Advanced Link Building Strategies for Affiliate Sites - Patrick Atloft

ADVANCED
LINK BUILDING STRATEGIES
FOR AFFILIATE SITES
Patrick Altoft
Director of Search, Branded3

Affiliates & SEO
Big advantage because sites can easily be edited & optimised compared to big organisations
Big disadvantage because affiliates struggle to get natural links unless they are brands
An SEO savvy affiliate can always get rankings if they have the right strategy & can think big

Search Engine Optimisation
Most people think SEO is about
Keywords
Page titles
Meta tags
Site structure
On-site optimisation is enough to rank for very uncompetitive keywords
When all your competitors sites are well optimised who gets to be number 1?

Links are the most important ranking factor
Links are what Google uses to differentiate between similar websites

Links and PageRank
This isn’t new......
Since 1998 links have formed the basis of the Google algorithm
PageRank is a probability distribution used to represent the likelihood that a person randomly clicking on links will arrive at any particular page.
The pages that have the most incoming links are deemed more important.

PageRank≠ rankings
PageRank is quite inaccurate – a higher PR does not necessarily mean higher rankings

Research & Analysis Toolset
Yahoo Site Explorer for quick checks
OpenSiteExplorer.org (from SEOmoz)
MajesticSEO.com
Advanced knowledge of Microsoft Excel
Wordle.net

Majestic SEO

Competitor analysis
Identify 20 target keywords
Record domains ranking in top 20 search results for each keyword
Remove duplicate sites

Competitor analysis
Export all links to Excel

Competitor analysis
Repeat for all competitors to create one giant Excel document
Remove duplicate linking domains
Sort by Domain Authority or Page Authority

Competitor analysis
Use filters to find valuable links
URL contains .ac.uk , .edu , .gov , .nhs
Anchor text contains target keyword

Visualising your link profile

Case study – “mobile phones”
Competitive keyword
Good mixture of brands & affiliate sites
Sites have lots of links

Anchor text visualisation
Wordle.net

mobilejazz.co.uk

T Mobile

Bestcontractmobilephone.co.uk

Phones 4U

Onestopphoneshop.co.uk

Dial-a-Phone

Mobiles.co.uk

Carphone Warehouse

Carphone Warehouse
Pivot table
Find top 10 anchor texts by count

Brand link authority

Link authority

Carphone Warehouse Link Profile

Unnatural Link Profile

Brand Links

Keyword links

Is this a fluke?

The importance of brand links
We tested 30 highly commercial UK keywords
Every single keyword followed the same pattern: sites with large brand link authority rank higher
Non-brands are using branded anchor text links to make Google believe they are brands

What about anchor text & paid links?
Most people think that paid or unnatural links are devalued based on the site that they are placed on
For example if the site is openly selling links and putting groups of paid links in sidebars or footers...

Naturalness
What we found is that Google appears to be doing the opposite
They are devaluing links based on the “naturalness” of a sites link profile
Sites with very natural link profiles can use obvious spammy or paid links with immediate positive results
The same links pointed to a site with lesser brand authority are devalued and have no effect
Very obvious if you do reputation management

Implications
To succeed in Google a site needs to have a high amount of “natural” links with more brand authority than competitors
If you don’t have this authority already you need to create it
Once you have brand authority you only need a very small number of anchor text links to rank

Good news
It’s a lot easier to get brand anchor text than keyword anchor text in links
Very few people know about this so you can get a head start on your competitors

Easy 4 step strategy
Analyse industry & find out how much brand authority the leading sites have
Find out how much keyword anchor text link authority they have
Analyse your link profile and build up your brand authority so it’s higher than your competitors
Then build your keyword authority until you hit the top

Content syndication
When looking for brand anchor text this is highly effective
MarketWire
PRweb
PR News Wire
Etc
Article syndication systems
Blog networks that syndicate content
Guest posts

Replicating competitor links
Think about why each link was given
Is it a paid link?
Did the company attend a trade show or event?
Is it from one of their business partners?
What are your chances of getting the link?

Link QA process
Some links are better than others
If we’re paying for a link is it worth the money?

Link QA

Exchange links
This still works very well
Try not to use links pages
Set up partnerships with bloggers where you link to them and they link to you once a week
Do this with 10 people and you get 520 links per year

Making contact
Speak to people over the phone
Send personal emails, one by one, to people who run relevant websites
Make sure it doesn’t start with “Dear Webmaster”
Ask about advertising
Ask bloggers if they accept guest posts
Every time you get a link ask the site owner if they have any more sites

Design
Invest in stunning design
Design makes a site more linkable
Improving linkability dramatically increases the efficiency of your campaign
Allows the site to be featured in CSS galleries

Content
People don’t generally link to commercial content
Informational content attracts lots of free links
Think about added value
Guides
Reviews
Blog
News
Photos
Good content improves linkability

Paying for links
Google is against buying & selling links
Any links that appear to be paid are likely to be devalued unless you have brand authority
This is risky & delivers low ROI
If you choose to buy links sure they appear 100% natural
Be wary about using high profile link sellers......
Always try to get permanent links

Don’t become a headline
Buying links is a risk, do it right or don’t do it at all

Infographics

Graphs

Tips for linkbait
Make friends with all the bloggers in your industry
When you have a good article email each one of them individually
Highly effective

Tools for link building

Some final points
Link-building is a very difficult task
Results can take a long time to deliver
Analyse the industry and your link profile to understand what type of links you need
Don’t rely on natural link-building in the hope that you will get to the top eventually - you won’t
Don’t assume that your big brand competitors who are using paid links will be penalised – they won’t

Learning more
Read Blogstorm.co.uk - UK’s largest blog about SEO with over 10,000 daily readers
Email patrick@branded3.com for free SEO advice
Visit our website at Branded3.com

http://www.smartinsights.com	2091
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Advanced Link Building Strategies for Affiliate Sites - Patrick Atloft

by a4uexpo Conference on Oct 14, 2010

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Advanced Link Building Strategies for Affiliate Sites - Patrick Atloft — Presentation Transcript