How does a publisher know if they're going to be good at affiliate marketing?
What about their site when you look at it or your network team looks at it?
Yeah, that's the site you want to work on.
I think, again, this is one of the things that's really improving in the last few years
is the user experience and publishers have become very sophisticated
when they do it from what we were doing 10 years ago.
And that's a wonderful thing for us, because we're all about making sure
we have these great relationships between advertising and publishers,
driving the sales and driving a really great user experience for those publishing users
as well as making sure the advertising and publishers understand what your shop needs.
So I think most of the time as we always look at how good the usability of the site is,
the user interface and really understanding the business of that publisher
to make sure there's some fit for them within that network.
And it's very rare that that happens because of the vast number of clients that we have
as well as we're always welcoming unique publishers as well as large-scale shopping needs.
Got it.
So a question for all of you.
What's the impact on SEO as both an advertiser or an publisher?
What should I be thinking about when I'm at SEO in affiliate marketing?
Let's start with it.
Well, as far as lane trust goes with SEO, many of our clients are very concerned about the fact
that because there's redirect links between the actual website and their product
that they're not getting the SEO that they really deserve.
And so, from a technology standpoint, we have to engineer our product to be able to maximize
on giving the most SEO capabilities to our clients.
Now, that really, from our perspective, that really is just allowing them to brand their tracking link
or just do direct linking right to their website and not get in the middle between
the publisher and their website.
Okay, so you have suffered that an advertiser can install directly on their own system.
So the tracking is done just with the direct links to the advertiser with no redirect.
Absolutely, and then some clients don't really care about the SEO effects at all.
And I know there's a very sensitive to it.
They have a brand and they're very keen at taking that brand and utilizing that
to the maximum of all of the internet.
So we have to essentially be made sure that we're very innovative
and that we're trying to pass on as much of the SEO positives as we can to that brand
and not really not get in the way of their advertising effort
but just facilitating it in the way that they need to have it done.
Okay.
Philip, what about as an advertiser?
Do you feel the same where any one of those SEO sensitive advertisers are?
I mean, the SEO is really up to the affiliate of a partner, right?
And their website, they're going to monetize that to the fullest, put it all the right links
and make sure that it's Google-friendly.
Okay, but all.
I can't say that the tracking links that we use have had a large impact
into the SEO of the sites.
I know that Commission Junction uses a redirect which doesn't work well with the SEO obviously
and I'm not, can't speak to Link's share, I'm not really sure which technology they use
but I can't say that it's had a negative impact in doing this for over 10 years
and I haven't had any, you know, angry abilities.
You know, why are you working with these guys that are on the SEO?
Got it.
So, okay.
Gary, but I don't want to ask the Link's share source what, you know,
publishers and advertisers, how do they feel about SEO?
It's definitely, I think, in the last year or so with some of the Google changes
it has impacted some of the publishers who have keyboard phones before
and one of the things we're trying to do is read.
Again, just to facilitate relations for the advertisers and publishers
to understand what they are allowed to do with that.
You know, it is, I think you touched on it before, there is a sensitivity with it
and one of the ways that we've approached is to help some of these publishers
read games and the traction and their work is to, you know,
maybe work more directly with the advertisers to understand what they should be allowed to do
so there's no, you know, a trademark being here or anything on that.
But sometimes with the advertisers they do enjoy the relationship
they have with certain publishers they will allow.
But a lot of the time we are trying to help the publishers catch it back
some of the forms they've been given before and that's through a variety of methods
and maybe a little bit about my technical head.
That is, it is something we do support because again,
if the publisher is successful, it means the advertisers get a great, great sales
and that means we're successful with the analytics.
We're always trying to support the people.
So the publisher, I think you've all spoken to the SEO of the publisher, right?
The publisher wants to be well-ranked in Google, they use Link's share links,
you know, sounds like that.
You know, either dozens or largely affects their SEO.
What about the SEO of the advertisers?
So I'm sure, you know, eHealth wants to rank really well.
And at the end of the day, publishers are linking to you.
So do you think about that at all?
Like in terms of, you know, the people you engage with,
does that help you to rank or is that sort of not on your original side?
