Top Affiliate Programs for SEO Software / Top SEO Affiliate Programs in 2024

Many SEO platforms are SaaS solutions with monthly subscriptions, so affiliate marketing is a popular business development technique in the industry. It’s only natural that bloggers and marketers with substantial following in the ecommerce niche often look to partner with the best search engine optimization companies to earn commission through affiliate links.

The interesting thing about this passive income strategy is that people who invest time to educate their audience about a specific SEO solution are sometimes paid for a subscription to a free plan as well (e.g. SemRush). So you only have to get your audience interested enough to try a product free.

Reaping the Benefits of SEO Affiliate Program: Two-Way Road

Both software companies and marketers promoting them get to enjoy the benefits of SEO affiliate marketing. This is how each side leverages this promotion technique to achieve their business goals:

Benefits of partnering affiliates for SEO software companies

This promotional opportunity is specifically valuable when you enter a saturated niche, with rivals of the caliber of SemRush, Moz, and Ahrefs. Once your product has some unique features and reasonable pricing, you can always outbid bigger players for affiliates by offering a higher commission per lead.

• Increased brand awareness
• It may take years for new digital ventures to fill up Google’s first page with brand mentions. It also takes a lot of finance, effort, and funds to reach out to your audience systematically and constantly. SEO affiliate marketing addresses both issues.
• Boost of backlink profile & DA
• Domain authority depends greatly on how many quality backlinks point to your site. This is where affiliate partners are specifically handy, as they disseminate affiliate links to your site to direct potential clients to your tool.
• Low-cost marketing activity
• Once you set up an affiliate marketing program to promote your Search engine optimization tool, the only significant expense is the actual payouts to partners. Unlike in the PPC universe, you pay for the leads, not for clicks.
• High-quality traffic
• Due to the narrow specialization of bloggers and marketers, their traffic is relevant with high commercial intent.

On the other end of the spectrum, influencers with substantial social following get a chance to create a steady income stream by promoting SEO tools.

Leveraging generous SEO affiliate programs to make money online

Bloggers and business coaches with thriving personal brands often include all sorts of SEO solutions in their affiliate portfolio over these conspicuous benefits:

• Recurring passive income
• Cost per lead in the realm of SaaS solutions is among the premium end of the spectrum and presents a lucrative money-making opportunity. As SEO software revenue models mostly use monthly subscriptions, many of the companies also base their affiliate programs on this pattern, incentivizing their partners to work on client retention.
• Ample addressable market
• Not only ecommerce but even manufacturing businesses now require an online presence. This makes SEO tools of interest to pretty much any business out there. YouTube videos with a comparison of top software solutions for search engine optimization get thousands of hits a day from all over the world.
• Easy content creation
• Top SEO affiliate programs provide extensive materials, collaterals, and educational recourses to ease their partners into the subject. This makes content creation for these platforms an intuitive and low-effort activity.

That said, some of the bigger companies pivoted away from this marketing technique, Ahrefs affiliate program, for example, was stopped after a few years of successful running. The company found that the Pareto principle worked for them and they offered private deals to the top referral partners while ceasing the pan-Ahrefs affiliate deal.

Now let’s review the existing passive income opportunities for those marketers interested in general entrepreneurship and ecommerce topics.

Top SEO Affiliate Programs for Beginners and Professionals

This is our list of top 10 affiliate programs for SEO software that is worth considering for marketers with an audience interested in general online business and search engine optimization in particular.

SemRush affiliate program

120-day cookie lifetime | $10 free trial | $200-350 paid lead depending on partnership level

Semrush offers its partners one of the industry’s top commissions of $200 per paying client and even extends a courtesy $10 fee for a free trial. With lots of pre-designed promotional materials, they further sweeten this offer by allowing a 120-day conversion window based on the last-click attribution model.

Depending on the number of sales you bring, there are 4 levels: Basic, Silver, Gold, and Premium. Premium partners enjoy a $350 commission and a lot of other perks, inclusive of a quarterly content bonus of $1500.

180-day cookie lifetime | 30% recurring commission for up to 1 year depending on partnership level

Hubspot is a powerhouse of a digital marketing tool with CRM capabilities, SEO, SEM, email marketing and so much more embedded in it. Due to the abundance of products and add-ons, the revenue model is based on a generous 30% recurring commission for the duration of up to one year.

