Hi Matt... what would you do if you have a service website doing a $3.5k minimum profit a month... sell it and raise cash to invest in affiliate SEO or hold it?
Agree with #2. Quality content is key and it might sound like a lot of work but it'll not only benefit your affiliate marketing strategy but your whole site's search engine ranking as well. Thanks for this, man!
Totally agree with semantic SEO and topic authority! The only part I would be "lazy" about is backlink building. I would love to go with "Helpful Content": people naturally refer to my content. I know it's like a dream, but I would try it.
Matt, do you believe that the reason Google is going after affiliates is so that affiliate marketers will buy advertisements rather than receive organic traffic?
google will always be interested in organic traffic cause they understand the pain of paid promotion - ads products will dominate over better ones w/o budget on marketing
The majority of affiliate articles aren't actually helpful for consumers who are seeking information or honest product reviews. They're mostly scammy/spammy rehashed information simply trying to drive click throughs. If Google penalizes most of these sites, then good!
@@JohnnyNasello Yep, Driven by the high Commissions so completely tainted as far as honest review of product/service so understandable G will deindex these eventually.
Thank you. Now I think I understand why my rankings dropped so much. I added 100 comercial articles like Best x for y in march and after may update my website lost lot of rankings
I don't think Google is going specifically after affiliates, however, in the industry, people tend to take the "short cuts" of SEO, therefore we see alot more affiliates, rather than "real websites or business" getting hit by the Google updates, this is a positive thing, as we get the black-hat and grey-hat SEO out of the way, it's still too easy to rank high in Google, as an SEO.
Some really great info here! I absolutely agree, these google updates have been going on for years and seem to just thin the heard a bit opening up more opportunity for the resilient ones. Thx the time spent and info shared.
hey Matt that would be very unfair if you not gonna share your current niche research strategy, please make a video on that. highly appreciated and lots of love from Asia.
I have been testing a new way on an up-and-coming site I have. I want to keep the commercial ratio very low. What I'm doing is writing a lot of reviews about the items and comparisons. I plan to watch the traffic and rankings. The articles that bring in the most traffic that does have buyer intent, I will then add the products too. I feel this is a win-win since my affiliate ratio will stay low, yet I should still capture a good amount of traffic to sell some items.
00:00 😡 Google's negative impact on affiliate marketing - Google has been penalizing affiliate websites, causing negative effects for many affiliates. - The algorithm updates have resulted in a significant drop in traffic for affiliate sites. - The loss of traffic can be devastating for affiliate marketers. 00:59 🕵 Challenges for affiliate marketing on Google - Google's product reviews updates target affiliate websites and make it more complex to write reviews. - Affiliate marketers also have to deal with Google's core algorithm updates, which can impact various SEO factors. - The presence of mega sites with strong backlinks already covering lucrative search terms makes it difficult for affiliate marketers to compete. 02:25 ⚰ The death of SEO and affiliate marketing? - The traditional way of doing affiliate marketing on Google is no longer effective. - Affiliate marketing on Google requires a different strategy than before. - SEO and affiliate marketing are still possible on Google with the right approach. 03:23 🚀 Five essential Google affiliate marketing strategies - Topical authority is crucial for ranking on Google, which involves thoroughly covering every aspect of a topic. - Creating well-written quality standalone articles for each topic is essential for success. - Optimizing content structure, including headings, subheadings, and targeted keywords, is necessary to meet Google's expectations. 05:16 💡 Generating content ideas and organizing keywords - Tools like Answer the Public and Google's auto-complete feature can help generate content ideas. - SEO Minion and Keyword Cupid can assist in organizing and mapping keywords for effective content creation. - Clicking through competitors' websites and analyzing their subtopics can provide valuable insights for generating content. 05:45 ✍ Producing high-quality content and search intent - Well-written and comprehensive articles on each topic are crucial for ranking on Google. - Understanding search intent and structuring the content accordingly is essential for success. - Following a research phase, determining the target word count, and writing the content based on the determined search intent are recommended steps. 07:43 👩🍳 Structuring content and determining subtopics - Content should have a clear heading structure, including H1, H2, H3 sections. - Analyzing the top-ranking pages for a target keyword can provide insights into the appropriate subtopics to include. - Including a private notes section can demonstrate firsthand experience and depth of knowledge. 08:12 ✍ Word count and misconceptions about article length - Word count should be determined based on the search intent and user expectations. - Writing excessively long articles is not necessary for ranking on Google. - Google's guidelines do not specify a specific word count, but rather value quality and relevance. 09:39 📊 Commercial and informational content balance - The ratio of commercial to informational content impacts website traffic after Google's updates. - Websites with a high proportion of commercial content compared to helpful informational content experience a drop in traffic. - Finding the right balance between commercial and informational content is crucial for success. 11:05 🔗 Importance of backlink authority and trust - Backlinks play a significant role in Google's algorithm, providing power and trust signals. - Power links come from websites with many links, while trust links come from trusted websites. - Getting links from high-authority websites or seed sites can boost trust and improve rankings. 12:02 📰 Obtaining backlinks through link insertion and digital PR - Link insertions and guest posts on high-authority websites can provide power links. - Digital PR, such as using HARO or creating studies, can help acquire trust links. - Authority Builders is recommended for link-building services. 12:31 📚 Integrating content and link strategies - Content and link-building strategies should be implemented together. - Both strategies are crucial for success in affiliate marketing on Google. - More detailed information on these strategies can be found in the free training provided.
