SEO
The Three Pillars Of SEO: Authority, Relevance, And Experience
What do you need to compete in SEO?
Some say more inbound links, others better content, while some might emphasize a technically healthy site.
Experienced SEOs know that the most successful sites when it comes to organic search have the right mix of high-level fundamentals.
In recent years, there has been a lot of attention around E-A-T (Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness) as mentioned in Google’s Search Rater Quality Guidelines.
Some have come to think of these as the most fundamental aspects of SEO.
However, as important as E-A-T maybe for some sites, it only addresses one aspect: content.
A holistic SEO program needs to include more.
Over the years, I’ve come to think that SEO can be reduced at its most fundamental level to building three things into a site and its pages:
- Authority.
- Relevance.
- Experience (of the users and bots visiting the site).
The sites that pay attention to all three of these are more likely to be valued by both search engines and users, and attract more organic traffic over time.
Notice that one of my categories, Authority, overlaps with an E-A-T category.
That’s because I believe at the highest level of SEO, expertise and trustworthiness are really parts of what makes a site or page authoritative.
Let’s dive into each of these A-R-E categories to see how they should be incorporated into a holistic SEO program.
Authority: Do You Matter?
In SEO, authority refers to the importance or weight given to a page relative to a given search query.
Modern search engines such as Google use many factors (or signals) when evaluating the authority of a webpage.
Why does Google care about assessing the authority of a page?
For most queries, there are thousands or even millions of pages available that could be ranked.
Google wants to bring to the top the ones that are most likely to satisfy the user with accurate, reliable information that fully answers the intent of the query.
Google cares about serving users the most authoritative pages for their queries because users that are satisfied by the pages they click through to from Google are more likely to use Google again, and thus get more exposure to Google’s ads, the primary source of its revenue.
Authority Came First
Assessing the authority of webpages was the first fundamental problem search engines had to solve.
Some of the earliest search engines relied on human evaluators, but as the world wide web exploded, that quickly became impossible to scale.
Google overtook all its rivals because its creators, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, developed the idea of PageRank, using links from other pages on the web as weighed citations to assess the authoritativeness of a page.
Page and Brin realized that links were an already-existing system of constantly evolving polling where other authoritative sites “voted” for pages they saw as reliable and relevant to their users.
Search engines use links much like we might treat scholarly citations. The more scholarly papers relevant to a source document that cite it, the better.
The relative authority and trustworthiness of each of the citing source come into play as well.
So, of our three fundamental categories, authority came first because it was the easiest of the three to crack given the ubiquity of hyperlinks on the web.
The other two, relevance and user experience, would be tackled later, as machine learning/AI-driven algorithms developed.
Links Still Primary For Authority
The big innovation that made Google the dominant search engine in a short period was that it used an analysis of links on the web as a ranking factor.
This started with a paper written by Larry Page and Sergey Brin called The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine.
The essential insight behind this paper was that the web is built on the notion of documents inter-connected with each other via links.
Since putting a link on your site to a third-party site might cause a user to leave your site, there was little incentive for a publisher to link to another site, unless it was really good and of great value to their site’s users.
In other words, linking to a third-party site acts a bit like a “vote” for it, and each vote could be considered an endorsement, endorsing the page the link points to as one of the best resources on the web for a given topic.
Then, in principle, the more votes you get, the better and the more authoritative a search engine would consider you to be, and you should therefore rank higher.
Passing PageRank
A significant piece of the initial Google algorithm was based on the concept of PageRank, a system for evaluating which pages are the most important based on scoring the links they receive.
So, a page that has large quantities of valuable links pointing to it will have a higher PageRank, and in principle will be likely to rank higher in the search results than other pages without as high a PageRank score.
When a page links to another page, it passes a portion of its PageRank to the page it links to.
Thus, pages accumulate more PageRank based on the number and quality of links they receive.
Not All Links Are Created Equal
So more votes are better, right?
Well, that’s true in theory, but it’s a lot more complicated than that.
PageRank scores range from a base value of one to values that likely exceed trillions.
Higher PageRank pages can have a lot more PageRank to pass than lower PageRank pages. In fact, a link from one page can easily be worth more than one million times a link from another page.
Let’s use our intuition for a moment.
Imagine you have a page that’s selling a book, and it gets two links. One is from Joe’s Book Store, and the other one is from Amazon.
It’s pretty obvious which one you would value more as a user, right? As users, we recognize that Amazon has more authority on this topic.
As it turns out, the web has recognized this as well, and Amazon has a much more powerful link profile (and higher PageRank) than any other site involved in selling books.
As a result, it has a much higher PageRank, and can pass more PageRank to the pages that it links to.
It’s important to note that Google’s algorithms have evolved a long way from the original PageRank thesis.
The way that links are evaluated has changed in significant ways – some of which we know, and some of which we don’t.
What About Trust?
You may hear many people talk about the role of trust in search rankings and in evaluating link quality.
For the record, Google says they don’t have a concept of trust they apply to links (or ranking), so you should take those discussions with many grains of salt.
These discussions began because of a Yahoo patent on the concept of TrustRank.
The idea was that if you started with a seed set of hand-picked, highly trusted sites, and you then counted the number of clicks it took you to go from those sites to yours, the fewer clicks the more trusted your site was.
Google has long said they don’t use this type of metric.
However, in April 2018, Google was granted a patent related to evaluating the trustworthiness of links. But the existence of a granted patent does not mean it’s used in practice.
For your own purposes, however, if you want to assess the trustworthiness of a site as a source of a link, using the concept of trusted links is not a bad idea.
If they do any of the following, then it probably isn’t a good source for a link:
- Sell links to others.
- Have less than great content.
- Otherwise don’t appear reputable.
Google may not be calculating trust the way you do in your analysis, but chances are good that some other aspect of their system will devalue that link anyway.
Fundamentals Of Earning & Attracting Links
Now that you know that obtaining links to your site is critical to SEO success, it’s time to start putting together a plan to get some.
The key to success is understanding that Google wants this entire process to be holistic.
