Enhancing SEO Efforts and PageRank Through Affiliates
By Mark Romanelli
Direct Response Technologies, Inc.
Search
Marketing and Affiliate Marketing activities increasingly
intersect. A growing number of organizations that in the
past have isolated their search marketing and affiliate
marketing activities are beginning to evaluate both their
separate and joint-impact on the company and on each other
when making online strategy decisions. To improve both the
efficiency and effectiveness of your online strategy you
need to have an understanding of the impact that your search
marketing and affiliate marketing programs are having on one
another.
First,
there are three primary ways to get listed on the major
search engines:
-
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) -
You bid and pay on a per click basis for keywords, and
-
Organic or Natural Search –
The terms that appear in the free listings sections of most
search engines, such as Google or Yahoo
-
Paid
Inclusion
– Terms
that appear in the free listings section submitted to the
search engines by Inktomi
Second,
there are two keys that an organization must consider when
developing their search marketing and affiliate marketing
strategy:
1)
Do I allow my affiliate partners to bid on my
trademark and other keyword terms?
-
If so,
do I compete against my own affiliates for my major PPC
terms?
-
If not,
what terms should I restrict them from bidding on?
2)
Equally important, yet often overlooked, are my
affiliate links pointing directly to my landing pages, or
are they being redirected before hitting my site?
Ideally,
online marketers would like to maintain a high listing for
their organic search terms (i.e. they want their site
listing to show up on page 1 of a search). Achieving this
can be an extremely complicated process as search engines
consider many different factors when determining your
placement in the free, natural listings. One such factor
that a search engine considers is the number of different
websites that are linking directly to your site. This is
commonly referred to as your websites link popularity.
Other
than participating in a link exchange program with other
website owners, an affiliate program can help contribute to
your natural search results. However, simply having an
affiliate program with hundreds of affiliates does not
necessarily mean that you are receiving credit towards your
free search listings or improving your natural search
results.
Almost
every affiliate network and 3rd party affiliate
software program does not enable the links on your affiliate
site to point directly to your site. Instead, and
unfortunately for your business, the links are typically
directed towards the 3rd party provider and then
redirected to your site.
This is
usually done so that the 3rd party provider can
place a cookie on the users computer to be tracked before
the user is redirected to your site.
The
following is an example of a 3rd party affiliate
link:
http://service.affiliatenetwork.com/server/click?affid=26463997&siteid=39602688&affpage=homepage
When a
user clicks on the link, they are directed to the 3rd
party server and information contained within the link then
tells the 3rd party server where to redirect the
user.
The
search engines do not see that ultimately this link and the
user is going to your website. As a result of this, you are
not receiving credit from the search engines for your link
popularity when they are considering your search rank.
When
considering a solution to power your affiliate program, do
your homework and consider the following:
-
How are
the tracking links listed?
-
Is the
tracking comprehensive?
-
Is the
tracking accurate?
The way
that the DirectTrack™ privately branded affiliate software
helps you navigate these waters is through a tracking method
called DirectLink™. This tracking method enables you
to place a simple JavaScript on all of
your landing pages to look up the referring URL of each of
your affiliate links (i.e. the affiliates website).
In
addition, each of the tracking links contain the affiliates
unique identification number at the end of your linking URL
for the JavaScript to credit the specific affiliate which
sent that user, and place a cookie on their computer. An
example of this type of tracking link would look something
like this:
http://www.yourwebsite.com/?aff1 or
http://www.yoursite.com/productA/?aff1
This type of tracking will not guarantee
that your site is listed on the first page of every search
engine but it will help to increase your search rank in most
search engines. However, this
factor should not be your only consideration with regards to
an affiliate program.
Your
affiliate program should be a viable revenue stream and not
just something used to enhance your search marketing
efforts.
