Image credit: Shari Green

What’s in this post? I’m going to explain potential reasons for Amazon’s decision to ban merchant-direct PPC, then I’m going to share steps you can take to help your affiliate business compete with challenges like this in the short term i.e. what to do now, and to avoid them altogether further into the long term.

I’ll start with the bitter pill.  You knew this was coming.  Deep down in the pit of your stomach you knew this day would come.  Like brand bidding it was only a matter of time till the affiliate gut punch, the decision to cut the erosion of margin.

But wait, we were FREE PPC.

In some cases this may be true, but before you all shout at me for being too merchant-friendly I’m just trying to illustrate the conditions in which this decision might make sense: 3,4 and 5% commission are directly paid out of product margin that would otherwise be in Amazon’s pocket.

Amazon are hugely dependent on price as their competitive advantage, particularly coming out of a recession, and with such a vast distribution operation, it wouldn’t surprise me if that seemingly measly 5% commission made up around a third of Amazon’s net margin.  It’s a simple calculation for them:

Affiliate commission from direct PPC activity ≥ PPC budget and associated management costs

If they can manage PPC more profitably and at a lower CPA than they’re paying affiliates then why wouldn’t they claw back that extra percent or two?  In fact, they’ve probably used the PPC programme as a kind of Paid-Search-X-Idol-Factor to pick out the superstars that they’ll continue working with.

Their only other option to make the numbers work would be to lower commission for either this group or across the board which would piss a whole lot more people off.

No sense crying over spilt milk

Right, well it’s done now so get the kettle on and start the plan of action.  In the short term, it goes something like this and you’re probably half-way down it by now:

1. Pause all campaigns
2. Prioritise your best-performing niches for landing page treatment
3. Find your hosting passwords or get some, quick,
4. Bang in wordpress.
5. Create some kick-ass landing page templates
6. Install Google Analytics and Website Optimiser
7. Optimise
8. Test
9. Go to step 6

What?! I hear you scream, that’s just a thin affiliate site from 1999.  I know, I know it’s just for the short term to keep you earning something.  2 months down the line when the commission cheques dry up you’ll thank me for this step.

It’s not all bad (well, it’s quite bad)

The bad news: If this is all you do then you should write off half of your conversions for the coming month and a third for the month after even if you follow these steps.

The good news: If this truly is all you do then chances are you’re bloody good at it (If you’re not, then it’s time to hit the pub). If you’ve been running PPC in such a way that you can compete profitably with the other 8 bazillion Amazon PPC-direct affiliates then you must have some serious quality in your account, hopefully through relevant ad content and great CTRs.

So the absolutely MOST important thing to focus on at this stage is minimizing losses.

No sense windmilling in with your eyes closed

Image Credit: The Sports Hernia

We all know that windmills only help the Dutch and Environmentalists, so leave it out.

Get Google Analytics on your landing pages, use the site overlay for now, you’re going to want to understand the different languages and calls to action that work – tailor it to the language you’re using in your PPC ads to start with and then use Google Website Optimiser to test alternatives.  And finally, while you’re at it make sure you have Google Analytics talking to Adwords and other PPC vendors.

Not too sure on the best format for landing pages?  Take the advice of the people in this list:

• 12 Landing Page Tips – Econsultancy
• Surprising PPC Landing Pages – SEW
• PPC Landing Optimization – SEJ

Once you’ve got your basic wireframe then I’d suggest making it super easy on yourself and just install Wordpress, then get a dev to build you a landing page php template (seriously it’s worth the £100 or so) and then every landing page is just a Wordpress page that you write in the back end. Now you can whack up landing pages at a hell of a rate.

Stemming the bleeding

That’s you now with a bunch of landing pages that are utilizing the quality you’ve built up in your PPC accounts and for the time being to make you some money. You can build new pages quickly and test placement and calls to action, that’s great.

What you also have now is a sustainable base for your future and more importantly, a plan – so well done

That’s enough for you to be getting on with for the next couple of days so I’ll leave you to it.  Part 2 will show you how to build a sustainable affiliate business out of what you already have:

• Creating your free traffic funnel
• Optimise your landing pages for natural search – that means content kids, unique content.
• Wordpress SEO
• One shot solutions so you can use data feeds to compare other merchants and product

But not really in the way I’d hope.

Exhibit A – An SEO power Player

What actually caught my eye and started me on this thread was a sponsored listing, phrase-matching SEO like so:

SEO paid search listing

Initially I scoffed and clicked through to see why, if they were so great at SEO, they’re bidding on it.  I saw that they’ve clearly done a lot (too much?) to make the structure and navigation focused on their keyterms but was surprised to see that the site actually looked nice, well organised etc.  And then of course there’s the vanity sell…

Ethical, white hat techniques?

