what Google was ranking.
Now, things have flipped back to niche sites and forums but it took over a decade to happen.
So, keep adapting. This is how we survive as small site owners and bloggers.
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