Here’s Why Smaller Affiliate Sites Are Losing Rankings After Google’s Core Update and How Brand Search Can Reverse the Trend.

Affiliate sites have been hit hard in search rankings since Google’s March 2024 core update, leading some to lay off teams or cut budgets.

Despite believing they adhere to Google’s guidelines and providing “helpful content” based on experience, these sites are still struggling. What could they be missing?

Danny Ashton, founder of the air purifier review site HouseFresh, expressed his frustration in an article, stating that “Google is killing independent sites” like HouseFresh, which lost 91% of its Google traffic, nearly destroying the business.

Ashton wrote, “We keep an eye on Google’s news and documentation because these updates can make or break our website. That said, we don’t write for Google’s robots and always make editorial decisions with our readers in mind.”

What’s Changed?

Since Google’s March 2024 core update, many affiliate sites without significant brand searches have seen a drop in traffic. Marketers often believe that large authority sites are outranking them, making it difficult for small “independent” sites to compete.

However, the issue isn’t that smaller sites can’t outrank large brands due to overall authority. The real problem is that smaller sites are not driving brand search.

Brand search refers to how your audience seeks out your website or offering after encountering your product, service, or ideas on another platform (e.g., press or social media). It’s a crucial factor that smaller sites must focus on to regain their rankings and traffic.

Sites with Brand Search Are Ranking

In a recent Search Engine Land article, I highlighted the importance of brand search using an example of how an e-bike brand ranks first for high-volume, high-competition keywords.

Air Purifier Brand Ranking

For keywords like “air purifier reviews” and “best treadmills,” Google has replaced affiliate sites lacking brand searches with those with substantial brand search presence.

For instance, HouseFresh, an affiliate site reviewing air purifiers, saw its rankings and traffic plummet after the March core update. Review articles from sites such as The Spruce, which cover a wide range of home and garden topics, have overtaken it. The key difference? The Spruce has a strong brand search presence, while HouseFresh does not. Google has been increasingly favoring sites with brand search for some time now.

Treadmill Brand Ranking

This trend is also visible for the keyword “best treadmills.” TreadmillReviews.net lost its traffic for treadmill-related keywords, whereas Garage Gym Reviews’ best treadmill article now ranks first and continues to grow. The March core update has pushed brand search closer to being a requirement in SEO, reflecting an ongoing trend.

I recently analyzed top-ranking sites for cybersecurity keywords and discovered a correlation between brand search volume and top-three Google rankings. The graph showed that higher brand search volume and more brand mentions are associated with more keywords ranked in the top three positions. This indicates that Google values brand search significantly.

SEO professionals must focus on building brand search traffic, not just ranking for non-brand keywords. The two are now interlinked.

What can affiliate sites—and any site, for that matter—do in response to the growing importance of brand search?

The Importance of Brand Search in SEO

We are entering a new era of SEO, in which brand search has become a crucial indicator of your site’s ability to rank in search results, particularly for non-brand keywords in highly competitive areas.

Brand search reflects your site’s authority, trust, and influence within a specific field (essentially a humanized way of discussing E-E-A-T). It gauges how well your messaging resonates with your audience and drives them to search for your brand after encountering your content or messaging.

Consider this scenario:

You have an audience segmentation platform designed to address critical issues for consumer packaged goods (CPG) brand managers. Your product has been featured in TechCrunch and other industry publications. When brand managers read about your platform, they search for your website on Google for more information. This directly results from how your content has influenced their search behavior.

Brand search is pivotal in your audience’s online journey, whether they’re solving a problem, creating an opportunity, or seeking helpful content. You can cultivate this through compelling content, showcasing your expertise, and delivering valuable products or services.

Research shows that 70% of online shoppers turn to Google after learning about a product on social media, and 45% of Americans believe media influence is growing.

This underscores that brand search directly determines how effectively you influence your audience’s search behavior. Search behavior encompasses how a specific audience seeks a website or expertise within a given topic area.

Therefore, many SEO strategies should now focus on driving brand search by shaping and influencing the audience’s search behavior.

What’s Next for Affiliate Sites?

Affiliates must develop a unified PR and SEO strategy to influence audience search behavior and drive them to search for your brand as part of their natural search patterns.

For a deeper understanding, you might find the following articles I wrote for Search Engine Land applicable:

• How to Integrate Cross-Functional SEO and PR Teams: Aligning PR and SEO teams with business objectives.
• What is Digital PR for SEO?: A guide on integrating digital PR with SEO goals.

Influencing audience search behavior is complex, but here are some practical tips to gain media coverage and drive brand search based on my years of testing:

• Create PR Studies: Develop studies on trends that engage both the media and your audience. I exclusively use studies in my digital PR for SEO campaigns because they effectively attract coverage.
• Become an Expert Source: Journalists always seek expert sources to provide insights on data, trends, or complex topics. Audiences of these publications often use search engines to find more information about the topics discussed, so becoming a go-to expert can drive brand searches.

Start Driving Brand Search

The ongoing updates to Google’s helpful content guidelines continually reshape SEO strategies, with a growing emphasis on brand search.

Smaller affiliate sites need to understand that their ranking decline isn’t just due to competition from larger brands but also due to their inability to generate brand-specific searches.

To adapt, these sites should integrate their PR and SEO efforts to influence audience behavior effectively, enhance brand recognition, and boost their search visibility in this evolving SEO landscape.

Key Takeaways

• Importance of Brand Search: Recent declines in affiliate traffic highlight that sites with solid brand search tend to perform better in rankings, while those lacking brand search experience more significant losses.
• Struggles for Smaller Sites: Smaller affiliate sites are losing visibility not due to a lack of authority but because they fail to drive brand-specific searches.
• Need for Strategic Shift: Affiliate sites must adopt integrated PR and SEO strategies that influence audience search behavior and enhance brand-specific searches to improve visibility.

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