Lily Ray: Growing affiliate sites beyond Google algorithm updates

this is where the internet is going if you look at the Tik Tok generation they like looking at other people they would much rather follow a person talking about their favorite pair of jeans then go on Google and type what are the best jeans you know and then have a brand tell them which jeans to buy like they people like people so um maybe if you feel uncomfortable on video there's someone you can work with to help you do that part of the business right you

know I always I'm always talking about like Brands these days should be thinking about having in-house cultural evangelists or Representatives that are people that know how to build a following on a personal level that represent the represent the brand I'm John Wright and you're listening to affiliate bi the business intelligence and affiliate marketing podcast brought to you by sta welcome to the affiliate bi podcast today we're chatting with Lily Ray who is the vice president of SEO strategy and research at amiv uh she's been in

the SEO space for I think over 10 years she's also a DJ and she's very active on Twitter X LinkedIn posting frequently about SEO and affiliate sites so I think we've got the right person for the podcast Lily welcome to the show thanks so much for having me so I'm G to get into it where in the past six months I've been paying attention to your account and also from Glenn alsup uh where both of you discuss discuss like the the disruption in SEO and affiliate

sites so I want to kind of get your your big picture overview what do you see as the takeaway of uh what's happening in the marketplace and maybe what are some of the Overlook insights for affiliate sites and e-commerce sites well affiliate and e-commerce are facing two kind of different situations in general I would say as far as SEO is concerned um I think past two years have been some of the most difficult years for affiliate sites on Google in Google search um Google has launched

a variety of different algorithm updates and changes and new initiatives that the outcome of many of them seems to be the reduction in visibility for lots of affiliate sites that's I think honestly probably one of the main takeaways as far as like if I were to summarize everything that happened in the SEO space in the last three years I think that's top five biggest changes that has happened um e-commerce is different because it seems like eCommerce sites that sell their own products or sell products in

general you know if you have the capability of of selling and buying the product on that actual website uh they seem to be a bit more immune to some of the types of algorithmic changes that Google's been rolling out now that's not to say that there aren't other SEO challenges that those sites have but it seems to be the case that Google has reduced the visibility of lots of sites that purely exist for affiliate purposes so I guess you could kind of dive in deeper to

say like in an easy thing to say it's like productize your affili site but I don't think that's the simple I mean I think on the larger scale we have perfect examples of companies that have so much money like nerd wallet they basically buy their own Finance Agency so when you're looking for business loans sure they got the business calculator like they had before but now when they take you to the next product which is actually getting the business loan that's now owned by nerd wallet

so I think this is probably what you're seeing seeing seeing happening well that's one potential way to kind of solve the problem of of being a site that only exists for you know one reason which is to refer business to another site but Google is very sophisticated and Google figures out these um different ways that people might try to solve these problems and if Google Google's algorithms determine over time that this is also not a good experience for users it doesn't mean that you get to

just check the box and say okay we fixed everything our SEO is great again because it's constantly evolving and the thing about these industries is as you know you know when when something becomes popular and something becomes uh a case study for what works everyone jumps in the bandwagon and tries to do the same thing so then it becomes even easier for Google and the other search engines to kind of like reverse engineer what's happening there and maybe factor that into future algorithm updates so unfortunately

you know a lot of this the reduction that we're seeing the visibility of these sites the reduction that they're seeing um it's it's a difficult problem to solve it's usually not solved by any type of Silver Bullet so what would you say would be your advice to new Affiliates that are pretty much like either getting started or onee in knowing what you've seen in the past like I'm assuming that the general takeaway and it it's kind of like a cheap comment it's like just be better

like be better than just the information site yeah yes and I I think um that's that's definitely the advice that I would give um but it goes It goes really beyond that beyond that there's different algorithms that Google has launched where it seems like the coal has been to identify all the sites that are doing some type of like you know lazy uh SEO strategy and I I don't mean to like group a lot of people that are actually spending a lot time in their SEO

like I don't mean to call them lazy but there are a lot of sites that are doing this in a somewhat lazy way like maybe they're using AI to programmatically generate many many new pages and they're just throwing affiliate links everywhere based on whatever likes bring them the highest commissions now that's kind of what I mean when I say lazy there's a lot of sites that are doing things really well the problem is that if Google creates algorithmic systems to identify you know group a but