We don't do, we don't share links with affiliates.
It's something that we kind of tested early on probably six plus years ago.
And as we've kind of evolved as a company and brought in our own in-house SEO team,
we've had some different views on how that may or may not impact the business.
So today, we don't do that.
We've got a very talented SEO team in-house.
And anything that's put on our side in public lane has to go through those guys.
And they really look at that.
So with respect to affiliates and SEO, there's definitely no impact.
They're negative impact there.
I don't think that they're affected or rankings.
But you have really strong rankings, I think.
Unfortunately, I don't think it's because of your affiliates.
I could do that.
Okay.
Cool.
Let's talk about that.
I was just going to say, you know, from a, from our standpoint,
it is the merchant that really is pushing the SEO.
What is the advertiser?
The affiliate, from our, from my understanding and my experience,
doesn't care so much about getting any SEO off of the links that they're putting on their website,
because they're not getting any anyways.
What they really care about is the format of those links,
so that Google doesn't flag and worship it.
Any other search engine doesn't flag.
It was just some kind of affiliate that is just, you know,
spawn your links all over the place,
but that they actually have legitimate links to merchants websites.
And so, to the affiliate, it's about the structure of the link.
The merchant, it's about it being their domain of their website.
Right?
And not having, and sometimes not having that intermediary redirect through a traffic system.
Got it.
So it, different facets for different people.
Okay.
Excellent.
Maybe you guys can speak a little bit towards the,
there's a lot of trust involved, you know,
a publisher sounds a bunch of clicks over the merchants,
and then link share or like trust, or even any help says,
okay, you know, you've made these many conversions here as your check.
How does the publisher know that you're accounting fairly with that?
That's a good question.
Well, number one is that they don't have a traffic system,
then they don't know.
Okay.
But this industry is built on trust.
And so, to some degree, I mean, if you're working with link share,
you can feel comfortable with the clientele that they have,
the traffic they have, and the long-standing reputation that you're going to get paid fairly
and then they're going to get a track platform.
But if you're working with somebody who doesn't have a tracking platform,
whether it's link share or a proprietary platform,
link trust or whatever, if they're not using any tracking platform,
it's very difficult.
In many times, for them to track exactly what's going on in the first place.
And so, to have that trust,
number one is you have to partner with the technology partner,
like link share or link trust that knows what they're doing that's been around
and has an ethical background at the industry of not doing things
which would jeopardize the integrity and the trust that goes on between the merchant and the end.
Okay.
No, I absolutely agree with that.
I mean, that's one of the key things is you're going to,
probably someone who has the great reputation and the experience
in the internet on account.
Because it is, like you said, it's a game of trust and so respects
because you're passing over these valuable users
that are very loyal to you as a publisher,
and you want the user experience for them to be great
and they go over to the advertiser sign.
In addition to that, from that process,
you want to make sure that the tracking is all completely where it is
and part of our services, we do as a network is,
and it's close relationships,
and we have the advertiser and our publishers
to ensure whenever there is an issue there.
And we resolve it quickly and efficiently so the reputation of not necessarily links you
and the advertisement publisher doesn't destroy that issue.
Right.
Now, I agree I was in the work.
I came to mind with reputation, and they both mentioned that,
working with the reputable companies and having a solid reputation
as an advertiser, we've had our programs since 2001,
and thankfully everything is going really well
and they're tracking a big solid,
so that's definitely a big part of it
and service, customer service, and reputation.
Coal publishers.
The thing is that longevity in the industry is a huge plus
when it comes to choosing who you're going to partner with,
whether it's partnering with the merchant
to run their products or partnering with a link share
to get a host of products or whatever it might be.
But if that trust has to be coupled
with knowledge of how they are tracking,
how they are doing their business.
So, companies that, you know, there's always companies
that come up all the time that want for us to build in features
that we might consider a violation of trust with the publisher.
No, yeah.
Because they want to make more revenue
or they want to avoid conversations that are unpleasant.
And so we take it upon ourselves, in many cases,
to make sure that we have to stand above that ethical mark.
Because any slight deviation from what is true and accurate tracking
is not only a black mark for the industry,
but it's a black mark on our company.