Most affiliate sites do not fail because of bad traffic. They fail because nobody audits the links, offers, and pages that actually produce revenue. Programs change commission rates. Merchants swap tracking URLs. Products go out of stock. A post that earned $400 a month two years ago might be sending readers to dead pages today.
A content audit is the operating rhythm that keeps your site aligned with your business goals. It shows you what is working, what is broken, and where you left
Updated 2026.
This guide walks through the full audit: link health, analytics, program diversification, earnings math, display optimization, click spreadsheets, and keyword monetization. We built Lasso around this workflow because link infrastructure is what separates hobby blogs from publishing businesses.
1Check Your Link Status
Fix Your Underperforming Posts
Monetizing a post isn’t enough — it needs to drive clicks. Find out which posts and links need attention to increase your monthly affiliate income.
Links are the lifeblood of any successful affiliate marketing business. Merchants use them to track referrals. You use them to get paid. When links break or point to out-of-stock products, commissions stop and readers lose trust.
Broken outbound paths are not just a revenue problem. They are a user experience problem. Nobody wants to click through to a 404 or a product page that says unavailable. Fixing link status is step one in every audit we run.
1. Replace Broken Affiliate Links
You can find broken links two ways. If you already use a marketing tool like SEMrush, Ahrefs, or Screaming Frog, run a site audit or plug your domain into its website analyzer.
In Ahrefs, head to Site Explorer > Your Domain > Outgoing links > Broken links. Set the link type to nofollow so you catch affiliate links that use nofollow attributes. Many publishers forget that step and miss half their broken inventory.
The faster path is a WordPress affiliate plugin like Lasso. Broken link alerts show up in your dashboard automatically. Click the broken link icon and you see every broken affiliate URL on your site.
Click the Locations column for any link to see every place it appears with full context: the post URL, anchor text, and link type (text, image, display, and so on). When we audited a site with broken Arcadia Power links, Lasso surfaced eleven locations across three posts in under a minute. Manual searching would have taken an afternoon.
Action step: If a link is broken, confirm your affiliate ID is still correct on your site. If it is, contact your affiliate manager for a fresh URL. Programs update tracking links often. When you get the replacement, paste it into the Link Details page in Lasso. Lasso updates it everywhere that URL appears. You do not need to open individual posts.
For a deeper look at keeping outbound links organized, read our guide on affiliate link management.
2. Remove Out-of-Stock Product Links
Lasso also flags affiliate links tied to out-of-stock products. Retailers run out of inventory constantly. Some discontinue products without telling affiliates.
When you spot an out-of-stock link:
- Click the out-of-stock icon in your dashboard
- Locate every instance on your site
- Replace the product or remove the link
Contact your affiliate manager or the brand directly if you are unsure about product status. You have a stake in their success. Asking is not bothering them.
If a product is rarely available, it may not belong in your content anymore. Out-of-stock links are especially common with Amazon Associates and other large eCommerce programs where inventory turns over fast.
2Analytics and Tracking
A strong content strategy tells you which links perform best. It also surfaces the engagement signals search engines care about: bounce rate, dwell time, and whether readers actually click through to merchants. Those metrics matter when you audit a site to improve the overall experience and revenue per visit.
3. Connect Lasso to Google Analytics
Connect Lasso to Google Analytics to see your top-performing affiliates by Event.
In your Lasso dashboard, go to Settings > General, paste your Analytics tracking ID, and click Enable Click Tracking. Lasso sends click data to GA as Events. You can now compare merchants, link types, and pages without guessing.
Open Behavior > Events > Top Events to see which affiliate links earn the most clicks. Drill into any event to compare text link clicks against product display clicks. That split tells you whether a merchant converts better as inline text or as a visual display.
For the full setup walkthrough, read how to connect Lasso to Google Analytics. Click tracking is the foundation for steps five and seven in this audit.
3Leverage Alternative Affiliate Programs
Diversification is the first rule of risk management. In affiliate marketing, it means you are not exposed to a single partner slashing commission rates overnight.
Amazon proved this mid-pandemic when they cut rates across multiple categories. Publishers who relied on Associates for 80% of income felt it immediately. Operators with a mix of direct programs and networks had more room to maneuver.