Google actively discourages, and in some cases punishes, schemes to get links in an artificial way. This means certain practices are seen as bad, such as:
- Buying links for SEO purposes.
- Going to forums and blogs and adding comments with links back to your site.
- Hacking people’s sites and injecting links into their content.
- Distributing poor-quality infographics or widgets that include links back to your pages.
- Offering discount codes or affiliate programs as a way to get links.
- And many other schemes where the resulting links are artificial in nature.
What Google really wants is for you to make a fantastic website, and promote it effectively, with the result that you earn or attract links.
So, how do you do that?
Who Links?
The first key insight is to understand who it is that might link to the content that you create.
Here is a chart that profiles the major groups of people in any given market space:
Who do you think are the people that might implement links?
It’s certainly not the laggards, and it’s also not the early or late majority.
It’s the innovators and early adopters. These are the people who write on media sites, or have blogs, and who might add links to your site.
There are also other sources of links, such as locally-oriented sites, such as the local chamber of commerce or local newspapers.
You might also find some opportunities with colleges and universities if they have pages that relate to some of the things you’re doing in your market space.
Relevance: Will Users Swipe Right On Your Page?
You have to be relevant to a given topic.
Think of every visit to a page as an encounter on a dating app. Will users “swipe right” (thinking, “this looks like a good match!)?
If you have a page about Tupperware, it doesn’t matter how many links you get – you’ll never rank for queries related to used cars.
This defines a limitation on the power of links as a ranking factor, and it shows how relevance also impacts the value of a link.
Consider a page on a site that is selling a used Ford Mustang. Imagine that it gets a link from Car and Driver magazine. That link is highly relevant.
Also, think of this intuitively. Is it likely that Car and Driver magazine has some expertise related to Ford Mustangs? Of course, they do.
In contrast, imagine a link to that Ford Mustang from a site that usually writes about sports. Is the link still helpful?
Probably, but not as helpful, because there is less evidence to Google that the sports site has a lot of knowledge about used Ford Mustangs.
In short, the relevance of the linking page, and the linking site, impacts how valuable a link might be considered.
What are some ways that Google evaluates relevance?
The Role Of Anchor Text
Anchor text is another aspect of links that matters to Google.
The anchor text helps Google confirm what the content on the page receiving the link is about.
For example, if the anchor text is the phrase “iron bathtubs” and the page has content on that topic, the anchor text, plus the link, acts as further confirmation that the page is about that topic.
Thus, the links act to evaluate both the relevance and authority of the page.
Be careful, though, as you don’t want to go aggressively obtaining links to your page that all use your main key phrase as the anchor text.
Google also looks for signs that you are manually manipulating links for SEO purposes.
One of the simplest indicators is if your anchor text looks manually manipulated.
Internal Linking
There is growing evidence that Google uses internal linking to evaluate how relevant a site is to a topic.
Properly structured internal links connecting related content are a way of showing Google that you have the topic well-covered, with pages about many different aspects.
By the way, anchor text is as important when creating external links as it is for external, inbound links.
Related to internal linking is your overall site structure.
Think strategically about where your pages fall in your site hierarchy. If it makes sense for users it will probably be useful to search engines.
The Content Itself
Of course, the most important indicator of the relevance of a page has to be the content on that page.
Most SEOs are aware that assessing the relevance of content to a query has become way more sophisticated than merely having the keywords a user is searching for.
Due to advances in natural language processing and machine learning, search engines like Google have vastly increased their competence in being able to assess the content on a page.
What are some things Google likely looks for in determining what queries a page should be relevant for?
- Keywords: While the days of keyword stuffing as an effective SEO tactic are (thankfully) way behind us, having certain words on a page still matters. My company has numerous case studies showing that merely adding key terms that are common among top-ranking pages for a topic is often enough to increase organic traffic to a page.
- Depth: The top-ranking pages for a topic usually cover the topic at the right depth. That is, they have enough content to cover the topic to satisfy searchers for a query, and/or are linked to/from pages that help flesh out the topic.
- Structure: Structural elements like H1…H2…H3, bolded topic headings, and schema structured data may help Google better understand the relevance and coverage of a page.
What About E-A-T?
Of course, Google encourages all site owners to create content that makes a visitor feel like this is authoritative, trustworthy content written by someone with expertise appropriate to the topic.
But how much they do or are able to evaluate those categories is still a topic of debate.
The main thing to keep in mind is that the more YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) your site is the more you should pay attention to E-A-T.
YMYL sites are those whose main content addresses things that might have an effect on people’s well-being or finances.
If your site is YMYL, you should go the extra mile in ensuring the accuracy of your content, and displaying that you have qualified experts writing it.
Building A Content Marketing Plan
Last, but certainly not least, create a real plan for your content marketing.
Don’t just suddenly start doing a lot of random stuff.
Take the time to study what your competitors are doing so you can invest your content marketing efforts in a way that’s likely to provide a solid ROI.
One approach to doing that is to pull their backlink profiles using tools that can do that.
With this information, you can see what types of links they’ve been getting and then based on that figure out what links you need to get to beat them.
Take the time to do this exercise and also to map which links are going to which pages on the competitors’ sites, as well as what each of those pages rank for.
Building out this kind of detailed view will help you scope out your plan of attack and give you some understanding of what keywords you might be able to rank for.
It’s well worth the effort!
In addition, study the competitor’s content plans.
Learn what they are doing and carefully consider what you can do that’s different.
Focus on developing a very clear differentiation in your content for topics that are in high demand with your potential customers.
This is another investment of time that will be very well spent.
Experience
As we traced above, Google started by focusing on the ranking pages by authority, then found ways to assess relevance.
The third evolution of search was the evaluation of user experience.
In fact, many SEOs (and I’m among them) prefer to speak of SEO not as Search Engine Optimization, but as Search Experience Optimization.
Google realized that authoritativeness and relevancy, as important as they are, were not the only things users were looking for when searching.
Users also want a good experience on the pages and sites Google sends them to.
