Affiliate SEO Secrets: Dive Deep with Matt Diggity

the Silver Lining on the whole thing is we've just now got permission to use AI in our content generation so our biggest resource requirement content was now reduced to a fraction of what it uh ever was before because blackout is now legal because they're able to use AI in their search results they have to be able to let everyone else use Ai and it's it's just been like the floodgates are open I'm I'm printing out websites right now and I've already added another seven figures to

my folio value just since the Advent of Advent of Advent of AI I'm John Wright and you're listening to affiliate bi the business intelligence and affiliate marketing podcast brought to you by statom welcome to the affiliate bi podcast I got a special guest here uh Matt Diggity he's well known in the SEO community and I know him from uh following his journey creating the affiliate lab uh he's got a very popular conference that he's organized at the changm SEO conference and I know Matt you do

a lot more thing more than just that so I want to pass it back to you and tell us what you do yeah other than the conference and the affiliate lab which is a course on SEO and affiliate marketing I also have an agency called the search initiative I have a portfolio company called lead spring which basically this is where we we uh what is it we walk the walk right so this is where we're we're building affiliate websites we're partnering with other businesses this is

where we're actually doing SEO and then um just I got the my personal brand which would be digity marketing and that kind of feeds leads into the agency the course and also like the partnership deals that I I get to be a part of and um that's mostly driven by the affiliate or the uh YouTube channel and then secondly by the blog that used to be switched around but this day and age uh YouTube is where people like to consume content I agree uh my first

question to get things started is a someone who gets to network with a lot of the the smartest people in the SEO space uh what's your view on the world of SEO today given that there's just been in my mind so much volatility volatility is like just the name of the game with SEO right uh I've been doing it since 2009 it's always been volatile I mean like the the first year I got into it and actually started getting success and making a bunch of money

and broking breaking five figures my whole entire portfolio died that year too so I'm kind of used to volatility but today's right now it's it's an interesting time in SEO because I think it's it's it's simultaneously harder than it's ever been before and easier than it's ever been before let me explain myself so it's harder in the sense that it takes more resources to do SEO and in the world of SEO resources means content and backlink so uh whereas before you could go after a niche

site with 20 pages of content if it's just like hyper targeted right going after knee pain or something like that just I'm going to write really good content 20 pages and just Dive Right into knee pain that doesn't work anymore so now we're in a world of topical Authority where it's like the website that covers the topic more completely will gain what's called topical Authority and have an advantage of ranking over other websites that only dabble in a topic so there's the content resource that's ballooned

um there's also a link resources that you need to apply to a website so it's just kind of ridiculous right now Google solves a lot of their problems with just um who has the most backlinks um I'm referring to the eat algorithms product review algorithms tons of algorithms where they put up a list of things that how they want their algorithm to work but it really just boils down to backlinks you want some evidence of this just Google something like best fat burner and you're going

to see a bunch of websites like Outlook India uh Miami heral these are all just gigantic websites that people use to piggyback off their link Authority myself included I'm not not throwing people under the bus I do this myself as well but we're piggy backing off that link Authority just to get to number one on Google um probably add to Google's embarrassment I don't think they really want their algorithm to work this way but it's uh it's a big problem um so yeah so it's harder

than ever because of this resource requirement but it's easier than ever because there's never been a time before now when SEO professionals have been more clear on exactly how the algorithm works and I think we've just had too much time to run our single variable test to network to compare notes and just figure out like what is actually working these days and I think that may be a byproduct of of like the connectivity is that a word connectiveness of uh the world these days and like

you know before we were hanging out on forums and no one would really share anything everyone was really private now people are having Live Events and um every everyone's connected on social media and there's just more sharing going on so I feel like it's easier in the sense that I know exactly what it takes to to to rank and I think a lot of other people do most people that I'm connected with are making more money now than they ever did before so I I would

say the the the knowledge part is outweighing the resource part the other interesting part about SEO right now is this influx of AI right so um Google's rolling out sge search generative experience which is them going to be able to answer queries with AI at the top of the search results that's not good for websites right if people are getting their answers from the AI there's no need for websites anymore why would I need to go dig around a website for an answer when it's right

here at the top of Google so that's uh there's there's fear over losing traffic and there's going to be some non-zero amount of traffic that's shaved off of our website traffic but I don't think it's going to be that bad um we have to remember Google makes 11 figures per year year that's hundreds of billions of dollars based on ad revenue and that's ad Revenue that websites pay if they stop feeding the Golden Goose um they're just gonna lose lose all their money right so I

don't think it's going to be that bad the the Silver Lining on the whole thing is we've just now got permission to use AI in our content generation so our biggest resource requirement content was now reduced to a fraction of what it uh ever was before because blackout is now legal because they're able to use AI in their search results they have to be able to let everyone else use Ai and it's it's just been like the floodgates are open I'm I'm printing out websites right

