Download - Affiliate SEO
Affiliate Marketing SEO
By Mert SahinogluDisclaimer: There are no
white/black/gray hat colors in Affiliate SEO
Three types of Affiliates
• Creative genius– Creates great content & Link bait• OCD Organizer – Great outsourced link building
organizer and accountant. Best paid ad marketing comes from this type.
• Automaton Programmer – Automated content generation, website optimization and link building expert
• IMO – If you are not two of the above 3, you will not have a sustainable future in this business.
Finding a niche• Entirely based on your operating style, there are three
types of affiliates• Nurturers: Creative/non techies types. They fall in love with
a few niches they enjoy and create great content and link bait.
• Bribers: These guys tend to be the programmer types. They create automated lead gen, ecommerce content and buy their way into rankings through long tail PPC and paid links
• Destruction Derby: This is the organizer type. They do not care about web assets. They burn through domains. They care about SEO from a short term perspective.
Hosting Considerations
• Global affiliates should consider shared hosting in multiple continents
• Destruction derby affiliates could use multiple shared hosting. Never interlink more than two sites at a time in same hosting server. Try not to interlink as much as you can.
• Nurturers could use one click CMS backend provider hosting company.
Use of domains
• Domain names are the number 2 factor (after links) that affect the SERP factors
• Keyword rich domain names are valuable. Using more than two dashes “-”, along with type of domain (.biz, .info, etc) is a filter factor for recognizing affiliate sites
• Subdomains can be a cheap alternative.• Wordpress 3.0 (coming up) allows subdomains.
Could be the secret weapon of affiliates.
CMS
• If you are a programmer or have access to cheap programmers, stay away (unless e-commerce). Dynamic content does not require CMS.
• If you are not a programmer. Wordpress is the name of the game.
• E-commerce is hard. There are open source solutions such as Magento but you still need access to a programmer.
Footsteps Theory for an Affiliate site.
• (long urls with .biz, .info)• Inbound link structure 99% of links from “graybar” link sources• Young domains with no link authority
suddenly pumping thousands of pages of content.
Green Links is a must
• The Toolbar is your greatest friend. • It still acts as one of the biggest factors in
spam filtering. So how do you get the green links:
Authority Link Sources
• Buy links• Guest Blog Posts• Widgets/Button/API Syndication• Create resource/link bait content and do a
digital PR campaign based on it
Links 101
• Anchor text: What words are used on the link itself and also in the paragraph that contains the link
• Nofollow tags (rel=“nofollow” : It is a signal to search engines not to give link value authority to a link)
Links are about marketing….
Why links matter to affiliates• More traffic • Better rankings• Get a web page indexed• Get an image/video ranked?• Reputation Management?• Event/Press Release Marketing?• Local Business Results?• Make you feel good ( I rank #1 for
“keyword”)• Increased audience reach?• Other?
Internal link Structure for Affiliateshttp://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/sports/baseball/wrigley-field-PLTRA0000169.topicCASE STUDY: CHICAGO TRIBUNE TOPIC PAGES BRENT PAYNE’S SECRET WEAPON FOR SHORT TAIL KEYWORD
SUCCESSFact: Tribune has over 590K Topic “tag” pages indexed by Google. www.google.com/search?q=site:chicagotribune.com+inurl:topic. Why did Tribune create Tag Pages? There are no other optimized
content in news articles to rank for short tail keyword. Here are their 3 steps to success Step 1: MAIN CATEGORY PAGES/HOME PAGE link to news articles
which are the source of long tail event focused keywords traffic.
Case Study Chicago Tribune
Step 2: A database assigns keywords to tagged pages . Every time a phrase is mentioned in an article, it is converted to a link.
with the anchor text being the keyword targeted.
Case Study:Chicago Tribune
End Result: The “Wrigley Field” tag page ranks #8 for
Wrigley Field in Google. Lessons: Keep your website structure as flat as
possible. Make sure you have an auto-link plug-in to link back to your product/info pages from blog posts/articles
Simple Widget Case Study• Mortgagecalculator.org by Aaron Wall• 150K/month traffic, link building mainly through widget syndication
Where to buy links
• Even Fortune 500 companies buy links from companies such as Conductor.com
When buying links
• Avoid public forums and brokers as much as you can.
• Approach individual website owners who have not already sold a million links.
• If you are in a highly competitive market feel free to use 301 redirect to hide bought links. (does not help with Bing, Yahoo traffic)
Old School Link Building• Your own sites & Internal Link building strategies• Friends• Competing websites• Vendors (ex: Web Designer, Plumber)• News sites (PR agencies need to be trained to ask for
links)• Blog & Forum Interaction (can be considered spam)• Related specialty sites (ex: Chamber of Commerce)• How-to sites• Social sites/groups/lists/profiles• Directories• Guest posting in other blogs and white paper
opportunities• Reviews & Testimonials• Article syndication& Press Releases• Content syndication (Video, image, podcast, etc). • CSS Galleries (if you have a great design)• Charities & Universities
Links can be embed codes
A link can be the embed/hotlink codes for your• images, • podcasts• videos on other people’s websites. Every embedded video/image helps your multi-
media asset rank higher in Image/Video Searches.
Personalized Search• Link to Twitter profile / Facebook group on email
signature• Consider not linking to your company/website home
page but to a Google Search Result that points to your site.
Ex: Google search result to show all my real estate site’s pages
http://www.google.com/search?q=site:falconliving.comPersonalized search history is recorded for computer IPs
and/or your Google Sign-in ID (If logged in) for six months so you will rank higher for that email contact’s future searches as a preferred website.
A link can be a mention
A mention of your Business name / phone number / address / email on a webpage (even without a link) helps you rank higher in search engine local business results.
Link Footprints
• Reciprocal Link Exchange Schemes• Having the majority of your link portfolio as
purchased links• Getting links from only low authority websites• Having the same “high traffic” anchor text
link. • A majority of links from Comment spam
(forums and blogs)
Link FarmsCase Study: Foster Web Marketing150+ Website clients in a large link farm:www.injurytriallawyer.com/resources.cfm Large Arrow is the Hidden Link shown as a Paragraph Header with CSS
Link Buying in an Ad formatCase Study: Cohomefinder.com – A Re/Max lead generation site – 99% of the
site is dynamically generated from MLS DatabaseSpent $50K+ (my estimation – 2009) on link buying in ad boxes or as text
links.Ranks First Page for every city + property type in Colorado Below screenshot from www.cobizmag.com
Timeless content theory
• Create timeless content pieces on your site. Resource guides, white papers, research studies• Promote your content to reporters, bloggers
and in forum threads. • Watch out for current events related to your
timeless piece, write guest blog posts and pitch the content to related reporters.
Questions
Mert Sahinoglu contact info: http://twitter.com/mertsahinoglumsahinoglu at yahoo.comhttp://linkedin.com/in/mertsahinoglu
Or just Google “Mert Chicago” http://www.google.com/search?
q=Mert+Chicago