This presentation is from Affiliate Summit East 2013 (August 18-20, 2013) in Philadelphia, PA). Session Description: This session will cover everything you need to know about how to get the most out of an organic SEO campaign, geared towards the project manager in a small firm.

1. Effectively Managing
Organic Campaigns for
Small Businesses
By: Patrick Coombe
@patrickcoombe
www.elite-strategies.com

2. Today’s Modified Audience
• Primarily in-house SEO’s
• SEO’s in General
• Affiliates who use SEO as a
traffic source
• Anyone interested in learning
more

3. What we’ll talk about*
• Ethics
• Staying Organized
• Methods / SEO Fundamentals
• Flow of information
• Outsourcing
• SEO
• Content Marketing
• The role of Social Media
*intermediate talk / not super-technical

4. Ethics
With a new SEO company on every corner, the best
way to set yourself apart from the competition is to
practice ethical SEO. This means:
• Following search guidelines such as Google
Webmaster Guidelines
• Being up front with clients and managing
expectations
• Not gambling with a site that isn’t yours
• Affiliate guidelines
• Break laws
• Do no harm
Clients will love you for it.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en

5. Search Guidelines
Spam tactics such as SAPE, blog comments
and other link SPAM might “work” but is never a
long term solution.
Just because you didn’t get hit this
update, doesn’t mean you won’t get hit in the
next one.

6. Don’t Gamble
If you are an in-house SEO, don’t gamble with a site that
you don’t own by using tactics that could hurt a business
in the long term.
Businesses are now starting to think about suing SEO
companies.

7. Affiliate Ethics
LOL?
Sounds like an oxymoron.
BUT
Again, in the long term, using unethical organic
search tactics to drive search traffic to a landing
page could get your account banned.
Example - NoNo

8. Do no harm
Examples:
• A client cancels so you noindex their site in the
htaccess
• Slandering a client or colleague for any reason
• Buying links that could penalize a site
• Buying links that you don’t know what they are
• Not refunding, etc

9. Breakin’ the Law
Sellers on the black market are selling links on
sites that they do not own by way of SQL
injection.
SQL injection = theft / breaking and entering
Plenty of other illegal ways to gain links (or 301)
Just ask Aaron Kelley lawyer in the next room.
Thanks Thomas Hawk Flickr

10. Staying Organized
• Project management software
• Spreadsheets
• CRM
• Internal file structure on your PC
• Backups
Thanks Z Andrei Flickr

11. Project Management
I
Basecamp

12. Why Basecamp is
Awesome for SEO’s
and Affiliate Marketers

13. Well
It keeps all of your client data organized
It keeps all of your personal sites organized
It keeps all of your affiliate campaigns data organized.
You can add/remove members (colleagues, etc) to
share information easily.
Easily collaborate with team members in another
state.
Once you get more than 10+ clients or campaigns a
spreadsheet just will not suffice.
Ballers use Basecamp.

14. A slide just for backups
Have you ever fell victim to a server
crash and not had a backup?
Don’t trust that the “server guy” will do it.
Backup everything, often.
Thanks mayhem/flickr

15. SEO: What’s Important
These Days?
Backlinks (still huge)
Site speed (now more important than ever)
UX
Meta data / alt tags and all that jazz.
Proper coding
Fresh content
Social

16. What would an SEO
presentation be without
backlinks?

17. Backlinks
Where not to get backlinks:
Automated toolz such as Scrapebox / Xrumer
Automated online systems (anything automated)
Most forum merchants
SAPE, etc.
“Private blog networks”
Or even
“Public blog networks”

18. So where can I
get backlinks?

19. Good backlinks will find
you, you will not find them

20. Good backlinks come
from creating good sites.
Create interesting websites that
people feel compelled to share.
Make really useful
properties, widgets, plugins, apps, in
fographics, charts, bells, whistles and
widgets.
Share useful
(helpful/resourceful, etc)
information.
If you can’t become a huge
brand, become a micro-authority or
micro-brand.

21. Other ways to get
links…
(Haro)

22. Ask for links
Always get credit where credit is due.
Find broken links. (there’s a tool for that)
Find places where you’ve contributed. (search for
them)
Find organizations you belong to.
Blogger outreach
Network at places like this.
In this day in age, you are gonna hafta hustle to make
it happen.
This means lots of emails, phone
calls, interviews, patronizing, sucking-up, following
up, and scheming.