Surfer SEO affiliate program

90-day cookie duration | 25% commission for lifetime, 10% for addons

Surfer SEO is a proper SEO tool that is exclusively focused on content optimization through proper keyword research and using AI to create competitive outlines and even texts. The affiliate program of this company offers a 25% recurring commission for the lifetime of an affiliate account, as it stands right now, mid 2024.

The great thing that makes this program such an ideal candidate for newbies to affiliate marketing is that the first paid-for pricing plan is only $89, which makes it affordable to freelancers, agencies, and small companies alike, hinting at a huge addressable market.

Serpstat SEO tool affiliate program

15-day cookie duration | Up to 30% commission for a lifetime

Serpstat is another strong contender among SEO platforms that offer site audits, keywords, and competitor research features. With pricing plans starting at just $59 per month, their offer for partners who refer business offers lots of opportunities to make passive income. The commission goes up to 30% and is extended on first-time clients as well as their prolongation revenue. On the sour side of things, the cookie’s lifetime is only 30 days.

SE ranking referral program

15-day cookie duration | 30% commission for a lifetime

This advanced SEO platform has robust features for local SEO, backlink building, competitive analysis, keyword research, lead generation, and even SMM. While it may take a bit of a learning curve to master, just like other tools of similar complexity in this niche, their loyal pricing and high lifetime commission of 30% make them a popular digital marketing platform to partner with.

AccuRanker affiliate marketing

120-day cookie length | 20% commission for a lifetime

This SEO tool allows you to accurately measure keyword ranking over time, and tag, and cluster them. The best-use scenario is for big ecommerce sites, that invest marketing budgets to rank for specific keywords. With prices starting at $110 per month for the smallest batch of 1000 keywords to monitor if paid annually, the addressable market is not great, leaving the smaller players out. Still, with a 120-day cookie duration and 20% commission, the tool is worth the attention of bloggers who have a solid ecommerce audience.

Mangools affiliate program

30-day cookie lifetime | 35% commission while subscription lasts

Over 2 million people tried Mangools, and this was not without the help of an army of devoted affiliate marketers who fell for the generous terms. This robust SEO platform is packed with useful features like keyword research, SERP tracking, backlink analysis, and site profiling.

Plenty of ready-to-use educational materials are available and make it easy to promote. There’s no prequalification of partners too, so anyone can start earning this passive income right away. And to crown it all - a whopping 35% commission is available to partners as long as the subscriber pays the company.

BrighLocal partner program

60-day cookie lifetime | 15% commission revenue share

This local SEO platform is packed with features that make physical stores, hotels, and restaurants more prominent on Google’s local SERP results. With a loyal pricing strategy starting at $39 per month and every brick-and-mortar establishment on any major street being a potential client, income opportunities are abundant. It’s safe to say that everyone who has a GMB profile is a potential customer for Bright Local. Clients stay with this SEO solution for well over 2 years and pay an average of $62, so affiliate marketers can easily estimate their earning potential.

APEX Traffic affiliate program

XX-day cookie lifetime | 50% of the first purchase

This CTR-boosting SEO tool has a lot to offer to digital marketing agencies and freelance marketers alike. Clients use it to drive clicks to new pages to warm them up while content marketing and backlinking gain traction.

ApexTraffic will help to direct a steady stream of traffic to a URL of choice, channeling direct, organic, or referral traffic from the device and country of choice. The company offers a generous 50% of the first order so partners enjoy payouts from their pricing plans starting at $178 for the Click Generator product, while the top price for the bot package is $99.

30-day cookie lifetime | 30% of the first purchase & recurring renewals

LinkWhisper helps businesses that focus on content marketing keep their blog posts updated and interlinked for higher Google rankings. As many affiliate marketers and media sites rely on content marketing as their sole promotional strategy, having new content linked with mature pieces with the right anchors is vital for better SERP positions. With a 30% commission on initial purchases as well as recurring revenues, this link-management SEO tool is a lucrative opportunity for affiliate marketers.

Leveraging Passive Income Opportunities in SEO Affiliate Marketing

Top affiliate programs for SEO offer multiple opportunities to make money, grow your social following through educational content, and scale your marketing business quickly.

Naturally, bloggers and educators will often sign up for multiple SEO partner programs, diversifying their product portfolio, taking advantage of multiple keywords, and offering a well-rounded unbiased opinion to their viewers.