Organic Real Estate; what’s that? 

We are in the midst of a virtual gold rush.  Every web page of information that you own is another chance for you to rank naturally, make passive income with ad revenue and provide your users with the call to action they are searching for.  Whether you are looking to sell directly or generate leads, investing in organic real estate should be a top priority in the 4th quarter of 2006. 

The Goal: Become the most informative and well respected resource in your vertical.  

Decide which site will become your super hub .  This hub should target the demographics of your ideal audience.  If you are like most affiliate marketers, you probably own several sites within each vertical that you promote. 

Your super hub should have the following characteristics:

1) Most traffic of your domains
2) Highest PR
3) Content Management System attached
4) Oldest domain age
5) Existing rankings
6) Best organized 

Once you have concluded which site will become your super hub, you need to begin brainstorming about how to bulk out the existing categories on your site.

Think of each category as a micro site within your hub.  Break them down individually and create mini site maps for each.  If you are working the Insurance vertical and one of your categories is “long term health insurance”, here is how I would approach it:

1) List keywords using WordTracker or Overture Keyword Selector Tool

2) Research top search results for that phrase to learn how other sites are providing value for that keyword.

3) Identify the target audience that would be searching for information on this particular phrase.  This audience is most likely interested in other things beyond Long Term Health Insurance and this step will help you identify potential link partners.

4) Search Google News for results on that phrase.  One of the best ways to come up with new articles for your site is to cover recent news.

5) Are their any Insurance Blogs that focus on this subject?

6) Learn more about your audience by researching sites that are “Created by and for”.  Ex. The Baby Boomer Generation

7) Keep a notepad for each of your verticals and every time you come across new information that you know will be of value, copy and paste it until you are ready to put the information to work.  I save these on my desktop within a “Vertical Data” folder.

Resources: Identify what you have and what you need to become a Super Affiliate
 
Once you have spent time breaking down all of the major and minor categories on your super hub, you need to figure out how you are going to manage all of this.  The majority of affiliates have contractors that they have been working with over the years and some have staff anywhere from 1 – 50+ employees.

Even if you never had plans to become a more “corporate” company, you must take in to consideration how you plan to scale your business.

Develop an internal operation to build assets and value or outsource strategically to keep your operation slim and easier to manage?  This is a big question that you may have already asked yourself or found yourself contemplating.

Fundamental positions for an internal operation:

Editor: This person should have a solid understanding of Journalistic Writing , HTML, Blog Management, SEO Basics, writing staff management.

Writers: These writers should either be experts or highly interested in what vertical you work in.  They must have an understanding of various writing styles along with basic knowledge of SEO.

Business Development & Advertising: I find that this role is usually taken by the CEO as most CEO’s love doing deals.  I do feel that in order for you to grow to another level, you should begin empowering someone to take on this responsibility.  You will obviously have the final answer on whether a deal flies or not but this way you are posturing your company to scale and you are adding more assets internally.

Jr. Analyst: The analyst will help you all researching tasks during the planning phase of your project.  They will also assist in any of the overflow that happens during the creation and integration process.   This role should go to the “apprentice” of your company.  The goal is to duplicate yourself with this person as you want them to eventually manage all of these roles for you next year.

Programmer: Your programmer is usually your partner or at least vested in your deal.  This person has one of the most pivotal roles in your company.  They need to have your work ethic, your dedication and your inspiration to continue building a better “product” for both the users and the search engines.

Designer: Your design team is crucial as they are developing all of your landing page creatives, email creatives, banner creatives and brand creatives.  They need to work well with your programmer and understand your style of project management. We all know that deadlines are of the utmost importance and usually the design portion of your work takes the most time to complete and finalize. Find an innovator that has management experience as you will most likely grow this team to have one designer for each aspect of your business.

Strategic Outsourcing:  Do you have the time to develop and manage a team internally?  If the answer is no, you need to find companies that have already systemized these processes for you.  Work with them and figure out a cost that you will be able to live with based on the work that is being done.

“To be a Super Affiliate Powerhouse, you need two things:  Unique Content & Relevant links pointing to your unique content”.

Content: Content Development and integration is how you are going to gain the most organic real estate.  If there is any part of this process that you should prioritize Content Development is it.  There are different types of content and different ways to leverage its effects.

Unique Content Development: Content Kings Media Group has over 100 professional writers managed by a premiere editing team.  They specialize in the planning, development and integration of robust content campaigns.  They own a proprietary CMS that allows them to create thousands of unique articles per month for their clients and partners.  CKMG provides the following types of content:

SEO Copywriting
Educational Articles
Authoritative Feature Articles
Landing Page Sales Content
Promotional Marketing Content
Blog Management Services
Press Releases

Links:

Professional Link Development Training: Jim Boykin and Todd Malicoat aka “Stuntdubl” are two industry experts when it comes to Link Strategy, Planning and Development.  You can send your team to train with them at their offices for the day or pay for them to fly to your home town and train you.  They also offer link building training over the phone.  This can be a great solution for you if you are looking to have staff trained of if you would like to take that responsibility on yourself.

Text Link Ads: buy or sell: TextLinkAds provides you with an easy to use category search allowing you to locate the best possible text links for your web pages.  They also provide you with a way to monetize your own internal pages by offering link services to their clients.

Google Related Links: Use Google to provide your site with fresh, dynamic and interesting content links to your site based on what is useful and relevant to your sites existing content.  This is a great way to provide more value to your users and to make your site “stickier”.

Execution:

Develop a plan of action worksheet with your team assigning detailed tasks and target deadlines.  There should be weekly calls scheduled to manage the progression of work. 

I see super affiliates adding 100 to 1,000 web pages per month to their primary hub and to their managed network of web sites.  There are affiliates with full time staff dedicated to the creation of relevant links for both traffic and PR.

I also see affiliates with lots of plans and a whole lot of contemplation because they don’t know where to begin.

1) Establish your Goals: Traffic, Rankings, PR, Alexa Rating, Leads/Sales Per month and attach dates to each goal.  Set goals for everything you would like to improve, get granular with them.  Ex. Pages Indexed, Backward Links, etc.

2) Plan your Strategy:  Assess what you have to work with internally.  Identify who your key players are and whatever you have left over, you know you will need to outsource to a company that understands what you are trying to do.  Establish your team and schedule your first meeting.  Announce goals, assign responsibilities, set deadlines and develop an organization chart for communication.

3) Take massive Action: Lead by example and keep the team on course.  If you miss a deadline don’t get discouraged. Adjust the date and figure out what didn’t happen and don’t let it happen again.

Tom Elliott is the CEO and Co-Founder of Content Kings, Inc. known as CKMG.com.  CKMG specializes in Content Development, SEO Strategy & Management  and Lead Generation  for various competitive industries.