Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for driving traffic and revenues in the affiliate marketing space. However, distinguishing effective and ethical SEO from spammy "black hat" tactics can be challenging.
That's why we're excited to provide an exclusive inside look at the proven SEO strategies of expert affiliate marketer Maxim Sabri. Sabri recently sat down for an in-depth interview sharing tips and insights from his experiences building successful affiliate sites and teams.
In this article, we'll recap Sabri's advice on conducting keyword research, selecting profitable GEOs, generating traffic from tier-3 countries, and more. We'll also get his take on whether purchasing backlinks is worth it, and if Google rankings come down to anything beyond on-page optimization.
For affiliate marketers struggling to grow and monetize organic traffic, Sabri's tactics could provide a blueprint for elevating your strategy. By learning from his real-world lessons in penetrating new markets and optimizing sites for higher conversions, you may be able to substantially improve your own earnings.
Let's dive in to extract as much tactical SEO and affiliate marketing knowledge as possible from marketing master Maxim Sabri.
To find out more information on money making and affiliate marketing, we advise you to visit our Telegram channel, where you’ll find tons of useful information.
About the Team
Maxim's team specializes in the gambling vertical, optimizing websites for casinos through SEO and testing strategies in the cryptocurrency niche. They are also trying to venture into a new trend in gambling — live streaming.
Maxim couldn't specify the exact number of people on his team but estimated it to be around 25-30 individuals. The team's structure includes:
- Head of SEO: Currently, this position is held by the owner himself, who is actively searching for a manager for this role;
- Project Manager: Responsible for overseeing the team's business processes;
- Link Builder: Engages in backlink acquisition and outreach;
- Designer-Programmer: A unique case where one person handles both design and programming functions in the team;
- Content Managers: Responsible for content creation and publication on websites;
- Content Managers’ assistant.
Outreach is one of the tools used to develop a website's external profile. It involves direct agreements with owners of various internet resources for placing content mentioning the site, brand, or event. Often, this includes backlinks or banners seamlessly integrated into the published material.
What are your criteria for selecting team members?
My main consideration is passion. None of my members had prior SEO experience, as I personally trained them from scratch, except for assistants of content managers.
In your experience, how long does it take to train someone in SEO?
If we're talking about the specific skills needed for my team's requirements, a couple of days of training are sufficient. This is valid assuming the person has critical thinking skills and is ready to absorb information.
Finding Keywords for a New Geographical Area
At the request of the YouTube channel authors, Sabri demonstrated how to use Ahrefs to find keywords that can be used for SEO in the gambling niche. As an example, he chose the Brazilian website casino.org/br/.
Next, one should logically consider which search query will attract a user who is likely to make a deposit. Maxim selected the key phrase "poker online dinheiro real" as the primary keyword, reasoning that a user searching for "online poker for real money" is likely to make a deposit.
Ahrefs showed two major websites ranking at the top for this query. The fourth-ranking site had a Domain Rating (DR) of 26, and the ninth had a DR of 21. According to the speaker, sites with a DR less than 40 aren't considered strong. Therefore, it makes sense to aim for a top-10 position for this keyword in Google search results.
Domain Rating (DR) is one of the primary metrics in the Ahrefs tool. It represents a domain's backlink authority and is used by SEO specialists to assess a site's strength compared to others.
Using the method described above, one should select several more keywords. Sabri advised against using the popular query "bonus sem depósito" (bonus without deposit), as it attracts an audience of bonus hunters who want to play for free and are unlikely to make deposits.
The key phrase "europa casino" brings in branded traffic, which isn't the best quality, but there is a substantial volume of traffic for this query, making it a viable option.
As shown in the screenshot below, several sites have a DR of less than 40 for these keywords. This suggests that it's possible to aim for a top-10 ranking for these keywords.
"By investing $6 000-7 000 in SEO for a site using keywords gathered this way, it's possible to see returns within 2-4 months," Maxim claimed.
