Searching for success

In the competitive world of affiliate marketing, the need and goal to rank higher than your competitors has never been greater.

Operators and affiliates continue to battle to come out on top in keyword searches, attempting to stand out in a crowded marketplace.

That battle hasn’t stopped amid the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic. Back in May at AffiliateCon Virtually Live, Gennadiy Vorobyov, Netpeak Bulgaria CEO, spoke about SEO search pattern trends during the pandemic. His research found searches had decreased, but impressions and clicks increased, as major live sport was suspended between mid-March and mid-May. However, that just increased the competition to stand out for other niche offerings, such as esports and virtual sports with an added importance on online casino.

But with all the technology available to affiliates these days, it’s crucial to take advantage of a number of platforms, as well as coming out on top in Google searches. And unsurprisingly, there are a number of ways to do this to stay one step ahead of your rivals, especially during the apparent Google bungee jumping game, where affiliates seem to rank inconsistently.

Being consistent is key and Neil Patel is a man whose day job is to focus on winning the SEO war. The co-founder of digital market agency Neil Patel Digital has previously worked with brands such as Microsoft, Amazon, IBM and Airbnb, and has experience ranking at the top for online casino and poker searches.

During his how to win the "Google Wars’ talk at iGB Live" in July, Patel’s initial advice is simple: “To be successful, it’s all the little things that add up. If you do the little things that give you a 1, 2 or 3% edge on your competition, that’s the key to success.

With Google algorithms, updates happen so frequently. What most people don’t know is a few years ago Google stated that more than 3,200 algorithm updates happen per year, which is a crazy amount.

What we found is you can’t always control if you’re going to do well or poorly during an update. We saw that Google makes its updates because they want to put users first.

If users enjoy using Google, they’ll keep going back, so Google makes money. If Google puts sites at the top that people hate, then they’re not going to use Google as much, and it makes less money. So what are some of the techniques that can help affiliates to rank higher more consistently? For one, focusing on updating rather than writing new content is a technique that Patel believes will give affiliates the edge over its competitors.

Everyone is writing so much content on a daily basis, which means Google now has its prime pickings of which content to rank number one, two and three,” Patel says.

“Updating your traffic is important. On my site, I only write one new blog post per week. But I have three people updating at least one blog post a day, roughly 90 a month. My team is updating loads of content a month, and even if they’re not new posts, your Google traffic over time can continue to rise by doing this.”

THE BIGGEST TRAFFIC GAINS IN RECENT YEARS HAVE COME FROM TRANSLATIONS. IF YOU GO WITH THE ROUTE OF TRANSLATING YOUR CONTENT, TRANSCRIBING IT TO THE LOCAL REGIONS, IT OPENS UP A TON OF OPPORTUNITIES. YOU MIGHT NOT MAKE THE SAME IN AFFILIATE COMMISSIONS FROM SOME OF THESE OTHER REGIONS, BUT BECAUSE THERE’S NO COMPETITION, YOU’LL RANK HIGHER AND YOU’LL GOBBLE UP THE MAJORITY OF THE TRAFFIC. When it comes to updating the content, Patel believes it’s crucial to look at who else is ranking for that keyword you’re aiming for, then going through the top 10 pages.

He adds: “I really ask myself, how is my content compared to theirs and what are they doing that I’m not?”

Updating those elements and also the timestamp to bring it back to prominence is next on the agenda, but Patel is adamant that it’s not always about the word count. Sometimes reducing the word count to make the content more relevant, to get people their answer quicker, is more important.

Further explaining his content strategy, Patel says: “If you have 80 to 100 blog posts, this strategy works really well, as opposed to 10 or 20. I would still spend 70 or 80% of your time writing new content, but the moment you hit 500 blog posts, you probably want to split your time 50-50 with updating and writing new posts.

“If one casino has some news and I know I can get a quick bit of traffic but no one’s going to end up converting it for affiliate revenue, I wouldn’t really care to write about it.

“I’m looking for more of the longtail phrases. Everyone wants to rank for those head terms but they don’t necessarily make the most money. Searching for something like credit cards could have endless possibilities, which means the conversion rate is much lower.”

While slow and steady wins the race with Google, it’s a different story with YouTube. The video-sharing platform is the second-most popular search engine, and as Patel mentions, the first 24 hours of publishing a video is key to gaining traction.

Patel says: “If you publish a video within the first 24 hours and it does well, YouTube is highly likely to rank you really high with almost any terms on that day or within a week. The key with YouTube is to share it on social media and blast and promote your videos within the first 24 hours; and by doing that, you’re much more likely to get the results.”

While updating and promoting content is vital, it’s arguably not quite as important as the need to make that content available for multiple audiences to view. With billions of blog posts already on the internet, having the ability to translate content to other languages and specific regions is how Patel has grown his traffic over the years. A survey from his company looking at what helped over 200 large corporations grow the most found translation was the biggest difference.

Patel explains: “What Google lacks is content for all the other languages other than English. Do you really need more content? No, but when you translate to other languages and regions, you don’t have as much competition and you can actually get quite a bit of traffic really fast.

“The biggest traffic gains in recent years have come from translations. If you go with the route of translating your content, transcribing it to the local regions, it opens up a ton of opportunities. You might not make the same in affiliate commissions from some of these other regions, but because there’s no competition, you’ll rank higher and you’ll gobble up the majority of the traffic.”

Another way to adapt to Google updating its algorithms is, of course, page speed. In a world where we want everything now, it can’t be understated how detrimental having a slower page speed than your competitors can be, especially with mobile search the preferred method. As Patel points out: “Every second delayed in load time costs Amazon around $1.6bn. That’s a lot of money and shows what people think about slow-loading sites. “People want really fast-loading sites and using a CDN [content delivery network] to host your whole site from it, not just static pages or images, will help with speed. I have my whole site as much as possible loading from CloudPlayer; it’s allowed me to have an amazing score on Google PageSpeed and it’s really helped me increase my traffic.”

On the ranking war, Patel concludes that having an amazing user experience is key. That means fast site speed, fewer pop ups, and more things that put the user first and provide value for them, such as free tools, which can make users more loyal to your brand.

With technology forever evolving, Patel believes the future of SEO lies with the omni-channel approach. Google isn’t the only place people search; there’s also YouTube and the next big search method: voice search.

Patel explains: “At least in the US, more than 50% of the searches this year are voice searches. That’s a big number because everyone is searching from their phone when they’re on the go, with people finding it easier to search for things like the weather.

“That means search is everywhere and voice search platforms are pulling from organic Google results. If you can rank your site higher, you’ll start pulling there.”

The way consumers search for the latest trends and key words in the gambling industry will also adapt to mainstream changes. Affiliates need to be aware of the evolving landscape and that there are multiple search methods to consider when it comes to winning the ranking war.