R.O.EYE Blog

By James Skelland, Technical Solutions Manager, R.O.EYE

SEO is hardly a hot new topic, quite the opposite, but fact is that it’s an important issue that needs to be addressed. Consider it like a trip to the gym. Put the effort in and your site will become a slick, greased up Adonis sitting atop of the pile. If you’re not really too fussed, your site will undoubtedly become a bloated loner, languishing at the back of the queue. OK, granted that analogy is fairly crass, I’m sure Barry’s Ferret Land (Search Term: Ferret Land) or HMH Vices (ST: Tube Fly Vice Converter) have more pressing issues than SEO on their mind, yet they have managed to sit atop of Google’s rankings. However they enjoy the rare and privileged position of being, to put it lightly, a tad niche.

This got me thinking about Sky. In an ideal world, the word as a search term should surely yield a mixed bag of results. The obvious TV and satellite deals from Mr Murdoch, their news and sports services, maybe a Patrick Moore fansite, or a met office page on Cumulonimbi? However, the entire first page of Google’s organic results (bar one) are all Sky.com’s various sites. Even the Wikipedia entry gets relegated to the middle of page 2. It is in fact the 3rd page that finally produces a rounded and objective list of results - I’ve never been so happy to see Vanilla Sky!

I got in touch with Richard Sliwa, who is the esteemed webmaster whose site gatecrashes Sky’s exclusive top 10 results party. He was kind enough to respond to me and pass on his SEO strategy. To find out how he does it, please send a cheque for £500 made payable to James Skelland…

I jest - but in all seriousness, he admits that it’s an old site of his that he last really took notice of around 3 years ago, when it was floating around the low 30’s. Richard cites a large portion of his page’s success to the old adage of KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid), involving the simple yet effective implementation of keywords, meta tags and backlinks - remembering content is king.

So how does Sky do it then? Of top 19 results in Google, 17 of them belong to Sky. Maybe the question should not be ‘how?’ - maybe we should be asking if it’s right to be able to monopolise an ambiguous word? I’ve got no qualms if, on searching for the word ‘Microsoft’, I get an infinite list of Microsoft subdomains. So does this mean that Sky is no longer even classed as an ambiguous word anymore? To be honest, the majority of people entering the search term Sky are probably only looking for a Sky TV site anyway, but it seems the knock on effect means that the only affiliates who get a sniff are the PPC’s. It’d be interesting to know the comments of affiliates on Sky’s programmes.

It’s at least a comfort to know that, despite corporations seemingly being able to take over any search term they wish, Richard Sliwa proves that there is always a way for the honest webmaster or affiliate to break into the big boys’ club. I shall leave you with a quote from the man himself to perhaps inspire you to give your site a little SEO workout…

“Online popularity is self-perpetuating even more than in the real world. Once one gets noticed to any degree, it just snowballs, and this is as true of search engines as it is with the real audience, with one feeding off the other. The most important thing, therefore, is to get noticed, by hook or by crook.”

By Michelle Anthony, Programme Executive, R.O.EYE

Last week Yahoo! launched SearchMonkey to little fanfare here and practically no hype.  The article I found featured the launch as a sideline against the ongoing Microsoft will they/won’t they buy-out story currently unfolding.  That said, they did put on a launch party Stateside - if there are any of those monkey biscuits left I’d love to sample one!

SearchMonkey is a plug and play application which will allow developers to increase the visibility of their natural search listing.  Users will be able to roll over listings to see a bubble containing further information about the featured site and an accompanying image.  The effect is very similar to the previews that were available when you hover over a listing in the updated Ask.com.

The idea behind this is that companies will be able to make their listing stand out above the rest, but what if everyone opts to use SearchMonkey? Yahoo! will become a very loud place and the resource which advertisers put into the development will fail to create an impact.

I also wonder who is likely to use SearchMonkey.  First impressions are that it looks quite easy to use and easy populate the necessary fields, deeplinks can be included and the enhanced ad is easily edited.  It could therefore be a useful tool for affiliates looking to stand out and for merchants looking to cut through the noise.

With Google so dominant in the search market there will be a resulting batch of advertisers who will not opt to use this, reasoning that there is little value in heightening the visibility of a Yahoo! advert when the result is still not likely to win the viewings, clickthroughs or conversions of a listing on another search engine.

SearchMonkey will be viewable to Yahoo! users in the coming weeks.  Once a few jazzy ads start appearing I am sure more advertisers will follow, but for now it’s a case of watch this space.

By Andy Mitchell, Programme Manager R.O.EYE

I wonder how many articles with that title have been written? 100’s? 1000’s?

Well this one is written from the point of view of an affiliate manager, and asks the question why “content is king” for an affiliate programme….

When launching an affiliate programme, you look for some quick wins that will bring in volume. This is fairly straight forward and generally involves working with some talented PPC affiliates who can add value to the programme immediately. Follow this up with ensuring that the merchant is placed on cashback sites and strategically supplying offer codes to discount code sites, you can be reasonably sure the programme will start to bring in some quick results. Obviously you’ll work with these affiliates and help them as much as possible to deliver maximum results for your programme.

But where does the programme growth come from? How do you ensure that the affiliate programme doesn’t stagnate and continues to steadily grow?

Once you reach a level where the PPC affiliates, cashback sites and voucher code sites are delivering a steady volume, you start to look for other affiliates. Generally, those ‘other affiliates’ are content affiliates, building niche sites and occupying natural listings. But why only look for them now? When the programme isn’t growing at the rate it once was?! This is a common mistake in the early stages of an affiliate programme….

In most cases, it is content affiliates that will ultimately determine whether your affiliate programme can continually grow. It is also content affiliates that can take longest to produce results, due to the nature of their type of promotion. So why not start working with these affiliates as soon as your affiliate programme launches?! That way, a few months down the line when their sites start to flourish and produce results, there won’t be a period of stagnation - just continual growth.

How can you do this?

In many ways!
Tell your affiliates what you think you’re top selling products will be for the next year. This means SEO affiliates can start building and optimising sites for those products.
Offer affiliates a higher commission on some of your key products - If you know an affiliate who is capable of producing results via SEO, then ask them to work on a site promoting these products in exchange for a higher commission - the worst they can do is say no!
Make it as easy as possible for SEO affiliates to get to work. If you are asking an affiliate to promote certain products, send them that product so they can personally review it. It’s hard work trying to promote something you know very little about!
And finally, provide content! We have a several merchants who are increasingly providing unique content to individual affiliates. Be it PR articles that weren’t used internally, or articles specifically written for affiliates, more merchants are starting to supply targeted content to affiliates, recognising the benefit content affiliates bring to a programme.

So, if you are planning to build a site to promote a specific merchant or product and need some content, ask the merchant if they’ll give you a hand!