TRAFFIC
they’re satisfied, they will come back
and its monopoly will continue.
Hopefully by now you’re onside
with the argument that engagement
drives rankings. If you are, welcome
to my world – and if you’re not, well,
that’s okay too.
Why do some affiliates rank
and others crash?
I’m not going to try to answer specific
use cases because there are too many
variables here, but I will go through
a methodology I use for working out
why some sites rank and others don’t.
Above all, signals manifested by
search user satisfaction – click-through
rates, dwell times and repeat visits –
seem to drive rankings. When I take
this idea about satisfaction driving
rankings, I think about why a search
user would click on a given result,
stay on a given page and return in
the future. Every search query is a
question. And every search ‘question’
will have different answers and
characteristics depending on the
country territory and the particular
user’s ‘search bubble’ (i.e. those unique
search results that are only shown to
an individual user).
Some search questions bring up
answers that engender a high bounce
rate, such as ‘odds for a football
match’, and other questions bring
up answers that are deep dive, such
as ‘how to do betting arbitrage’.
Whatever the question is, there will
“Google just wants satisfied users; if its
users are satisfied, they will come back to
Google and its monopoly will continue”
nearly always be a set of search results
and a prevailing set of characteristics.
When there’s little
differentiation
If you’re an affiliate and you want to
rank for ‘online casino bonus’, just bear
in mind your page or site is probably
very similar to every other casino
bonus affiliate out there. All of you
have to have a list of bonuses because
that’s how you make your money.
But how do you rank? Well, beyond
the initial auditioning of the domain,
the only real differentiators are:
• attractive title and description tags;
• site experience (colours used, fonts,
overall layout);
• brand awareness; and
• Google users getting what they want.
Incidentally, brand awareness is
not just being on TV. You can have
brand awareness by being seen across
numerous key phrases, so people can
iGB Affiliate Issue 72 DEC 2018 / JAN 2019
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