4. Use Lasso’s Affiliate Program Detector
One way to diversify is finding alternative programs in your niche. You can Google “product name + affiliate program” and sign up manually. ShareASale, ClickBank, and CJ Affiliate (formerly Commission Junction) are solid networks to explore.
The faster path is Lasso’s Affiliate Program Detector. We maintain a database of nearly 1,900 affiliate programs. If you link to a domain repeatedly but are not enrolled in their program yet, Lasso surfaces every instance along with:
- The affiliate program name
- How many programs Lasso found on your site you can still join
- Commission rate (payout)
- Potential link locations where you could add monetization
- A direct link to the sign-up page
Click any program for more detail or use the search field above Potential Links to find a specific merchant. Related programs appear on the detail page, which helps you stack complementary offers in the same niche.
Tip: If you only
What to Look for in Affiliate Programs
When you compare programs, two variables matter most: cookie duration and payout.
Cookie duration is how long your referral link stays valid after a click. A 60-day cookie gives you 60 days from the click to earn commission on a purchase. Amazon’s cookie lasts 24 hours. That is a tight window for considered purchases.
Payout covers how much the merchant pays, which payment method they use, and how often they send
For comparison, Lasso’s Preferred Partner program pays $49 per lead via PayPal on a 30-day cookie with Net-60 payment (you get paid for leads that remain customers through their second payment). Use those numbers as a benchmark when evaluating whether a program is worth your traffic.
4Calculate Earnings Per Click
Raw click volume lies. Earnings per click (EPC) tells you what a merchant actually pays you per interaction.
5. Calculate Your Earnings Per Click and Resources Pages Revenue
The formula is simple:
Total commissions ÷ total clicks = EPC
If an affiliate link gets 2,000 clicks and earns $20 in commissions, your EPC is $0.10 per click. That number helps you decide whether a merchant deserves more traffic or whether you should negotiate a higher rate.
Some programs pay poorly and will never justify prime placement. EPC makes that call objective instead of emotional.
Also audit your high-level resource pages separately. On our personal finance site, the Toolbox page generates roughly 10% of total income from a single URL. We monitor its performance closely because one page at that concentration is a business risk and an opportunity.
When income dips on a resources page, investigate immediately: broken links, outdated products, or a layout that no longer converts. For a walkthrough on building that page type, read how to create a profitable blog resources page.
5Assess Your Marketing Materials
Your affiliate managers want you to succeed. Their commissions depend on your conversions. Ask them for their best creative assets, seasonal promos, and updated product feeds before you rewrite a single paragraph.
6. Optimize Your Product Displays
If you use Lasso, make sure your product displays earn clicks. That means informative descriptions, strong copy, high-quality images, clear titles, and CTAs that give readers a reason to act.
Ask yourself: would I click this?
Lasso lets you customize displays with badges, secondary CTA buttons, and custom fields. Each one is a conversion lever.
Add badges to highlight your pick. Badges add visual hierarchy and another line of persuasion. Try labels like Our Pick, Budget Pick, Upgrade Pick, Best for Beginners, or Money-Back Guarantee depending on your niche.
Add badge text on the Link Details page. Lasso shows a live preview as you type.
Use secondary CTA buttons for choice. A secondary CTA gives readers another path. You might link to Walmart and Target for the same product. Or you might send hesitant buyers to your full review instead of straight to checkout.
That second button keeps engagement high. A reader who is not ready to buy might still click through to your tutorial. You get more time to make the case, and you avoid losing them entirely.
Add the secondary URL and button copy on the Link Details page.
Add star ratings and pro/con lists. Custom fields add flexibility. Scroll to the bottom of Link Details and click Add Custom Field. Choose Add from Library for built-in options like Primary Rating (score one through five) and Pros / Cons sections.
Build your bulleted lists, save changes, and preview the display. Pro/con blocks work especially well on comparison posts where readers expect structured evaluation.
6Find Monetization Opportunities in Analytics
Click data reveals patterns that keyword research alone will not surface. You might list ten products in a best-of post, but analytics shows readers only click three of them. That gap is actionable.
7. Create an Event URL Spreadsheet
An Event URL audit spreadsheet tracks affiliate link performance in one view. Once Lasso connects to Google Analytics, every affiliate click registers as an Event. Event URLs are your affiliate links.
