1. Winning SEO Tactics
for Product Affiliates
Dale Bertrand
President, Fire&Spark
August 12th, 2019
2. SEO is a Moving Target
Gets more competitive every day
Search algorithms are constantly
changing
Generating backlinks is harder than
ever
3. We want to live the SEO dream!
Massive amounts of free traffic
that converts
I’ve lived it. It’s awesome.
Why Do We Bother?
4. What Type of Sites Are We
Talking About Today?
Dropship
Ecommerce
Coupon
Product review
Anyone promoting products with any type of content
Price comparison
Product blogs
Wholesalers
5. My background
Built product review and education lead gen sites
Studied AI in graduate school
Practicing SEO since 1999
Founder of Fire&Spark digital marketing agency
Focus on SEO, content marketing and analytics
7. Problems We’ll Tackle
Competitors are outranking you
Organic traffic isn’t converting
Gave up on link building
Lost traffic during an algorithm update
8. You must have the most useful,
trustworthy content in your niche
What Does Google Want?
Happy searchers (and to sell more ads)
Google is a happiness engine
Google wants to send searchers to
sites they trust
10. Research
keywords one-
by-one
I did this for a decade!
Rinse and repeat
Lurk in forums
and FB groups
for content ideas
Continuously
generate
content
Send thousands
of link building
outreach emails
11. Old-school SEO Tactics Rely on
SEO Is Not a Numbers Game
More content
More links
More outreach emails
12. SEO in 2018
Keyword
targeting
Build an
SEO-friendly
site
Authority
based on
backlinks
SEO in 2019
Content must be
high quality and
useful
Minimum
viable
technical SEO
Authority
based on
backlinks and
reputation
18. Contacted anyone who wrote about the law
Interviewed activists
Wrote articles about the impact
Distributed banners and badges
We led the movement against the
Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act
(CPSIA)
Strategy
19. Mentions and backlinks on blogs
Backlinks from Handmade Toy Alliance
Backlinks Overlawyered Blog
Banner and badge backlinks
Links from toy makers
Interview and issue oriented content
Results
Content, links and Rankings
20.
21. Takeaways
SEO has evolved and we need to elevate our strategies
Your affiliate site can be “important reading”
Influencers have a soft spot for causes they care about
Dump mass email outreach for targeted email outreach
Generate natural links (don’t do link building)
Find a cause that you personally care about
[Note to Nick] Add relevant image to the right.
I think this slide is best served with your photo. If you have a different one you like I can swap.
[Note to Nick] Add relevant image to the right.
[Note to Nick] This slide looks kinda boring and sparse.
[Note to Nick] This slide looks kinda boring and sparse.
[Note to Nick] This slide looks kinda boring and sparse.
full stop let think about this for a moment
At the end. Help them internalize the story and the takeaways. How do folks in the audience take advantage of this?
[Note to Nick] How can I combine this slide with the last slide? Only one slide can be up during the Q&A. I’d want it to be this slide with my email address on it.
[Dale] See if this will work, the ‘stay in touch’ piece isn’t important in this case – you can just say that as you speak. The most important visual piece of this is the resource guide. I have hidden the last slide ( right-click > hide …. you can delete it when the deck is final ).