Comments on: Is SEO For Affiliate Product Sites Dead?

By: The Host

The Host — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 09:06:13 +0000

Good observation. SEO for affiliate sites is really becoming more involving esp. when targeting Google. I personally think this is due to the fact that affiliate sites contain similar information as they will be promoting the same product.

The only way to get around this problem is to try and find your own unique benefits that are not mentioned by the affiliate program provider. In this way you can write your own content pages that are unique.

The other thing that could be contributing to this is the nature of redirects that some affiliate site owners use. You probally know that spiders hate meta refresh redirects but yet a lot of affiliate marketers still use this technique to mask their links. If you are still using a meta refresh you can either block the spiders form the page or use a 301 permanent redirect.

By: Gene Kavner

Gene Kavner — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 00:36:33 +0000

I am not as pessimistic about Google free search traffic as you are. Certainly, Google traffic is significantly more difficult to obtain than from other search engines. However, search results amount to a zero-sum game. Someone has to appear in the top 5 results. The question is how to crack the Google algorithm to appear there.

As you pointed out, unique content + inbound links are critical to high page rank. Ensure you have enough interesting content and keep it updated.

As someone in charge of the Amazon Associates program for a year, I have seen a large number of very successful content-based sites generating Google free search traffic.

Good luck with the blog!

Gene Kavner

By: Jamie Birch

Jamie Birch — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 15:04:55 +0000

I agree with quite a lot of what you say here. Very thought out and appreciate your point of view, love the research. I’ve been thinking for a while that affiliates who rely solely on the search engines for all their traffic and income need to do some hard thinking very quickly. I think any site that does not offer some value to the consumer, enough that the consumers eventually decide to come to them first, well it will be tough for that site to continue to produce.

We have seen so many changed by the big G, and like you said Yahoo and others will follow most likely, and that will make it more difficult.

But if an affiliate site has lots of original content, or some value add that other sites can’t offer, then you start to build a long term sustainable business. I think you hit the nail on the head seeing lots of content sites out there. Content is returning to its previous positions as king from the early and late ’90s.

I think affiliates need to work hard at attracting and retaining thier customers, just like merchants do. I speak to many affiliates who have no plan on how to find out who is shopping through them, how to market to them directly or how to bring them back. A good CRM plan will go a long way.

I also think affiliates need to branch out and go beyond just ppc marketing. There are many cost effective offline marketing available to attract customers. We don’t live in an only online or offline world, we operate in both and so should your marketing campaigns.

Great blog and I really enjoy reading it!

By: Nick Schoonens

Nick Schoonens — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 03:04:59 +0000

I agree with what your saying. Even though I haven’t had much experience with affiliate marketing, I did have one site that did well in google for about 2 weeks.

I created it late last year and had about 40000 pages by early this year. Then in the space of 1 day, my hits from google went from about 10 / day to 600-700. That was great, I was making about $50 a day from the one site, but then, 2 weeks later, everything dropped off. Back to about 10 hits a day.

I’m now working on relaunching the site, but with bucket loads more content for each page.

I’ll let you know how it goes.