FEATURE
“Why was the termination of the Sky Bet affiliate programme
such a catastrophic mistake? Affiliates drive the vast
majority of non-brand organic search for an operator.
That non-brand traffic is all of the ‘comparison’ traffic”
Because search engines are now the most
trusted and influential information source
there is, it makes sense to say that if you
want to be trusted as a brand, you need to
be seen as trustworthy on organic search.
It’s an important point, so I’m going to
repeat in a different way…
If 88% of consumers research a purchase
— and search engines are more trusted
than mainstream media — it means as a
brand you should have prominence and a
trustworthy footprint in organic search.
Another recap
● ● Organic
search is hard to track,
which is why the influence of search
may come as a surprise to some brands
● ● Organic search is the single most
trusted source of information there is
● ● Most of us use search to make
buying decisions
Back to Sky Bet
Why was the termination of the Sky Bet
affiliate programme such a catastrophic
mistake for this brand?
Affiliates drive the vast majority of
non-brand organic search for an operator.
That non-brand traffic is all of the
‘comparison’ traffic.
Furthermore, affiliates such as
AskGamblers now rank across hundreds
of brand phrases for igaming operators,
so now affiliates are driving brand traffic
via their own affiliate properties!
I did some clicking around on some
Sky Bet affiliate placements and the traffic
goes to a site called wlskybet.iaofr.com
and then gets bounced into Sky Bet.
As you know, this is to enable tracking.
I then queried Majestic and downloaded
all of the referring domains to wlskybet.iaofr.
com using their historical and fresh index
databases. In other words I’ve got data on
Sky Bet’s complete affiliate network.
With this list, I queried SEMrush using
its API and got the search visibility for all
of its referring domains from the SEMrush
UK database.
The SEMrush database tracks the top
100 search results for 20 million keyphrases.
In reality there will be hundreds of millions
of long tail phrases that would probably
represent another 60% more traffic than
SEMrush is accounting for.
In other words, if SEMrush says ‘X’
site has 1,000 visits from organic search,
in reality it’s probably more like 1,600.
Majestic data shows 1,585 referring
domains and SEMrush data shows the
total sum of Sky Bet’s affiliate network:
● ● organic keywords 1,257,470
● ● organic traffic 1,541,162
● ● organic cost $4,303,282 (£3.2m)
Just to explain a little more about the data:
it says the Sky Bet affiliate programme
has 1,585 domains, which rank across
1.257 million keyphrases, with an
estimated organic traffic of 1.5 million
visits worth roughly $4.3m per month.
Is this massive self-harm? I think so, but
only time will tell if it kills Sky Bet.
Finally
We’ve talked about the difficult legal
landscape surrounding affiliates but
common sense tells us that it’s a tiny
minority of affiliate activity that is under
serious scrutiny.
It’s clear that organic search is the most
important source of information when
making a purchase, especially for online
products and services.
The reach that Sky Bet has excluded
itself from... is enormous.
So what do we learn from this?
I hope this article is read by affiliate
managers across the igaming ecosystem
and I hope operators understand they
should not pull the trigger on their
affiliate programme before thinking
very seriously about the dire consequences
that would follow.
Any operator who cares about brand
awareness, revenue and consumer trust
should know that affiliates own operator
reputation online.
“The Sky Bet affiliate programme has 1,585 domains,
which rank across 1.257 million keyphrases,
with an estimated organic traffic of 1.5 million visits
worth roughly £3.2m per month”
True visibility is probably more like
2.5 million keyphrases and three million
visits from organic search a month.
In case you’re wondering, Oddschecker
doesn’t seem to funnel through wlskybet.
iaofr.com, perhaps because there is a
‘special tracking relationship’?
I wonder if Sky Bet executives know
about these numbers. And do they realise
that they’ve not only killed all of that
visibility, but they have voluntarily removed
themselves from the ‘consideration’ cycle?
‘Consideration’: we know that 88% of
shoppers go through search when making a
decision about a purchase.
For consumers, it makes sense that they
will research which operator they join
because they will be trusting a third-party
organisation with their credit card details
and money, as well as trusting them to pay
if they win!
NAME: NICK GARNER
WHEN: 2 NOVEMBER@12:00
WHERE: ROOM 1
NICK GARNER is
an entrepreneur who
founded the successful
bitcoin casino Oshi.
More recently, he has
invested in RIZE.digital, the SEO
agency specialising in improved user
satisfaction. He previously worked as
SEO manager for Betfair and head of
search for Unibet. He is also an affiliate
within sportsbook.
iGB Affiliate Issue 65 OCT/NOV 2017
39