Gaining links for SEO on your affiliate website

One of the key parts of optimising your website for search engines is building in-bound links from other websites. The best place you can possibly have a link is in a contextually rich area i.e. on a page that has plenty of good written copy around the keywords that you’re hoping to rank well in.

Gaining these in-bound links is an art form that many get horribly wrong.

Some believe it’s ok to send a templated email to every email address they can find on the internet asking for a link exchange. Google and other search engines are aware this goes on and have long since put things in place to check for reciprocal links from the same site where there is no copy or wording around the link that’s relevant. It might be worth it if you had hundreds of links but a single, high quality, contextual link from the right website to your own affiliate website will be significantly more valuable.

A recent form of this type of email is one where the link researcher has identified a website they would like to have a link on and they understand that there needs to be a reason for the website owner to put that link up. Bringing in the contextual idea into the same mix, it makes sense to offer the website some uniquely written contextual content which includes a link back to your website (with them knowing of course) in exchange for that link.

In this scenario, both websites gain. One receives free written copy relevant to their website (if it’s done right) and the other receives an in-bound link that’s going to gain them better search engine optimisation through links.

Here’s an email I have recently seen that does this very well;

We had a couple of ideas which I hope you will find useful:
1) We can have our editorial team research and hand write some content for you to add to a page on [site removed]. We will agree a subject with you that is relevant to both of our sites (it won`t be a sales pitch for us!) and will include a single simple text link back to a relevant content page on our site. The content will be uniquely written for you and will not be re-used elsewhere. It should be helpful to your visitors and of course the search engines, as will the presence of a relevant link back to us. Hopefully we will also benefit from the link in the longer term.
- OR -
2) We can exchange links with you, directly from a relevant content page on [site removed]. We will explain where links are located on our site (on properly indexed and ranked pages) when you reply - we don`t have a links page as such - we link from the most relevant page to each partner.
There are of course no costs for you associated with either approach.

While this does take time and energy for the site looking to receive the in-bound link, both benefit.

This has to be probably the most compelling new version of link-exchange emails that I’ve seen.

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Dealing with rotating banner campaigns

It’s an on-going mission for an affiliate to deal with time dependent banner campaigns on their website.

Usually, if you have an affiliate program that’s doing the job right for you there will be an option for a specific rotating banner campaign that will switch between the time dependent campaign and a default advertising campaign for the product or website you’re promoting.

There are plenty of situations where this is not particularly well implemented and often it’s forgotten about or put in the too-hard basket (by both the affiliate and the program). It can be particularly difficult to implement text based campaigns like this. I can’t think of many sites that offer this.

As an affiliate, if you’re using rotating banner campaigns, the key thing to be aware of is what banners are going to be displayed in the campaign. You’re the one your viewers are going to turn on if something in-appropriate turns up, not the program who put the banner in there. Usually this isn’t a large problem but I have seen it as an issue design wise where a refreshed rotating banner campaign just looked plain bad on a particular site design.

In a recent affiliate newsletter sent out by Commission Monster, they appear to have spent some time on the issue and after listening to feedback they have come up with this;

Commission Monster is pleased to announce that as a result of consultation with Affiliates, we have implemented a new banner display solution for all inactive banners or campaigns. When a campaign becomes inactive, any remaining banners on Affiliate sites will become invisible. The website’s natural background will appear. Consumers that click through the invisible banner will be redirected to a Commission Monster page advising the promotion has finished, and providing alternative campaigns to click on.

Seems like a good implementation to me, good on you Commission Monster.

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Affiliate marketing through seasonal keywords

Building seasonal specific sections of your website is already an age-old tradition in affiliate marketing but it’s still a basic that some people just don’t get around to. Aside from the obvious season terms that every other affiliate marketer is getting articles and blog posts written about (e.g. Christmas and Valentines Day marketing terms), why not look into what else is going on seasonally that you could be gaining traffic for?

Recently I was discussing an affiliate site which is based around promoting online games and the owner of the site has a few different smaller sites which are wholly targeted on the world champs for those online games that happen only once a year. For a period of around a month there is a massive jump in traffic to that site and then it just sits, with only the odd small additional content added over the rest of the year.