What is a “good user experience”? It includes at least the following:
- The page the searcher lands on is what they would expect to see given their query. No bait and switch.
- The content on the landing page is highly relevant to the user’s query.
- The content is sufficient to answer the intent of the user’s query but also links to other relevant sources and related topics.
- The page loads quickly, the relevant content is immediately apparent, and page elements settle into place quickly (all aspects of Google’s Page Experience Update).
In addition, many of the suggestions made above about creating better content apply to user experience as well.
In summary, Google wants to rank pages that satisfy the query and make it as easy as possible for the searcher to identify and understand what they were searching for.
Putting It All Together
Search engines want happy users who will come back to them again and again when they have a question or need.
The way they create and sustain that happiness is by providing the best possible results that satisfy that question or need.
To keep their users happy, search engines must be able to understand and measure the relative authority of webpages for the topics they cover.
When you create content that is highly useful (or engaging or entertaining) to visitors – and when those visitors find your content reliable enough that they would willingly return again to your site, or even seek you out above others – you’ve gained authority.
The search engines work hard at continually improving their ability to match that human quest for trustworthy authority.
As we explained above, that same kind of quality content is key to earning the kinds of links that assure the search engines you should rank highly for relevant searches.
That can be either content on your site that others want to link to or content that other quality, relevant sites want to publish, with appropriate links back to your site.
Focusing on these three pillars of SEO – authority, relevance, and experience – will increase the opportunities for your content and make link-earning easier.
You now have everything you need to know for SEO success, so get to work!
Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
SEO
Top 10 Affiliate Marketing Platforms To Maximize Sales In 2024
Affiliate marketing has been experiencing explosive growth in recent years, so it’s essential now more than ever for brands to run affiliate programs of their own.
It involves brands hiring affiliates to promote their products and services and rewarding them with a commission from every sale.
As such, affiliate marketing is an excellent low-cost and low-risk way for brands to drive sales and brand awareness without hiring an in-house advertising and marketing team of their own.
Affiliate marketing spending worldwide is estimated at around $14 billion in 2024 – and the industry is predicted to reach a worth of over $38 billion by 2031.
Affiliate Marketing And SEO
Affiliate marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) both share a common goal of attracting relevant and high-quality traffic to a site with the goal of increasing sales.
As such, both of these marketing activities shouldn’t be perceived as two separate, competing entities.
Instead, you should look at them as one and the same that work together in perfect harmony to increase website traffic and generate more revenue.
The most successful publishers in the affiliate marketing space combine the two to get the best of both worlds.
SEO affiliate marketing involves choosing the right products and affiliate programs that attract the most search traffic and offer the best commissions.
Publishers often make the most of affiliate marketing by creating content that adds real value for their readers and prioritizes their experience.
Publishers often do this by creating “Best of” or “Top X” oriented posts that address their audience’s needs and pain points, while, at the same time, allowing them to monetize their content by using affiliate links throughout the posts.
By adding relevant and contextual affiliate links in such posts, publishers foster an authentic user experience that puts their readers first.
This is one of the most significant advantages of affiliate marketing compared to alternative marketing methods such as sponsored posts.
Today’s consumers are increasingly distancing themselves from heavily business-oriented content, as it’s often perceived as inauthentic and disingenuous.
By focusing on high-quality content that adds value to readers and combining it with relevant and contextual affiliate links, everyone wins!
Additionally, Google rewards publishers who create original content and add real value for their readers.
They reward such publishers by placing them higher in search results and driving more traffic to them.
But, in today’s highly competitive and increasingly dynamic market, how can brands find the time to manage and grow their affiliate marketing program?
The answer is with the help of the right affiliate marketing software that streamlines the entire process.
Once upon a time, running a successful affiliate marketing program meant manually managing every aspect – a time-consuming and inefficient process.
Thankfully, these days, affiliate marketing software and solutions have evolved to offer all the necessary tools in a single place, which simplifies the whole process and enables brands to optimize their programs and focus on growth.
Therefore, brands need to utilize the right affiliate marketing software to stay competitive and maximize ROI in today’s highly competitive affiliate marketing space.
This article will go over what affiliate marketing software is and what makes a great affiliate software platform.
We’ll also review the top 10 affiliate marketing software platforms that brands can use to take their affiliate program to the next level.
What Is An Affiliate Marketing Software?
In a nutshell, affiliate marketing software is a comprehensive tool that facilitates all aspects of affiliate marketing program management.
It allows brands to track, manage, and grow their affiliate marketing campaigns.
Most affiliate marketing software platforms share standard features such as affiliate onboarding, collaboration with affiliate partners, affiliate tracking and reporting, and referral, cost, and commission payment management.
What Makes A Good Affiliate Marketing Software Platform?
Though most affiliate marketing software platforms share many of the same features, what sets apart the good platforms from the bad is what’s important.
For starters, the actual platform must have an intuitive and user-friendly interface.
An affiliate marketing platform can boast all of the best affiliate tools and features available.
Still, it’s a moot effort if the dashboard is complicated for most people.
Additionally, since brands usually utilize a variety of Software as a Service (SaaS) platforms for ecommerce and affiliate marketing, affiliate marketing software platforms need to offer tons of third-party SaaS integrations.
The best affiliate marketing software platforms offer robust tracking and reporting capabilities.
Brands need to be able to precisely track their affiliate sales and access real-time granular data to measure the ROI of their affiliate campaigns effectively.
Additionally, a good affiliate marketing platform will provide brands with all the affiliate tools they need to launch, manage, promote, and scale their affiliate programs, such as flexible commission management and customizable real-time affiliate tracking and reporting capabilities.
At the same time, they should offer their clients peace of mind by providing the highest level of fraud detection and other security features.
Lastly, the best affiliate marketing software platforms mean nothing if there isn’t quality customer service available 24/7 to back it up. Readily available customer assistance is equally important for brands as it is for affiliates.