Started digging deeper then and they do indeed rank very admirably in the natural listings for these terms…

Exhibit B – The ‘Feeder’ domain

Looking briefly at the yahoo site explorer links list I saw a few oddities amongst the 49k links.  A couple of clients were apparent and another domain, clickconsult.  Now have a look at the sheer amount of content in the source of this site, and tell me if you can find those reams of content on the actual site.

You got it – javascript stuffing.  Try clicking on one of these guys:

Now whilst that page truly is a ridiculous example of content stuffing, I was more surprised to see a couple of their client sites practising the same thing.

Exhibit C – The clients

So here’s a link to what i assume is a client website.  I’ll assume it’s a client as i’m not sure that flooring is an obvious diversification for an SEO.  It’s enjoying healthy positions for what appear to be their target phrases, but employing exactly the same technique to stuff content, now I’d say that was some pretty thin ice but am astonished that in 2009 this is clearly still working just fine.

Totally Busted

Obviously the link profile and strength of the client domain helps:

Links to homepage: 1,054

Total links: 2,013

But according to Linkscape, only a hundred or so of those have particularly relevant anchor text, add the relatively low strength of the other competitors in that SERP, and finally take into account my links/content experiment with James, the content really is the only obvious advantage.

But honestly, however we look at this.  Shouldn’t they be hosed for practices like this?

Because your PR team are probably doing something right now that could be more valuable.

Honestly, everytime I read an article on link building techniques or a link buidling tutorial I can’t help but think about the last time I spoke with our PR guru.  He’s a talented and animated chap with an excellent eye for a scoop, angle or generally a reason for people to talk about us.

Broadly, link-building for SEO is the same principal.  The methods by which one ensures a company has a positive footprint in the broader world, map almost precisely onto the best ways to ensure a website has the same.

From Marc Cowlin’s PR101 post:

Merriam-Webster Definition: the business of inducing the public to have understanding for and goodwill toward a person, firm, or institution; also: the degree of understanding and goodwill achieved.

Certified Institute of Public Relations: Public Relations practice is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organization and its products or services.

Marc’s article also includes the following list:

• Free Placement
• Journalistic Slant – a journalist can write what they want – no matter how you position your story
• Usually only runs one or two times per story (there are exceptions)
• Create Credibility
• Viewed as a third party endorsement
• Time consuming, not easy, no guarantees

See the links (pardon the pun) already?

Before we go any further I have to concede; many of the ground-level link building techniques are things you’d never catch a PR doing.   But I think it’s fair to say these manual, time-consuming methods are often better outsourced to agencies like the excellent ContentNow article and link service and aren’t the best use of your time in-house.

Lots of linkbuilding 101 posts include the bigger hitting tactics and they broadly boil down to a few categories:

• Targeted link requests: Requesting links from authoritative, relevant sources.
• Contribute to your communities: Writing, reviewing and generally adding value to the content on the web
• Creating something to link to: Creating, syndicating and making it easy to link to great content

These are all areas that your PR dept. can help with

Get the most SEO benefit from PR activities

So how can you put your PR people in the driving seat when it comes to SEO? Hopefully the follwing tips will help them really help them to squeeze the last drop of link love from their work.

Keyword targets

Both existing easy-wins and higher-competition future keyword targets are a fantastic discussion point. Great ideas crop up for even the most competitive key terms.  It’s really important to ensure your PR team are furnished regularly with the terms and themes that will have the greatest impact for your business.

Indirectly, you’ll also see more useful links in your press releases as they’ll already be in the front of the author’s mind

Existing PR activity

Is there a piece of destination content or functionality that you can use to leverage an existing rush of visitors?  This is often difficult to coordinate with the tight timescales but almost always worth it to get some longevity from the rush.  Easy sharing or fun functionality will help an already intrigued audience enjoy and share your content.

Receptive Partners

Your PR department already maintains a mind-boggling number of relationships with people who are far more receptive to a link or content sharing than a stranger.  Usually these contacts reside in companies and publicationswith high-authority domains and valuable, authoritative content themselves.

You’ll also find other PRs in their fold who are actively looking for angles to hook up and share some limelight with mutually beneficial community activity.

In Summary

So, how do you build links?  Buy your PR a coffee )

Image courtesy of Flickr - wwworks

I really enjoyed a post by Kate Morris on New Edge Media regarding the skillsets of PPC and SEO Managers, where they meet and where they differ.

I won’t go over that again but it did get me wistfully thinking about how much fun I’ve had acquiring these skills and sent me off on a jaunt along memory lane, reminiscing about the early days of search and being part (or sometimes all!) of a growing, learning search department.

Many of us’ll remember evolving from the small one-win-at-a-time initiatives, to the infusion of search into marketing mixes and strategic growth across an organisation.  Doorway pages certainly seem a long time ago.

