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