Top 10 Affiliate Marketing Software
1. Refersion
With over 60,000+ registered merchants, 6.6 million affiliates managed, and $2 billion in affiliate revenue tracked, Refersion is one of the leading affiliate marketing software platforms on the market.
Its robust and highly personalized dashboard allows brands to manage all aspects of their affiliate program, such as monitoring all aspects of their affiliate activity with extensive real-time reporting capability.
Refersion offers brands all the tools they need to scale and promote their affiliate programs, such as managing commissions, payouts, and providing simplified tax automation. It also offers easy integration with popular tools like Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce.
While Refersion does come with a higher price point than some competitors – starting at $99 per month – it’s hard to find a solution that offers the same level of top-notch affiliate tools, marketplace, and customer service.
Pricing:
- The professional tier starts at $99/month (if paid annually) for up to 50 monthly order conversions.
- The business tier starts at $249/month (if paid annually) for up to 200 monthly order conversions.
- The enterprise tier is available with unlimited monthly order conversions – you’ll need to contact Refersion for pricing details.
2. Impact
Screenshot from Impact.com, August 2024Impact is one of the biggest affiliate marketing software platforms for cloud automation.
Its signature product, the Impact Partnership Cloud, allows brands to automate their affiliate and influencer marketing campaigns. It offers a marketplace where brands can connect with a network of affiliates, influencers, ambassadors, and other possible partners.
The platform’s tools also include dynamic commissioning, reporting, advanced analytics, and third-party integrations for companies to track and manage their affiliate programs.
However, pricing is not readily available, and you must contact the Impact sales team for a custom quote.
Pricing:
- Custom quotes are available upon request.
3. Tapfiliate
Screenshot from Tapfiliate.com, August 2024For businesses primarily operating and generating their revenue on ecommerce SaaS platforms, Tapfiliate may be a great choice.
It features a range of automation capabilities, including an autopilot mode that can automate things such as onboarding new affiliates, sharing via social media, or even drip campaigns.
Tapfiliate easily integrates with major ecommerce players like Shopify and WooCommerce, and offers advanced tracking and reporting capabilities. However, most of the features are accessible only through the Pro plan, which starts at $149 a month – nothing to sneeze at.
Pricing:
- The essential plan starts at $74/month for 1 team member and basic features.
- The pro plan starts at $124/month for 5 team members and more advanced features.
- The enterprise plan offers custom pricing for unlimited team members, unlimited tracking requests, a dedicated personal manager, and more.
4. Awin
Screenshot from Awin.com, August 2024Awin, previously known as Zanox, merged with Affilinet in 2017 to become one of the largest affiliate marketing platforms, providing “unlimited access to over 1M vetted partners.”
It features a handful of marketing and reporting features you’d expect from such an extensive network, like tools for cross-device tracking, real-time reporting, and automated compliance management.
The platform’s Awin Access program is an interesting option for smaller businesses or teams newer to affiliate marketing, as it offers a straightforward setup process and flexible pricing to make joining the network easier.
Registration is free on Awin, but it uses a performance-based pricing model. This means brands pay a predetermined cost-per-acquisition (CPA), and specific pricing details are only available upon request.
Pricing:
- Custom quotes are available upon request.
5. CAKE
Screenshot from getcake.com, August 2024CAKE is another SaaS-based affiliate marketing platform, meaning you can access it from anywhere (with an Internet connection).
CAKE partners with a bunch of partners to offer a variety of streamlined and automated features. It’s known for its great tracking and reporting capabilities, which enable you to follow and optimize your campaigns in real time.
The platform boasts more than 500 advertisers, networks, and publishers across 50+ countries, and it offers 24/7 customer support to its users. It has customizable features, granular data analysis, and impressive fraud protection to give customers peace of mind.
Unfortunately, CAKE’s pricing is not readily available on its website. It also doesn’t feature any pre-made promotional tools for marketers, which doesn’t make it quite suitable for novice users just starting out with their affiliate program
Pricing:
- Custom quotes are available upon request.
6. ClickBank
Screenshot from ClickBank.com, August 2024ClickBank was one of the first affiliate platforms, launching all the way back in 1998. Since then, it’s grown to one of the largest affiliate marketplaces with over 200 million customers.
According to the company’s website, there are 300,000+ daily purchases made on ClickBank – and it boasts $4.2B in paid commissions.
ClickBank stands out for its native support for subscription services, which makes it easy for brands to create one-click, repeatable purchases. This allows them to provide monthly products without requiring manual monthly payments.
It also offers some of the standard features commonly found on most affiliate platforms, such as affiliate reporting, payments, commissions management, and third-party integrations. It’s quick and easy to list your products and set up affiliate programs on the platform.
However, compared to some of the other affiliate platforms on this list, it doesn’t offer a demo, free trial, or monthly pricing. Instead, ClickBank charges a one-time activation to list products on the platform and then a fee per sale.
Pricing:
- One-Time Activation Fee: $49.95.
- Transaction Fee: 7.5% + $1 per sale.
7. CJ Affiliate
Screenshot from cj.com, August 2024CJ Affiliate is a well-known and reputable affiliate marketing platform. It offers access to hundreds of advertisers, publishers, and potential partners in one platform.
CJ Affiliate provides a customizable dashboard and a variety of reports and specialized tools, including advanced tracking and reporting capabilities. Most notably, it offers specialized tools, such as Deep Link Automation and Product Widgets, that enable brands to improve their affiliate program ROI.
While CJ Affiliate is a great choice for businesses of all sizes, it’s worth noting that the company doesn’t provide a free trial or demo, operates on a performance-based pricing model, and you’ll need to reach out for specific details.
Pricing:
- Custom quotes are available upon request.
8. TUNE
Screenshot from Tune.com, August 2024Designed for companies that require detailed tracking and analytics, TUNE allows brands to build, manage, and grow their affiliate partner networks through its proprietary marketing technology.
TUNE offers a flexible platform, which users can tweak and tailor to fit their needs. Within the platform, you have customizable tools, commissions, payments, and real-time affiliate tracking and reporting.
