How to do SEO like aSuper AffiliatePatrick AltoftDirector of Search

My definition of a super affiliate

• An affiliate business that has made the transition into being one of the following:o A well known brando A business driving substantial revenue &

profitso A business with perhaps 20+ employeeso A business with real offices

EXAMPLES

Finance

Travel

Voucher Sites

CHARACTERISTICS

Become a great business• Google wants to rank the best sites at the top• What can you be the best in the world at?

Superaffiliates are great at 2 things

Digital

Marketing

Sector

Expertise

Superaffiliates are generally very knowledgeable about their sector & products but so are a lot of brands.

Digital marketing expertise is what makes them stand out – need to beat merchants & all the other affiliates.

Some thoughts• Affiliates are always competing against other

affiliates as well as merchants• Barriers to entry are low – markets are

competitive

• SEO campaigns need to be very aggressive but in a natural & controlled way

• You need to show Google you are a trusted brand before you get aggressive with SEO

SEO is not your marketing strategySuperaffiliates do everything

High level SEO is about rankings

True high level SEO is not about conversions, brand awareness, sales, leads, revenue or profits.

Separate your SEO team from your commercial teams and let each one focus on what they do best.

Select a keyword, rank for it & move on to the next.

Strategy• Regular keyword selection based on extensive

opportunity analysis• Do this over lots (100,000+) of keywords

Opportunity = Search Vol. * Max CTR * Conversion Rate * Revenue Per Sale

TEAMS

Structure

Marketing Departme

nt

Designers

Content Writers

SEO

PPC

Conversion Rate

Optimisation

Analytics

Developers

Ideal SEO Team Structure

Head of Search

Strategist

Linkbuilders

Strategist

Linkbuilders

Content Manger

Content writers

Agency

Agency team

Talent

Research• To SEO like a superaffiliate you have to learn

what they do & how they do it• Year end financial reports• Investor calls• Press releases• Events• Google Alerts• Twitter/Facebook

COMPETITOR ANALYSIS

Searchmetrics

Searchmetrics

spyfu.com/uk/

Google Trends

Open Site Explorer

Open Site Explorer

Majestic SEO

LINK ANALYSIS

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

o URL contains .ac.uk , .edu , .gov , .nhso Anchor text contains target keyword

Anchor text visualisation• Wordle.net

Booking.com

Booking.com• Pivot table• Find top 10 anchor texts by count

Brand link authority Booking.com• Add up Domain Authority of all brand links –

125518

• Add up Domain Authority of non-brand links - 26757

Link Profile Booking.com

Building links• Press release every week• Pitch to bloggers, give quotes etc• Write guest content for blogs & news sites• Pay for links if you can make them look 100%

natural• Become an authority by being a voice in your

sector

Linkbuilding process

Competitor

Analysis

Search Google

Shortlist sites

QA process

Story ideas

Pitch stories

Content productio

n

Place links

QA process

Promote links

Track links

Content syndicationWhen looking for brand anchor text this is highly

effective

• MarketWire• PRweb• PR News Wire• Etc

• Article syndication systems• Blog networks that syndicate content

Questions?

• www.blogstorm.co.uk• www.branded3.com

• twitter.com/patrickaltoft• patrick@branded3.com