PubCon: Affiliate Strategies and Content Strategies

The following is simply my notes from each speaker. I simply jotted things down as they got my attention, much (but not all) is in my own words filtered through my own thought processes. If I lack information on any particular speaker, or misrepresent what was said, please know that this is inadvertent.

This session focused primarily on how affiliates can generate traffic to their sites as a means to deliver their users through their affiliate links. One of the primary things noted was how important good content on a site is for getting traffic. Information which is valuable to all affiliate and non-affiliate sites alike.

Elisabeth Archambault, Buckworks

• Job of the affiliate is to get people to the products they want to buy. Good content is your best servant.
• Make sure site is spiderable, plan the flow of PageRank of your site.
• Get a lot of inbound links, quality and quantity with good anchor text. Pay attention to themes and staying relevant.
• Can you make an educated guess as to what a site is about by looking at the backlinks? You should. If not then the site might not have the right sites linking to it.
• Design your site for accessibility. If it makes sense to a browser reader it tends to work well for spiders too. Perform an accessibility check.
• Good content is a magnet for links: easier link development, more spontaneous links, more offline mentions, more spider food.
• Content should be real info, uniqueness and quality counts. Don’t build an "ordinary" site. Stand out from the pack?
• Is your content good enough for a newspaper or a magazine? It should be. Good content makes outside promotion easier.
• Careful! Good content gets stolen, learn how to deal with that (DMCA).

John Coronella, OnlineMarketer

• There is risk in affiliate marketing but also lots of opportunity.
• Google is clamping down and trying to bypass the affiliate marketer.
• Long-term strategy: build a great site that bypasses the search engines. Get "direct navigation". Add value to your site so the SEs don’t cut you out (or won't ban you.)

David Rivero, JoeBucks

• Affiliate networks get a piece of the pie. Affiliate programs leave out the network. Make more money by using affiliate programs (going directly to the merchant) than networks.
• Get paid twice each month so you can reinvest your money more quickly. Make sure you get to use your own domain and can control the exit traffic (send to related product or service). Make sure you have a variety of payment methods.
• Test everything. Use smaller search engines. Build product and service review sites.
• Create different language landing pages.

Matt Tuens, InfoSearchMedia

• Content = success, informational resources = success. Get depth, breadth and variety in content. No such thing as too much content (so long as its quality).
• Content should help you become a destination site, get organic listings, encourage linking, increase conversions, be different from competition.
• Leverage on-site content: Build short informational optimized articles. Hundreds of longer, more detailed articles to build authority and reputation, excellent landing pages, blogs (doesn’t have to be all business, use the human side).
• Link out to articles on related products and information. Use calls to action to drive them into your site.
• Leverage Off-site content: write great articles and give them away. Blog on other people’s blogs. It’ll enhance your reputation and get visits. Go to industry forums.