for whatever reason Google's systems are not sophisticated enough to differentiate between A and B now you have a lot of people in B who are trying to do the right thing who are getting grouped into those algorithm updates and they're getting hit I think right now we're starting to see Google reverse a little bit of that because maybe they went too far but to your point it's not just about being better or being the best it's like how can you create a site where it doesn't

look and feel like all those other sites because it's so helpful and it's so unique and it has all these other signals that Google looks at when it's looking for Meaningful websites you know if you have an enormous social media following if you have really good engagement metrics if you have really good um you know ATT traic diversification these are signals that Google can kind of see as far as like oh this is a real brand and it would make Google look bad if we didn't

surface that surface that surface that content yeah that makes sense I mean I look at the B2B SEO space with uh you Glenn alup and Steve Toth and I kind of go you you talk about certain things uh that are similar but you all have your own point of view and you all have your own way of producing your own B2B content and the way I look at your content is that it's not just regurgitated content that I think a lot of seos have been doing

for a long time and to be honest I did that a long time ago in the past I'm like I'm just going to do this basic SEO article I think you take it to the next level and I think uh those lessons from what's working for you three are pretty much maybe they're blueprints to actually say why can't we make this happen for the Phil site it's it it's kind of like extending what you said about how to just be better but take it to One

More Level yeah yeah the problem or the challenge these days is that it requires much more creativity than it ever has before I think a lot of site owners in these categories tend to operate in a way where they want SEO to be really simple they want it to be this checklist that they follow where they can follow the blueprint from 30 other people that have done it with great success and just repeat everything they did and then see success as well those days are over

I'm sorry to say um now the sites there are a small handful of sites that I can point to that are affiliate sites that do product reviews that are weathering the updates pretty well um and it's a very small group of sites but they put so much energy into the content that they're not following any blueprint they're spending tons of time testing products putting ample evidence all over the site that they tested the products and even then some of those sites get hit by algorithm updates

um but usually they don't get hit in a very significant way they kind of go up and down over time and generally go generally go generally go up I'll I'll I'll share that comment to a few people that I know are doing exactly what you say but still haven't really fully recovered yet where they have amazing amazing detailed product review sites I think their their I think their expression of authority isn't being pushed through like you're not really see more of the people on behind the

scenes of those actual reviews and going well is there a community behind this or is there a single author that is so passionate about this like that's actually what they have for Content but you wouldn't know it from just looking at the page that's the thing and that's actually um ties back to what I've mostly been speaking and writing about in the SEO space before I spoke a lot about affiliate sites and product review sit and everything like that I've been very focused on this concept

of eat expertise experience Authority and Trust um I said that backwards experience expertise Authority interest but the takeaway from that is Google has been very focused for the last let's say six or seven years on who who are the people behind this website how can we how much can we trust them and how much experience and Authority do they have and it matters more or less in different categories and there's a lot of debates about how much Google uses it these days but I think it's

fair to say that one consistent outcome of all these updates and One Direction that Google's been going in recent years and Bing as well Bing actually says this is quite important to them is transparency and who's behind the website and if you focus on building your personal brand and your personal brand is closely affiliated with reviewing running shoes or whatever it is that you're known for that's something that that stands the test of time and that Google likes to elevate Google likes people so if you're

person that's known for that whatever it is that you're writing about that's something that can potentially protect you from algorithm updates I think that ties in well with my next question which is I used to run and create B Toc affiliate sites as well as B2B I I now focus on B2B but now as a SAS company um one thing that I've discovered it's like how do I get my marketing message across to my uh my ICP and one thing that I've been doing with some

success is focusing on bot of funnel content where it's like I'm going so deep and really talking to the user and I've actually kind of like mapped out who are my users and I think a lot of sites don't do that would you say that that's maybe like a missing playbook for most affiliate sites today and ones that are success successful actually have that sort of bottom of funnel mindset to say hey we're gonna we're gonna identify you and we're going to talk to you because