When this is done in combination with a few different sites which are using different affiliate marketing terms that are searched heavily on for just a couple of weeks or a month in the year then you can end up with a good amount of seasonal traffic to help boost your standard levels through-out the year.

What do your viewers love to get involved in? Is it the yearly Young Farmers Awards or is it the New Zealand Tennis Open? I’m sure keyword traffic to these takes significant spikes over the period that they’re running in.

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Question and Response on the NZ vs US affiliate market

I received an interesting (if broad) question today by email and thought it was worth putting the details up;

Question:

Hi,

Found your great site and got your contact details. I’m new to the affiliate mktg game but motivated and keen to get moving. However being based in NZ was hoping to start in the NZ marketplace but it does not look like its happening in terms of merchant availability and motivation to use affiliates. I’ll think i’ll start in the US market? Am i thinking straight? Any advice appreciated.

Cheers…[name removed]

Response:
Hi [name removed],

Good question, although it’s a pretty big one :)

Do you ignore the NZ market given its current lack of affiliate programs and target the US market which has more than one program for everything you can sell or do online or do you stick with the NZ market because it’s what you know best and deal with the restrictions?

Sadly it’s not something I can answer properly as it depends on what you are interested in promoting and how you want to promote it.

Affiliate marketers worldwide tend to work on more than one site at a time. Perhaps the answer is to work on both?

Having exposure to different markets can be a very positive thing as if there is a down-turn in one it does not necessarily mean the other is also heading down.

The key for the NZ market is to make sure you think long and hard about what you’re planning on marketing and make sure there are already promotional options available. There’s no excuse for building a website and then saying “there’s no-one to pay me for it”, your research before you built the website should have included how you are going to fund the revenue from it.

The obvious default answer in New Zealand is to use Google Adsense however this will not always give you the best value for your traffic.

In the US market, the same thing applies. Make sure there is not too much competition in the market you are looking to enter, or that you have a strong enough offer and/or content to beat out the competition. As long as you’ve already seen advertising avenues for whatever it is you’re promoting, then go for it!

Cheers

AP

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Affiliate Marketing and Search in New Zealand - Search Engine Room

I had the pleasure of attending and was a speaker at (although not for affiliateprograms.co.nz) the Search Engine Room conference yesterday and have to say that I was impressed.

The level of expectation from search industry professionals that the search market in New Zealand is ready for double digit growth over each quarter in the next year is a positive step forward for the New Zealand market.

Search advertising is over 40% of online advertising spend elsewhere in the world however in New Zealand it is still under 30%. Online advertising spend as a percentage of marketing budgets in New Zealand is still well under the worldwide norm with New Zealand online spend at around 7% and the rest of the world between 13-15%.

Will affiliate marketing increases impact on this? It surely will.

Many affiliates spend time bringing viewers to their site through search engine advertising. In New Zealand this has always meant Google Adsense however now with the updated Yahoo! Search Marketing tools available it will need to include YSM as well.

As more affiliate programs are created and more affiliates come online looking for ways to source targeted traffic then search advertising spend in New Zealand will only inrease.

As discussed in a previous post, affiliates need to steer clear of search advertising for branded keywords as many programs expressely forbid this in their terms and conditions however search advertising for long-tail keywords in the New Zealand market are still relatively light in competition for the top positions. While this is true at the moment, it is not likely to stay that way for long, as more marketing managers from companies around New Zealand begin to jump on the band-wagon of search advertising.

With companies in attendance like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! as well as innovative New Zealand companies like Eurekster and SLI-Systems. It was great to see the first search conference become a successful and interesting event.

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.nz Internationalised Domains

If you hadn’t heard about it yet, the DNC (Domain Name Commission) for New Zealand are starting the process towards bringing in the ability to include (for a start) five different characters into the .nz domain space. These are; the the macronised vowels ā, ē, ī, ō, and ū which are not currently available in the .nz domain market.

Having New Zealand domains include these is a logical choice given that a large number of Te Reo Māori words include these characters. If you are interested in having your say about whether or not they should be introduced you can submit directly to the Working Group.

