The Death Of Affiliate Marketing? Declare Your Relationship or Go To Jail?

Oh don't you love regulation? But I feel this is probably for the better given the gullibility of much of the general public!

So how many of you know about the "Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading 2008" regulation recently mentioned in Marketing Week?

It's aim may to bring us in line with "Europe" but it could have far reaching consequences to both social media geeks like me and PR companies that run stunts on behalf of their clients - if we're not clever we could end up time behind bars!

Thankfully I try and avoid things like stupid (but successful) linkbait. I always try and keep the brand under control by keeping things factual. Linkbait can be that you know!!

The important bit to note is "The new rules are designed to clamp down on sharp practice and aggressive selling tactics, but experts say it will have a significant impact on reputable businesses and buzz marketing firms." (Marketing Week 28th May 2008).

To quote more:

Osborne Clarke head of marketing and privacy law Stephen Groom thinks the new regulations are the “biggest shake-up in the UK laws affecting marketing and advertising ever.”

“For the first time, all the rules are being... pooled into an umbrella of rules focusing on unfair commercial practice,” he says. He adds that the regulations could create more complex issues for marketers: “Not just fringe merchants, but mainstream legitimate marketers. They might get caught offside if they do not pay attention to this. This will have quite an impact on a very hot, popular and growing area of the market.”

If you wanted a quick summary here it is:

The new regulations will make seeding positive messages about a brand in a blog – without making it clear that the message has been created by or on behalf of a brand – illegal.

Bugger!

What about affiliates being all gooey about their merchants to get sales?? Do we have to say we're "offical affiliates of merchant xyz" just as Sky's brand bidding clique have to?

Next to every link do I have to declare my relationship with the merchant?

Reading this bit I feel better:

However, Hyperlaunch head of buzz marketing Simon Quanse says the new regulations will only have the potential to affect those using “underhand” buzz marketing techniques.

“There are some agencies that do not have the maturity, openness and respectfulness to engage with people in the right way,” says Quanse. “As a result, the whole industry suffers.”

Can the network bigwigs and suited legal counsel please give advice?

My Response To Jeff Molander: Affiliate Cannibalisation

This is an econsultancy email they recently sent out with an interview with Jeff Molander.

E-Con) More and more retailers are expressing concerns that affiliates are cannibalising other sales channels. But is it actually happening?

Jeff) Retail marketers find themselves struggling to balance objectives of their search marketing campaigns with those of affiliate programs. Affiliates, they've suddenly discovered, are competing. In fact, they have been for years. Affiliates pioneered paid search while marketers sat on the sidelines, all the while grabbing low-hanging-fruit opportunities like bidding on branded trademarks.

Lee) This is the issue many of us have seen in recent years. Affiliates who tend to be the most imaginative, industrious and inventive in the industry risked their own cash not only in paid search but researching and investing in natural search methods and websites.

Merchants were often very slow to highlight the tactics used and when they saw the returns that were actually being made, they decided to shut off these routes to sales one by one.

We saw some a steady stream of merchants saying you can't bid on their brand, you can't advertise direct to merchant in paid search and you can't bid on their most successful keywords - which us affiliates provided them in many circumstances in their log files.

So I feel many merchants are squeezing affiliates more and more into the lower return channels and methods.

But then there's still the brand bidding groups; the open groups and the totally closed (we are told) bidding groups. It amazes me that with such a positive ROI with raw brand-bidding that merchants don't solely do this themselves but rely on affiliates and their agency over-ride, oh and the network over-ride too to "manage" the really difficult task of promoting via brand terms.

I've still yet to recieve a clear reason why merchants should conduct brand bidding with affiliate tracking! The only reasons I can find is that merchants and agencies are conning (dare I saw defrauding?) merchants into allowing brand bidding groups for their own self-interest. The other reason is that the merchant is just plain lazy or stupid - come to me and I'll do it for a tenth of your current cost!


Jeff) Also, marketers are re-thinking the value affiliates contribute in relatively new terms. They're studying simple things like the type of customers referred by various types of affiliates. In other words, marketers see some affiliates contributing valuable customers with higher lifetime values and other affiliates sending less desirable customers. In many cases, affiliates are earning the same fee from advertisers and that, they believe, needs to be corrected. Of course, affiliate networks and affiliates aren't as eager to correct.

Totally, I see a big shift by the merchants to taking over the long-term relationship with affiliates that are able to deliver strong ROI in the long-term. Whilst I see it as the network's role to find "hidden gems" - affiliates that aren't performing but with the right assistance can turn into these major affiliates.

E-Con) Why does this matter when affiliate marketing is performance based?

