Hello! I’m pleased to share a guest post from Mike Futia, an expert in SEO. He used his knowledge to earn $95,000 as an Amazon affiliate, with 88% of his traffic coming from Google. He manages the site with only a few hours of work per week. Below he explains the exact approach he used in a comprehensive guide of over 5,000 words. Enjoy!
Hello, I’m Mike. Today I’ll walk you through an SEO and keyword research blueprint that can meaningfully increase your affiliate income.
If you follow these steps, your search visibility should improve, your Google rankings can rise, and your organic traffic can grow—leading to more affiliate conversions for your blog.
By the end of this article you’ll understand:
- What searcher intent is and how to capture users at different stages of the buying process
- Why topical relevance matters for ranking and how to use it to your advantage
- How to find dozens of keyword ideas that convert well for affiliate marketing
- How to uncover keywords your competitors already rank for
- How to assess a keyword’s competitiveness and decide whether to target it
Also available is a free video training called The SEO Starter Pack (6 short videos) to boost your SEO skills in about an hour.
Related content:
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- How a New Blog Grew Traffic 10,000% in 6 Months, A Must-Read For New Bloggers
- How I Grew My Blog from $0 to $17,000 per Month in a Year as a Stay at Home Mom
- 5 Ways I Made My Blog Go Viral – 2,000,000 Views A Month In One Year!
- 12 Passive Income Ideas That Will Let You Enjoy Life More
Why Should You Listen To Me?
My name is Mike Futia. I run the course Stupid Simple SEO and publish at Stupid Simple SEO and Credit Takeoff. I help bloggers implement practical, easy-to-follow SEO strategies to increase organic traffic and revenue—all explained in plain language.
SEO does not need to be overcomplicated. Focused, consistent application of a few core concepts can produce strong results.
Before launching my SEO blog, I started a site in the outdoors niche (hiking, backpacking, camping). I had no social following or network, but I knew SEO plus affiliate marketing could drive buyers from Google to my pages.
After two years, my site finished the year with over one million unique pageviews (seasonal spikes in summer). About 88% of traffic came from Google, and the site earned more than $95,000 from Amazon Associates—largely passive income while I kept a full-time job.
SEO combined with affiliate marketing can create long-term, low-maintenance revenue once your content ranks, unlike platforms that require constant content re-sharing. It also has strong earning potential when done right.
SEO + Affiliate Marketing = Revenue
Consider The Wirecutter as a model: it started as one person creating exhaustive product reviews optimized for buyers’ search intent. Those pages ranked well for buyer-focused queries like “best bluetooth headphones” and converted readers into affiliate purchases. That focused approach eventually scaled into a large, valuable business.
The core idea: concentrate on buyer-intent content—reviews, comparison guides, and “best of” posts that attract people ready to purchase.
Search Intent & The Sales Funnel
Search intent determines where a user is in the buying journey. Keywords like “foam roller exercises” are informational—users likely already own the product and are looking for usage ideas. “Foam roller benefits” is more exploratory—users may be considering a foam roller but aren’t ready to buy. “Best foam roller” signals purchase intent—users know what they want and are comparing options to buy.
For affiliate monetization, bottom-of-funnel keywords such as “best [product]” are most valuable because searchers are ready to convert. Google’s search results confirm this: queries with buyer intent return comparison and review pages, often with affiliate links.
Important: don’t fill your entire site with only “best” posts. That will seem spammy. Mix helpful informational content with well-crafted buyer-focused reviews so your audience trusts you and Google sees value in your content.
Are You Relevant?
Topical relevance matters. Google rewards sites that are clearly focused on a topic. For example, search results for “best crib mattress” are dominated by baby and sleep sites—not travel or recipe blogs—because those sites are more relevant to the query. A tightly themed blog can outrank much larger, authoritative sites simply because it better matches user intent for those keywords.
If your content spans many unrelated topics, you confuse Google about your site’s focus and make ranking harder. Aim to build deep topical coverage so search engines see your site as an authority in that niche.