we think we know what you're looking for yeah I mean I think that's probably a better way to spend your time these days because now you're talking about improving conversions improving engagement you know building an audience like all these things that are important for your business important for your brand and it's not you know like looking for cheap exploits that could potentially bring you more top of funnel traffic where that that opportunity is slipping away like that there's less and less opportunity up there and not

to mention you know aside from whatever changes Google's doing with its algorithms we have ai overviews now like we have different ways that Google just answers top of funnel questions itself um or maybe they're looking for that information on Tik Tok or whatever it is like yeah focusing on bottom of the funnel and really understanding your audience and your customer I think is a much better use of your time than trying to capture everybody and would you say that with top of funnel where obviously an

AI overview could basically be your answer to that maybe it'd be better to kind of have more like video content to say hey I'm so and so and maybe you create uh not just top tople funnel content but maybe like series of that so it's kind of like you know kind of like a entities suround it yeah 100% I mean I I would say YouTube is like a cheat code for SEO right now because I mean it's not secret but like if you make a really

great video that has really great engagement lots of views and whatever engagement metrics YouTube and Google look at um Google loves serving YouTube so if your site is struggling and you take a lot of the great information that you have on your site and you repurpose that as YouTube video the likelihood of that being served across Google servfaces is much higher than your website so you might have tons of views coming from Google discover because Google discover loves to show YouTube content um Google embeds YouTube

videos in the results for extremely high volume queries uh there's now short video carousels where Google I mean Google's now pulling like your Instagram reels directly into the search results so results so yeah as much as it's like we say it over and over again in the SEO space right now and um making videos and splicing up those videos into short videos is one of the biggest SEO opportunities right so taking like one year of starting with the helpful content update on a lot of different

uh updates with Google would you say that the bigger sites like the the mega affiliate groups and the media companies have benefited the most or would you say everyone's kind of scared in terms of like all kind of on edge where some of these companies have lost a lot of uh Edge and my question is I hear from a lot of Affiliates that they get this feeling that if you haven't made a lot of money and you've got money in the bank to be able to

buy your own SEO team and have like the money to to get resources is it too late to be an affiliate well we're in the middle of a pretty significant Google algorithm update right now um I think a lot of people in the I at space we're waiting for this update for a long time and it's the helpful content update I mean Google hasn't called this core update the helpful content update it doesn't it doesn't have its own update name anymore or its own ranking system

anymore which it used to but we're in the middle of a significant Google core update that to answer your question has reversed this trend a bit for a lot of sites that have been negatively impacted and the reason I think this is so important is I don't know that it necessarily changes the overall landscape too much but what it does is It's seems to be lifting this like people call it a shadow band Google would never call it that but there was something suppressing these sites

ever since the September 2023 helpful content update that Google seems to have retweaked in some way that these sites are now some of them are getting their visibility back I think that's important because if there is some type of weight that they've applied maybe now there's more opportunity because there's less weight down sites or maybe new sites that enter the Market aren't going to be weighed down in the same ways I don't know exactly how they changed their algorithms but I think they might have reversed

a little bit because they they went a little bit too far another thing we don't know is like um you know Google's made really significant changes in the last year where now Reddit and Kora are like the biggest winners in 2024 RIT especially they're ranking for seemingly everything on the internet in top positions and we need time to see how the average Google Searcher feels about that um you know in 202 for reddits only grown but it could be the case that we start hearing in

2025 everyone's sick and tired of using Google because they feel like it's a redit search engine and they're like bring back bring back the sites that were doing all these great reviews where did those go so the these things are dyn dynamic they can change over time yeah I agree I mean I kind of laugh at that because I know I use Google for a lot of Reddit searches it's like I just feel like Reddit quite often when I'm looking for something very specific I would

put that search term and then I'll put Reddit on there because I'm actually looking for the Reddit and I actually believe Google has a better search engine than Reddit does for helping me find what I want well what you just said was something that has been said by I mean I've personally read it like maybe thousands of times and Google clearly read it or saw it in the data probably millions of times which is why they made these changes right they understand people are looking for