Jeff) That's a common question that needs to be addressed. I like to think of it in these terms: Performance marketing is absolutely effective but is it efficient? We all know that it works but how well?

We're definitely entering a maturation phase where some marketers are much better at stretching their marketing dollars. During these difficult economic times that will only become more important. CMOs will only come under more pressure not less.

In simple terms, "performance-based" has become a bit of an industry darling. In reality, there's much more behind a performance-based marketing strategy than 'I only pay when I receive' the desired action from a customer.

There are behind-the-scenes, tactical issues that must be managed like fraud, returns and cancelled orders, managing multiple affiliate programs and/or multiple performance-based strategies, such as CPC search and affiliate.

When multiple performance-based programs are used, the concern for duplication or cannibalisation arises. Specifically, duplicate payments can be made (leading to cost inflation). Duplicate "scoring" of marketing strategies can occur which cloud true ROI measurement.

Marketers need to know what's working and what isn't. When orders are credited to multiple performance-based campaigns or channels this prohibits good analysis and stifles optimisation.

In summary, there are serious tactical-driven issues that need to be addressed: Behind-the-scenes economics that can seriously impact efficiency.

Lee) I think there's more segmentation. With the huge budgets being allocated to this channel there'll be this attention to detail and these merchants will take a good look at the value each adds to their overall bottom line.

However, with the merchants where affiliate marketing offers a smaller part of their revenue stream I'm sure that de-duping will play much less of a role in their overall affiliate marketing processes.

Now mix merchant apathy with closed, unethical or partial brand bidding policies then you've got affilate hell!

In some circumstances up to 70% of content affiliate's can be overwritten by brand bidding affiliate's cookies. If merchants don't go through the de-duping process then they will have no idea of the extent of how much their affilaite marketing spend is effectively going down the drain and how many content affiliates they are turning off as they'll see them as unprofitable.

So I call every merchant who wants to improve their bottom line and make a long-terms success of the industry to contact their agency and/or network and ask what they're doing to help you make the most of your budget and do they really care about your bottom line?

E-Con) Do you feel affiliate networks are doing enough to tackle the problem?

Jeff) Honestly speaking, the entire conversation is not one that affiliate networks are looking to have with clients because it shines a big spotlight on something that's been blindly assumed: efficiency.

Affiliate marketing itself has clung to effectiveness for too long. There must be a sense of accountability on the efficiency front. Marketers are demanding it.

That stated, networks are addressing the problem behind the scenes and have been for years - on an individual case basis. With affiliate solution providers aligned closely with analytics solutions, it's becoming increasingly simple to gather data; however, business-minded analysts must be called in to audit it.

Therein lies the challenge: human resources and, again, the commitment to act on findings in a way that may suggest one channel's "ROI superiority" over another.

Lee) Love it Jeff! The majority of networks don't want to raise the issue because 1) they don't want more work to do & 2) they're making more money by sweeping the issue under the carpet!

I'm affraid, if merchants and affiliates demand it, there will be a flight to networks that act openly - just like what happened a few years ago with the spyware issues.

E-Con) How do you feel affiliate marketing budgets might be affected if and when retailers move away from the "last click wins" model?

Jeff) What a question! I'm glad you asked. Here's an answer that you may not expect: CPA affiliate may very well prove to be a more valuable asset among all the various advertising cogs in the wheel - comparison shopping, affiliates, search, banner/display, etc. Budgets may very well see an increase.

Bottom line: This is where the action is - and things are just now beginning to heat up. Watch for companies like ValueClick taking all their performance-based media opportunities and roll them together for larger advertisers - using CPA affiliate networks like Commission Junction as an "indicator of purchase intent" in a more complex, yet highly predictable, shopper behaviour pattern.

Who wins on the publisher side? Those who provide the most value and the value game always comes down to actions. Influencing purchase intent is great but causing the sale wins every time. That translates to CPA shining brightly and standing to win the lion's share of what is sure to be a more complex payment model. Indeed, "last click wins" is all but dead as everyone from Microsoft to Valueclick runs toward a more appealing (to marketers and publishers) solution.

Driving all of this is convergence. As affiliate marketing units gets swallowed up by companies offering multiple strategies it opens the door for scale across all of these strategies.

Another driving factor: marketers typically aren't spreadsheet whizzes, but today's efficiency-focused environment demands use of basic analysis and what amounts to reconciliation. It isn't sexy or complicated, but it's a lot of bloody work!

Yes, it's vital to success when developing an efficient approach but it doesn't scale well. There's too much friction and a reliance on business analysts (in short supply). Once each channel's true performance is understood, it is possible to begin making intelligent improvements but there's a lot of manual, heavy lifting involved.

