The End of Big 3 SEO for Affiliates?

Friday, May 19th, 2006 at 7:14am by Linda Buquet

The search engine algos, as always, are a changin. A big part of the recent changes, especially due to Big Daddy, affects affiliate sites and the traditional link building strategies we have become accustomed to. Time to re-think! As many of you know Text Link Ads is a 5 Star Affiliate Program, so I was checking out their Link Building Blog today which lucky for me, just happened to be related to affiliate marketing.

Andy Hagans discusses the need for affiliates to re-think their link building strategy, considering all the changes and havoc Google’s Big Daddy update has created for affiliate sites. He also questions whether it’s wise for affiliates to continue to try to optimize for the big 3 – Google, Yahoo and MSN. He makes some great points, asks affiliates what their strategy is – then shares his own. He also refers to a related article I discovered earlier this morning that has a great ‘link baiting’ subject line – “Are You A Link Whore? I admit I am a link whore, but not for Page Rank. Read below for my comments on that topic.

Google Doesn’t Like Linking Streetwalkers & the End of ‘Tri-engine’ SEO for Affiliates? “Are we getting to a point where it’s more cost effective for affiliates to take an either/or approach to ranking in Google or MSN/Yahoo! ? In my experience, if you target both, it’s hard to do GREAT in either (For simplicity’s sake I’m lumping Yahoo! and MSN together as they both seem to reward linking in the same general way.)”

Andy links out and references another story that caught my eye earlier today from Eric Ward, with an attention grabbing title that I of course re-used in my headline today.

Are You A Link Whore? “Have you used trackbacks just for the link? Do you have a reciprocal links page that you only created so the engines might give you credit for it? Have you gone back to existing links and changed the anchor text just to look nice for the bots? Do you send out press releases every week about absolutely nothing just so you can fill them with so many deep links they look like site maps? You slut.”

Yes I do many of the things you talk about. But almost everything I do is to generate traffic, to get in the serps and to get real visitors, not for Page Rank or inbound links. “Do you send out press releases… fill them with so many deep links they look like site maps?” Err… ya, I guess that’s what I did in this Press Release. (Sheepish grin). But all those links seriously were to get exposure for clients and to help readers more easily get to the program info they may be interested in. I also do most of the other whorish activities you mentioned. I’ve DUGG my own stories, posted my links on social sites, I do blog trackbacks and I also post at lots of forums with a well crafted link-filled sig – but I do it for real eyeballs and traffic, not for back links.

So how do you distinguish a link whore from a guerilla marketer? Can a bot tell the difference???

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#1 Geeman wrote on May 19, 2006 :

I am more of a slut than a whore. I don’t get paid!

#2 James Trotta wrote on May 20, 2006 :

Don’t forget starting forum theads about your blog posts – that’s pretty slutty! http://www.v7n.com/forums/marketing-forum/30706-you-link-whore.html

#3 Eric Ward wrote on May 22, 2006 :

“So how do you distinguish a link whore from a guerilla marketer? Can a bot tell the difference???
”

This is a brilliant question. For me it boils down to intent. If you are pursuing a tactic (digging, press releases, socialinking, etc.) for the direct click traffic and not for an algorithm, then it feels less slutty to me. For example, if you have a web site that sells, say, bird feeders for humingbirds. Now lets say you are over at YahooGroups, and you discover a discussion list just for humingbird lovers. Naturally, you’d love it if these group members knew about your hummingbird feeder web site. So if you can politely get your link in front of this group, without spamming this group (like by actually joining and particpating in the exchagne of info), then you have done it for the direct traffic, not the bots. I agree with those who say this is just link whoring by another name, however, it’s not been done for search rank. This week I will do a followup to my “Are You a Link Whore?” article, and I’ll have some painful admissions to make.

#4 Linda Buquet wrote on May 22, 2006 :

Hi Eric, thanks for coming over to comment. Yes intent – that’s my concern about Google and other bots. I know that my INTENT when I do some of the things I do is for traffic and real human eyeballs but a bot could interpret the links differently. For example you can easily Google and find thousands of forum posts with links to my site. G could think those links are forum spam. In reality 90% of the time I am giving free advice and answering questions about AM. My INTENT is to help. A bot could interpret all those links as something different. A bot would only look at the number of links and could assume only a forum Spam BOT could make that many posts.