it they understand it's super helpful authentic content I just wonder if they didn't go a bit too far with these changes uh so I wonder reverse engineer this uh Google mess that we have today and just kind of go back I think you've already said a lot of these things in different bits and pieces but what would your Evergreen content strategy be for an affiliate site or any sort of hobby site well you know I think the days of relying on SEO tools to do the

thinking for you which probably shouldn't have ever been doing in the first place and I say that as an SEO professional but like doing this in a way where it's like okay let me put this keyword into this SEO tool and see what the SEO tool tells me to write about and use this other SEO tool it's going to automate the article with AI and use this other SEO tool to tell me which links to add and all this stuff that's automated and you're just kind

of sitting back and hoping that the tools do all the work for you and then you build out a website that looks and feels exactly like all the other people that have started a website about traveling to New York City or whatever it is those days are over um I recommend recommend that people do it the opposite way way way where maybe you don't just buy a domain name because it's available and you can afford it and then you suddenly become the experts on whatever it

is that you just bought you know focus on something you are truly passionate about and write build your content strategy and your editorial calendar and everything based on what you truly are passionate about writing about or making videos about or have actually spent time reviewing the products like products like products like I did just like a random example on my personal website at one point just to kind of experience what it feels like to write a product review article based on um products that I use

when I'm traveling because I travel all the time and what I what I felt during the process was like I'm writing based on you know an an anecdote about when I was at the airport and I needed this thing and this is why it's helpful I'm not writing an article based on the top 10 trending products on Amazon what's going to bring me the highest affiliate commissions this month which a lot of people have been doing and I think search engines can tell the difference because

the first example where it's written with true authenticity and real experience is what they're looking for as opposed to just listing the same 10 products that everybody else listed yeah I I think your example is a story people would rather read and I know my own experience of of going okay if if I've got a SAS tool that I'm trying to be um an authority in affiliate marketing it's h what am I going to write about and the more tools I use uh the more they

actually I find they don't help me like I'm a big fan of surfer SEO uh so I I I produce like affiliate program um like content pieces like just generic um and it's basically saying okay you got to do like seven 8,000 words I'm like I can do that but what I'm trying to do very intently is go well if I'm the expert in Authority what have I seen in 20 years in affiliate marketing and when I start writing and focusing on the stuff that's not

inside the ecosystem of what Surfers telling me to write about um I think it it's better and I'm actually starting to get the rewards of those rankings and you know it's just it's fun to to be on that side and go okay I've relied on SEO tools for a while but the more I I go away from them uh the more I think what you just said as a strategy is so true yeah yeah it's kind of changing your way of thinking you know it's it's

it's going from this literally Google calls it like an SEO first mentality or like a writing for search engines mentality to a writing what you care about mentality and of course if you could find ways to incorporate affiliate links or whatever it is that helps you make money in the content of course do that where it makees sense to do that but the more important thing is what you talked about which is like what do I know about this what what makes me different how do

I show my voice and my experience throughout the throughout the throughout the content would you say for a larger affiliate site that you mentioned earlier that trying to put up personality or the people behind it whether they own it or their actual dis writers would you say it'd be wise to to say okay let's try to get these authors um as part of Google Knowledge panels like if you're helping them as their individual profiles would you say that kind of amplifies the Fage site itself yeah

I mean now we're going back to again like like I would say 2018 2019 was when me personally I talked about e eat at the time it was called eat now it's eat talked about that every day as probably the single most important SEO factor it's not one factor it's thousands of factors but SEO consideration because what you just described is something that has proven time and time again to be really important having you know recognized knowledge panels entities like in Google's Knowledge Graph for people

places and things that are associated to your business which in the case of an affiliate website it's usually going to be a person right um it's going to be a person who or maybe a group of people who Love video games or they love travel or whatever it is and think about like the Points Guy right it's like a person who loves traveling and the more or like um The Pioneer Woman for cooking right it's like and I actually did presentations about like five or 10

examples of people who have personal Brands where their site ranks for a ton of stuff in their category because Google says oh when you need um you know cooking advice it's this person and this person owns this website so this website has Authority on those topics so the more that you can reveal who you are and why you can be trusted the other thing too is users respond really well to that you know I think users will follow you on LinkedIn or Instagram or where wherever