Lee) To me the "last click model" doesn't reward affiliates like me that educate and inform users. I may spend a couple of hours writing some content about "how to choose the best tv for bathrooms" or whatever. So I tell them model xyz is the best and you should buy it from Comet because they'll take your old one away, will deliver on time, are friendly etc etc. Then the user has a chat with their other half when they come home. The user then opens up their browser and types "comet electricals" and the affiliate that spent two seconds coming up with that idea get's the £5 comission - but it may happend 20 times that day. So I loose £100! It's really going to keep me being a content affiliate and will really make me want to tell the world how great you are!

There needs to be a solution. With all this clever wizzardry around at the moment I'm sure some network with balls will come up with a solution!

Come on you network techies - provide the pancea the industry needs. And you network CEO's get off the gravy train and offer your merchants and affiliates more value!

p.s. - was my spelling really that bad!?!!?! Jeez. Can someone start up a collection to get me a proof-reader please?

Lee, Why Arent' Your Sites Beautiful?

At the buy.at gig an affiliate (I think it was Nick Smith from Freestuff.co.uk) asked me "why aren't your sites beautiful"? My answer was that "I want to get people in and out as quickly as possible!"

This is my view of what people want these days. Now Jakob Nielson shares my view.

Nick said to me that I seem to replicate the same template through-out my sites and then just write loads and loads of content - a virtually completely accurate summary of my strategy.

I reassessed what I was doing about 2 1/2 years ago. I looked at my strengths and weakneses. I know I can design nice sites but it'll take me 3 / 4 times longer than most to do this. I also realised that I hate updating sites with links. I also knew that I love writing content and giving my thoughts about stuff to people.

I then found Blogger and worked out how to make them look half-decent and perform well in the search engines.

But the main reason is content not only allows you to offer the search engines websites that they like but the textual part allows you to drop links in that people follow as I knew visitors are turning off from image ads.

Its now got to the situation that about 90% of my income is from editorially given text links. The other 10% is made of Adsense, banners and other stuff.

So if you've got sites really think about how quickly you can get what traffic you do get then really think about how you can convert page impressesions to validated commissions. Work out which link placements get more clicks, establish if using keywords such as "best", "great", "offers", "deals" etc next to those links encourage people to click and put them in a more "buying" frame of mind".

I'd thoroughly recommend the "Landing Page Optimisation" Handbook From Marketing Sherpa. It may be a few quid but it's well worth it!!! There are subtle changes that you can make which will result in fairly substantial massive increases in commissions.

Go to town on your content, think hard about how you're actually going to get visitors to take actions you want. Don't simply right some "stuff" and "whack some banners" on. You'll make more writing content and carefully selecting links and anchor text.

How Should You Select Merchants To Promote? Part 1: Networks

It's entirely up to you to be honest, but here's the subconscious list I run through when I've got a product / merchant to promote.

There's several levels to think about, Network, Merchant, Product, but I'll just deal with the first today:

1) Collective Perception
We all have our favourite networks, but I think these networks forget that our views of them aren't just instilled within us at birth! They occur for many reasons. One of those reasons is that others may have had good and bad experiences with those networks. So I do read what others have to say on the forum and on messenger, those experiences help to form part of my reasoning on who to promote, and especially if I've never worked in that sector before or if I'm looking at a merchant on a network I've never used before. I've been told stuff on the d-low about some networks that obviously they don't want to get out in the open, some names try and have a clean reputation, but the truth is somewhat different - I won't mention names.

2) Individual Perception
I think all of us have had issues with every network from time to time. I've had issues with CJ, TD (still do and they don't seem to care about my issue), Buy.at with HMV, a credit card merchant with OMG (who called everyone else that was promoting it to tell them but not me - that cost me a few £k), Affiliate Window (back in the days - I can't even remember what it was about), Affiliate Future (getting me recked and leaving me naked in the bath - Pete was off duty then). So I've got my own list of networks that I try not to work with much.

I know others haven't got a great perception of Buy.at because of all the dodgy brand bidding stuff. Many see them as just a brand bidding network. I see that they had a great temp/work experience/placement person in Nicola White who helped with content and getting samples from her merchants. So that was a thumbs up.

3) Ease Of Creating Links And Finding Products
When I've got a long post or article to write I need to find relevant products and create the links very quickly - time is money and all that.

At the moment Affiliate Window is far and away the easiest to do this. With their Shop Window product I have created a site that I use just for this purpose (being indexed and ranking is just a bonus). If I wanted to write a post about "diamond rings" for example I'd just search in the Shop Window site and get all the images and links I need. It even gives you a redirect link which blocks Google out of crawling and you don't have to upload the images - you can hot link them! Perfect!!