However, it doesn’t provide affiliate promotional tools like most other platforms, and there is no straightforward pricing listed on the website.
It does, however, list details on its different plans, including a Pro Plan with basic features up to an Enterprise Plan with features like custom integrations, premium support, enhanced fraud prevention, and more.
Pricing:
- Custom quote available upon request.
9. LeadDyno
Screenshot from LeadDyno.com, August 2024LeadDyno specializes in affiliate program promotion and perhaps offers the most promotional tools available in an affiliate marketing software platform.
LeadDyno offers tools that enable brands to create various promotional campaigns, such as email, newsletters, and social media campaigns, making it a wonderful choice for companies that want to expand the reach of their programs.
It provides a straightforward user experience that makes it easy to onboard affiliates, track your performance, and manage payouts. Extensive real-time tracking and reporting features give businesses the ability to monitor and optimize their campaigns.
Pricing is on the affordable side and LeadDyno offers a free trial – which not all tools on this list do!
Pricing:
- The lite plan starts at $49/month for up to 50 active affiliates, one commission plan, one reward structure, and other basics.
- The essential plan is $129.month and offers up to 150 active affiliates, three commission plans, and one reward structure, as well as other advanced features like a landing page, 1:1 call and video support, and more.
- The advanced plan is $349/month and offers up to 500 active affiliates, unlimited reward structures and commission plans, and many other advanced features.
- The unlimited plan is $749/month and offers unlimited active affiliates, unlimited reward structures and commission plans, and more.
10. ShareASale
Screenshot from ShareASale.com, August 2024With over 20 years of experience, ShareASale has been around for quite some time. It’s a reliable solution for merchants and affiliates alike, and carries a variety of tools to help boost your affiliate marketing programs.
If you’re looking for an extensive network of affiliates and partners across a ton of industries, ShareASale is a good option for you. You’ll also get access to customizable affiliable management, real-time tracking, detailed reporting, custom banner, and link generation, and plenty more.
One thing to note: like a few of the other tools listed here, ShareASale uses a performance-based pricing model that includes a one-time network access fee and then transaction fees.
Pricing:
- There is a one-time setup fee of $650.
- Transaction fees: 20% of each affiliate commission, with a minimum of $35/month.
Wrapping Up
Great affiliate marketing solutions enable brands to easily launch and manage affiliate programs, as well as track referrals and sales made by their affiliate partners.
The best affiliate marketing software provides brands with all the tools needed to launch, promote, and grow their affiliate program.
At the same time, they provide customizable and easy-to-use reporting capabilities for real-time performance tracking.
Without reliable tracking and reporting tools, brands cannot effectively assess the success and profitability of their affiliate campaigns and partnerships.
More resources:
Featured Image: Panchenko Vladimir/Shutterstock
SEO
Early Analysis & User Feedback
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has introduced a prototype of SearchGPT, an AI-powered search engine.
The launch has sparked considerable interest, leading to discussions about its potential to compete with Google.
However, early studies and user feedback indicate that while SearchGPT shows promise, it has limitations and needs more refinement.
Experts suggest it needs further development before challenging current market leaders.
Study Highlights SearchGPT’s Strengths and Weaknesses
SE Ranking, an SEO software company, conducted an in-depth analysis of SearchGPT’s performance and compared it to Google and Bing.
The study found that SearchGPT’s search results are 73% similar to Bing’s but only 46% similar to Google’s.
Interestingly, 26% of domains ranking in SearchGPT receive no traffic from Google, indicating opportunities for websites struggling to gain traction.
The study highlighted some of SearchGPT’s key features, including:
- The ability to summarize information from multiple sources Provide a conversational interface for refining searches Offering an ad-free user experience.
- However, the research noted that SearchGPT lacks the variety and depth of Google’s search results, especially for navigational, transactional, and local searches.
- The study also suggested that SearchGPT favors authoritative, well-established websites, with backlinks being a significant ranking factor.
Around 32% of all SearchGPT results came from media sources, increasing to over 75% for media-related queries.
SE Ranking notes that SearchGPT needs improvement in providing the latest news, as some news results were outdated.
User Experiences & Limitations Reported By The Washington Post
The Washington Post interviewed several early testers of SearchGPT and reported mixed reviews.
Some users praised the tool’s summarization capabilities and found it more helpful than Google’s AI-generated answers for certain queries.
Others, however, found SearchGPT’s interface and results less impressive than those of smaller competitors like Perplexity.
The article also highlighted instances where SearchGPT provided incorrect or “hallucinated” information, a problem that has plagued other AI chatbots.
While the SE Ranking study estimated that less than 1% of searches returned inaccurate results, The Washington Post says there’s significant room for improvement.
The article also highlighted Google’s advantage in handling shopping and local queries due to its access to specialized data, which can be expensive to acquire.
Looking Ahead: OpenAI’s Plans For SearchGPT and Potential Impact on the Market
OpenAI spokesperson Kayla Wood revealed that the company plans to integrate SearchGPT’s best features into ChatGPT, potentially enhancing the popular language model’s capabilities.
When asked about the possibility of including ads in SearchGPT, Wood stated that OpenAI’s business model is based on subscriptions but didn’t specify whether SearchGPT would be offered for free or as part of a ChatGPT subscription.
Despite the excitement surrounding SearchGPT, Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently reported continued growth in the company’s search revenue, suggesting that Google may maintain its dominant position even with the emergence of new AI-powered search tools.
Top Takeaways
Despite its current limitations, SearchGPT has the potential to shake up online information seeking. As OpenAI iterates based on user feedback, its impact may grow significantly.
Integrating SearchGPT’s best features into ChatGPT could create a more powerful info-seeking tool. The proposed subscription model raises questions about competition with free search engines and user adoption.
While Google’s search revenue and specialized query handling remain strong, SearchGPT could carve out its own niche. The two might coexist, serving different user needs.
For SearchGPT to truly compete, OpenAI must address accuracy issues, expand query capabilities, and continuously improve based on user input. It could become a viable alternative to traditional search engines with ongoing development.
