Best SEO Affiliate Programs - Competitive but Lucrative

There are some really attractive marketing opportunities in SEO affiliate programs. Many pay high commission percentages and many pay recurring commissions. But, you must be prepared to compete with lots of people with SEO knowledge and experience.

SEO affiliate programs are a lot like hosting programs. Lot’s of opportunity but you are running with the big dogs.

Ideally, you will have a body of SEO content and a site with some authority. If you are up for a bit of a challenge you can make some good money and help your visitors.

How to Market SEO Programs

The usual strategy of writing compelling content that provides value and brings in organic search will be difficult if you are a new site with no authority in Google’s eyes. You will have trouble outranking those who came before you.

As long as there has been Google there have been SEO practitioners writing about search and tools to help with search marketing, optimization, analysis and more. There is a lot of quality content already created on websites with age and authority.

Some strategies to consider:

Have a strong video channels with screenflow demos
Do podcasts with SEO experts (no shortage of those!)
Focus on new tools. Be first to rank them.
Have bonus offers of templates, training, etc. if allowed
Jump right on upgrades and review those
Rank Branded keywords
Specialize in an SEO niche and become an authority

Some specific strategies include …

Clients

If you are an agency or SEO consultant the first thing you should do is to market to your client base. These are people that trust your SEO opinion and should be an easy conversion. Be extra careful of the tools you recommend. It would be terrible to jeopardize an SEO client for an affiliate commission.

Blog and Forum Posting

People are always looking for SEO advice. I would always only post a link to an info article not a money page on an SEO forum. And never a link with your affiliate id. The main goal is to be helpful and gain trust and authority.

Facebook

Creating a Facebook group around a sub-niche of SEO makes a lot of os sense. You can’t just start a general SEO Facebook page unless you really think you can compete with the Neil Pattells of the world. So focus on local, affiliate, on-page, international or some other sub-category of SEO.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is a good channel for new products, sales announcements, etc. You can get email subscribers by having a video or e-book offer in exchange for subscribing.

Content Marketing

This is the backbone of your organic search strategy. Find low competition long-tail keywords that overlap with your affiliate offers. But you will need to look hard for keywords with decent volume that are not too competitive. The keyword “SEMrush review” for instance has over 1850 posts with that keyword in the title. Just one simple metric but you can see that much has been written on this already. Have a good mix of just high-value info posts and money posts like “Best Tool for Site Audits”. I would stick with KGR-like keywords that you will have some opportunity to rank for.

Here are 32 SEO affiliate programs to consider, most with recurring lifetime commissions.

Top 10 SEO Affiliate Programs

Go to our affiliate programs page for more program reviews.

Bright Local Affiliate Program

Bright Local ha s a full suite of local SEO tools. It deals with duplicate and incorrect citations.

The Bright local affiliate program pays 15% and has a 60 day cookie. You can join the Brightlocal affiliate program at ShareASale.

Bright Local

Commission Rate: 15%

Cookie Length: 60 days

Affiliate Info: Bright Local at ShareASAle

LongTailPro Affiliate Program

LongTailPro is a well known keyword research tool. Very straight forward with powerful filtering to find target keywords.

The LongTailPro affiliate program can be joined at either ShareASale or at Post Affiliate Pro. The ShareASale program seems better supported if you have no preference.

LongTailPro

Commission Rate: 30% Recurring

Cookie Length: One Year (ShareASale)

Affiliate Info: Longtail Pro Affiliate Page

Linkody Affiliate Program

Linkody is a backlink monitoring tool. It will let you know when you get or lose a backlink. It will also let you know when your competitor gets a new backlink so you can try for the same one.

The Linkody affiliate program is managed by Fastspring. To apply send an email to support@Linkody.com. Include in the subject line “Me Your New Affiliate”.

Linkody

Commission Rate: 30% recurring

Cookie Length: 30 days

Affiliate Info: Linkody Affiliate Page

Mangools Affiliate Program

Mangools has a great suite of tools. KWFinder is particularly strong and popular.

KWFinder
SERPChecker
SERPWatcher
LinkMiner
SiteProfiler

The affiliate program pays 30% and is recurring. The cookie is 30 days. As long as the sign up for the free program in the 30 day cookie period you will get paid if they convert.

Mangools

Commission Rate: 30%

Cookie Length: 30 days

Affiliate Info: Mangools Affiliate Page

MOZ Pro Affiliate Program

MOZ is a leading tool kit for SEO. It compares favorably with ahrefs. Most people are familiar with Moz DA ranking of sites.

MOZ like ahrefs has no official affiliate program but do appear to have private arrangements.

MOZ

Commission Rate: NA

Cookie Length: NA

Affiliate Info: NA

SEMRush Affiliate Program

SEMRush is a great tool. It goes head-to-head with ahrefs. They provide keyword research, competitive analysis, and more. You can even put in a competitor site and find the pages on a site that has the most organic search traffic – nice. There affiliate program though – not so nice.

They use a 10-year first touch cookie. Basically lifetime. The problem is that it is not first affiliate touch but first touch by any channel. So if your referred customer has ever been to SEMrush via search, an ad, a direct link a social link … you get no credit.

SEMRush

Commission Rate: 40% recurring

Cookie Length: 10 year first touch

Affiliate Info: SEMRush Affiliate Page

SEO PowerSuite Affiliate Program

SEO Powersuite is a group of tools for SEO including:

rank checker
keyword research tool.
backlink analysis tool
site auditor

You can become an SEO PowerSuite affiliate at Avangate. SEO PowerSuite pay 33% and has average $197 per referral.

SEO Powersuite

Commission Rate: 33%

Cookie Length: 90 days

Affiliate Info: SEO Powersuite Affiliate Page

SpyFu Affiliate Program

SpyFu is a keyword analysis tool focused on competitive keyword analysis. It has been around for a while under constant maintenance. It os a solid product.

The Affiliate program has a 40% recurring commission rate. The cookie length is one year. Spyfu uses a system of tracking that does not require links with embedded codes. You can direct link to any page and as long as the domain was registered as a Spyfu affiliate site you will be credited.

SpyFu

Commission Rate: 40%

Cookie Length: One Year

Affiliate Info: SpyFu Affiliate Page

The Hoth Affiliate Program

The Hoth provides outsourced SEO services including …

Managed SEO
Video Production
Blog Content
Guest Posting

The HOTH affiliate program pays 25% for most purchases. With the large ticket Hoth X paying 5%. They are very good marketers and convert well.