There are more than 620 million domains worldwide, 43% of which feature top-level domains (TLDs), with .com (37%) being the prevalent domain extension. Does this mean all good domain names have already been taken? Well, not exactly…
The magic of setting up a great domain name for affiliate marketing is that you don’t need to find a catchy set of two or three words to do it effectively. Crucially, you just need to choose a domain name that can potentially rank high on Google.
That may be more complex than it sounds, but this guide covers everything you need to find the ideal branded domain for your affiliate marketing business. Later on, we will examine how brand monitoring software such as KeyMentions can boost your Reddit marketing efforts.
What is a Branded Domain For Affiliate Marketing?
Branded domains are domains that incorporate the name of the brand. So, if you’re starting a website for a digital marketing brand called VirtualMarketing, the correspondent branded domain would be virtualmarketing.com.
Affiliate marketing, on the other hand, is the activity of promoting someone else’s businesses on one’s website via referrals. Every time someone buys a product or service from such a business via one of your referral links, you get paid a commission.
Popular examples of affiliate marketing websites include blogs with product reviews and how-to guides. These are published in the form of articles, featuring links to the websites of the brands paying to get promoted.
So, since affiliate marketing websites are designed to promote other brands and businesses, their domain names should be unique, easy to find, and have tons of Google ranking potential rather than focus on the name of the brand per se. Let’s examine this further below.
Choosing the Perfect Branded Domain Name
Here’s a genius idea: why don’t you choose the name of your affiliate marketing website based on its branded domain? The first step to doing so is to scour Google looking for domain names that currently have zero hits. This will help your website rank higher.
Imagine that you’re starting a website with gaming-chair reviews. Choosing a generic domain name such as gamingchairreviews.com sounds like a nice plan, but it would drive your website away from Google’s top SERP, where big players such as PC Gamer and Tech Radar have already established their position.
So, the goal is to choose a domain name with as few Google hits as possible, rather than finding the catchiest or coolest one. For your gaming chair review website, a good idea would be to use the name GamingChairHut.com, as it has only two (unrelated) Google hits:
From then on, different domain names can be associated with your website’s landing page, where you can link to different products from different affiliated partners, and start building your brand reputation on places like Reddit. But before, two things to keep in mind:
Domain Availability
You can check the current availability of potential domain names by searching Google (try not to use spaces between words), but there are other ways of doing so. Websites like Name.com and Check Domain include features for analyzing domain availability.
To be absolutely sure, you can also enter “site:domainname.com” on Google Search and see if the domain has already been taken. Finally, consider the different advantages of disparate TLDs (.com, .org, etc.) to choose the ideal domain extension for your business.
Localized Brand Domains
If you’re planning on using various domain names for a single landing page, taking localization into account can also prove fruitful. This includes incorporating names of places into domain names to attract more traffic from search engines.
So, if you have a website for flower shops, you can explore domain options such as Parisflowershop.com or Seattleflowershop.com. Make sure enough people are searching for flower shops in a given area first, and you’ll know if your localization efforts are worth it or not.
A good way of doing this is using KeyMentions to analyze Reddit discussions involving specific locations. Just enter keywords such as “flower shops [location]” or “flower shops in my city,” and you should be able to get a pretty good idea of what Redditors have been up to.
Creating Branded Domains For Affiliate Marketing
Have you chosen the perfect domain name for your affiliate marketing website? Well, now it’s time to turn the dream into reality by actually buying the domain. Top services for easy domain acquisition include, among others, Go Daddy, Squarespace, and Shopify.
Once your website is up and running, you need to make sure it’s crawled by Google, i.e., that Google knows it exists and will rank it on relevant SERPs. If you’re having issues with this, you can always input the domain manually on Google Search Console.
Using KeyMentions For Reddit Affiliate Marketing
Unfortunately, even the best possible domain name won’t be enough to make your affiliate marketing website. The actual work starts once the website is up and running, and you will want to have an ally like KeyMentions by your side during this process.
KeyMentions is a social listening tool for Reddit that lets you find Reddit threads that relate to your niche and automatically post comments promoting your website on such threads—all without even needing to create a Reddit account!
But wait, for there is more, much more KeyMentions can do for your affiliate marketing efforts:
Market & Competitor Analysis
The more niche an affiliate marketing website is, the better. The Internet is too busy for generic websites, so being specific is usually rewarded. But are there enough people looking for products in your niche? And is your website good enough to top your main competitors?
KeyMentions is all about online reputation management because it gives you a pretty good idea of how many people are engaging in discussions about a niche on Reddit, which provides an even clearer notion of how the niche performs on the wider scale of the Internet.
By inputting the names of your competitors as keywords in KeyMentions, you also get access to all active threads where your competitor is being discussed. Use this valuable information to conduct thorough market and competitor analysis.
Diagnosing Brand Sentiment
In addition to providing valuable insights about markets and competitors, KeyMentions is also perfect for drafting a diagnosis of your brand sentiment. Since KeyMentions provides access to still-active, relevant threads, you can make a pretty good diagnosis of where you’re at.
If your website is being discussed favorably on Reddit, KeyMentions will let you know. And if it’s not, it will provide you with the necessary means to make a difference; it will even let you auto-publish comments, in real-time, for disputing negative comments made by Redditors (even if they were made just half an hour ago).
By collecting and considering feedback on Reddit, you get to make the necessary changes to please disgruntled users and keep your loyal audience happy. Crucially, KeyMentions allows you to do so faster than the alternatives due to its instant notifications feature.
Traffic Estimation
To sell on Reddit, one must know how to separate a great opportunity from a not-so-great opportunity. Unlike other social listening tools, KeyMentions is equipped to do so due to its traffic estimations of Reddit threads, mainly based on their Google ranking performance.
What does this mean? This means that, with KeyMentions, you know from the get-go whether a Reddit thread is worth the trouble of commenting or not. After all, why should you waste your time promoting affiliate marketing partners on empty/inactive Reddit discussions?
This KeyMentions feature can save marketers a lot of time by helping them recognize which threads are worth their trouble before even taking any kind of promotional action. In the end, it’s not about using Reddit; it’s about using Reddit properly.
Auto-Generated Comments
Speaking of time-saving, what about letting someone else create Reddit comments so you can focus on tasks like finding new affiliate partners or building your website’s SEO? Once more, KeyMentions is the ideal right-hand man for the chore.
After creating your project, identifying relevant keywords, and spotting the correspondent Reddit threads, it’s time to post a comment promoting your website/partners. This can be tedious if you’re using other tools, but not at all an issue for KeyMentions.
For each relevant thread, KeyMentions generates Reddit comments automatically. All you need to do is read the comment, edit it if you feel like it’s not quite there, and press the [Approve] button. Generally, the comment will be posted to Reddit the same day.
Summary
Affiliate marketing has turned into a monstrous trend for online businesses worldwide, and the overall industry is now worth a staggering $17+ billion. That’s a lot, but hardly surprising if we consider an estimated 80% of brands rely on affiliate marketing.
With so many potential opportunities (especially as emerging technologies such as AI step into the picture), I’m sure your affiliate marketing website (no matter how weird the niche) has all it needs to fly off and start making some serious money.
At the center of it all is your branded domain, so try not to take it lightly. Although having a great domain name isn’t enough to succeed in affiliate marketing, it sure is the right first step to make your affiliate dreams come true.