Featured Image: Robert Way/Shutterstock
SEO
How to Adapt to the New Era of Search
Last month, I bought a laser cutter. If you’ve been in my shoes, you know that one does not simply Google “best laser cutters” and then buy the one most recommended in the ranking articles.
As search marketers, that’s often what we think happens. But here’s what actually happened:
The branch of SEO that cares about journeys like this is search experience optimization (SXO). It focuses on making a brand discoverable along all touchpoints in modern search journeys, no matter where they start or what path they take.
Search is becoming more of a ‘choose your own adventure’ experience.
I interviewed some of the industry’s top experts and consolidated their advice into a process for optimizing brand visibility everywhere people search these days. Big thanks to:
SXO is about optimizing a brand’s presence for non-linear search journeys over multiple platforms, not just Google.
Unlike search engine optimization (SEO), which traditionally focuses on a website’s Google rankings, SXO incorporates user experience elements. It prioritizes a person’s entire experience from initial search through to conversion.
For example, if you sell laser cutters, it’s about helping potential customers through the process of:
- Figuring out what they want to make
- Sourcing the right materials
- Showing them exactly how to make these things
- Recommending products for different budgets or use cases
It’s also about doing the above in forums, on YouTube, and anywhere else they look for information, on and off your website. If you don’t show up where they are searching, you miss many opportunities to connect with potential customers.
The goal of SXO is to create an integrated experience from search to interaction. It’s essential to understand where your audience is searching and to ensure that their experience is optimized across all those touchpoints, reinforcing the notion that every interaction is part of a cohesive, integrated set of experiences.
Let’s now put this into practice. Here’s a step-by-step process for getting started with SXO.
This step starts by understanding that searchers looking for information differ from users who’ve entered your marketing funnel and are interacting with your website.
Typically, a searcher is:
- Unaware of your brand
- On an active hunt for reliable answers or recommendations
- Not interested in your brand unless you provide exactly what they’re looking for
As an audience segment, searchers are best segmented by the patterns in how they think and their motivations for why they’re looking for something.
There are two parts to this: the searcher’s intent and their lens.
Search intent is a concept used in SEO to understand why someone searches for a specific keyword. It focuses on the micro level and is considered on a keyword-by-keyword basis.
For example, someone searching for “buy laser cutter” would have a transactional intent as they’re ready to spend some cash. Someone searching for “laser cutter projects” has an informational intent.
In UX, the concept of a lens applies to the entire journey and is about the macro level. For instance, someone interested in “making cool stuff” may search both of the above keywords (or similar) at some stage.
You need to consider both intent and the searcher’s lens for SXO.
I like to start by understanding the micro intents using Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer and checking out the Matching terms report.
Then, I look at the ranking pages for a handful of terms relevant to my audience by clicking the SERP dropdown and checking out the Identify intents feature:
Doing this gives you a breakdown of the common reasons why people are looking for your product or service, like:
- 45% want to compare laser cutters
- 28% want to buy a laser cutter
- 18% want to learn about laser cutters
- 8% want to watch reviews or tutorials
- 2% want to view images of laser cutters
These are the micro-intents. The more keywords you look at, the more you’ll get a feel for the macro-level and why these people are searching to begin with. For example, a lot of people who look for laser cutters want to make cool stuff.
Take the time to research your audience and understand common patterns in how they think and what they’re seeking from their search experiences.
When you understand that the main drive is “to make cool stuff”, or whatever the equivalent lens is for your industry, you open up a broader understanding of the search journeys people go through before they’re ready to buy.
For instance, before I bought the laser cutter, I searched 195 different keywords on Google and countless more on platforms like Amazon, Etsy, and even specific e-commerce stores. Of these, only twenty included the word “laser”.
In order to know what laser cutter is best for the stuff I want to make, I first needed to know:
- What am I interested in making?
- What materials do I need to make these things?
- Can I get those materials easily or do I need to find an alternative option?
- What’s the exact step-by-step process for making these things?
- What type of laser fits my budget and covers all my needs?
Chances are, people in your industry are also asking a tonne of questions:
I like to look at the Clusters by terms to see what themes and general patterns show up. Then, I do keyword research on each cluster separately.
For instance, it’s common for people to search for material-related phrases when shopping for laser cutters, like acrylic, wood, metal and vinyl.
They also search for things they can make, like earrings and puzzles. In this example, I’d then do keyword research for anything with a DIY intent that overlaps with the things people search for related to lasers.
That could be anything from “how to make a wooden puzzle” to “buy bulk basswood sheets”.
While searching for these keywords, I also like to check out the Traffic share by domain report to get a feel for what websites and platforms searchers may visit. For instance, I checked all of the outlined sites before I bought my laser cutter, and your audience is likely to follow a similar pattern:
Let’s take a closer look at this.
Search behavior is changing. Google is not always the platform of choice for modern searchers, with more people satisfying their curiosity elsewhere.
For instance, Gartner predicted a 25% drop in upcoming search engine usage due to AI chatbots.
These days, the five types of platforms where most searches tend to happen include:
- Search engines
- Social media
- Marketplaces
- Forum + discussion threads
- Generative AI + chatbots
For instance, in my journey to buy a laser cutter, 6% of my clicks went to Google, 38% to marketplaces and 57% to various retailers. However, in terms of time, I spent 41% on social media (especially YouTube and TikTok) and forums.
Here’s how to find the right platforms to target for your SXO strategy in each of these categories.
Search engines
Today, at the time of writing this, over 10 trillion searches have been made on Google (and counting)!
If Gartner is correct and we do see a 25% drop in search engine usage, that will still be a whopping 7.5 trillion daily searches happening on Google alone. Not to mention other search engines like Yep, Bing, Baidu, and Naver.
Search marketing is a formidable channel and won’t just disappear overnight.
To find how popular search engines are in your industry, check out the Overview tab in Keywords Explorer.
For example, for the keyword “halloween costumes” we get the following stats:
Pay attention to the estimated monthly search volume (locally and globally), traffic potential, and forecasted search volume. The higher these numbers, the greater the potential to gather traffic from search engines in your industry.