This brings up a few interesting questions in the affiliate marketing world in New Zealand as you may now have people who have been trading on words without these characters where, if they are not the first in to register the new domains, may end up with intellectual property issues (e.g. copyright, passing off) if another company or an affiliate decides to use the domain for the same purposes.

In the affiliate world, being a “domain affiliate” can be a lucrative business. Many affiliates have made a lot of money from buying up domains, both for type-in traffic (where people just type the domain directly into their browser in the hope of getting the site they are looking for) as well as for generic keywords which other companies consider a valuable item.

There are people on both sides of the fence in terms of calling some of the above domain-squatting or not. It is usually a case-by-case basis to be able to call it that as there are many legitimate reasons for registering valuable domains.

For an affiliate program, this can be a double-edged sword and some treat the matter very differently to others. Many affiliate programs will have in their terms and conditions that an affiliate cannot receive or pass-through traffic generated through the use of the companies brand name. Others are not quite so restrictive.

In the case of a large multi-national company who is receiving significant traffic from its branding, then protection of the brand from the affiliate is quite a logical choice (particularly when PPC traffic and branded keywords are involved). However it can be taken too far by some smaller affiliate programs when there is no real need to become so restrictive about the branded domain.

Take the registering of domain names which are similar to the brand name of the company. Not many companies have the resources to register every domain name which is mildly relevant to their brand. For example, I’m sure Google will have registered the googlr.com domain (for type in traffic mistakes) when your average company would not have the funds to register all typo’s or hyphenated domains relevant to their brand (e.g. google-analytics.com).

This is where a bit of flexibility from an affiliate program in regards to their affiliates domain and brand usage can go a long way to help both parties increase revenue. I have seen many cases where a good affiliate was trading off a hyphenated brand name and the smarter companies were happy for the affiliate to use those sites and their traffic, so long as the affiliate is sending the traffic to the brands own website.

So, if you’re looking at whether or not to try and register every domain you can think of that looks even close to your brand, try opening an affiliate program instead and you may find that you problem will be solved with an increase in revenue!

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Affiliate emails: Get the basics right

I would have thought an affiliate network would understand the absolute importance of the privacy of their affiliates email addresses however I just received an email which included 100 email address of their publishers in the “To” field.

Unbelievable!

It was a promotional email promoting one of the affiliate programs on their network who is running a special campaign for a limited amount of time. The email was reasonably well written and quite compelling as an affiliate. I was thinking about promoting the product for the time of the special offer.

Then I noticed that 100 other affiliate email addresses were in the “To” field. This breaks the fundamental policy of working with any database of customers (or affiliates) that their privacy is paramount. A customer trusts you with their personal details which must be respected with utmost care.

Getting the basics right in emailing affiliates (and your sites newsletter database) is very important. The reputation of your brand is depending on it.

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URL’s in Affiliate Promotional Material

In my past life as an Affiliate Manager, the first time I thought about URL’s in affiliate promotional material was when a very influential affiliate came to me and said;

I will not promote your site because all of your promotional material includes your URL on it.

I was quite properly shocked.

I hadn’t even considered that an issue (this was a good few years ago now) when we were in development of the promotional material for affiliates.

After talking with the affiliate for some time, it came down to choice in the market.

This affiliate had the option of promoting many different affiliate programs, they were all pushing for his attention and prominent spots on his homepage. When this situation occurs (an affiliate dream scenario) then it’s all of the small things which a program can offer the affiliate which make the difference on their decision to pick a particular product or program to go with.

In this case it was the fact that the affiliate was not interested in the program promoting the main site URL through his affiliate banners as that would mean a percentage of viewers (even if it was small) would not click the advertising but would instead type the domain name directly into their browser. They may even remember the URL from the affiliates advertising and later on type it in.

If the URL had not been there they would have been a lot more likely to either click the banner to get to the site or to come back to the affiliates site to find the resource again.

This may be a very small percentage of people but when you’re talking about super-affiliates with millions of page views per day across their sites then the percentages all start to add up and there’s just no reason for them to promote a banner with a URL on it as opposed to one without.