I know another large network is launching similar product soon, they're already high up my list so I use their fairly rudimentary tool too.

Paid On Results also have a great link building tool. If I know what merchant I want to promote I'd go straight to the site find the products and drop them into the POR tool. I'm sure I could use POR much better - they have some great tools - just that I haven't got round to using them all yet. Also I don't have to worry about putting their links into a hidden redirect of my own as their links are ok.

TD is on my naughty step big time! But it's very easy to create links, just not so easy to find the products. Because of my network perception (1+2) above I try not to use them.

Webgains is also affected by 1 + 2 above. I haven't tried hard enough with them and I feel the same is true in reverse. They've go the link building tool within the merchant creatives section. But, I'm afraid, Webgains is never in the forefront of my mind when populating my sites with merchants or products :-(.

CJWho? I only use these if I really have to! Like I do with Hotel Chocolat.

Buy.at had their tool which allowed me to search on their merchant's products. It was just a shame that I only ever really found books (could they post here which merchants currently have feeds?)

4) Payment Terms
As I'm now solely a content affiliate it doesn't really affect me. I earn well from consultancy so my affiliate earnings are pretty much just for retirement, but payment terms are still important. Affiliate Future pay very quickly (are they the quickest), and their payments are guaranteed (does anyone else offer this?), Affiliate Window pay twice monthly (more bloody work for me creating invoices ;-) ) and know there's a "payment on demand" network somewhere.

I'll be lucky to get money out of TD, CJ seem to take ages and POR I have to remember to request payment (I can't even remember my niece's birthday!).

5) Trust
This may relate to the others. But I know that that when a network first starts up I won't use them, unless I know the people there and had built up a good relationship in the past. Look what happened to Zanox and that "sea"-related network (are they still around?) etc. There's too many other networks I trust and too much to do to risk spending my limited time on networks that just smell a bit fishy.

6) They Communicate In A Manner That Makes It Easy For Me To Promote Their Merchants
Webgains have a great blog (perhaps there's too many posts??) but they keep you informed in a manner I like. I've added their blog feed to my reader and can search easily on product names and merchant types within Google Reader.

Affiliate Future have great news updates and merchant content areas within the login.

I don't feel most of the other networks see blogging as a central element to their affiliate communication. TD and CJ seem to be non-existent on the forum.

Only Linkshare (Darren Newmark) is in daily contact with me on Messenger. The other networks (and agencies) speak to me weekly (which is fine).

6) Experience In The Industry
AF are obviously great in travel - which I no-longer have as a core sector, but they are strong in other areas like gifts that I work in.

AW are very strong in gadgets and consumer products so I push them up to the top of my list when looking for products / merchants to promote.

Buy.at are generally week in my areas, save for Thorntons and Ethical Superstore.

TD, I feel also aren't strong in my areas. I get the feeling that the ones they do have in my sectors are poorly converting. I'll revisit them later on.

POR - I feel bad. As I know they'll have great merchants for my Christmas blog but will have a day populating my current posts with their merchants.

Linkshare - they have some great merchants that I've got to build in.

7) Relationships
It is important to build relationships with people within the networks. Some networks have worked at talking to me and bringing me along to events.

I had some great relationships with people at OMG. I've got to rebuild those. AW work hard at building relationships. Affiliate Future I feel are the best, Pete, Mary and even Maz are/were great at really taking an interest in what you do. Ken at Altogether Digital/Ads is great. James Little is a little angel ;-) for keeping you informed and feeling valued. Julia at Affiliate Window is a helpful contact. I couldn't mention anyone at CJ and TD don't seem to care. Clarke at POR is there if I need him. And I even know anyone at Buy.at would help if I asked.

There are some great network staff if you think about it.

From all this what are my perceptions of the networks? Which do I look at first??

1) Affiliate Window - just because they make it easy for me to promote their merchants. OK, it's very easy and they have loads of great merchants in my sector. I just which they were as approachable as AF.

Joint 1st) Affiliate Future - Great people, great product, great offering and pay quickly.

3) Paid On Results - Makes life easy, no fuss, no crap, they just get on with it

4) LinkShare - Still a bit untested, they've got rid of much of the Americana, still a bit to go but I know Darren is there on hand.

5) Webgains - so much potential for me. Its my fault I've done next to nothing with them

6) Buy.at - some great merchants, very helpful staff but that closed-BNB still annoys me.

7) Altogether - great people. A client does nicely with one of their merchants and I'm building them into a new site.

8) OMG - helpful but I've been too lazy/busy lately to look at their retail stuff as I've still got it in the back of my head that they're a finance network

9) TD - some good merchants but have really pissed me off

10) CJ - I stupidly applied to a load of yank merchants when I had a US site and they now just get in the way. I can't get my head around the payments and see them as too clunky to use in a hurry!

