If your traffic never seems to grow or shrink during a core update, congratulations, you’re likely doing things right.  SEO isn’t always about gains and losses, sometimes it is maintaining your current market positions so your company doesn’t lose on revenue, branding, and exposure.  Maintaining positions isn’t easy, and even the big brands and media houses have to constantly update and test. If you’re an independent publisher, or if your boss is asking why they’re not seeing gains, don’t stress.  This is your opportunity to open the door to testing new ideas that would normall ..read more

The client came to us because they didn’t have luck with affiliate program managers in the past.  The traffic sources were hard to determine, they found some end of sale interceptions via branded coupon phrases in Google, and lots of reviews being a source of traffic (which is value adding, but not top-funnel).  We assured them the affiliate channel can be top funnel, provide value, and be mutually beneficial for both the partners and the brand.  They gave us a chance, and below you’ll find the results with tons of actionable tips, and how we achieved them. TL:DR We removed any ..read more

Google has a new featured snippet in beta called carousels. This is one of the most exciting schema libraries to come out in years, and may be a game changer for small businesses, publishers, affiliates, and even big brands in the future.  Below you’ll find how I think it will be developed, ways different types of sites can potentially use it from service providers and retailers to bloggers, content creators, and affiliates. But first, please remember that schema and structured data are not meant to boost your SEO, they are meant to help you get rich results and more space in a search re ..read more

Yahoo’s and Bing’s knowledge panels are sometimes affiliate links, and this can impact your SEO tracking and analytics reporting.  But not every time, and it depends on the type of landing page you end up on.  Other times they’ll load coupons from coupon affiliate sites for branded search results on a knowledge panel without using their own affiliate link to the store.  I’ve included 7 video examples in the middle of this post. To fill in the missing gaps from your SEO or company wide attribution reports, find the referring URLs from the knowledge panels inside the affiliate pr ..read more

January is one of the months that is primed for entrepreneurs as there are industries with substantial demand and room for new players to move in.  I’m not talking about building a database of couples that got engaged during the holidays, prepping for Valentine’s, fitness and resolutions, or the big famous football game in February.  Those are packed with competition and you’ve likely considered them. I’m talking about niches that spike in recurring traffic each January with plenty of room to create a footprint for yourself.  I have experience in both of the following through m ..read more

Yes, affiliate links are backlinks and they can work for or against you when it comes to SEO.  This is because they are a link from one site to your website, and any link that points towards your website is technically a backlink.  But not every backlink passes SEO value, and that is where the confusion occurs.  Example: A link from a search result in Google, like your website’s homepage showing up in Google for your brand name, is a backlink and will help with SEO.  This is because it is a link from Google.com to your site.  But this does not technically pass “author ..read more

A page with “high conversion intent” does not mean it will be a high converter.  This is because the intent of the user changes based on where the user came from. When doing conversion and monetization optimization, we split traffic by channels and website paths.  And this post walks you through the reasoning as to why the same “high intent” content can have different conversion rates. If you’re looking to maximize revenue on a website, split the conversions out by both channel and intent.  The same page could have very different conversion rates solely based on the channel or ..read more

The new Google updates are going to be amazing for affiliates and for small brands.  There’s multiple reasons for this, and not just the AI aspects.  If you’re a blogger, YouTuber, social media personality, or niche site owner, you should be excited.  Same with smaller brands and service providers. Before I jump in, go here and watch the video, then look at the layouts for the new search interface.  The new layout for AI generated responses is a little past half way down.  I was originally going to post them here and mark them up, but one of the best ways to learn and ..read more

Understanding and meeting user intent impacts conversion rates, AOV, and all marketing channels.  But the lines get crossed regularly because queries and trackable actions may look similar, even though the person is at a very different stage in their lifecycle with your business.  And this includes ecommerce stores, brick and mortar, publishers, and service providers. I’ve been teaching user intent for 15+ years now at marketing conferences from Affiliate Summit and Pubcon in the USA, to Big Digital Adelaide and the Business Builders group in Australia, and niche shows like ShiftCon ..read more

Using PPC marketing data is the perfect way to drive your online marketing strategy.  Your PPC person or team controls information that everyone in the company from marketing to product, and customer support to PR can use.  This is because the PPC team has insight into what customers are looking for before they know about your brand, where they research this information, the demographics that engage with your ads, and the long tail phrases your customers are using. On top of this, PPC data gives you the information needed to build a business case, complete with revenue numbers, so y ..read more