We increased applications from three partners by
Number of underperforming URLs discovered due to Search Domination Project
A leading online trading and investment platform, serving millions of customers worldwide. Known for providing access to a broad range of financial instruments, the brand aims to empower traders and investors with user-friendly tools, educational resources, and competitive pricing. Operating in one of the most tightly regulated sectors in online trading, the brand must constantly balance growth ambitions with compliance requirements.
The brand faced a unique set of hurdles in the UK affiliate market. Due to compliance regulations, the pool of potential affiliate partners was already limited. Traditional partners, such as cashback and voucher sites, were largely out of scope, leaving content publishers and comparison sites as the primary focus.
However, several further challenges emerged:
Many of the brand’s long-term affiliate partners had traditionally ranked well in search results, but core algorithm updates from Google caused significant shifts in visibility. Partners that had been reliable traffic drivers dropped in ranking or disappeared from page one altogether.
For highly competitive commercial terms like “best trading platform UK” and “best stock broker”, the brand’s visibility on affiliate’s pages was inconsistent, and often below the fold. Even when affiliates were ranking well, the brand wasn’t always one of the top recommendations.
Like others in the financial services sector, the brand operates in a heavily regulated environment. This limits the types of partners they can work with, typically comparison and content publishers, and imposes strict rules around how their products can be promoted. For example, financial regulators prohibit offering incentives to encourage trading with leverage, due to the high-risk nature of these products. These industry-wide restrictions made it increasingly difficult to onboard new partners who could both drive meaningful performance and meet compliance standards. As a result, the team focused on optimising the performance of existing partners, for example, through strategic work on search dominance, while building deeper, more collaborative relationships.
The team needed a strategy that not only responded to ranking volatility but also helped the brand take a proactive, data-led approach to affiliate growth in an industry where affiliate opportunities are often constrained.
To solve these challenges, Silverbean launched a Search Domination Project. A strategic initiative designed to identify which affiliates were winning in organic search, how the brand was positioned across key terms and where there were opportunities to grow visibility in a scalable, cost-effective way.
This multi-phase project included:
Keyword mapping and commercial intent focus
We began by identifying high-intent search terms aligned to the brand’s key positioning. These keywords were selected based on both search volume and the commercial opportunity they represented for the brand.
Search results analysis and URL mapping
For each keyword, the top 10 Google results were analysed to determine whether the ranking pages were operated by affiliates, media publishers or organic brand content. This revealed where affiliate partners had visibility and, crucially, where they didn’t.
Each ranking URL was categorised as:
This mapping provided us with a clear, data-backed view of the current affiliate landscape and where opportunity lay.
Opportunity segmentation
The team segmented their findings into two core action areas:
Recruitment opportunities: Where high-ranking URLs belonged to publishers not yet on the programme, Silverbean reached out with partnership proposals, demonstrating the revenue opportunity and alignment with the brand’s audience.
Optimisation opportunities: For current partners, Silverbean identified where the brand was not listed as prominently as key competitors. In total, 42 URLs across 24 existing partners were flagged for optimisation, either due to poor positioning or lack of presence entirely. These insights formed the basis of tenancy discussions or collaborative content updates aimed at improving visibility and position.
To improve IG’s visibility on these partner sites, we worked directly with publishers to secure better placements within their content, for example, moving the brand higher up on a comparison table or list-style articles. This typically involved either negotiating a higher CPA or securing fixed fees to ensure the brand appeared in more prominent, above-the-fold positions.
Monthly search tracking and reporting
Silverbean implemented monthly reporting to track ranking changes, keyword movements and partner performance across the mapped terms. This allowed the team to:
This was especially valuable in a sector where visibility on just one high-performing affiliate page could drive significant conversions.
While traditional affiliate growth metrics were part of the picture, this project was equally about building strategic clarity, increasing search visibility, and demonstrating how the affiliate channel can complement wider digital and brand objectives.
Silverbean identified 42 high-value URLs across 24 existing affiliate partners where the brand was either under-represented or missing entirely, as well as 14 partners that were not currently on the programme. These insights drove targeted optimisations that increased exposure on competitive, conversion-focused keywords.
Of the 42 identified URLs, 11 partners were successfully optimised, with improvements to placement and positioning driving clear performance gains. In addition, 5 of the 14 potential new partners were onboarded and are now contributing to incremental growth in applications, traffic and first trades. While uncovering new partners was the core aim of the search domination project, given the limited number of compliant, performance-focused partners still available, this outcome represents a valuable bonus.
At a time when algorithm changes were expected to result in declining ranking and performance across the board, the brand instead saw uplift with these key partners. Thanks to our proactive work on the search domination project, 3 partners delivered a combined uplift of +49% in applications between February and June 2025 compared to the previous period.
Several optimised partners saw meaningful increases in applications:
These results were driven by improved placement, enhanced positioning and alignment with high-performing, relevant content.
Ongoing keyword tracking and URL-level insights allowed the team to respond more quickly to search volatility and proactively manage affiliate exposure across priority terms.
This project reframed affiliate as more than just a last-click channel. By aligning with ’s search priorities, the affiliate programme supported broader brand goals, securing placements on high-authority sites and increasing share of voice in the SERPs.
The brand gained a clear roadmap for where to focus, whether through recruiting new partners, optimising existing ones, or reallocating spend from underperforming placements. The result was a more focused and future-proof approach to affiliate growth.
This project shows what’s possible when the affiliate channel is aligned with your wider digital goals, from reclaiming search visibility to driving a +49% uplift in applications.