This journey is often a personal one, differs vastly in speed dependent on industry and of course is never completed – so pooling experiences from a couple of jobs along the way as well as some great tidbits I’ve heard, here’s my take on the growing pains of a pre-pubescent search dept.

Stage 1: Selling search marketing into an organisation

Situation: ’90’s corp’ has decided that they need a handful of PPCs and 6 or so yards of essy-o so you interview, try to talk in depth about your experiences without dazzling anyone with such mystical fare as H1s or keyword density and it works – you’re in, get cracking!

Team: It’s just you; all other resource is begged, borrowed or stolen – it sinks in, seriously – just you. Oh snap.

Main objectives/focus: You’re doing it all, setting up and tactically managing the PPC, consulting and winning over technical teams to unravel the mess that is the company’s (usually 6 year-old) in-house CMS.  SEO at this point is almost exclusively the reconfiguration of sites to be visible, clear to navigate and as irridiculous as you can muster the energy to make it.

You get the opportunity to communicate the results of your hard work in rare, besuited presentations to the board.  They see trend lines going up, they nod.  They ask you why we aren’t number one for our obscure internal name for something irrelevant.  It’s frustrating, tiring and often all but invisible but by god is it rewarding when you see those sales creeping up and your vanity searches reaping more than a disappointed slump.

Most tested skills: tenacity, communication, prioritisation, forging relationships and organisation, curiosity.

Stage 2: Sophistication in SEO, Scale in PPC

Situation: Finally you think – you can start to move away from answering everything with ‘because that’s just how you should do it’ to ‘see these proven results? *tapping screen*’.

You need to shoulder off the day-to-day campaign management and creative link-building.  With more resource you know how quickly your avg. ROI would be 30% up and your already pretty vast keyword portfolio an order of magnitude vaster.

You start hunting.  First to fall prey to your charm is that friendly sales analyst who ‘looks after’ the web stats, they help you show the true value and conversions all your sweat is contributing; then that bored print copywriter who wants to hone their calls to action, they get your ad text popping.

You get some much bigger cheques signed for messrs Google and Overture.  Hey, this search business might not be such a fad after all, although this is probably also the point where you realise that everybody is an SEO expert. Heated discussion ensues. You think, “If he calls another meeting because a company sent him a we-can-get-you-to-#1-in-Google-for-£200-quid email I’m taking up floristry.”

Team: You’ve managed to make a case for, and hire support, whether your main focus is natural or paid search, this is a god send and you can look up from the now and start to think about sustainable traffic growth.

Main objectives/focus: Now is the time for big hits.  Site structure guidelines are being adhered to, 5-figure PPC budgets are rolling your way, you’ve got a seat at the project board table and new products are ready for googlebot lovin’ straight off the bat.  Remedial SEO is a thing of the past (except for the odd ‘microsite’ that pops up now and again).

Things are still very hands-on but you’ve got the respect of the tech teams through results, the writers and product teams are loving the sales they’re seeing from prospective keyword targeting.  You are buzzing, the heart and soul.

Most tested skills: Influencing, motivating, analysis and commitment to building a team, creativity in link-building, proposing and budget-securing. Ego ;o)

Stage 3: Looking forward to strategic, enterprise-level search programmes

Situation: Up until now, you’ve been relatively inward-looking.  What are our traffic levels?  Which keywords convert best for us?  Now that the ship’s on an even keel it’s time to dust off the sextant and take a look around, further than your immediate competitors.  You know you’re getting traffic but is it a lot?  How much is out there and are you getting your share?  Ranks are topping out and keyword portfolios bulging but growth is slowing; there must be more demand out there, surely?

Team: By now, you’ve likely got your very own analyst on board, and a couple of execs.  They’re either called the SEO guy and the PPC guy, or the fluffy one and the geeky one, dependent on who you’ve found and how best your creative/scientific work is divided up.
Your training programmes have created a legion of supporters at ground level and it turns out you took the right path, getting the whole company into SEO rather than guarding the knowledge and telling them to back off when pockets of the company started pushing ahead alone.  We’ve all felt that warm rush of rage up our cheeks when someone undermines you with their (usually wrong) insta-SEO knowledge gained from ‘a friend in IT’.

Main objectives/focus: finding more growth is tough but you’re so used to optimising your tiny team’s time that it’s just another challenge and you start getting creative in response to market movements.  Whole product launches are created from an idle poke through Hitwise or Google (with SEO for Firefox of course!).  You are creating website structures and taxonomies that are profoundly relevant to their target searcher from the get-go.  Who’d have thought it would still be this rewarding, this far along?

Most tested skills: inspiration, resource optimisation, drive.

Discuss:

I’ve tried to intentionally keep this post light and top line.  Anyone got any juicy horror stories?

