The video above from Chase Reiner SEO on YouTube.com discusses SEO for affiliate sites. As you already know, Google.com frowns on the promotion of raw affiliate links, even with the rel="nofollow" attribute. If you find yourself scratching your head from time to time how to best optimize your website, WordPress blog, or how to achieve better affiliate SEO, Chase's video is for you.
Food for thought: Search engine optimization is not a process of pushing a button and watching your site improve overnight in Bing.com, Google.com, and YaHoO.com. It's the process of creating quality and engaging content that empowers people. Good search engine optimization takes time. You have to commit yourself to creating content and staying consistent in the process.
When you stay consistent with consistent SEO and build valuable relationships along the way, people will automatically help your affiliate site improve in search engine results pages, thus giving you free advertising by sharing your affiliate site content across Facebook.com, Twitter.com, LinkedIn.com, Pinterest.com, and ReddIt.com without asking them to. This not only gives you free advertising by others sharing your affiliate site content, but it also reduces your struggle of promoting your own affiliate site.