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March 9, 2021 By adamriemer 2 Comments

7 Women in Affiliate Marketing That Inspire Me

There are a ton of people that have influenced the direction of the affiliate industry in both good and bad ways. But this post isn’t about forums, conferences and associations (many in affiliate marketing are women lead and founded), this is about specific women that have shaped my path and that I am grateful for.

I did not plan this post ahead of time, I just thought of influential women in affiliate marketing and who shaped my path the other month and after seeing all the SEO, tech and founders lists I wanted to do an affiliate one. I think I did a similar thing 7 or 8 years ago too.

To create this list I wrote the first seven names down that came to mind. There are tons more people I’d like to include because they are amazing, so maybe next year I’ll do another post with another seven leading women in affiliate marketing.

Here they are in no particular order.

(note: all photos are from LinkedIn or personal blogs, please let me know if I should pull them down or change them).

Lisa Riolo

Lisa is the co-founder of Impact (one of the world’s leading affiliate tracking platforms and one I have recommended to multiple companies). Not only is she a brilliant business leader who began as a berry dipper and worked her way up to being a tech executive, but she has been a sounding board for myself and countless others over the years.

I remember standing outside of my only big client’s offices in Canada when I first went out on my own (oddly enough the same time her and her partner were launching Impact Radius) and when I was scared because they gave me an ultimatum to come in house or lose the contract; she is the first person I called.

Whether it is chasing down firemen in Seattle, having drinks in Santa Barbara, or simply knowing she exists; Lisa Riolo has had a massive “impact” on my life and I will always be grateful to know she is part of my circle of friends, business partners and people.

Missy Ward

Definitely not my number 2, well unless it is a Halloween costume party and we end up with the same outfit/character (she’ll get the joke). Missy built countless careers for people like me.

She helped almost every affiliate network and agency find their place and grow, not to mention connect tens of thousands of publishers to offers and generate billions of dollars in business.

By co-founding Affiliate Summit and always being ready to help a friend, she helped drive change in an developing industry by providing a platform to create actual leadership. Her conference lead to the formation of action groups that connected us beyond forums and her drive helped us all build the lives we have today so we can provide for ourselves, our families, employees and others. Without her many of us would be lost.

I personally think the real reason she sold Affiliate Summit wasn’t for something new. I think it was really so she never has to go to Vegas again until Michaela calls and says “The bullies are babysitting Gabe…lets go for a girl’s weekend! Pack your bags and grab your Louis, the tickets are booked.”.

February 22, 2021 By adamriemer 1 Comment

How to Easily Rank for Big Search Terms in Google

This post will teach you one of my favorite SEO tips. I use this for clients and affiliates that want to show up for highly competitive phrases who also cannot compete against big brands with more authority.

This strategy is not going after low hanging fruit, it is about using the search interface in a smart way. The phrases I present normally show 20 to 50 searches, but each has the potential to bring in thousands of visitors. Let’s dive in.

The term water pump has an estimated 74,000 monthly searches. Well water pump has 12,100.

Both are great terms and product based which means they can result in direct sales and revenue. If you’re a company like Home Depot, Ace or Lowe’s then you’re likely able to optimize pretty easily for this phrase.

If you’re a smaller or local retailer it is going to be tricky, but you can do it.

Here’s how! [Read more…] about How to Easily Rank for Big Search Terms in Google

February 8, 2021 By adamriemer 1 Comment

WordPress SEO – Settings, Strategy & More

WordPress SEO is easy! You simply start with the basics, create a plan and test so you can prove if the concepts apply to other posts, pages and categories. Once you find what works for your website, stick to it and grow it.

This guide will walk you through the basics like how to make your site visible to advanced topics like schema (with tons of bonus tips and hints). It also contains easy explanations of how you can proactively optimize your WordPress website for SEO and shares private strategies I use with my paying clients.

Go get some coffee cause this is a long one and lets jump in!

How to do WordPress SEO:

Update your code – Don’t get nervous, this is easy!
Check your settings
Clear out the excess
Content Strategy
Comments
Schema
Other

(The links below are affiliate links and I’ll earn a commission if you shop through them. If any are direct links and the company launches an affiliate program, I’ll turn them into affiliate links because I am a business and want to make money. And guess what? There’s no additional cost to you and in some cases you may save because I am an ambassador for the company. An even better reason to shop through my links.)