it is that you are Tik Tok and Google can pick up on that stuff you know Google literally even has mechanisms to show follower accounts in the search result so you know don't do this stuff for SEO do it because that's the brand You're Building yeah I I agree I think uh personal brand building is becoming more important and my personal take is that it's actually like what I've seen in the B2B space and you probably notice the same as well it's that you know people

want to buy from people that's always been true but in the B2B space I felt it's really helped me a lot for my SAS company and when I talk to people that have done uh a lot of video work like you know Craig Campbell for example is they've just said the the work they've in the past has helped them quite a bit and I've interviewed Jason Barnard the knowledge panel guy and he said this has been like like all these people said it's been so influential

and I think I think uh we will see more Affiliates gravitate towards this but maybe what stops them is I don't know if it's imposter syndrome or if it's the being uncomfortable in video and recording YouTube I think that's basically the the biggest barrier to entry yeah I agree I think it's it's much easier said than done including for myself I always say I I want I wake up you know I woke up today and I want to make a video and then I don't um

so I get it it's a lot of work it's just unfortunately for better for worse unfortunately if you don't want to be on video but for better for worse this is where the world is going this is where the internet is going if you look at the Tik Tok generation they like looking at other people they would much rather follow a person talking about their favorite pair of jeans than go on Google and type what are the best jeans you know and then have a Brands

tell them which jeans to buy like they people like people so um maybe if you feel uncomfortable on video there's someone you can work with to help you do that part of the business right you know I always I'm always talking about like Brands these days should be thinking about having in-house cultural evangelists or Representatives that are people that know how to build a following on a personal level that represent the brand yeah I hear a lot of that from Chris Walker from revenue vitals and

uh he's got a few different companies and a lot of the people in in his ecosystem for his companies they're all doing the same thing is uh they have their own podcasts and you know they they've got their own you know point of view on LinkedIn and they don't all seem to copy a similar uh Playbook it's kind of like take your own identity pick something that you want to talk about be your own mini topical Authority or your own specialist n Niche and then um

go for it yeah yeah I mean that's it's interesting now like even with LinkedIn there's there's influencers from late Den they're people right and I think the first question is who are these people second question is where do they work right and you might be surprised to see like oh wow they work at X Big Brand but you're going to know the person first right you're gonna like on LinkedIn you're going to see their content you're going to see their thoughts and that's happening on X

as well you know uh it's it's been happening on X now we have threads it's like generally speaking people prefer to follow the accounts of of experts in the space as opposed to following the corporate account yeah I agree it's I still do some of the corporate brand building but after working on LinkedIn for two and a half years it's U it it's people first the corporate just kind of like pick pick another reason for why that corporate account's goingon to exist and you know for

why people would even care to follow it yeah that great so I noticed that you're involved in some capacity for women in Tech and SEO I just wanted to ask uh why do you think more women should be an SEO I mean I can give you a ton of reasons like in my journey in affiliate marketing um you know it's male-dominated and you know I I come from the gambling space where um so many guys were basically saying okay we're going to create the whole marketing

ecosystem for the whole population Without Really you know having an understanding of like how people buy or you know just understanding you know the the opposite sex so I just wanted to get your take on uh what you do there and how would you encourage uh more women to get get get involved yeah I mean um props to AR the founder of women in Tech SEO and all the women that are part of that Community um she's actually been making a lot of hires for people

that are working like full-time or parttime at women and Tech SEO um I've been I guess part of it from the beginning from the Inception um and I have to say as someone as a a woman that's able to see that see what happens in that community and be part of that community and then also see other communities in the SEO space that are not just women it's always incredible to me how that is the single most helpful kind organized um just like warm like like

loving community in the SEO space By by a 100,000 miles like nothing comes close to that and there's in-person conferences there's a slack group there's a Facebook group there's all kinds of events that they're doing um and it's very open and and supportive and there's you know rules of community engagement and the way that people interact with each other that are like heavily enforced so it's it's a very safe space and you know I speak at some of their events and attend their events and I

mean there's women on my team on my SEO team that prefer to be part of that Community compared to other SEO communities because they just feel safer there but you know that that Community absolutely revolutionized the experience of women in the space it made it a much more inclusive place to learn and it gave a lot more opportunities to women where there weren't any before so Props to a reach and that group it's amazing and then whether this applies to women or anyone that's new in