You Say Wa? Wierd & Interesting Keywords

I was just wondering what drives people here (other than the desire to read fantastic, insightful SEO & affiliate info - cough).

So here's a list of some of the 2,179 keyphrases that has bought the blog search engine traffic:


lee mccoy - shit I'm hot ;-)

initial city link - the enemy!

google trademark policy - topic du jour

myvouchercodes - dodgy gits that steal other affiliate's codes - if I'm wrong either tell me or sue me!

facebookoff

eeepc buy - do you really want to?

ocean finance - one of the reasons we're in this mess perhaps: easy credit
affiliate future - nice people. And even better with the great fuzz ball that is joining them!

brand bidding - the tactic of the lazy and greedy

pazang - I consulted for them

search logic - who? Aren't they starting again with new people - tres suspicious if you ask me!

thorntons chocolates - my heros

asos marketing - all about brand not incremental sales

darren newmark - shame he supports a crap footy team, but he works his backside off!

dilbert marketing - a book most merchants seem to read

goods loaded onto a van - ah back to shitty link

working for asos - why?

kier marston photo - you sick puppy!

mark pearson - tosser. Fanstastic with coins and pancakes apparently

seo recession ppc - think about it!

sheenu aggarwal - lovely

beauty icon - I wish I could write what I really thought

quick google indexing - come speak to me!

going to barbados - maybe hey?

millwall tattoo - why the hell would you want one?

nick robinson asos - misguided

page similarity checker - useful!

pr guaranteed - yep we offer that

the lazy affiliate - Brand bidders of the world unite

direct to merchant google - try building content sites

div visibility - dodgy!

duplicate title tags - don't do it

helen southgate - my hero

kennedyassissination - yep I ownt the domain name

neil mitchell search logic - ah my lamb chop

sam applegate - was bidding on brand terms when he should be!

got a degree in economics - yep, but don't hold it against me!

mazda rx8 altogether ads - I'm waiting

nic cordingly - never seen his glass empty

advanced mp3 josh - great guy

affiliate cash flow - many affiliates forget about htis

affiliate future brand bidding - they'll rip your head off!

affiliate marketing illegal - who told you that?

affiliate programme advice - where is she?

affiliate redirects - crucial

affiliate shop window - doesn't work with non alphanumeric terms

affiliate window cost of set up - ask them not me

affiliate's favourite network - not telling ya.

baconology - yep I'm starving

bidding on brand terms - try working for a living

brand bidding closed groups - get some mints and knee pads. Yes Kieron I know you don't like me saying that but I don't give a shit

brands social shopping - going to be hot

buy.at closed groups protection - no comment!

can you make money on facebook - yes

consultancy rates 2008 - email me

consumer is king - yep, even stupid ones

content affiliates - my friends

dgm affiliates good brand policy - I'll ask Helen

dgm team olympics - so looking forward to that!

dilbert mccoy - that hurt!

div seo invisible div - look I said don't do it alright!?!

does lovehoney.co.uk use amazon - I don't know. Have you tried looking?

emma delaforce - the happiest person at Webgains :-)

female phones - you turn them on by pressing a button. I'll get my coat!

find-me-a-gift seo - very good

gadget shop - could do better

get visible lee mccoy - that's me

google affiliates scam - new one to me!

google don't forget - nope! Except for my Christmas present last year!

gravy tanker - wha?

hmv fraud - intersting

how much can you make affiliate - lots

how to get visible on google - ask me

how webgains works - ah, mmm.

i got my pleo from iirobotics - good for you

marketing chickens - we're all chickens

marketing age group 31-40 - you don't have to tell me I' m getting old!

massage parlor warrington - that wasn't me!

mccoy beer - please buy me one!

neil hutchinson affiliate - successful. But a bit of BNB me thinks

paul smith, iwoot - does a good job

pc piri piri chicken - eh?

pleo lee mccoy - it's doing nowt now

promoting massage during a recession - did you really want to search for that?

satish jayakumar - another good guy

seo chocolate - love it

seth godin is shit - nope, just wrong occassionaly

sky seo - they should first start with good customer service and not ripping me off

thorntons affiliate manager - It was Nicola White. Great lass.

top 10 affiliate strategies - do tell

ukwebmedia - how did they get there?

ukwebmedia day part bidding - oh very clever. I never thought of day parting or geo-targetting so merchants and networks can't spot brandbidding!

until what time on a sturday can i expect a city link delivery - never

voucher sites - boring

we're going to barbados - gits

what do i need to know to become a successful business man? - work hard, be different, don't believe the hype

what do you need to work in marketing - a thick skin

what's the uk's nickname - are you kidding me? I could say so much here!

why use affiliate marketing - because it's the most accountable form of marketing

why would i want to work in affiliate marketing - because you work with some great people

woolworth's 0% affiliate commissions - don't get me started

laser tvs mccoy - why you searching for that? What do you know?

lee mccoy lovehoney - nope I don't do anything with them. I consult for a competitor

what is affiliate de-duping? - something that all merchants and networks need to get their heads around!

why i effectively left affiliate marketing - because I saw the industry was getting shafted my selfish people that'd break any rule just to add another fiver.

