I am not going to describe what a product feed (or a data-feed)
is. There is a lot of information out there about how to use
one to build sites. Instead, I want to talk about how you can
actually make more sales with data-feed sites.
The program that I manage offers a product feed, and I get a
chance to see a sad picture of many good affiliates wasting
their potential.
Here is my advice from the affiliate manager's perspective.
Whenever you join (or think bout joining) a program, you need
to look for two things:
- Temporary or permanent opportunities
- Flaws of a merchant
Here is an example of an opportunity that was created by an
outside factor.
Recently, we got removed from the Yahoo index because of a
penalty. I have no idea when (or if) we will get included back
in, but I do know that it makes one decision much easier for
our affiliates.
Judging by the numerous posts on various SEO-related message
boards, it looks like Google and Yahoo use very different
algorithms to rank pages. So for any given site, you have a
choice to make. You can optimize for Yahoo, for Google, or
for both.
Since Yahoo and Google use different algorithms, it is going
to be hard to optimize the same set of pages for both of those
engines at the same time, unless you employ heavy cloaking. And
the way I see it, for an affiliate, it is better to appear high
on one search engine than to appear low on both of them in an
attempt to optimize for different algorithms at the same time.
Imagine that you are one of our affiliates. Given the
information I just told you, shouldn't you concentrate on
Yahoo for that data-feed site that is being used to promote
our products?
Why spend (at least) half of your time and resources on
optimizing for Google when you know that we are nowhere
to be found in Yahoo?
You have to have an extremely well linked and optimized site
to get ahead of the merchant for the exact product-name search
terms. The merchant is your biggest obstacle when it comes to
the search engine traffic. So if there is a route that lets you
get around that obstacle - take it!
Most of our well-performing affiliates did just that. Either
intentionally or unintentionally, they ended up making much more
money by appearing high in Yahoo results, while not being ranked
high in Google.
So on a practical side of things, here is what you should do.
For your existing merchants, check if they are removed from the
index in any of the major search engines, and if they are, then
start reading and implementing SEO tips for that particular
engine.
And if you are thinking about joining a program and can't decide
between several merchants, then check if any of them is not in
the index of either Yahoo or Google. If you find a merchant like
that - drop everything else you are doing and jump on that
program.
As far as theory goes, this was just a simple, but specific
example of what you should look for to make your efforts pay off.
There are many different opportunities to get ahead in existing
programs with data-feed sites; you just have to look for them.
Now, let's talk about flaws of merchants and how you can exploit
them to make more money and help consumers at the same time.
I will give another specific example, but you should be able to
apply this concept to many different programs.
Our site has one huge structural flaw: we only list products
by product-oriented categories.
In other words, there is no way to navigate our site by a
specific occasion or by the purchasing intent of a visitor.
You can follow a path like:
widgets -> wooden widgets -> red wooden widgets
This setup works fine for some type of shoppers, but is a
complete turn-off for others.
And the problem is that most affiliates simply mirror the
catalog structure of a merchant according to their feed.
But if you structured your site to list widgets as:
- widgets for birthdays
- widgets for girlfriends
- widgets for those who are over 50
- the Independence Day widgets
etc.
then you would attract different type of shoppers. You would
no longer compete with the merchant, but instead you would
complement them.
A visitor who is looking for a gift for his 50-something friend
and has no idea that a red wooden widget would be perfect, will
not travel down the path laid out by our catalog. So if he gets
to our home page, we simply lose a sale. And if your
data-feed-based site follows the same structure - you lose
a sale as well.
Also, since the visitor does not know that he really wants a
red wooden widget, he we not use those keywords while searching
for a present on the search engines.
But if you attracted that visitor to your site, presented him
with ideas for older friends' birthday gifts and guided him to
that specific widget's page - then we would make a sale, you
would make a commission, and the visitor (turned customer) would
get his present with much less searching around. Everyone wins.
Such approach takes more work than simply cloning the merchant's
site with a feed, but affiliates who actually do something to
complement merchant instead competing with them make a lot more
money. After all, if you create a copy of a merchant's site -
you are not only competing with the merchant, you are also
competing with all of their affiliates that use the same feed
in the same way.
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