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I bumped into the following tips and ideas about maximizing your placement of affiliate / pay-per-click advertisements on your page and thought they were some very sensible suggestions. The source of this material is the Equifax Affiliate Newsletter, which highlights a valuable, if rarely considered, additional upside to joining some of the major affiliate programs too: it’s in their best interest to help you identify how best to position and present your affiliate links, so they’ll often help you create the best possible pages for their products.

On with their suggestions:

While there are many different ways to place affiliate links, placing links in context with the theme of your site or within a specific category is a very successful technique for many affiliates.Smart sellers know that product placement is essential to generating sales. This same rule applies to affiliate links on your site. Evaluate your site and organize your links in a way that makes the most sense for your audience to see, click, and take action. Keep the following guidelines in mind when designing your pages:

• Links placed in the upper right-hand corner of a site are more likely to be seen and clicked. Include special offers and new content in this location to maximum exposure.
• Try adding descriptive content around a link to improve link performance and let visitors know why the link is there.
• When incorporated into content, text links and product links have been proven to be much more effective link types than banner ads. When placed in context, product links can be closely matched to a visitor’s interests. Similarly, text links can be included directly into site content or product recommendations, providing a direct and simple transition between information that you provide and a product that you are advertising.
• Add a call-to-action in your site text or within the affiliate link. The words “buy this here,” “order now,” and “click here,” alert visitors to a commerce opportunity.

While the savvy among you may be saying “that’s pretty obvious”, it’s surprising how many sites offer affiliate links like this:

In fact, the affiliate program site says “use the HTML exactly as we present it”, but the Equifax newsletter obviously - and correctly - suggests that you’ll have better results with something like:

Unsure about your credit rating? We highly recommend that you check out the service today. It’s the best $9.00 you’ll spend this week!

You can clearly see the difference, I’m sure. In publishing it’s the difference between “advertising” and “advertorials”, and the latter performs quite a bit better than the former.