How to Increase Profit 179% in Under 60 Days in 9 Steps (Affiliate SEO Case Study)

This post will highly deviate from the format of my regular posts.

I’ve had quite a few requests to release a case study where I delve into the actual steps I’ve taken to get a site ranked higher and generating more profit.

So here we are.

In this article, we’re going to take a look at a particular affiliate website that grew in monthly profit by 179% in less than two months.

I’ll reveal the exact actions that I took to improve the site’s organic rankings and conversion rate optimization (CRO), resulting in nearly double the profit.

Before we get started, I’d like to make a quick introduction…

Meet Alex

Other than being a super handsome guy and a near-clone of Jake Gyllenhaal, Alex is a really good SEO.

Alex produces and ranks high-quality affiliate sites in the Amazon affiliate space, which allows him to travel and surf the globe nonstop.  Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Alex had a problem, though.  He was spending more and more time focusing on new projects and, let’s not forget, surfing.  In doing so, he was neglecting some of his projects that he knew deserved more attention than they were getting.

To fix this, Alex applied to my LeadSpring Launchpad JV affiliate program.  We decided we were a good fit and forged a partnership.  As a result, I assumed responsibility over the ranking and conversion rate optimization (CRO) of one of his affiliate sites.

This is how Launchpad works.  I take over the management of one of your sites.  From that point on, you do nothing.  No more PBNs, content updates… nothing.

Whatever profit I add to the site, we split 50-50%.

Before partnering, Alex was making $2900 from his site. We increased profit to $5204.  So essentially I’ve added $2304 additional profit added to the site which is split 50-50%.

In two months’ time, Alex is making $4052, while doing absolutely nothing.

It’s a solid win-win.

I talked to Alex and he’s graciously given his permission for me to discuss the site’s biggest wins regarding SEO and CRO.

Of course we’re not giving away the niche or the URL, but here’s what you need to know:

• Monetization: Amazon affiliate and a bit of AdSense
• Niche: Home products
• Size: 55 Indexed Pages
• Site age: 2 years
• Ranking methodology: PBN
• Daily traffic:
  • Before partnering: ~195 unique visitors
  • After two months: ~327 unique visitors
• Profit:
  • Before partnering: $2900/month
  • After two months: $5204/month

How We Nearly Doubled Revenue in Two Months

SEO Wins

1)  Cast a Wider Net with Onsite SEO

Two of the biggest onsite SEO keyword placeholders are the SEO title tag (<title>) and the page title (H1).

The SEO title tag can accommodate 70 characters while the page title can be any length you want, as long as you don’t look spammy.  This gives us a ton of bandwidth to sneak in keywords into these critical on-page spots.

We were able to target 324 additional longtail keywords by intelligently rewriting title tags and H1s.  The key is to increase the range of longtail coverage, while making sure to avoid keyword stuffing and over-optimization.

2)  Reduced Keyword Density

By looking at the total word count of each page and comparing it to various keyword counts, we found that a few pages were overly dense.

Reducing these densities gave us a quick win, as was expected with onsite SEO changes.

3)  Reorganized the Inter-Linking Architecture

We performed a diagnosis of each page on the site and listed them in order of:

1. High traffic
2. High buyer intent

Once we could prioritize which pages were the most important to rank, we directed more link juice and topical relevance to the most critical ones.  At the same time, we unlinked pages that had little topical similarity.

This is easier said than done, as it requires a bit of experience with understanding how and why Google would think that some pages are similar, but once that’d understood, the rewards are fab.

4)  Technical cleanup

We audited the site, cleaned up empty alt tags, fixed the sitemap, removed redundant structural markup, and added schema.

Boring stuff… but it all counts.

5)  Hit it with an Offsite Makeover

We gave the site the full Diggity offsite package, including:

• Traffic generating PBNs
• Real social signals
• A comprehensive and holistic social fortress
• Anchor text adjustment according to what the niche was asking for

All of these SEO wins stacked up over time, and in two months, we increased daily traffic by 50%.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Wins

6)  Increased the Frequency of In-line Call-to-Actions (CTAs)

There’s a sweet spot when it comes to conversion.  You don’t want too many CTAs on a page as it might turn-off the reader.  But then again, you don’t want too few.

We applied various A/B tests to figure out each page’s sweet spot to ensure that we get the highest amount of clicks to our offers.

7)  Added Comparison Tables

People are busy.  More often than not, visitors won’t take the time to read content, even if it solves their problems.

For these folks, we created comparison tables for them to be able to quickly determine which product best meets their needs.

8)  Made the Site Prettier and more User-friendly

We added more relevant images to the content.  This not only increases the perceived value of a website, but it also reduces huge walls-of-text that might have caused readers to bounce because they got bored.

We have to remember that we’re in an age where our attention spans are highly fickle.  Adding in interesting images will keep a person on-site, which increases their chances of clicking CTAs.

Tip: Split test your images around call to actions.  For example, someone smiling vs. someone angry can all have a surprising effect on conversions.

9)  Made the Site Mobile-Friendly.

We tossed the site into a mobile compatibility checker and saw that a few of the CTAs weren’t showing up because the pages weren’t responsive.

This was fixed and as a result, no matter how you’re viewing the site (whether it is on a PC, tablet, or phone) you have access to all of the content, images, and most importantly, CTAs.

Tip: Track to see how many of your visitors are coming from mobile. You can do this in Analytics or Clicky. Many sites have more mobile visitors than desktop.  Make sure you are serving these users the best you can.

In just under two months, this project was a huge success and today the profit continues to grow.  We’re on track to increase site revenue by another 50% at the end of this month and, so far, we see no sign of this niche hitting a plateau.  The sky seems to be the limit.

Here’s what Alex had to say about the Launchpad experience…

The funny thing is, as happy as Alex is with our partnership, we’re equally as happy to be working with him.  That’s what JVs are all about.

If partnering up is also something that you’re interested in doing, make sure to apply at LeadSpring.org.

Over time, I’ll be releasing more of these case studies, highlighting the factors that yielded the biggest wins in our projects.  Stay tuned.