Giving Control Of Your Site To A Merchant - Would You Do It?

Well I have. I've given Subside Sports access to my Euro 2008 blog.

We're running a competition and the winners will get a free football shirt of their choice. We're also working on some content that they can update ...

It looks like, but we haven't finalised the details, we'll create an alternative Euro 2008 tournament. The idea is that we match the games that are actually being played with shirt sales and create alternate group tables - just for a laugh.

It needs some thought I know, but I wanted merchants to contribute directly to some of my blogs as they often have the most relevant information and the desire to make it work.

I'm sure that there are many affiliates that think I'm barking, but I believe in trusting merchants and building strong relationships with them in my key areas. They know its not in their best interests to take the ....

Would any of you affiliates let merchants contribute to any of your sites/blogs? If not why not?

If there are any non-football shirt merchants that would want to contribute to the site then let me know (top right of the blog). It regularly gets around 2,000 visits a day so it'll be worth your effort.

p.s. Would Affiliate Window affiliate 73195 please stop bidding on their brand! They don't allow it!

Tips For Merchants: Keep On Top Of Your SEO

A couple of months ago I took over the SEO for a sex toys retailer, ok it's Naughty Bits And Bobs!

When I first took over the SEO-work I knew that there'll be a massive amount of work to strip out all the old-fashioned and, in its day uber-seo, that worked very well for ages - but not now! But I also knew that I was given a day a month to fix it. So it was a case of prioritising what's most important.

The client has given me the go-ahead to talk about so that's fine. He bought the business off the previous owners and was run through the site but it looks like he didn't see all if its idiosyncrasies! The system was developed by a number of people using different technologies over a number of years. Up steps Lee saying we'll give it a go. Boy I didn't expect the CMS systems to be such a nightmare! Things that look as if they work didn't, things that should realistically only affect one feature affected other things such as the title tags and the directory used in the links - simultaneously!!!

I've had to re-focus the site's SEO towards a white-hat situation and I'm still miles away from achieving it! I've also moved the site away from a total obsession from the "head" keywords (how apt) towards the more long-tail stuff. As a result pages per visit, time spent on the site per visit and conversion rates have increased markedly. Also deduping has led to an increase in visits to the product pages.

So here's some tips for merchants that are setting out with a new site or are looking at using a new design agency to complete or extend a site:

1) Even if you're in a highly competitive market and in for the long-term don't do dark-grey hat SEO like pages of miss-spellings that draw in the same products and pages as the correct spellings.

2) Don't link to and accept links from any Tom, Dick or Harry! The links should be editorially give and based on merit - other than Page Rank.

3) Ensure that the key areas of title, meta description, link text, link architecture and page content can be easily updated. In fact you should be able to update them in isolation without affecting the other areas of the site.

4) You should work hard to add value by creating detailed product pages that really inform your users as to the benefits of buying that specific product over a competing one also create something like I did with their sex toy blog to allow them greater control over the variable content on their site and to also allow them to break a proportion of the site out of the main template.

5) Decide if you're going to compete on price or quality as this will determine the use of the active keywords in your matrix.

6) Keep boiler-plates and templated features to a minimum.

7) Keep the site updated with fresh, relevant & useful content

8) Try and offer something that your competitors don't - whether it's content, approach, products, price or whatever!

9) Think long term with everything you do.

10) Keep up-to-date with your SEO. Make sure that the methods you tried last year are still relevant this year. Scrub that think "month"!

It all sounds so simple doesn't it! But there are many online retailers and big brand sites in every industry that have really made life difficult by going overboard with their SEO in the past. Just think bmw.de!

Affiliate Tip: Use Brand & Keyword Restrictions To Your SEO Benefit

I've stopped doing ppc on my own affiliate stuff because I like to focus on building successful sites that work in the long term and don't require me to constantly manage the campaigns. But that doesn't mean I should forget what's going on in the PPC world with merchants as there is so much information avaliable that can help your SEO efforts.

Here's one tip. I feel guilty about this so will do a nice long post later today helping merchants.