Update your code

Speed and performance is one of the easiest things you can do with WordPress SEO. And good news, WordPress makes it easy to have a lightning fast website.

Depending on your host (I use this one for myself and some of my clients) security is easy as well.

Here is where to start for both WordPress speed and security:

PHP – Many themes and databases you buy have not been updated to the latest version. Download a PHP testing plugin from the repository (repository is a fancy word the plugins search).There are free plugins that will automatically tell if you have the most current version. If you don’t have a recent version of PHP then you only need a quick and easy update. If you’re not a programmer try writing to your host, they may do it for you for free. Or you can go to any consulting site like GetCredo, Upwork or Fiverr and find someone to do it for less than $100.
Security – In addition to your host, make sure you check the notes in the top of your WordPress dashboard when you login to make sure your theme and your WordPress version, and all of your active plugins are up to date. Many times the updates are to fix security holes.Backup your current site and then click update. Once updated you’re likely more secure.
Servers – Once your site grows, reach out to your host for a dedicated server. Moving to a dedicated server from shared may provide some SEO value trust wise (this is debatable) and it can also help with speed and performance.I found this with the client in this Small business SEO case study about a local company beating national corporations. The server the site was on could not handle modern PHP which slowed the site down speed wise and the server was about to die. We wrote to the company’s host and they moved the site to an updated server within an hour. It was a quick and easy win.

I’ll get to some more speed wins below. Many are plug and play. But we have a few other things to do first, like checking our WordPress settings.

Check your settings

These are boring to think about but your settings are just as important as your copy and site performance. If you don’t have your settings done correctly for your needs; you may waste your crawl budget, hurt the amount of authority your internal links can pass to important pages and you’ll make it harder for your website to show up in the search engines. [Read more…] about WordPress SEO – Settings, Strategy & More

January 30, 2021 By adamriemer Leave a Comment

How to Make Money with Mother’s Day This Year

A quick note before reading: I was originally going to publish this on Wednesday. Unfortunately a well known and very loved person in the SEO space died of Covid-19. Even though this post is not for my SEO readers or the SEO space, it would have been inappropriate to publish then. Thank you for understanding why I did not publish when I said I would.

Mother’s Day is our next big shopping holiday, and this year is going to be a blowout spending wise!

But why am I talking about Mother’s Day now when there is Valentine’s Day, 4/20 and St. Patrick’s Day?

Because Mother’s Day is a gift giving holiday where people buy big money items.

Last year covid was still new so Mother’s Day content was about bringing a little bit of happy in a time of fear. This year we are being vaccinated and Mother’s Day will likely be the first time people will see and hug their moms and grandmas in over a year (assuming it is safe and we’re all vaccinated). This is what makes Mother’s Day a massive opportunity for you as a publisher!

By creating unique content with original ideas (think about the first person that developed the candy shoot for trick-or-treating) you can build your audience, grow your subscribers and make money!

As you mention a product or service in your solution, incorporate your affiliate links to help your audience create the solution. Your readers or viewers can find the tools implement your tip and you get a commission. It’s a win-win.

Bonus tip – once Mother’s Day is over, remove the covid references to make it evergreen and turn it into a “How to surprise mom” themed post for evergreen traffic.

Note: Instead of giving marketing strategy, please read this post about gift guide SEO and marketing list style posts. Your content won’t be a gift guide, but it is a list and the concepts are the same.

Here’s some ideas I came up with that you’re welcome to use as your own. And of course if you’re looking for affiliate programs to monetize your posts with, contact me and I’ll see if we have one that is a fit for your content.

Give a Standard Gift But Show Up In Person

This can work with anything from a flower of the month club to a single time bouquet purchase. The goal is to create posts with ideas to surprise mom with a gift that distracts her eyes.

Flowers for example are bright and colorful so they attract her eyes away from the delivery person’s face and they also appeal to other senses like smell and taste (to an extent). The sensory overload between the colors and desire to smell the bouquet may get her to ignore the height and build of the delivery person.