By that I mean rules to make sure we’re not wasting links by needlessly diluting the authority they bring; or contradicting the content focus that made our site and its structure profoundly relevant from the start.

One that cropped up recently was pagination of articles, I’ll cover search result pagination in a later post.

Contradictory opinions on how best to paginate articles are common, specifically with SEO in mind.  As we know there are loads of different approaches to how content websites manage pagination, but different business units have vastly discint best-case scenarios, meaning it’s normally a case of compromise. Usually between commercial, editorial and digital marketing/SEO.

Is there a way to consistently paginate that keeps all parties happy?

The commercial best case

Sorry to be a cynic but this is obvious.  Loads of pages per article = loads of page views.  Ignoring user journey, this is commercially effective from both an ‘available display inventory’ point of view and a ‘look how engaged my site users are mr. advertiser’ point of view.  Simply, the commercial case for pagination is:

do it, and lots.

The editorial best case

I can already feel the shivers of some editors, and they’re shivering for good reason.  Forcing users to jump through numerous pages because that’s how we’ve decided to monetize their eyes is fundamentally, plain wrong. I have seen some really strong cases for severe pagination like on Time magazine’s photo essays but also some shameless overkill, I’m sure many would agree that the editorial journey can be just as powerful in pictures as in words, but needless pagination, particularly on cynical diggbait, is tiresome.

Issues affecting SEO

Ok, so onto the main beef.  A colleague and I had a great talk about the ramifications of pagination from an SEO point of view and both came to the conclusion that we face the following areas of risk:

• The anchor text
• To follow or not to follow?
• To index of not to index?
• Multiple URLs

The anchor text

Obvious and, if we decide to consistently paginate, purely a case of user understanding.  Stick with the masses here with absolute page number links and first/last links.  keyword rich pagination anchor text is completely off the menu if we want to avoid looking like a ridiculous spammer.

To follow or not to follow?

Assuming we do paginate, is there any reason to allow Google to leave the ‘main’ article page? On one hand yes, there’s alot of rich content on those supplemental article pages.  On the other, no. Where an article hits the SERPS early, we want to continue to rank a single page and herd new users to the ‘main’ article page.  Thus we’ll self-fulfill the traffic=links model.

In the increasingly unlikely event that people still link to additional article pages, will making sure we don’t rel=nofollow the link to page 1 on these additional pages mean that authority is channelled back?

To index of not to index?

It’s worth reiterating that noindex and nofollow are differet things entirely and need to be deployed strategically. But, continuing the thread in the previous paragraph, should these sub/article pages exist in search engines?

Again, by noindexing additional pages as well as nofollowing the links to them, we’re severly limiting the likeliehood that anyone will find a page two or three of our paginated article in the search engines. And technically, if we didn’t nofollow the first page link, chanelling that authority back to the single, indexable URL. So aren’t we minimizing the likeliehood of diluting inbound links?  Nope, not yet.

Multiple URLs

We can avoid duplicate titles and descriptions by controlling each page in the CMS but what’s the point?

The main issue here is inbound links diluting the inbound link authority across multiple URLs for the same article. Obviously we can manipulate which page users will see from a search results page by nofollowing and noindexing. But we can’t be certain that a properly chunked article won’t still have its separate pages linked to; and therefore the authority of the article still spread across multiple URLs.

SEO Best Case, Javascript?

I remember a time when javascript was the devil’s work.

Now though, javascript is commonly used as an effective and elegantly degrading method for cutting related content into separate ‘tabs’. Often seen in the travel sector, it’s a fantastic way to simplify the URLs that you’re expecting a search engine to crawl.

Why should we use it?  Well, mainly we want to maximise the value of inbound links, keeping all the content in one page of code and then use javascript to display the chosen content according to a user’s preference.  This method can be used so that the links to the content are anchors so even when javascript is disabled, the user simply uses the tab nav to skip down the page to the relevant content.  A great example of the elegance of this method is booking.com, try the different tabs, switch off javascript and have a nosy at the source.

So why don’t purely editorial sites use this method for pagination down the bottom of the article then?

Honestly, I have no idea. Particularly when a reload and therefore ad refresh can be called from the onclick. So we can maintain multiple ad views per article interaction, which is essentially what pagination is for commercially; we can provide pagination without multiple URLs; degrade gracefully to a single article for non-js visitors and present the same content at the same URL to both robots and real people.

I’m tempted to think of it as the pagination silver bullet but would love to hear other opinions.

Patrick over at BlogStorm has noticed that the BBC is no longer linking directly to those sweet sweet related links in the side bars of their stories. They in fact are passing through a redirection script.

Seems to me though, that I can easily link to my own site through this script like this Cardiff SEO

I’ll be watching my GWT to see if anything happens.