This week’s Ask SEO question is a little different. One wants to know how to stay fit and feel secure in their jobs with AI replacing humans. In addition to this question, someone at the Digital Marketing EU conference in Lisbon asked, “How do we pay affiliates to use AIO/GEO?” during my presentation.
If you’re worried about losing your job to AI or you feel your role is less important, there’s always a chance that AI will replace you, but it’s probably less likely if you value yourself and use it as an incentive versus a potential replacement. This post is specifically about the intersections between affiliate marketing and SEO, and other PR touch points and other channels.
First, here is a quick description of both to explain the exact roles of this post:
- Affiliate marketing is a combination of content creators (influencers), bloggers, media company listings, detailed guides and blog posts, and coupon and cashback sites. Each of these can be used as a source and reference for larger language models to acquire information, determine sentiment, know what a product does, and produce output.
- SEO is finding ways to get visibility in search engines and now in LLM results/results. This is done with context about what is said about the product, websites, and creators, including links that can be followed or specified if the company is owned by the link or marked as sponsored to find new pages, and to help ensure that the algorithm knows what the company does or sells, and what types of audience.
1. Align and Present Product Benefits
We’re already seeing customized output in LLMs and AI Overviews (to some extent) based on what the system knows about the person. It is one of the reasons why a manager and an executive see different results for the same question about the company, and the executive assistant. Ultimately, we can expect the products from the search result or output to be the same.
They may be based on:
- Average income level.
- AI gender recognition (especially in stores) based on purchasing habits and engagement.
- Location.
- The level of language, pronunciation, slang, and tone used in the question.
- Collaboration in previous sessions.
By having an aligned strategy and knowing what are the key talking points about the product, this is a way to ensure that the LLM knows how to include you if your service or product resonates with the user. If you don’t make it clear and concise who your audience and customer base are, there’s a good chance the LLM will ignore you and share with a larger brand or competitor.
For example, a user can ask which t-shirt is right for them without entering price, designer, occupation, age, gender, etc. The LLM or AIO will then look at the data they have on the customer and determine which types are similar based on the information they have. In SEO, you will get a general result, with machine learning and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), the system will evaluate the true and most appropriate answer based on what you have from external sources combined with what you know about the person.
SEOs can say, “Here’s what we don’t show you,” and list many of the selling points that are important to the user. An affiliate manager can take this and ask affiliates who review, create videos, and build lists to include more of these content marketing points to help systems learn who the product or service is for, building a knowledge base.
The above will probably help SEO as there are now more references to these qualities, and the affiliate manager may benefit because the content is more relevant to the reader. If that reader is in the target audience, now they know the product or service is right for them, and there’s a better reason to click and buy. In turn, the affiliate manager can make SEO integrate the talking points used by the marketing affiliates on the website and application information, which carries a consistent flow from clicks to the page and should help increase conversions.
2. Review Payment Models
The old membership model of paying a percentage or a flat fee on a sale is outdated and has been for over 10 years. That model doesn’t account for customer lifetime value, touchpoint attribution, or other conversions like email signups that turn into sales without a commission, as they are after the lifetime of a cookie, and social media tracking that doesn’t follow an affiliate when they convert.
More importantly, media buyers, link builders, AIO/GEO specialists, and PR people are now buying space on their channel websites, but they are not sharing in a way that works across multiple channels. They focus on their channels, in no time, there are backlinks rich in keywords compared to natural and unnatural language, or brand statements and talking points compared to the actual context about the feature and link.
This is where SEO and affiliate marketing can join forces to set the stage for long-term success:
- SEO can identify affiliates that regularly source LLMs and AI Overviews and track listings.
- An ambassadorial manager can dominate relationships with partners, and focus on them.
- Sometimes the partners are sleeping or not driving the revenue, so the management doesn’t pay attention.
- SEO and affiliate marketing describes a strategy that includes paid media for guaranteed placement in natural language on search results pages and ads or content for future content related to the topic.
- This is pay-to-play and may be something that breaks you in the future, but for now, it seems to be working fine.
- If done organically and with genuine, regular, and unbiased input (even for a fee), this can be legal and harmless. It will depend on whether there is honesty in sharing negatives, ways to improve, and a full understanding of planning.
- Monitor and track progress.
The goal is to pay the affiliate for their work while ensuring that they continue to include you as LLMs trust you as a source of information for your industry or niche. This can include Facebook groups, social media influencers, blogs, organizations, white papers, and courses, etc.
Updated fees and more options can get more people to sign up for your affiliate program and active promotions. In some of the interactive management groups I participate in, one of the biggest questions we have is how to convince our companies or clients to update their payment structures in today’s times. This is an opportunity.
3. Cross-Recruit Link Building And Affiliate
Affiliate links are not back links; they are usually 307 redirects, have restrictions on them, or are set to track with JavaScript when the site exits. Search engines know which links are relevant and will not count them as a reliable source as a strong natural backlink. They can track them, so it’s a safe bet that if an LLM is going to track and identify what is organic mention versus paid placement, it will rate the website, mention, context, and value differently.
Affiliate managers can help clean up bad link profiles by inviting websites with harmful links to become affiliates. The pitch is simple: “You’re already connecting with us, why not get paid for the work you’ve already done?” SEOs can stop losing backlinks and organic mentions by sharing their list of sites with affiliate managers, so that affiliate managers don’t replace quality links with affiliate links.
In cases where SEO can’t get coverage, they can invite someone to an affiliate program, where, if they link from relevant content and have someone in the decision-making process, now they can make money. This prevents competitors from entering the space and drives the user to your website where the product may not have been mentioned to anyone or links before.
On top of this, make the website crawl and find new pages if it is a relatively new product. and waiting for the spider to find it or a manual request for crawling and indexing.
Here’s How You Can Use AI to Stay Fit
There is much more these two can do together to grow the company and the brand. Yes, AI can send email to get links and make recommendations on content and placement, but it will likely be seen as AI and cause contacts, creators, and publishers to ignore your product.
Showing how as a team, you increase brand exposure, build a user base, and drive revenue while using AI to analyze data and streamline processes, is how you can protect your career because you’re scaling a company the way AI can, and using AI to be more successful.
Additional resources:
Featured image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