The tip relates to the keyword restrictions that many merchants set out to restrict us affiliates using them for PPC. Take a look Banquet In A Box on Affiliate Future. I'm just working on some Christmas posts and one of them was going to be a tip about buying Gourmet Christmas dinners - so I obviously signed up to them.

The interesting fact is that they restrict affiliates from bidding on these phrases (where they are right to or not is a different matter). Well they've just given me straight away some of their top converting keywords:

gourmet meals delivered
gourmet meals delivered to
gourmet meals delivery
gourmet food delivered
gourmet food delivery.

I will now be building them extensively into the copy of my post and the links to it. So if you're a content affiliate, look at the words that PPC affiliates are restricted from using and use them yourselves. No sane merchant will restrict you from using non-brand terms in the descriptive copy for them!

Enjoy!

RBI Considering CPM Model For Journalists

I love accountability, but I hate sordid rubbish that just panders to people's demand for titillation rather than tackle the important issues of the day. This is what I fear for the ostensibly good move that Reed Business Information appear to be considering in a potential move to paying their journos on a CPM model.

Affiliate marketing was borne out of the need for accountability and transparency about the true ROI of marketing spend. You may say that with the current economic climate, every single business owner/board should be looking to squeeze every element of value of their operations, but I am worried that if this CPM model will spread to other online "news" sources and reduce online publishing to a pure "eyeballs" game rather than the value of the information contained.

You could say that this is the perfect model for these organisations. Many of them aren't as upfront about their editorial motives as the Beeb, for the rest it is actual fact a numbers game. Their goal is to get as high a readership as possible in an attempt to show value to potential advertisers. But surely there's too many variables for this approach to be the a desirable solution?

Just as I have a complete and utter dislike for Pay Per Post, surely this is just the same? In that process blog owners say they have a certain amount of traffic, their site is about a certain topic and they're paid accordingly - regardless of the actual traffic level and the propensity of those readers to take an agreeable course of action.

Currently RBI offer their bloggers a performance related remuneration package where the total fee is increased when a threshold is reached. This just sits uneasily with me as a fantastic journo / content writer / blogger can write great stuff but the publication they are writing for may have terrible SEO, no social bookmarking facilities or is designed poorly - all of these factors will affect the journo's income to some degree.

I believe it's a cop-out to be cut-throat. Media owners should build tighter editorial controls from the get-go, they should look at the traffic stats and use them as a guide to performance, not an indication of them.

These media owners should look at assessing the true value of the each individual's contribution by establishing KPI's such as "average time spent on the page", "bounce rate", CTR to advertisers, a loyalty index, rss feed subscriptions, referrals etc etc.

A mate of mine got 18,000 UPV's a day as he hit the front page of Google news with a news story of no great intellectual value and how much did he make from it? Yep from CPA and CPC stuff he made didly squat - on this new model he'd make loads!

As affiliates are we really worried about the quality, truthfulness, accuracy, relevancy of what we write - not always! We're back to the "pile 'em high and sell 'em cheap" approach. As affiliates we're generally awarded for writing engaging, sale-inducing content - journo's should be to!

Look To The Long Tail For Affiliate Gold

As promised, and I've been meaning to do this for ages. But here's a look at how creating decent, unique posts on an affiliate blog can bring you not only traffic but the wonga that goes with it.

On my Easter Eggs blog I basically started it on 2nd January this year (I think) and was posting away, reviewing Easter eggs, detailing discount codes and profiling the merchants. I didn't pay too much attention to any Keyword Suggestion Tools or keyword lists or anything of the kind. I just wanted to keep it as natural as possible.

When I went back and looked at the data I was shocked at the amount of keyword variation. I know the site went up to 4,000 visits a day. But here's a look at the keyword distribution for the first 3 months of the year:



and that's just the first 5,000 records! Look at the long tail. Now look at it again knowing that the length of the long tail is actually almost 3 times longer!!!

Volume Occurrences

2,000 - 10,000 1
1,000 - 1,999 2
500 - 999 2
250 - 499 5
200 - 249 6
150 - 199 3
100 - 149 24
50 - 99 51
25 - 49 89
20 - 24 60
15 - 19 96
10 - 14 160
5 - 9 557
4 324
3 531
2 1605
1 14,742

(I'll tidy this chart up later)

yes that's right. There were 14,742 key phrases that delivered only one visitor! These search phrases delivered 76.15% of all traffic!

So what can you learn from this?

Well I may not have taken too much time thinking the about the posts but I have got to the situation now from doing SEO for many years that adding what I call "active keywords" into my posts and templates as second nature now.

I call "active keywords" those keywords that people add in with product or brand search terms that indicate an action or that they are actively looking to conduct an action. These keywords often include "buy", "cheap", "cheapest", "purchase", "best", "recommended" etc.