Employee Motivation
In response to a question about how he manages to retain team members and prevent them from going solo, Maxim discussed two factors:
- In many affiliate marketing teams, when there are traffic downturns, affiliates still receive a minimum profit share, even when owners may incur losses. By working independently, an affiliate marketer assumes all the financial risks.
- He raises the salaries of all his employees every 2-3 months and also offers bonuses for First Time Depositors (FTD).
"It sometimes happens that in a particular month, we purchase many expensive dropshipping products, leading to a temporary profit loss. In such situations, I don't see anything alarming. I withdraw funds from circulation and distribute salaries and bonuses to our team," Sabri boasted about his altruistic approach.
FTD (First Time Deposit) refers to the initial deposit made by a referred trader when they deposit real money into their account.
What are the salaries of your employees?
I'll put it this way: I am confident that by 2023-2024, all my top employees will be earning $4 000-5 000 and above.
In which countries' markets do you operate?
I can't specify the exact geo, but I can tell you that we operate from LATAM and above (including the USA and Canada).
Can you name some underrated geographies in gambling?
Yes, practically all of LATAM, particularly Brazil and Mexico. Many affiliate marketers also claim that Tier-3 is a wasteland where you can't make money with SEO websites in gambling. I tried promoting in one of the Tier-3 countries; I won't specify which one. The average RevShare income per player there was $200. Initially, the median was around $10, but over time, after the daily FTD reached around $200, a few high rollers significantly raised the average earnings. Therefore, I am confident that it is profitable to work with any geo.
Another Way to Find Keywords in Ahrefs:
Relevant queries can be found through the "Top Pages" tab.
Maxim selected the "roleta" page on the casino.org website.
Among the keywords for which this page is ranking, the speaker chose "sites de roleta."
Among the top 10 websites ranking for this keyword, one has a DR of 8.
"We don't even buy drops with a DR lower than 8, so displacing such a site from its position won't be a big challenge," Sabri commented on the competitor's site.
Stages of Creating a Gambling Website and Traffic Analysis:
The speaker skipped the technical part of building a website. Below you’ll see his perspective on the key aspects of creation and analysis:
- Content Upload:
- Bonuses
- Slots
- Payment Systems
- Brand Reviews
- Provider Slots
2. Analyzing which of the above types of content performs better.
3. Purchasing and placing links to increase the site's trust.
4. Deposit analysis: It's essential to understand which page attracts the most deposits. According to Maxim's experience, around 90% of deposits come from pages that collectively generate 15-20% of the traffic. In other words, the pages that bring in the most traffic don't always generate the most deposits.
Maxim also offered the following advice: It's important to evaluate the quality, not just the quantity, of deposits. For example, if one page brings in 50 FTDs with a total deposit amount of $1000, that's $20 per player. On the other hand, another page brings in 3 FTDs with a total deposit of $20 000. Obviously, it makes sense to focus on boosting the second page in this example.
"You don't need to try to be a great SEO and spend time promoting the entire site. Understanding which pages generate revenue and focusing all efforts on their SEO is enough," Maxim concluded.
Services Used for SEO:
- Ahrefs: Used for competitor analysis, allowing you to understand how much money the site owner has invested in backlinks. You can't uncover PBNs through Ahrefs, but you can see all purchased links. Additionally, you can use this platform to scrape competitors' keywords.
- Serpstat or SeoRanker: Used to determine the positions of promoted websites.
- Keitaro: Used to understand which page a player came from.
Regarding the purchase of backlinks and behavioral factors manipulation:
Links come in different types, for example, crowd and submit links — they only work for those who sell them, and in SEO, they are absolutely useless.
In general, the speaker has a negative stance towards purchased backlinks for the following reasons:
- Google only detects a small portion of links, and even fewer are indexed.
- In any niche, it's possible to acquire high-quality links for free. For instance, you can create a review for a casino affiliate program, and they may, in return, provide a testimonial link. Not only are such links relatively cost-free, but they also carry significant weight compared to purchased submissions. Maxim believes that if you do decide to buy links, it should be done judiciously, avoiding acquiring links indiscriminately at low prices.
How much do you spend on link building per month?