Build a Google Sheet with four columns:
| Column | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Event URL | The Lasso link URL from GA |
| Total Events | Click count |
| % of Total | Share of clicks on that page or site |
| Notes | Action items (replace, remove, promote) |
Items in the red zone are candidates for removal or replacement. Nobody clicks them. They clutter the post without earning.
These spreadsheets shine on “best” list posts (best gifts for bourbon lovers, best digital cameras, and similar formats). To populate one:
- Open Behavior > Events > Pages in Google Analytics
- Sort by click volume, highest to lowest
- Click any page to see which affiliate links drove those events
- Click a merchant name to compare display clicks vs. text link clicks
On one of our
Tip: To scale extraction from long list posts, use a scraping tool like Chrome’s Scraper extension. Right-click the first H2 in a numbered list, choose Scrape similar, copy the results to a Google Sheet, and cross-reference against your Event URL data.
7Curate Your Content Framework
Analytics tells you what readers click. A content framework tells you what to create next. The two together turn audit findings into a publishing calendar.
Design content around strategic keyword research, but let click data override assumptions when the numbers disagree with your gut.
Using a high-performing merchant as an example (Survey Junkie in our data), content types worth expanding include:
- Product reviews (Survey Junkie review)
- Comparisons (Survey Junkie vs. Swagbucks)
- Alternatives roundups (Survey Junkie alternatives)
- Best lists (best-paying survey sites)
- How-tos (how to use Survey Junkie, how to choose survey sites)
Lasso’s Opportunities feature accelerates this step.
8. Turn Keywords into Affiliate Links
Lasso’s Opportunities dashboard runs a detection engine across your site. It scans for three things: affiliate programs, keywords, and content gaps.
Brand keywording finds unmonetized mentions of a specific product. Say you run a personal finance site and mention the cashback app Earny in several posts but never linked it. Head to Opportunities > Keywords, enter Earny, click Add Keyword, then search again to pull every unmonetized mention with the source post listed.
Concept keywording catches related phrases. Earny is a cashback app, so you might also search cashback or cashback app to find broader mentions worth monetizing. If you promote Bluehost, search web hosting to surface every hosting reference on your site.
Content Opportunities filters posts by last updated date or outbound link count. Click Links to sort from highest to lowest. Open any post to see monetized and unmonetized outbound links side by side with anchor text and link type.
On one audit we ran against a post with 105 outbound links, big brands like NerdWallet and Credit Karma showed up unmonetized. Flipping the
You can also search post titles by content type. Type review to see how many product reviews you have published and how well they
One niche site using Lasso automations and displays earned $1.2M in affiliate income in under five years. Keyword Opportunities was a core part of that stack. If your reviews average a 7-day EPC of $80 per 100 clicks across 58 reviews, that is $4,640 in weekly potential from review content alone. Run your own numbers before you commit to another content sprint.
Run an Opportunities Scan to surface unmonetized mentions and underperforming posts in one pass. For a site with hundreds of published articles, manual searching is not realistic. The scan is.
8How Often Should You Perform This Content Audit?
Frequency depends on site size and how fast your niche changes. A small blog might audit quarterly. A large review property with daily inventory shifts might audit monthly.
Treat it like a scheduled maintenance appointment. Put it on the calendar and keep the appointment.
| Site size | Suggested cadence |
|---|---|
| Under 50 posts | Every 3 to 4 months |
| 50 to 200 posts | Every 2 to 3 months |
| 200+ posts or heavy Amazon inventory | Monthly |
These are estimates. Adjust based on how often links break in your vertical. The important part is that you do the work. Ignoring broken links and stale offers guarantees you leave
9Run Your Audit and Recover Hidden Revenue
Building a successful affiliate marketing site starts with knowing what works. A content audit turns guesswork into a system: fix broken links, track clicks, diversify programs, optimize displays, and
We built Lasso because link management, displays, click tracking, and opportunity detection belong in one place. You should not need five tools and a spreadsheet marathon to answer a simple question: where is my site leaking commissions?
Run an Opportunities Scan to find your highest-impact fixes first. Then sign up for Lasso and work through all eight steps on a schedule you can keep.
Ready to audit your site and earn more from content you already published? Get started with Lasso today.
Sean Brison
Sean Brison is a dad, writer, business owner, and Content Lead at Lasso. He's spent the past several years in cahoots with Lasso's founder, Andrew, creating awesome things for people. He's also addicted to perfectly-balanced cocktails, the outdoors, and John…