‘Don’t try and optimise for everything, optimise for what’s valuable,’ say SEO expert at SBC’s Digital day panel.
The world of SEO is quickly evolving, and the landscape for affiliate marketers is unpredictable, and their jobs have become ever-more complicated.
SBC hosted a Digital day – a digital event series in with online conferences, focusing on specific challenges in affiliate marketing. The event brought together industry-leading experts to discuss one of the most pressing issues the sector faces: SEO versus GEO.
LLMs and AI chatbots – like ChatGPt, Gemini and Claude – have given rise to a ‘zero-click’ environment, meaning users are increasingly completing their searches without clicking through to any affiliate site thanks to direct answers, AI overviews, and local recommendations.
“The search is changing. The user behaviour is changing. The stats are changing,” explains Eugene Ravdins head of PR at SEOBROTHERS. “It’s not enough to rank high in Google anymore to have traffic, you can be top of the ranking, and still have very little traffic.”
It’s undoubtedly a turbulent time, and the overwhelming outlook from the industry is one of uncertainty. With technology moving forward at such a rapid pace, it’s difficult to imagine how the industry will change going forward.
“We don’t know what will happen. I see a massive change,” says iGaming.com CEO Andreas Ditsche, adding that roughly eight out of ten searches don’t result in a click, so zero-click traffic is here to stay.
But, SEO remains a pillar of the industry, and still has a large basis in informing marketing strategy. Ditsche notes that as an organisation that depends on click-through traffic, his company is still growing – a sign of “hope” for affiliates.
Others agree, with Ravdins arguing that traditional SEO remains “the foundation and the basis for everything that [we] do”. He points out that even when brands don’t focus their efforts specifically on AEO or on getting into the AI overview, they do often find themselves gaining traffic from chatbots, “just by doing what we do”.
This proves a few things. First, it shows that SEO is not ‘dead’ as so many have proclaimed – it has undeniably changed, but it is still at the core of much of the industry’s strategy. Importantly though, it proves that content quality matters.
Ditsche elaborates: “It’s the quality of the content [that matters], and I would even go one step further – it will be vital to have unique content and authority in it, because, let’s be honest, bots copy content from other bots and make it new content that will be then copied again. So, you have a constant development where it’s exchangeable and the content will be without identification, without personality and [made] only with data – that will not attract people, so you really have to balance that.”
Human input is crucial, too. Milica Kuzmanovic, senior SEO manager at Betsson Group, explains that affiliates often think of optimisation as a strictly on-site strategy, but optimisation happens off-site too.
“We need strong digital presence, strong PR, [and] strong public presence of leaders of the company,” she says.
“We are running into this problem where AI is generating AI content that is then being used to generate even more AI content. So real people and real interactions are going to play a role here.”
But, there is such a thing as too much optimisation. Google’s search dominance is wavering, and with so many AI platforms each requiring a specific (and often conflicting) optimisation strategy, it’s not possible to cater for each one.
The solution? “Don’t try and optimise for everything. Optimise for what’s valuable,” says co-founder of Gaminchanger, Sean Bianco. “I would say if you have an interest in LLM answers, the traditional affiliate model is not going to work for you,” he warns.
Rounding paras to conclude
To conclude, the panellists were asked: If you were starting a new affiliate site today and you had $50,000 what is the one thing you would prioritise to ensure you’re still relevant in two years?
Overwhelmingly, they advised that this was not enough. However, the experts advised to start specific – don’t try and compete with broad affiliates, and crucially, try to add something new. The age old recommendation of a unique selling point which adds value for partners and customers still rings true.