So when you look at developing a site and adding content, view it as a matrix. Your blog posts should form one side of the matrix - i.e. content keywords, whilst your template should look to form the other side of the matrix i.e include the "active keywords".

But don't look at that as a hard-and-fast rule, just a guide. As you'll interchange some of the keyword use to make your content more useful for your visitors. But try and do the matrix approach if you can.

If you do this then the keywords in each area of your page will help each other, they'll compliment each other and allow you to extend your reach way into the long tail.

I hate, however, how some people try and take the easy route and simply paste a range of keywords into their boiler plate in the expectation they'll manage to get the variation. This is just lazy! Add these keywords into your navigation by taking the time to write content about them. The keywords within the links will not only aid the page its on, but contribute to the pages they're refrencing! Stop being lazy and write content!

But also helping you achieve this is the length of your posts, make them 400 words plus at the very least. The more words you have the more opportunity of picking up long tail search phrases. It also helps you break out of any templated / boilerplate duplication issues.

In summary:

• Think of keyword matrices;
• Think of blending them into useful content;
• Try and write with length and uniqueness
  

I'm going to post about how to choose merchants and pre-qualify them before your site starts to attract visitors. Then I'll be looking at chocolate merchants themselves as to how they performed financially and operationally. I'll also be showing everyone how I'm using these learnings and expanding them to tackle this years Christmas shopping period with my Christmas blog. I started the site in March but next March I'll hopefully be showing if and how it worked.

Bit Of A Shock - But Thanks

Whilst I was away in Madrid I got an email from Claire at Existem that I'd been shortlisted for the "Marketing Blog of 2008" award which was a complete shock as I hadn't used the blog to request people vote for me - it's a bit crap to do that I think.

But to be honest I don't think anyone should vote for me in the final round. Here's the reasons why:

1) The last month I haven't posted enough. I've been too busy with client work. I've got some great ones and I've also been working my backside off on my Christmas blog and having a quick trip to watch Real Madrid V Barcelona with the lads.

I feel I've got some cracking posts to do this weekend / next week about how writing good quality content, using the Google suggestion tool and thinking "outside the box" can lead you to having 19,000 different keyphrase variations in a four week period. It's a great story of how to monetise the long tail - I'll try and finish it off today. But overall, many of the other nominees blog far more often (and some of them write some good stuff too ;-) )

2) I give my secrets away - I shouldn't be rewarded for letting other's know my secrets! I should be slapped for it! Jimbo - I should have listened!

3) I don't have as many readers as the other blogs in contention. People are voting with their feet!

4) I can't spell! In fact I'm useless at it! I'm sure it takes most of you twice as long to read my posts than others as you're trying to decipher what I'm trying to say.

5) This blog can be boring - there's not enough "light entertainment". I should start posting about non affiliate stuff here just to break it up!

6) I won't be able to make the awards dinner as it's just before my Cuba holiday. I won't fit in with my shorts and sandals when everyone else is wearing Dickie-bows! I just hate those "But he can't be with us tonight" awards. I'm sure Keiron will be steam pressing his suit so give it to him.

7) I'm not as good-looking as the others. I may have "sweet cheeks" (cough) but the others are more toned and handsome and will look better on the publicity photos! I'm already a fat git when looking at the recent photos.

8) I won't enjoy the limelight! In fact I hate it. So give it to someone that will really enjoy getting all your praise!

9) I don't have a mantelpiece - It'll just gather dust next to the TV. And I can't afford to nag the missus into cleaning it as I don't know where the duster is!

10) I don't have a dinner suit! Well I did when I was 18 but I'm sure it doesn't fit! Don't make me go and spend my ill-gotten gains (bugger I don't do brand bidding) on a new suit I'll only ever wear once!!

April 2008 Review

After working for months on a site about the Euro 2008 tournament I realised I'd booked a holiday when it was under way - lesson for all: Make sure you keep a diary of your important affiliate events!

One of the big events of the year was that Google relaxed its brand bidding policies. It really didn't affect me as an affiliate as because I don't do a great deal off PPC. But it did mean that some of my clients had their competitors bid on their terms. So we replied in kind. Ho hum! I did do a summary for affiliates too.

One of my favourite chocolate shops was the fastest growing in the flowers & gifts category (my actual favourite is Chocolate Trading Co. of course). I did a few sales for them, so maybe I did my bit for them!

There were some more developments in Google when they launched "previous query".

I got ripped off by RSS scrapers in Pakistan! Gits! But I'm not sure if they'll do the same for one of my clients which launched a blog.

I've started to see more UK web sites start doing this now, but back in April I blogged about how Japanese companies weren't using their urls in advertising but search terms.