Finding Keywords You Can Rank For (And Which Will Make You Money)
Now that you know search intent and relevance matter, it’s time to find keyword ideas that are monetizable and realistically rankable. A good target keyword is both relevant to your niche and something you have a reasonable chance of ranking for.
What Makes A “Good” Keyword?
A good keyword:
- Directly relates to your niche and supports your goals (email signups, affiliate conversions, ad revenue)
- Is realistic to rank for given your site’s authority and the competition on page one
Keywords That Further Your Goals
Each post should support at least one measurable goal: capture subscribers, drive affiliate sales, or generate ad revenue. For example, a productivity blog could target “bullet journal supplies” because it’s relevant and easy to monetize with affiliate links. In contrast, “how to resize a PDF on a Mac” offers little obvious affiliate potential and may not align with your revenue goals.
Keywords You Can Rank For
Ranking requires assessing competition. Ten results appear on page one; if they’re dominated by highly authoritative sites, your chances drop. There’s no perfect metric, but you can make a reasoned judgment by analyzing the sites currently ranking and their authority.
Step 1: Brainstorm Product Ideas in Your Niche
If your focus is affiliate income, start by listing products your audience buys. For a gardening blog, products might include gloves, pruning shears, garden tillers, knee pads, wheelbarrows, and shovels. Create a spreadsheet with columns for Product, Keyword, Search Volume, and Competition.
Then browse the relevant department on Amazon and explore subcategories to expand your product list. Prefer products you’ve used or can review personally—authentic experience improves conversion and trust.
Step 2: Reverse-Engineer Competitors
Find blogs in your niche that are similar in authority to your site. Avoid targeting massive, authoritative sites that will be hard to outrank. Use tools such as Moz to check Domain Authority and focus on competitors with DA close to or lower than yours.
Put competitor domains into tools like SEMrush to see their top organic keywords. These reveal what topics already drive traffic for them and can uncover product-related keywords you should add to your spreadsheet. For each promising product, add “best [product]” as a candidate keyword because this modifier often captures buyer intent and matches what review content should target.
Step 3: Check Search Volume and Keyword Difficulty
Use keyword tools to check search volume for your candidate queries. For affiliate-focused terms, I generally look for keywords getting at least 100 searches per month—higher is better but lower-volume keywords can still be worth it if they convert well and competition is low.
Then analyze page-one competitors manually. Install the MozBar Chrome extension to view Domain Authority in the search results, and open each top-ranking result to assess relevance, authority, and content quality. Key points to evaluate:
- Relevance: Are these sites topically related to your niche?
- Domain Authority: Can you compete with the DAs shown? Use DA as a general guide, not an absolute rule.
- Content quality: How comprehensive and well-produced are the top results? If the top result is a 5,000-word, polished guide, you’ll need to match or exceed that level to compete.
Ignore Amazon product pages and YouTube videos for this competitive assessment—focus on blog-like pages you’ll be competing against. If the results include several low-DA sites and no overwhelming authority sites, and you can commit to an epic, high-quality post, the keyword is worth pursuing. Cross-check with services like Ahrefs or SEMrush for keyword difficulty metrics if you want additional confirmation.
Update your spreadsheet with volume and your assessment of whether you can realistically rank for each keyword. Repeat this for many candidates until you have a robust list of monetizable, buyer-intent keywords that fit your niche and authority level.
Wrap-Up and Bonus Guidance
This method is the approach I used while building an outdoors site that later produced significant affiliate revenue. The process—brainstorm product ideas, reverse-engineer competitor keywords, add buyer-intent modifiers like “best,” check volume and competition, and create an outstanding piece of content—lets you systematically identify profitable topics to target.
If you want further help, consider structured training that walks through these steps with examples and templates to speed up your research and execution.
About the author: Mike Futia is the blogger behind Stupid Simple SEO, where he helps bloggers rank higher in Google and increase organic traffic so they can generate more sales.