“Affiliates Will Suddenly Be Getting A Lot Of Calls From Brands”, Lily Ray On Future Of Affiliate Marketing and SEO

Observing and reflecting upon the current situation in SEO can sometimes make one feel like Poe’s narrator who comes within view of the melancholy House of Usher. “A sense of insufferable gloom pervades the spirit.”

For the past year, the space has been struck by setback after setback that have wiped out industries, stifled affiliate marketers, and buried publishers two pages deep below sponsored results and AI Overviews. It really is like a Poe story.

However, for the first time in months, I feel hopeful, even excited, about the future of affiliate marketers using SEO strategies. 

That’s thanks to a fantastic session by Lily Ray, Vice President, SEO Strategy & Research at Amsive, at Awin’s Global ThinkTank event last week.

A house in collapse

Ray began with an overview of Google’s big disruptive updates from the past few years – Florida, Panda, and Penguin – which targeted different SEO strategies considered to be spammy. For the most part, a lot of these strategies were unhelpful to users: link stuffing, exact-match domains, and doorway pages.