I was thinking about this recently as I was contacted directly by an affiliate manager about a site, I agreed to post their banner on the homepage of the site as a trial run however on getting into their banner farm there was no banner which didn’t have the URL splashed across it. Needless to say I didn’t put them on my homepage and have since requested a banner without the URL.

Something to think about it you’re an affiliate looking to promote a program or an affiliate manager working with your creative team to come up with advertising options.

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What kind of affiliates do New Zealand merchants want?

I’m happy to introduce the first in a series of four articles on affiliate marketing in New Zealand from a merchant perspective by Antony Ellis, Affiliate Manager for NZ Fine Prints, New Zealand’s largest retailer of art prints and posters; www.prints.co.nz.

The next articles in the series will be;

What kind of affiliates do New Zealand merchants want?

Why should a New Zealand merchant care about the kind of website that is signing up to their affiliate program?

No retailer wants to set up shop in a shady part of town. They want to associate their brand and products with quality websites. If your affiliate program offers the option merchants should always thoroughly check the content of sites that apply to join their affiliate program. Infringing copyright? Objectionable content? Think hard about whether the extra sales are worth associating your company, brand and products with dodgy looking websites.

Merchants should read the applicant’s “About Us” or “Contact Us” - check who owns the site. If this is not clear try using whois or domainz to look up the owner. It’s hard to trust any site that doesn’t have clear contact and address details. I’m not bothered by the lack of a physical address - many of our best affiliates are run from a home office and don’t want people dropping by as a matter of course - but a contact form with no other details will make a merchant less likely to accept your affiliate application.

If your merchant program includes pay per click think very hard about the signals you pick up from your research. Unless you have sophisticated tools in place to prevent it click fraud may mean paying out more to the affiliate than they deserve. Pay per sale is harder for a dishonest affiliate to fake - but there is always the possibility the site owner is just signing up to get a discount on your products for a one off sale!

A word on expectations. Owners of new websites in particular may have unrealistic expectations of what they can earn in the short term. Let you affiliates know how much traffic your site needs to make a sale (your conversion rate expressed as sales per 100 visitors) so they don’t give up on your program within a couple of weeks if they are not sending through much traffic. Savvy affiliates will also want to know the value of your average sale. Remember that your merchant ads are competing with alternative affiliate programs for screen share on the affiliate’s site so be as open with them as you can - while imagining one of your competitors is reading the email too so you don’t let slip any commercial secrets in you haste to impress an important affiliate!

Merchants - once you have signed up the right kind of affiliate make sure someone in your company is given the job of keeping in touch with them so they send you visitors for many years. It’s hard for a merchant to find quality New Zealand affiliates - a problem that I will explore in my next article.

Learn more about the New Zealand Fine Prints Affiliate Program.

Thank you to Antony for his contribution.

Close communication with the affiliate market is a very important tool for Affiliate Managers to show their commitment to providing value in the industry so I’m glad to see the Fine Prints Affiliate Program is willing to help the community of New Zealand affiliates.

If you have any comments or contributions feel free to contact me on affiliate@nzbase.com.

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New Zealand Online Research for Affiliates

One of the difficult things when working in the New Zealand online market is finding just the right place to research the habits of New Zealanders on the web.

Many of the tools which you might use for a global campaign are not as relevant to the New Zealand web. A good example here is Google Adwords keyword suggestion tool. This is an excellent online research tool for your affiliate marketing keywords on a particular topic when you’re interested in promoting in the US affiliate market however it is reasonably limited from a New Zealand specific market perspective.

So, you need to have a good look around and find some research tools as well as something like the Google keyword suggestions which will give you a better perspective on the local New Zealand angle.

One excellent local option here is the Hitwise New Zealand Data Center which has monthly reports like the Top 20 NZ Websites (here), the Top 4 Fast Moving Websites in NZ (here) and of course the most useful Top 10 Industry Keywords in NZ (here).

Keeping an eye on what’s going on from this sort of freely available New Zealand online research data is going to give you a good chance to make sure your research is as targeted to the New Zealand demographic as possible.

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