All Roads lead to Shady Backlinks

First and foremost, you will need to check the backlinks on your affiliate website. Do they lead to credible websites? If you were able to answer that question with a convinced yes, you are good to go.

If you found erroneous pages that no longer exist, or if you found out your partnering website had low domain authority scores, you could be in some serious trouble. An even worse case would be if you discovered that those websites were black hat SEO practices to get more leads or first-time deposits (FTDs).

Make sure you check your backlinks regularly to avoid faulty pages or scammy websites being tied to your website. Who knows, Google may want to keep a closer eye on websites that are actively collaborating with shady website owners who condone unspeakable transgressions against the best-known search engine’s famous rulebook. Google’s guidelines are crystal clear on what is acceptable and what is not.

In other words, if someone is breaking the rules, you can bet your top dollar on them knowing exactly what they are trying to pull.

Trojan Horse Attacks

No, we are not referring to the infamous virus that went and spread like crazy on instant messaging apps in the early 2000s. Rather, we are talking about an even worse kind of attack of which your affiliate website might be on the receiving end. And trust us, few cyber-attacks are as destructive as this one.

In this specific case of negative SEO attacks, your competitor (I.e., the offending party) would send your website a bunch of shady or faulty backlinks to poke holes in your hard-earned score on Google. While this move seems like a cowardly step to take against another business owner, you can find some solace in knowing that you are not the first person to go through this – nor will you be the last.

So, how can you fight against this terrible predicament?

Luckily enough, there were apps and tools designed to fight this very kind of negative backlink-oriented cyber-attacks. These tools can quickly detect and send you notifications if they find backlinks that do not match Google’s standards.

Breaking into The Hall of Fame

If you have made a name for yourself, your blog or website may be getting quite a few mentions on external sources - sources with a similar (if not identical) target audience to yours. While those mentions are an excellent starting point, they will not get you as much traffic as a backlink would.

To get more potential leads onto your affiliate website, all you need to do is contact the websites’ owners and ask them to use your backlinks. Although some would demand a fee for that, you are more likely to get more bang for your buck this way. Just make sure the website indeed has relevant traffic. In many cases, that means using a platform like SEMRush or SimilarWeb, and seeing how many visits a website has in a single month.

Website owners often ask for about $180 to place your backlink to your website indefinitely. Of course, that price could be rise significantly if they have an incredible amount of new and existing readers who are returning to their platform each month.