I aim to purchase one link per week for each site, excluding PBNs. This amounts to $300-400 per month for one site.
We don't specifically invest in PBNs since we strive to turn every domain into a primary resource. This is successful in about 40% of cases. Combining the budgets for intentionally purchased links and PBNs results in approximately $1500 per month for one site.
Do you engage in manipulating behavioral factors?
I know it works in Yandex. I've also heard that some people attempt to manipulate them in Google. I'm confident that those who successfully manipulate behavioral factors invest a significant amount of money in doing so. Furthermore, it's a complex process that requires specialists who are well-versed in the field.
My negative attitude towards manipulating behavioral factors is not only because it's laborious and expensive. I don't know of any cases where behavioral manipulation worked as a standalone SEO tool. Typically, it's combined with other promotion methods, making it impossible to determine what ultimately contributed to a site's ranking.
Repeating the Fate of a Weak Competitor
Another promotional method shared by Maxim involves finding a low DR competitor and examining the keywords they are ranking for. By copying and improving upon their promotion strategy to reach the top 10, you can replace the weaker competitor in the search results with your own site.
As an example, the guy chose the keyword "blaze casino" in Ahrefs. As seen in the screenshot below, two sites in the top 10 have a DR lower than 40. Additionally, many pages in the search results have no relevance to this brand.
Next, you need to check which other keywords the competitors with low DR are ranking for. After that, you should purchase a drop for the specific geo, in this case, Brazil, and publish articles about the brand on it. If it's not about branded keywords, you can redirect the traffic where needed.
A roulette script is added to the site to allow users to spin the wheel. Additionally, buttons for redirecting to the casino site are included if the customer wishes to play for real money.
AI Tools for Content
Many SEO professionals place great emphasis on the quality of the text and believe that, at this stage of their development, AI tools are unsuitable for generating content for primary sites. Maxim thinks this assertion is valid only for informational websites. On resources created for SEO in gambling, most page texts go unread. Therefore, the feasibility of using AI tools should be evaluated solely from an economic perspective.
"Sometimes it's cheaper and easier to hire a copywriter to write the text than to deal with AI tools. In such cases, it's best to prefer a copywriter. If you can generate texts quickly with an AI tool, then I see no reason not to do it."
Sabri added an important detail. Google is currently actively combating texts generated by GPT-3 and there is a high likelihood that it will address all AI tools soon. In this case, before using them, you should have a script in place that can easily replace all texts generated by AI in the event of a Google update.
Answers to Questions
What is better, a PBN network or one large site?
A single large site is better, complemented by a good PBN network, as well as purchased links and outreach.
How many people should ideally be on the team to efficiently manage both on-page and off-page optimization processes?
You need a specialist for on-page optimization who can also double as a content manager. Additionally, you'll need a designer and a programmer. For off-page optimization, one person who can purchase links and engage in outreach is sufficient.
How much would you estimate it costs to build a gambling website from scratch?
Starting from $20 000 per month, but the exact amount depends on various factors. In my first project, I invested $50 000, and it generated around $6 000 to $7 000 per month after a few months. It was a stressful journey because during that period, I spent around $9 000 to $10 000 on the team and further site promotion. Eventually, after 8 months, this project started breaking even, and we decided to try a different geo where the results were significantly better.
What should be done with "dead" websites, those that have dropped below the top ten positions? Can they be revived?
If you want to bury a site, hide it on the second page of search results; there, no one will find it for sure. It's easier and cheaper to promote a different domain and redirect the content from the underperforming site. Another option is to completely deindex it and move the content to another site.
How long does it take to get a newly registered site into the top 10?
This depends on the geo. I had a case where I took a site from Tier-3 to the top 10 in a month and a half. On average, it takes about six months.
Can you tell us about a profitable gambling site you've managed?
I've noticed a pattern that the most profitable sites are often the ones you least expect. For instance, I've had cases where sites I invested $500 to $600 in brought in around $20 000.
What is the most expensive domain you've ever purchased?
$3 000. I prefer buying several relatively inexpensive domains rather than one for $50 000.