now and I've already added another seven figures to my portfolio value just since the Advent of AI that's probably going to be the the the hot take I'm going to pull from this uh this podcast all right well let's we'll see if I can do better yeah uh so I want to you kind of touched upon obviously the the topical Authority and where it's never been a better time to to be an SEO and to learn it I'm just kind of wondering what what do you

see for people that are maybe intimidated by SEO that they they don't seem to get started and like I I just see a lot of professionals that I think if you add this SEO skill set to what you do in your um your day job I think this is just going to add more um so why do you think people are still overwhelmed or are you seeing maybe more changes I would also agree from a bird's eye view SEO might look intimidating but also if you

looked at math that way too that would look difficult right so like eventually I have to learn linear algebra but how do you learn math you start at the beginning you start with arithmetic then you get into geometry trigonometry algebra and then maybe you might work your way up to this linear algebra thing so like it's just how you approach the SEO learning process I would start with the course and start from the beginning it's not like you have to digest the whole profession in one

day so I I I want to give a little tough love to the people that might be intimidated to learn new things and new skill sets because if you're not if you're shying away from like learning something like YouTube SEO whatever digital marketing in general you're probably not a lifelong learner and you probably should just get used to working for other people for the rest of your life because that is entrepreneurship at the end of the day SEO is just the tool that I'm using right

now what I'm really doing showing up and getting in front of the computer every day is I'm perfecting entrepreneurship I'm learning product Market fit I'm learning how to hire people on learning how to scale that's entrepreneurship SEO is just the tool of the day and at the the end of the day no pun intended you really just want to craft entrepreneurship whether it's SEO or not and that's what's going to make you AI proof that's what's going to carry you forward generation to generation as Technologies

change that's the real skill entrepreneurship real good book that'll light to fire under her ass is called end of jobs by Taylor Taylor Taylor Pierce I won't spoil it just just read it just awesome um so obviously like just before even getting on here you did a post about um I forget who the people were involved but basically some guy uh I think it was the co-founder of affiliate lab um J Yap is it yeah Jay yeah so he he did a post where you know

he hopped on one of the uh like a a partners website and was able to increase it substantially so my question is have you seen like a lot of these uh data stories where you've just been able to see like amazing results or maybe profound learnings from being able to look at like all the different types of SEO data and the way you can break it down yeah so the the biggest secret to my success is it probably relates back to my engineering background is to

be able to run single variable test in SEO so it it what a single variable test is is you have a set of websites this might be your control group you don't do anything new to these guys you have another set of websites where you're testing something new Let's test something like information game so where each of these articles I'm going to add something new that none of the other articles on the top of page one have so I'm I'm adding something new to the Corpus

I'm adding something new to Google and maybe they might think I'm better than these guys right so the the the punchline is 75 to 80% of these hypotheses that I come up with single in single variable testing don't actually work they don't actually yield a positive result so most of the time it's me dodging bullets and saving time on different things that I could add to my process my SEO process and and whether alert Information Gain is one of them it it doesn't yield a positive

effect and that's during core updates as well and this is a big difference that a lot of the like patent junky seos and um theor radical seos they don't like to hear something like this because it makes a lot of sense wouldn't Google want to reward websites that add more more content than the other websites on page one but it just doesn't it just do do I know why I can take some guesses but it just doesn't in practice so at the end of the day

like I think these these data experiments what they're really helping me do most of the time is save time so I can I can focus on the tasks that are going to get results and I can throw all this theoretical stuff away the time wasting stuff away so I get better and faster results at my portfolio company my agency get better results for our clients our students at the affiliate lab get better results that's that's where I think it's been the uh the most beneficial for

me I think like what it really boils down to is Google's a business that needs to maximize profits yes they're very smart they can look at thousands of ranking factors right but will they at the cost of their profit if you're Googling something like how to TI shoe you think they're going to run a $15 per search algorithm on that no no they're going to save money and we have to remember that uh going back to AI content where you said uh I think I think

you mentioned that it kind of makes a Content um like you're able to accelerate the rate of content you're able able to produce with AI what other AI tools are you using your business uh outside of the content I'll tell OF content uh my content tool is serf for AI my non-content tool was I mean it's kind of all of it's language Generation stuff but um aside from content generation I guess it would just be Chad gbt I don't really use anything else uh but Chad

