Building links for household brands is tough, building links for affiliate websites is even tougher. In this guide I’ve asked two of the leading affiliate and SEO experts how they approach link acquisition for affiliate websites. I’ve also added my answers too.
1. Day one of link building for a brand new affiliate site. What do you do?
Aaron Wall, SEO Book
I try to throw up a blog and add a few posts that make it look informational, such that it is easier for me to get links from directories like the Yahoo! Directory and Business.com. I think submit the site to those 2 and maybe a couple other directories.
Marcus Tandler, Mediadonis
Scanning the Top200 sites for my keywords
- Identify the common backlinks of those sites
- Finding the Hubs & Authorities in my niche
- Identify the key bloggers / forums / directories in my niche
Patrick Altoft
My first step would be to ensure the site doesn’t look like a typical affiliate site, this increases the success rate and ROI of any link building tasks you do in the future.
Day 1 is to look at all the sites that are ranking and figure out where they get their links from and why. Check which blogs are linking regularly to your competitors and subscribe to their feeds. Basically just get to know the link patterns in the industry.
2. Can you summarise your strategy for the first 2 months link building?
Aaron Wall, SEO Book
If I have any nepotistic linking opportunities I try to add those. Sometimes I actually throw up a site and let it sit for like 6 months before promoting it seriously though…just get it a few links and let it age for a while. That way while I am actively working on the site I am likely to see some results rather than the frustrations of grinding it out for minimal returns off the start. It makes it easier to put effort into promoting a site when you know the site will be making a hundred or a couple hundred a day by the time you start monetizing and serious link building.
Marcus Tandler, Mediadonis
Basically go after all of the identified links
I’ll also be pretty active my niche, contribute to the community, build up a good social profile – since it’s a longterm approach, rather then a quick-win situation, it helps getting to know the community slowly, rather then be to pushy (and therefore spammy).
Patrick Altoft
During this time I would be working to create a popular blog, submitting to perhaps the top 5 general directories and ten of the best niche directories and getting as many of the same links as my competitors as possible provided they are half decent.
3. How would you approach link building for an established site where the traffic seems to have plateaued?
Aaron Wall, SEO Book
I would use any nepostic linking opportunities I could – interview others I know, ask my audience to link to me, etc. The other big piece is to look for linkbait ideas and software you can give away to get the link juice and reach needed to take the site to the next level.
If the site already has tons of link equity but few pages it might be a better strategy to work on adding content and making sure the on page SEO is done well then it would be to keep working on links…the return is best if links and content are built together, rather than relying on either one of them too heavily.
Marcus Tandler, Mediadonis
Identify good traffic keywords (and longtail keyword kombinations), I´m ranking on pretty ok, but not great (maybe like a page 2 or 3), and focus on those. Test a couple of keywords and keyword-combinations by exact-matching them in AdWords, and see how much traffic they´re getting, and then include those in my linkbuilding strategy.
Patrick Altoft
See my posts on Googles Glass Ceiling and Breaking Through Traffic Barriers
4. How successful do you find linkbait to be for affiliate websites?
Aaron Wall, SEO Book
It is huge. If you and 1,000 other people are selling the exact same crap, it can be hard to differentiate and hard to build a sustained competitive advantage (especially if you come to the market later than competing sites). Linkbait creates editorial links that competitors can not duplicate…them creating a similar piece of content and marketing it to the same people who liked your content might not generate any links for the competitor since the people already linked at your site.
Another big plus with linkbait is that it creates an organic traffic stream that is not entirely driven by search…this offers you another promotional avenue for future linkbait/content ideas.
Marcus Tandler, Mediadonis
I really don´t like the term “linkbait” anymore – that term has really gotten a negative connotation in the last couple of month. Just create compelling content, and be active in your community / niche – don´t worry that much about baiting!
Patrick Altoft
Affiliate sites don’t have to worry about branding so you can take huge risks with your linkbait. It’s also a lot less worrying when you are just linkbaiting for yourself rather than a client who might have paid a lot of money for the service.
Any site can get good results from linkbait as long as you don’t rely too much on social media sites such as Digg – go directly to the people you want links from.
What are your top link building strategies?
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice read thanks Patrick. I still wish that someday I’ll have the time to do all of these important tasks.
Stupid question. What are nepostic links?
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Links from friends or other sites in your network.
More comments from Patrick AltoftGood design then links from CSS galleries.
What is linkbait and what is linkbaiting for your self
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Read this guide to linkbait
More comments from Patrick AltoftAnother way is to get safe links in the content of other relevant sites. You can use a service like LinkXL.com.
Easy to remember domain name!!! Not so much a building , unless you have a killer generic, but a Not Loosing Links Strategy.
How many times have you found a really good site in a very competitive field, and you can’t find it because you forgot its name? then give up looking for it because it’s impossible to find it under its “keyword terms” due to keyword competition oversaturation in the search engines. I know this happend to me when i was shopping for black pearls, link lost, due to unmemorable domain. It wasn’t even a bad name, it was short, a .com, but it was something that just didn’t want to lodge in my brain, even after i’ve seen it several times. Sure what are bookmarks for you say, but thats too much work, and not part of my habbit. Have you experienced link loss due bad domain lately?
I’v follow the link on guide to linkbait, am blessed keep me informed, and thanks.
nice blog.. great work there.. hope it help many more people..
for me ….
viral marketing its quite powerful
Great post. Just one point really regarding: “Scanning the Top 200 sites for my keywords ” – that’s colossal! Great work!
>>>Affiliate sites don’t have to worry about branding
Then IMHO, you’re building the wrong type of affiliate sites at this stage in the game.
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Rae I agree with what you are saying. Perhaps I didn’t phrase it in the right way.
I meant to say that you can publish more controversial content without worrying about whether it will be within brand guidelines. For example the sort of content that large corporations would never allow can be put on an affiliate site.
More comments from Patrick AltoftGreat post and I’d thought I’d share a tip. I’ve worked with new affiliate programs and getting them exposed through social media etc. But the most important factor was getting out there in the affiliate forums, and forums related to the niche at hand. It’s a great way to start interacting with your affiliates while attracting them easily. Affiliate forums allow you to do posts about your affiliate program which brings in links and attention.
Great post! Thanks for the info!
Build some directories on some older domains, then affiliate with other directory owners – this way when you get a new client in, you know they are automatically getting the 20-30 directory links into their site that you know Google indexes before worrying about finding hubs and looking into what the websites in the same field are doing. It will give you the edge and get my clients into your own network.
The ability to pass PageRank and develop silos of authority within the hierarchy of a website.
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