Food gifts like a large basket that shows the fruits, meats and chocolates has the same effect but for different senses. Because her eyes are focused elsewhere the gift giver (your reader) can be [Read more…] about How to Make Money with Mother’s Day This Year

January 18, 2021 By adamriemer 2 Comments

Case Study – A Small Business Beats Big Brands in SEO on Shopify

In this case study you will learn some of the common SEO issues that come with a Shopify store and how we addressed them to help our client rank. It is full of actionable items with some massive bonus tips.

The client in the screen shots below is a smaller brand without many backlinks and has a two person marketing team with no developer.

The company is in a highly competitive retail niche and competing for big brand terms (think phrases like “t-shirt” or “clothing” where you’re up against Macy’s, Calvin Klein and Hanes). Unlike tshirt, the terms here have lower search volumes. This makes it even more competitive.

Here’s how we helped them beat the big brands.

Note: This is year two on the project and I’m comparing year two to year 1. SEO is not a quick one and done or lets fix it and hope it sticks channel.

How to do SEO for Shopify sites:

Fix the Shopify SEO issues
Add content
1. PDP
2. Categories
3. Internal links
Find ambassadors
Tech SEO

Fix the Shopify SEO Issues

Shopify is currently my recommended shopping cart for ecommerce stores. The app store makes it affordable to have the whistles and bells of big brands without the big budget.

When combined with the reasonably good checkout process and excessive amount of affordable developers, you can build an awesome store as a small or mid-size company with ease.

But just because it is a good shopping cart platform does not mean it is marketing or SEO friendly. The good news is the majority of Shopify SEO issues are known and can be remedied.

The biggest issue is that you don’t get access to your own code base making it really hard to speed up your site and optimize it. But don’t let that deter you, having Shopify host your ecommerce store has benefits like accessing their security systems and having them watch so that your servers and your store stays online.

Here are the big known Shopify SEO issues:

January 11, 2021 By adamriemer Leave a Comment

SEO Case Study – Small Business Beats International Corporation

If you’re a small business and you think you cannot compete with the big corporations in SEO, think again!

The case study below is a project I did for a friend’s company which is a small and local business in a very competitive niche with national and multi-national players. This company is not local to me and I won’t say which market or markets they are in. This is at their request.

The traffic in the screen shot below might not be massive, but this company is up against a Google algorithm specific to high trust and authority (not E-A-T, E-A-T is a concept and not an algorithm with factors and signals).

Each conversion is worth $20,000 to $200,000 in revenue annually, and the users normally stay for multiple years. This makes it high value and really expensive to advertise for.

Needless to say all channels are saturated and there is big money involved making it really hard for small and local businesses to compete.

So how did we beat the big players?

I scrapped the entire site
We deleted more than 3,000 pages of copy
The company used their resources like friends to build trust
No backlinks were built, we did PR work
Schema and site structure were added
We kept each other accountable even when there was no time

So here’s the results YOY for 2019 and 2020. Remember, they are a local company in one or a couple markets and they are competing with the big players. There is also a limited amount of customers and users that exist in each market.

Please note that:

Only the old lead form path is listed here for conversions.
There are multiple new lead options based on the theme of the page the incoming traffic hits.
The bounce rate started lowering later in the year when we upgraded the PHP and speed up the site.
The pages per session lowering is a good thing. We added in lead forms and CTAs to the more important pages making it easier for leads to contact us. Less searching the site for contact information means easier conversions and more money, even if there are less pageviews.

Step 1 – Scrap the Entire Site

The very first thing I did was delete the entire site (after backing up all of the copy and pages of course). The old site was built with outdated code, it lacked structure and had no solid calls to action. Only a button that leads the visitor to a form and a phone number to call. It also featured giant rotating hero images. This was the first thing to go!

Pro-tip: Giant hero images on the homepage kill conversions and can be incredibly bad for SEO. If you have these on [Read more…] about SEO Case Study – Small Business Beats International Corporation

Blog

Update your code

Check your settings

Give a Standard Gift But Show Up In Person

Fix the Shopify SEO Issues

Here are the big known Shopify SEO issues:

Step 1 – Scrap the Entire Site

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