SEO what would your playbook be for someone that wanted to get in the space where they they wanted to get an SEO job because they think it's a you know an interesting work um in know work space whether they want to be a consultant or say hey I think this is the the career path I want to to to take yeah I mean um of course you know I think the the best answer to that is to try to build your own thing at some point

it doesn't have to be like I'm going to put all my eggs in one basket and just make this my life because as we've seen from the past few years that's very risky like to put all your eggs in the Google basket but you should have some experience building your own things number one that experience can be happening while you have another job if they let you have side projects or whatever but I think that's very important something that helped me a lot throughout my career

uh but I would say the most important thing the best way to learn aside from teaching yourself is to have some agency experience um I'm biased because I've been doing over 12 years at SEO agencies but there's just no chance that you could ever come close to learning the amount that we learn as quickly as we do at an agency as you could in another job not to say that people that work in house don't know a ton they actually I always say people that work

work in-house doing in-house SEO for brands have a completely different skill set than what we do on the agency side um I have friends that work at some of the biggest brands doing SEO for them and I'm like we have completely different day-to-day completely different but the one thing about working at an SEO agency and having years at an SEO agency is we've seen it all you name it I've seen it we've worked in every category we worked on every type of SEO disaster every type

of SEO challenge you know e-commerce publishing news whatever affiliate all of it I've done all of it local SEO everything so have at least a couple years of agency experience under your belt whether it's like an internship or an entry-level job because you'll get trained you learn how to do it yeah you're basically going through the maximum amount of case studies possible yeah and it's it's funny to me when people talk about SEO as if it's this one thing when they've only worked on three sites

because I'm like you do you understand how big this world is it's a very big world it's a universe and you're a tiny planet yeah whenever I think about SEO from a big picture I'm like I don't even think we scratch the surface about how deep SEO can get because there's just so many angles like I like focusing on the data side and I think SEO and data been hand going hand to hand for a long time and that's that's a big component but that's not

the only one yeah it's there's a million different ways that you can do SEO or spend your day as an SEO and they're all valid it's all important and then the last question which is what do you see of the future of affiliate Market marketing as it intersects with business intelligence intelligence sure um I don't know it might be less focused on search or the search aspect of it will probably shift to other platforms right like I think we've been talking a lot about Tik Tok

that's probably a very big opportunity for Affiliates um but also AI products like AI AI AI llms um you know figuring out how you can be in included in in llm outputs could be another potential way that this is all going but um it's hard to say I think we have to to um just kind of keep a finger on the pulse of where things are going because there's so much up in the air right now but yeah it's probably going to become a bit less

less focused on Google in particular probably more focused on like on social platforms and video as well yeah I I would agree I I think social is becoming a stronger extension of search it's kind of like you know Google was I trust Google to give me an answer to whatever and now people are saying well I trust other people I need to know that they're the authority and I think uh getting that on social is becoming a lot easier and stronger and not to say that

Google's going to disappear they still got their YouTube in there on the side but um it's an interesting space where I don't see it as a single Monopoly of just Google it's kind of like well Instagram's a player Twitter's a player you know linkedin's a player yeah exactly yeah I think that that's that's the direction it's going I was just thinking today like I've been using chat GPT more and more and more but that doesn't cut into how much I'm searching Google I think I'm still

searching Google just as much I'm just using chat GPT in different ways so we'll see what happens in the next few years but it's going to be very interesting I think it's going to be less of a a Google only Universe going forward uh Lily thank you so much for doing this I want to pass it back to to ask uh how people can get a hold you yeah um well you can Google my name Lily Ray and take your pick of where you want to

contact me but uh I have a personal website ly ray. myc and I have a LinkedIn account that I post on frequently and then X I'm always posting on there as well L rayan Weiss awesome thank you so much thank 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 rating and review wherever you listen to your podcast that helps us expand our reach to rank higher in podcast directories and reach

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