2 Big Reasons That Membership Websites Cannot Ignore SEO

Posted on 14. May, 2010 by Steve in Tips & Tricks

In order to generate new members, membership websites most often rely on traffic and advertising strategies like PPC, list marketing, and creating a strong army of affiliates. With so much focus placed in these areas of advertising, basic Search Engine Optimization is often completely ignored. This is unfortunate because there are a lot of benefits of SEO marketing that are often overlooked by membership site owners.

1. Duplicate Advertising

Most membership websites will have a lot of affiliate marketers to help promote it. The first thing that most affiliate marketers do is start a PPC campaign and send out a few mailings to their list. If you are also focusing on PPC and sending out mailings to your list, there is a large chance that you will be competing with your affiliates. This causes two problems. The first is that your affiliates will make less money, which means that they are more likely to stop promoting your membership site. Second, this means that a larger amount of time and money is being focused on a smaller target group. Instead of competing with your affiliates, SEO allows you to set your membership website up for long term traffic. This is especially important since many of your affiliates will only promote the website for a short amount of time, often a year or less.

2. Planning For Your Exit Strategy

Many people design membership websites solely to build it up to sell it at some point in the future. With a solid amount of SEO traffic, your membership website will hold much more value. This is because the new owner will receive a consistent flow of traffic from Day 1. If all of your traffic comes from PPC advertising and mailing lists, then the new owner is not guaranteed any new traffic. This prospect will often lower the overall value of your membership website. If you start a membership website and want to ensure a more successful exit strategy, then creating SEO traffic is essential. Additionally, even if you run your membership site until it outdated, the SEO traffic gives your domain additional value as well.

There are a lot of additional advantages to using SEO as a traffic generation strategy, however these two reason are specific to membership websites. SEO will make sure that you are not competing and discouraging your own affiliates, as well as increasing the total resell value of your membership website.