GPT is such a great Swiss army knife for so many tasks I I use it for like website Audits and content audits you can take chat gbt feed it something like Google's documentation product reviews guidelines a uh the quality Raider guidelines and then say grade My article versus these other three articles at the top of Google Google and find out where you're weak so that's that's really powerful um it's really good for social media helps me design like a lot of the YouTube titles that I

come up with uh repurposing is killer so oh this is this is just like one of the biggest Time Savers I ever I ever do so for example coming on this this podcast right yeah you're asking me questions I'm answering these questions I can then take a transcript of this feed this to chat GPT and say use whatever nuggets I it in this in this interview and make 40 social media posts of this and then I'm I'm done for the rest of the year something like

that U that's really powerful for that and then uh digital PR digital PR when you're creating newsworthy stories and getting them in front of journalists to build backlinks is like the most powerful way to build backlinks these days Chad jbd is killer at coming up with interesting angles to pitch to journalist so remember when um remember remember when barbin Heimer came came out like Barbie and offheim came out the same weekend that was like a big event like virally like people got into that uh I

asked CH gbt how could I leverage this to make a viral story or a viral piece of content that I can pitch to journalist for my Fitness website immediately comes back with uh you should make a fitness routine uh based on uh like these movies and stuff so it's like oh here's exercise number one Atomic ABS exercise number two the constant plank like planks constant it's freaking clever like I would to come up with that by myself I love Chad jpd okay that's a lot lots

of notes there uh next is let's flip things around and talk about B2B SEO since you have to use this for your business what do you think affiliate programs and affiliate managers should be doing to help their business in ways which goes full circle to actually help their customers their customers their customers their Affiliates oh yeah I mean the the biggest thing that they can help me with is just steer geing me towards the right products to promote so like we're just guessing when we log

into that dashboard we see the EPC numbers and stuff like that but the they really know the behind the scenes and especially how to relate that to the content I already have so steer me towards the profitable products is the big thing and then the second best thing that they can do for me is creating like a creative offer that's better than bu this get this so like buy three get one free or sign up for 12 months and months and months and have some kind

of recurring aspect to it so like that's like one of the biggest things that can add another zero to the income I'm making with a product yeah it makes sense I mean in terms of like all the data that an affiliate program or an operator would have on their side um in my experience with some of the programs I've dealt with especially in I gaming is I don't feel like they're actually looking at at that data and sharing it back with Affiliates where I think uh

that would change a lot yeah would you say as well that um would you say like for the Filip managers that you have dealt with um my guess is that they should be also uh in tune with SEO and I almost think that if they actually new SEO better they'd probably jump on the other side of the fence and start their own affiliate sites that's funny um so the there's like so I'm big into the fitness space and there's a few networks more Niche and I

would say stack brands fan fuel these guys are like completely targeting SEO to Drive traffic to their offers that that's their specialty right so they're the ironically the only ones that I ever see them make an investment in educating their own um affiliate base on SEO and I know that because they literally brought me in and gave trainings to their to their Affiliates and I I think their Community appreciates that but like any hybrid networks where it's like we do little paid ads and SEO and

stuff like that I don't see them investing in it maybe maybe there's a reason behind that but I don't know don't know don't know why that's I find that interesting because it's I just find that the F programs I've dealt with where I've got thousands of accounts um you know it's the the Outreach is done terribly and I just find that they don't really know their product as well and I just think if they actually understood SEO they would approach us Affiliates in a different way

where it wouldn't be let's just think from this I need the number one position on your homepage mentality where you know if they knew how to use basic tools like hrefs and uh they'd be able kind of deconstruct where where you find better opportuni on your own site yeah here's an interesting anecdotal story so there's um we talked about parasite SEO before where you're you're jumping on like one of these newspapers to get to the top of Google right so we were ranked number one for

blank product review um blank review and we're making x amount of money we'll just call it $10,000 a month from this product we also decided why don't we dominate page one why don't we be number one two and three so we we ordered some parasite uh parasite articles and one of them happened to jump to number one right guess how much we were making afterwards like $6,000 the reason was they just don't convert that well you can't design them decorate them and there's probably a lot

lack of trust that when you're just kind of piggybacking off of Outlook in you or something like that um it's probably just causing some kind of skepticism or something like that so it is Within These networks best interest to nurture their website Affiliates you know because they're going to make more money if it's all parasite that's jammed up at the top of Google the Network's gonna make more M less money uh I've got a question that I've asked a few other SEO guests on and I

kind of think I might know the answer and it has to do with this idea that you know in my space in igaming where I've come from uh there's a lot of Affiliates that say it's getting too competitive itive where it's almost like give up don't even get started but when I when I interviewed Kyle he basically said no like what you've said earlier that this is one of the best times to become an SEO looking at something that's highly competitive as online gambling what would

you say for advice or maybe like a strategy of getting started where you know you you are competing against companies that have large Bank roles they they have uh like the SEO um um what do you call Arsenal to be able to get link buy links uh hire the best content writers use AI tools to get stronger so what would your take be on uh how people can uh get started and penetrate this uh this intimidating uh space I think casinos a I'm I'm guessing I