The forecasted volume graph can also indicate general trends over time so you can spot if interest in your industry is trending up or down over time.
Social media
After Google, the second most popular search engine is YouTube, a social media platform.
Other social platforms that people search for information on include FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter/X, TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest.
Social media platforms are great at providing alternative content formats. For instance, people who prefer short-form video content are more likely to search on a social platform like YouTube or TikTok than Google.
I like to use SparkToro to get a sense of the most popular social platforms for a topic.
For instance, after YouTube and Facebook, people interested in content marketing are more likely to use LinkedIn.
However, people interested in dancing prefer to use Instagram, Reddit, and Twitter before LinkedIn.
It can take the guesswork out of which social platforms to prioritize in your industry.
Marketplaces
Marketplaces are a common place where people search for products. For example, instead of turning to Google, many people go straight to Amazon or Etsy to find a product they’re looking for.
The specific marketplaces that are relevant in your industry may be different and you can use Ahrefs to uncover them.
For example, let’s look at the keyword “amigurumi” (which is a type of crochet craft). In Keywords Explorer, you can check out the traffic share by domain report to see the top websites ranking.
In this example, the top two industry-specific sites (amigurumi.com and amigurumi.today) are marketplaces offering crochet patterns from various artists.
This is a simple example of industry-specific marketplaces that amigurumi artists can feature their designs on. It’s likely your industry may also have niche marketplaces to feature your brand in.
Pro Tip:
You may be able to gather keyword data for specific marketplaces using tools like Helium 10 for Amazon or EverBee for Etsy. These can be worth checking out if you want to find more accurate search patterns across different platforms.
Forums + discussion threads
Reddit and Quora are two of the most common platforms offering user-generated answers to questions. They’re great sources of first-hand experiences and crowdsourced knowledge about a topic.
Many times, people want to hear stories, recommendations, and experiences from other people instead of reading blog posts or consuming social media content.
There are two ways you can use Keywords Explorer to quickly find specific conversations happening in forums about your topic.
The first is to use the SERP features filter and to only include “Discussions and Forums”:
By doing this, you’ll get a list of keywords related to your industry where people are interested in user-generated content.
You can also check out the ranking pages for specific keywords in this list to see what threads or conversations are ranking. It’s ideal for you to join these conversations and reach more people interested in the topic.
Here’s an example of relevant discussions on the topic “aquaponics vs hydroponics”:
The second method is to check out the Traffic share by page report and to look for specific subreddits or forum threads. For example, Reddit gets 3% of the traffic share for “ChatGPT” related searches:
Generative AI + chatbots
Generative AI is the new kid on the block, but all signs point to it sticking around.
People are using this technology to look for all sorts of things and it’s likely to increase once SearchGPT is made available to the public. That’s why most of the big tech giants have adopted AI technology in one way or another:
- Microsoft has heavily invested in ChatGPT
- Google has created Gemini
- Apple’s Siri leverages Gen AI
- As does Meta AI and LinkedIn AI
You get the idea.
As far as search experiences go, however, here’s what fascinates me the most. If you do a good job showing up on all the platforms mentioned above, chances are high you’ll also show up within AI-powered tools and chatbots.
Think about what data they’re trained on.
For instance, Bing’s search index powers ChatGPT. Google has partnered with Reddit to train its AI models.
So, to show up in the responses of AI-powered answer engines, you need to first show up in the platforms they use to fill their knowledge bases.
I also really like Wil Reynold’s take on this. He’s already getting leads through ChatGPT and is tracking differences in brand visibility between search engines and LLMs. Check it out:
Once you have an idea of who your audience is and what platforms they search on, it’s time to map their search journeys. This will help you identify content gaps you can fill and untapped opportunities to increase your brand’s visibility.
To do this, we’re going to borrow the UX concept of journey mapping. We’ll look at the pre-funnel journey and what platforms searchers visit to get the information they’re seeking.
The point isn’t to map the exact steps in a linear format because that’s nearly impossible these days.
Search journeys are too complex now to really give attribution accurately. Attribution gets even more difficult for things like “the start of a search journey.” There’s too much info out there. Things aren’t linear. We’re bombarded with ads and social content without realizing it. In experiences like this, no specific channel can be attributed to anything other than the fact it was part of the person’s journey.
Instead, it’s about understanding how different lenses impact the steps people take and decisions they make while searching.
Let’s put it into action with this example scenario:
Scenario
Jane is the mother of two primary school-aged children. It is the week before Halloween and she has forgotten to order costumes. She is looking to buy last-minute costumes, ideally with fast delivery.
Her search lens is all about the last-minute nature of her purchase.
Now, pretend you’re Jane and look for last-minute costumes on each relevant platform listed in the step above. For each platform, assess how easy it is for Jane to find what she wants. Pay attention to the possible emotional experiences that will influence her next steps.
Then, map the experience for each platform. I really love Georgia Tan’s template for this; I have now added emojis as a scoring mechanism for my own journey maps too!
For instance, say Jane starts by searching for “last minute halloween costumes” on Google.
Using Ahrefs’ Identify Intents feature, we can see that 51% of the search results are about DIY costumes and 27% are lists with ideas (also for DIY).
If Jane’s intention is to buy some costumes, she may not feel like Google’s results are particularly helpful. She may also be feeling some slight frustration here because the results are not what she expected.
So, on our journey map, we might score this experience as a 2/5 in terms of how well it satisfied Jane’s expectations. Then, consider her next step in the journey and repeat the process until you reach the end.
The beauty of considering a searcher’s emotional and psychological state at each step is that you gain insights into what problems your content can help solve.
I like to plot each platform on a matrix based on how likely it is that people search on it and how satisfying the results are to a searcher.