23. UX
Google is straight up banning sites that look like crap.
Google and other search engines rate your site based on
a quality score.
First and foremost, your site should be easy for your
customer to navigate (esp. affiliates)
http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/insidesearch/howsearchworks/fighting-spam.html

24. SPEEEEEEED
I don’t need to cite or reference the dozens of
studies that show the importance of site speed, it is.
In addition to studies, Google has publicly stated
this.
Perfecting site speed and performance should be a
large part of your efforts.

25. FACT
If your site takes longer
than 2 seconds to load
you have a problem.

26. How to test site speed?
Tried an tested:
Tools.pingdom.com
Does a fine job and will tell you
everything you need to know about
site speed.
It’s free and you install nothing.

27. More on site speed
It could take months to perfect (depending on the size)
Consider speed from the beginning of a new site.
Plugins / and other fancy widgetry will bloat out your site
faster than anything!
There are so many ways to optimize your site for speed:
• Minification of css/JS
• Image spriting
• Get a better host
• Get a CDN
• Caching
• So much more
A guide on optimizing Wordpress for Speed:
http://bit.ly/17pvbVS

28. Meta data and all that
jazz
Meta keywords tag = not important (unless it’s a press
release)
Your meta description should accurately describe your
page. It is good for SEO if it contains the keywords you
are targeting. (140-160 char limit)
Same goes with titles.
Same with image alt tags, they should accurately
describe the image and maybe even the surrounding
text.
H1 tags and HX tags are great for SEO.
Keyword density, still important but not nearly as
important as your content making sense.

29. Fresh Content
Updating your website frequently sends positive
vibes to Google and other search engines.
This doesn’t just mean “have a blog”
It could mean:
• Updating a table of information
• Updating dates
• Adding new members or items to a data set
• Adding new PDF’s to a page
• Adding a new paragraph of text to a piece of
information
• Adding images

30. Social Media & SEO
Weather or not social media plays a role
in SEO is still up in the air to many
SEO’s.
Some say it is important.
Some say it is not.
Others say “it will be” (like me)
Nevertheless, there are still a lot of aspects
of social media that does help SEO.

31. For now…
Make sure you have active
Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest
accounts.
This means post information from your
blog/site as well as relevant information from
your community/niche.
Don’t forget social profile links.
Authorship?

32. Outsourcing
For an agency, not a good idea in general.
Linkbuilding should rarely be outsourced.
A good affiliate will outsource almost everything
(except money site content and creative)
Remember: Everyone is not great at everything.
When you find someone good, treat them very well
and hold onto them.
Trust no one with your campaign data and client
data.

33. Content Marketing
Is so much fun.
Fun example
At our office, we do “1 hour buzz session power
hours” where we take 1 piece of content from one
client and 10-12 people attempt to get as much
attention as we can in 1 hour.

34. Sometimes the results
are insane!
And very rewarding.

35. Content marketing is not:
• Re-writing lame “top 10 lists” and hitting
publish.
• “Writing content”
• Making an infographic
• Publishing a video
Writing a post filled with content and
developing pieces of media might be
part of content marketing, it is only the
beginning of it.

36. Content marketing is:
Finding an amazing outlet to share your newly written
piece of content, curating it, and finding ways to share
that outlet.
Spending an hour with a group of 3 people to think of
the best way to title your content.
Negotiating with other social outlets to distribute your
content.
Finding creative ways to get your content tweeted
(trade, sponsored tweet, ask)
Allowing other content marketers to use your
channels to share their content that is relevant to your
niche.

37. Before I forget, a few tools
that I love:
(everyone loves tools)

38. Scrapebox (yea, I said
it)
Not recommended for building links.
The add-ons ROCK!:
• Dupe checker
• Alive check
• Dupe removal
• Link extractor
• Sitemap scraper
• Import/export/sorting
• Fake PageRank checker (so good)
• OBL checker
• URL shortner
• And so many more

39. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is the best backlink analyzer and used by
all of the top SEO professionals.
IMO, has one of the best indexes out there.
Picks up new links fast
Great for checking out competitors
Finding referring domains
Finding new and lost backlinks
www.AHREFS.com

40. PIWIK
Used as a replacement for Google Analytics
Does an amazing job of breaking down your data.
Great for exporting for client reports.
Great for affiliates.

41. Prosper 202
Not an SEO tool, but my favorite way to track an affiliate
campaign.
Been running for over 3 years, without missing a beat.

42. Lastly
Don’t think about tomorrow, as hard is it may be.
Think about next year, and 10 years from now.
Read, read, read. A good SEO is up to date on
current information.
ABT = Always be testing. A good SEO will
constantly be running tests, analyzing
information, and sharing results with the
community.
There are no shortcuts.