How about a video/case study on using original vs stock photos? Do you think Google goes further than reading meta data and reads or understands what’s in the image for web search?
Thank god. There's nothing worse than trying to search for honest product review, and all you get are unheard of sites with lists of "Top Ten X" that are just amazon links with generic information copied from the product description. People are resorting to appending "reddit" to the end of their search to get any useful information. Affiliate marketing websites that don't actually feature real reviews or testing and are just 'listacles' can burn in hell for all I care.
Working on the Commercial. vs info ratio definitely worked for me, thanks for this tip. However, I am curious about how should one calculate the ratio? 1 page with even only one affiliate link = commercial page? Or do you believe there's an affiliate content density ratio?
Is it possible to develop topical authority for multiple niches on the same site? Take a large general website for instance, can you develop topical authority in a wellness niche by doing a deep dive in relevant articles and then also in a technology niche, or is the entire site pigeon holed?
That's what I've always wondered, and why I've built a 'podcast' site . Haven't done too much work but getting good results on some pages I've written so far, with only dr 9
Tom's Guide seems to cover multiple niches in its website and RU-vid channel. But they may be so big that their brand starts to overpower Google Search. And people just go straight to Tom's Guide and ignore the search part.
😅Really glad that I found you so far ....... I joined your channel and I hit the big bell for you Matt Diggity PS sharing your video to my e-mail affiliate marketing friends to read your content.
Darn. With all that research taking all that extra time, why don't people find a Google alternative? Is there one? How about a course on how to do Affiliate Marketing WITHOUT using Google? Just a thought.
So basically, If you write untruthful, shallow, or crap content, you will lose. Who knew you had to be an actual expert for your opinion to be considered helpfull.
With all the respect for you Matt, starting every video by saying smash the like button and a whole story why this is important is not very persuading. Instead, it is better to get straight into the information you have for people and at the end of the video, you can ask them to like and share it if they found it helpful. That's my take. You can throw it, you can keep it, do what you want. Have a nice day!
At the 2:33 mark of your video, I see your google search page shows DR, AR, and UR scores (among other things). How did you configure google search to provide all that information?
Actually iam a college student and got interested in seo and online marketing, but iam continously hearing news about sites getting downgraded, google is becoming more stict every six month, SEO will be automated , do you think SEO is safe field to enter for like next 10 years at least?
Affiliate marketing might still be viable, but it has definitely become diminishing returns. More content is required to get less results, the entire industry is over-saturated.
Btw, what does that mean for client seo? Obviously business websites have a lot of, ugh, commercial content. Should that be mixed up with informative articles? Kinda silly on google's part, some sites just are commercial in nature, nothing wrong about that (maybe they want these to buy gads, lol)
@@MattDiggity I meant ecoms and local businesses (I have mostly ecoms now, but I have some local businesses too). Like, you know, ecoms will have mostly product pages... Some have blogs too, that are not necessarily reguraly updated. Is it beneficial to create a informational blog for them and update that? Or it doesn't matter?
A LOT of these 'review' websites and 'Top" or 'Best' lists are a bunch of garbage that aren't honest review sites, so it's about time that these bogus review sites are penalized. There should be the ability to create a page to promote your affiliate offer either through organic or paid ads efforts.
Can you please make a tips and tricks video on how to write plagiarism free content? I think most of the newbie content writer like me are expecting a tutorial from a reliable creator like you.. Please 🥺❤️
Beautifully analyzed, Matt. Google feeds the low quality affiliate sites into its machine learning black box ninja… One after another, the AI builds its recognition signals to automatically identify other low quality sites by learned patterns… and deals with them accordingly. POW!
Instead of publishing 10 different articles on x, I cover everything in one long article. The number of words in my articles is between 3,000 and 5,000. Do you think this is the wrong strategy?
I've just been hit in the April Product Review today and already lost half my traffic. The writing is from first-hand experiences but the photos aren't. Do you I can regain my rankings by changing the photos to originals and then say adding videos?
@@MattDiggity I own a travel site that doe top... round ups of unique hotels some have original photos but others don't. This makes up around half of my content so I'm also thinking of writing more general travel guides so Google doesn't put me into an affiliate site box?
Hey Matt what's the name of that site you talked about in one of your videos, that regroups a lot of SaaS and email marketing, like Aweber I think, affiliate programs on it?
DUDE YOU HAVE GOT TO CHANGE THE TITLE OF THIS VIDEO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Awesome content man. Great video. Learned allot..... and now as i'm typing this........i'm thinking , "well i fuckin' clicked on it..." . That pissed me off.... because it was clickbait and now i'm doing exactly what you are saying........... SON OF A B!+CH..... ok you win.
Hi Matt: I write automotive information articles, but I think google see's it as commercial? Example: I write 1,400 words about a water pump repair on a Honda Civic. At the end I include a single link to (amazon text and image ad) a model specific water pump. Does this 1 affiliate link turn the information article into Commercial? Website smacked down in early July 2021 downhill ever since. Opinion? Thanks
Cool. Can I ask a question? Started a niche blog 28 days ago, my impression is about 2.5k, and clicks 45. But my average position keeps dropping. Currently 43. What will you advise?
😀 Insightful as usual Matt - I think you got a point! People who are copy content from other sites and past it into their affiliate sites should rethink their strategy because they are highly unlikely to rank well in search results. Google says & I quote: Affiliate program content should form only a minor part of the content of your site if the content adds no additional features. If you got 80/20 then you're dead.