It helps with knowing which platforms to prioritize in your content plan. It also helps you spot untapped opportunities to increase brand visibility. The platforms with the lowest satisfaction usually have a content gap you might be able to fill quickly and easily.
| Quadrant | Pattern | Potential | Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q 1 | High search potential, Low satisfaction | Offers the most potential for you to become the go-to source of information fairly quickly and easily. | Double down on your efforts |
| Q 2 | High search potential, High satisfaction | It will take some time to earn consistent visibility and to build an audience due to competition levels. | Worth investing for the long run. |
| Q 3 | Low search potential, High satisfaction | It’s great to have a presence here, but dial back how frequently you post or how much effort you invest. | Run a test to gauge audience responses. |
| Q 4 | Low search potential, Low satisfaction | The only time it’s worth investing in these platforms is if your content can shift them into either Q1 or Q3. | Run a test to gauge movement toward Q1 or Q3. |
The type of content you’ll need to create will depend on which platforms are in the first and second quadrants of your matrix. Generally, you’ll want to consider a content strategy that covers a variety of:
- Content types: like videos, social posts, blog posts, or website landing pages.
- Content formats: like how-to posts, listicles, answers to questions, or product reviews.
- Content angles: like opinion pieces or sharing the latest data.
Where possible, it’s worth covering the same topic across multiple content types and formats. For example, let’s take the topic of link building strategies and tactics.
We’ve published a handful of long-form blog posts covering different angles, like:
Sam has also created a video but has selected an angle that’s a better fit for audiences on YouTube: Link Building Tactics No One is Talking About
And, we’ve also published many social posts about it, adapting the content to fit the native audience of each platform, like this short and sweet LinkedIn post:
I like to start with a long form piece of content and then distribute that in multiple ways. For me, it’s easier to write a post, then turn that into images, videos, audio clips and so on. You can also start with a video instead if you find that easier than writing.
Pro tip from Joe:
Check out creator insights in each platform for ideas on what works best for other creators and tips on optimizing your own content. You’ll get a ton of info to learn from and can also get new ideas on what’s actively being talked about relating to a solution or product offering.
The ultimate goal of SXO is to provide a seamless experience from search through to conversion. In most cases, your website will be the central hub where people eventually buy what you’re selling, so I recommend doubling down on improving its user experience and conversion potential.
Optimizing things like your core web vitals and website speed offers remarkable gains for SEO and UX alike. You can check these using the performance report in Ahrefs’ Site Audit:
However, you need to go beyond only looking at technical things.
You need to factor in the effectiveness of your designs and content messaging on each page. Do they provide a seamless experience no matter what platform visitors have found your website through?
There’s a whole lot I can say about improving your site’s UX and optimizing for conversions. Nothing beats actually getting feedback from users though. So try out something like usertesting.com to get unbiased feedback on what’s working and what’s not, then improve in iterations.
Where possible, it’s also worth optimizing each platform in your SXO strategy to get native conversions so people don’t have to leave or interrupt their journey by going off-platform.
For instance, if you run an ecommerce store, you can add your products to:
- Popular marketplaces in your industry
- Google’s Merchant Centre
- Social platforms with purchase functionality, like Facebook and Instagram
If the platforms you’re optimizing for your SXO strategy don’t offer native shop functionality, you can instead leverage paid ads to help get searchers deeper into your funnel and closer to converting before they land on your site.
It’s becoming much harder to track how people discover your brand in a zero-click world. But there are a few ways you can still measure success with your SXO efforts.
The first is to run through the journey mapping process after a while and note any changes in searcher satisfaction as a result of your efforts. For example, if you’ve added content on platforms in the first quadrant (high search potential, low satisfaction) and received many positive comments about it, that’s a sign of success right there.
If you’re after a more automated solution, the challenge is that there’s no single tool that accurately tracks your brand visibility all over the web. However, you can use a dashboarding platform like Whatagraph:
It integrates with all the popular social media platforms, search engines, and website analytics tools to get performance data across most of the platforms mentioned in this post.
I really liked Georgia’s take on this since it combines the metrics that matter for SEO, user experience, and conversion optimization. It is very similar to the metrics I measure for my clients too, for example:
| Metric | What it measures | Where to track |
|---|---|---|
| Organic traffic | The number of organic website visitors from search engines. | Website analytics like GA4 |
| Organic traffic value | The $ value of your traffic from organic search channels. | Ahrefs |
| Click-through rate (CTR) | The percentage of users who clickon a link, usually from a search engine or social platform to your website. | Website analytics like GA4 |
| Referral traffic | The number of visits from other websites including social media platforms, marketplaces or other sites. | Website analytics like GA4 |
| Bounce rate | The percentage of people who leave your website after visiting only one page. | Website analytics like GA4 |
| Dwell time | The average length of time visitors stay on a page on your website. | Website analytics like GA4 |
| Pages per session | How many pages users visit on your website in an average session. | Website analytics like GA4 |
| Heatmapping | A visual breakdown of where user attention flows on a webpage. | HotJar (or similar) |
| On-page interactions | Measuring scrolls, clicks and other interactions that occur on a webpage. | HotJar (or similar) |
| Goal completions | How many actions users took on your website that you wanted them to take, like phone calls, booked demos or product sales. | Website analytics like GA4 |
| Conversion rate | The percentage of visitors who complete goals or convert. | Website analytics like GA4 |
There are three main areas you can improve based on what you can measure:
- Traffic acquisition: Increase brand touchpoints by getting more traffic and impressions on your content.
- User experience: Provide a more satisfactory user experience from search through to conversion on any platform relevant to your business.
- Conversions: Increase conversion potential by using more native features on the platforms where you’re seeing visibility growth.
Key takeaways
Search experience optimization is about optimizing the entire journey from search to conversion no matter what platforms people visit along the way.
Ultimately, it’s about making your brand more visible by offering the solution people are looking for, on the right platform, at the right time.
The future of search isn’t just about ranking high, it’s about creating an experience that search engines and users trust. SXO is the key to future-proofing your brand’s presence, ensuring it remains discoverable, engaging and trustworthy as AI continues to reshape how we search for information.
If you’ve got any questions or are nerdy enough to check out your own search journeys, share them with me on LinkedIn!
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