haven't in Casino in a long time and I just did it in one Geo Thailand so like I'm guessing here maybe you can help me uh verify whether this is is true or not but I as I understand Casino changes a lot there's new games all the time new bingos pop up new new poers and all that kind of stuff so there's probably content gaps that are getting created like every single day now a established website an established team as long as they can identify these

and they have a big website with a lot Authority if they jump on it they're going to be able to to grab that so one thing that I would I would recommend is starting off an age domain or a domain that's like if you purchase an existing site and start from there there's this this strange effect called like the first rise and when you get like an expired domain or or a age domain and start a new piece uh new website on it it typically gets

just like blessed at the beginning um you're going to get asymmetric uh growth curves and I think the reason is because this website was like at the bottom of page eight of Google for these Target keywords so it's getting judged upon those kind of criteria that PE the website that don't have much traffic so you get this like huge huge huge huge ranking increase and traffic increase at the beginning and so that's when I would say then you attack like these content gaps and of course

when the cont when the core update rolls around that's going to get corrected and you'll probably start growing flat after that but that's how I would jump in there is to jump on a enage domain and then just attack those content gaps and yeah see what happens after the core update when you start to get treated normally normally normally yeah that makes a bit of sense uh my personal take on the seoi gaming space is that everyone just kind of more or less copying each other

and I'm I would guess like you know just from going through all the different things you teach in the SEO space you guys are uh talking about topical Authority and you really get into the mindset of what the user wants and I think uh what I've been hearing on the igaming side especially in relation to SEO and content is that people keep doing it from a sales perspective or they're they're trying to satisfy Google first rather than who they're actually marketing to yeah you got to

do both and at the end of the day if you're getting tons of traffic with just bad layout or you're not answering the question at the top of your content your users are going to bounce and you're going to lose that SEO traffic anyways I want to just uh pivot quickly into the surfer SEO tool I've been using it for a little while and I remember asking you previously like are the SEO tools that you live with and I think you said Surfer and maybe hre

so um what would you say Surfer is for someone that's getting started in SEO and how valuable is it as a tool for I know what it does for me in terms of uh you know kicking my ass and saying hey John put more effort into your content uh maybe just talk uh what Surfer is for for everyone in the SEO space yeah so what Surfer does is from a Content perspective it'll analyze the top ranking sites on Google and it'll stract out what got them

to number number one two and three on Google so it'll figure out how long they wrote their content it'll figure out how they structured their articles it'll figure out what the critical NLP entities keywords and phrases that had sprinkled in the content and at what frequencies and so then when you're writing that content it gives you a dashboard on the right hand side that shows you how you're progressing along to fit in with the exact things that got the other articles to the top of Google

and so like what this does for a beginner is you just can't miss it's like when you're when you take your kid bowling and they put the Lanes on the side and you just like the ball's going to get hit the pins eventually it's it's kind of like that and then once you scale up and you get good and you're not writing your own content anymore you could you don't have to hire experts anymore SEO experts you can also hire beginners and because they have the

bumper Lanes on they're gonna hit the pins yeah I I like how the tool is kind of gamified content writing it's uh I never found content writing so kind of interesting where I'm typing along and just watching these keywords get knocked up and going okay I need to be strategic about putting this together yeah yeah yeah uh last question I want to ask is what do you see of the future of affiliate marketing as it intersects with business with business intelligence I mean I can tell

you what I want um like right now it's like with business intelligence it's like I'm going to do this full set of SEO things I'm going to optimize for Speed I'm going to write this content I'm going to Interlink these articles together I'm going to get back links and then I might get a a positive increase in traffic later to watch amount to what amount I have no freaking clue so you just gotta kind of get a gut feel on like what you're able to do

um in terms of website growth I have no clue like to the to the level of detail if I write this piece of content it's going to make me that much money if I'm going to build this backlink it's going to make me that much money that's like completely blind to to me uh I don't know if that's solvable but if it is that changes the game like to be able to take uh to to correlate cost with the output that's tough but I think it

goes full circle to what you said earlier about doing all your different single variable test experiments where um eventually once you get those wins it might take a lot to get a win but once you have it it's I think you're able to Compound on it yeah honestly I think the best version of this is kind of like what you're doing with stats drone is so I do this on the the content website side too is just correlating a lot of data together on existing websites

that have done this before so like if you know the last 50 websites that have sold in the education Niche then you know how much they make you know how how much content they have you know how much backlinks they built so that's probably the best you can get at least from from my perspective is just knowing how much current people are actually making making and what they put into it and you're you're on a great start with stat sh thank you so much uh Matt

how can people get a hold of you uh Twitter I might get a response there uh check me out on my YouTube channel that's where I'm posting most of my content I answer the comments um so there there you go awesome thank you so much for doing this it's a pleasure thank you for tuning in to the affiliate bi podcast I'd like to take this time to ask for a small favor to leave a Reading and Review wherever you listen to your podcast that helps us

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