How To Pitch & Recruit Value Adding SEO Affiliates – Step by Step

The goldmine in the Affiliate World is having a value adding SEO Affiliate that builds a site specifically for your program.  Although everyone promises they can recruit these partners, chances are they cannot and will not be able to because you have to have a special relationship and a program that can be pitched effectively to a value adding SEO Affiliate.  But don’t worry, this blog post will help you to know what to look for and help you to recruit value adding SEO Affiliates with step by step instructions that I use on my own pitches.

Why are value adding SEO Affiliates the gold standard?

Not everyone is good with SEO, and not everyone cannot rank for the big terms that drive traffic and sales.  That’s why recruiting value adding SEO Affiliates for your affiliate program is important and what makes them the most sought after.  I’m going to use my client DecorativeCeilingTiles.net‘s affiliate program in this post as an example.  This is a program that is ideal for pitching and recruiting SEO Affiliates because it is very clean, content site friendly and meets a lot of the criteria in the sections below.  Before I show you how I pitch, I want to go over what a value adding SEO affiliate is and what a low value or non value adding SEO affiliate could be. 

So what is the difference between a low or non and a value adding SEO Affiliate?

• A low or non value adding SEO Affiliate is an Affiliate that builds pages to rank for your site and poach your traffic.  This includes a coupon site that builds pages to rank for your url or trademark + coupons, an Affiliate that buys variations of your url or url + extensions or Affiliates that try to rank their current sites for your company’s names.  Unless you have serious ORM issues and need a site to replace you for URL Scam or URL Reviews, these are low or non value adding affiliates and may prevent smart value adding Affiliates from joining your program.
• A value adding SEO Affiliate is someone that builds a site to rank for products or services and does not focus on your trademarks or go after your customer base.  They go after the terms you cannot rank for, the long tail terms you don’t rank for and works to rank with you for terms you do rank for, but don’t have all of the top positions for.  By ranking for those terms you can get more of the search volume and in theory more sales since the person continues to discover you and does not find competitors.  They can either add on to a current site if you are relevant for it, or some will buy a new site and build it from scratch and get it to rank over time to drive sales for you.

Now that you know the difference, here is one way to pitch and recruit value adding SEO Affiliates.

How to develop a pitch for value adding SEO Affiliates.

Developing a pitch to bring in these partners is easy.  The trick is knowing how to pitch them, what to say and to be able to show examples.  Many of them will check for things like affiliates ranking for your URL + Coupons, some will check for adware and others will look for leaks and other things that cause them to lose money.  By having a clean program you are much more likely to get one to join your program.

Dirty programs have a chance to recruit them, but if a clean program comes along then they can more easily pull your top performer and you lose the traffic and sales.  If you want me to run a test or audit on your program, please use my contact form and if I have time I will be happy to do it.

The first thing I do is create a power point presentation (here is a power point template affiliate program I manage if you want a cool design) or you can use another presentation program to walk them through why they should invest a lot of time, money and effort into your program.  Each slide is focused around a specific part of the program that speaks directly to a value adding partner.

Remember to not say something like “we don’t work with toolbars” to the new Affiliate because if you do, and they find it, you may never get another chance to work with them again.  The best thing to do is say you will double check but as far as you know you do not.  Then let them know that if they find them to tell you so that you can remove them and follow up with the new partner once they are removed.  If you will allow them to be stolen from by coupon + url, adware, etc… This shows you are proactive and will help protect them from theft.

Slide 1:

Selling points of your product lines – I start with the selling points of the products and services and merchant.  You want to get your new partner excited about promoting you and let them know why these are the products and you are a merchant that they should focus on.  Here are some of the selling points that I use for pitching value adding SEO Affiliates for DecorativeCeilingTiles.net.

• Only available online – By having the majority of products only available online, their website visitors have to shop online and can’t do research then shop offline.   This means they have a better chance at getting their commissions since they need to buy online.
• Exclusive products – By having exclusive products only available through the merchant, the person has to shop there if they want them.  They can’t visit the merchant and then shop somewhere else.
• The site layout and design – Go through the shopping process and layout of the site.  Talk about the sales funnels, the path the person goes through and also how they encourage shopping instead of increasing clicks and adding extra steps.  You can talk about leaks, copy and other things to help talk about the steps to better convert website traffic.  Here is a post I wrote about onsite copy for SEO and user experience.

Slide 2:

This slide is about the lack of competition.  You can do one about general high volume keywords and one about long tail, or combine both onto one slide.

• Show a url string the person can click to see the top ten results and then break down the top 5 by SEO issues:
  • Bad code
  • A lack of copy
  • No images
  • Title tags that aren’t appealing or good
  • Low authority or a lack of proper SEO basics
• Provide a url string for a long tail term and then provide the same types of details.

Slide 3:

This slide is about what you will do for them to make their lives easier or to help with getting them started.

• Provide them with a great url – If you have extra urls, see if you can give one away to the new Affiliate.
• Offer them help with design work – Having a great design built off of schema.org will mean a lot to the partner and give them a way to get started much quicker.
• Create a keyword list and content outline for part of the site and offer to help write the first 4 or 5 articles for them.
• If you are able to build backlinks or help with backlinks, this can be huge if they are quality links.
• You can also provide a list of high volume or high converting keywords from your PPC campaigns to help them get started and to know what they may want to focus on.

Slide 4:

This slide is all about the extra steps you take to protect their traffic and sales.

• Protection from theft – If they are driving new visitors to your site, talk about how you protect them from having their cookie or tracking overwritten or replaced.
  • No sites ranking for url + coupon (If you have leapfrogging available talk about that as well)
  • No adware or toolbars
  • No trademark bidders
  • No leaks or how you protect them from leaks (the same pixel in the other sites shopping cart)
  • No remarketing done with affiliate links or exit pops or live chat companies that use affiliate links for shopping cart abandonment
  • No pick up and pay at our retail location options
• Dedicated support – One thing that is very important for a value adding SEO Affiliate is to know they have someone they can reach out to that will give them a response in a timely manner.  If they only work in the evening or on the weekends, give them a way to reach out to you to ask questions, especially about products if they are writing copy or building links.  This is a huge selling point for them.

Slide 5:

This slide is about competitors if the Affiliate has a site and is already promoting another company. Showing examples and comparing why your program is better is a huge way to get them to want to work with you or give you more exposure if you are already on their site.

Pull up other competitors programs and have examples of why you are the right program to promote.  It can address a lot of the things from slide 4 and some of the other slides.  You can also take screen shots and provide labeled comparisons with the issues and why you are the better program to work with.  These images speak a huge volume.  If you show their traffic being driven away or cookies and tracking being replaced, that makes your point even stronger.

Slide 6:

This slide has your program details on it.  It should be used to get your new partner excited to work with you.

• Commission
• Cookie life
• Phone tracking
• A url to sign up
• Your contact information
• A bonus for them if they start before a certain date and a higher commission if they can start sending sales before XYZ.

Pitching and recruiting value adding SEO Affiliates is hard, but if you can get a good one to sign up that will focus on the site dedicated to your company, they can become one of your top ten partners.  They will have their own traffic that you do not have access to, or give you extra exposure for your best keywords which can prove the value of the affiliate channel.  This can also help to drive a lot of incremental sales.  The important thing to remember is that if they build a site for you it costs them time, money and takes a lot of effort.  Make sure you focus on them, why your program is the best for them and make sure they know you are there to help them.  Once you have this in place, you are on your way to creating a successful pitch to recruit value adding SEO Affiliates.

*Image was purchased from DepositPhotos.