• Poorly Targeted Content/Traffic
• Website Usability
• Poor Calls To Action

So lets take these one at a time, and I’m going to use some example so I’m betting I’ll get some hate mail after this is posted. But ya know, I don’t care

Content/Traffic Not Converting

As mentioned above, many websites have content and traffic, but make $0. There could be several reasons for this, so let’s review the most common.

The content is bringing in the wrong type of traffic. As a webmaster you must know your target audience and target content and CTA’s to those visitors. Not all Poker Sites are the same, not all poker sites convert the same, and finally not all poker players are the same. A good example is a webmaster building a Poker Strategy websites and ranking for terms like: SNG Basics, MTT Strategy, Three Betting Strategy, or Poker Starting hands. While these are all great terms and terms that will bring you traffic they do not convert near as well as more targeted content to players that are looking for a new room to signup at. Again, it comes down to knowing your traffic, knowing what traffic has the highest chance of conversion,  and giving your traffic what they want.

Quiz: What Search Term Will Convert Better?

a) Sit and Go Strategy Tips

b) “any room” Review

c) “any room” Deposit Bonus

I think the answer is obvious. Now just to be clear, all those search terms can get you a new signup, but the probability is highest with a direct targeted search from a player ready to find a new room, signup bonus, etc. So it is very important you are targeting terms that convert well and not just the easiest terms to rank for. The difference between ranking for PokerStars Review and PokerStars Bonus Code is at least a couple million dollars a year.

Website Usability/Calls To Action

The navigation of your website is a key competent to your marketing strategy because you can put everything you need on the homepage. So its crucial you have a clearly defined path to your sub-pages which usually our the money pages. When you break it down the whole object of our webistes in the poker business is simple:

1. Get Interest (in our case this means visitors)

2. Sell Them on a Product

3. Get them to buy the product

It can really be that simple. As hard as it is for some Poker Affiliates, we are not Poker Players anymore, we are Salesman! YOU are a SALESMAN! No shit, yes I know its a bad feeling but we are. Our job is to get people to look at what we are selling, and sell them on the product by any means needed. We spoke int he last article about “Calls To Action“ and this is where it is essential. If you have traffic, you should be making money. If you are not making money, you are being a bad salesman!

Here is a few things you need to look at if you have traffic but are not converting players:

1. Where is the traffic from?

2. What kw’s are driving my traffic?

3. Are these the best KW’s for what I’m selling?

4. Is my Site Easy To Understand?

5. Is it easy for an idiot to find my money pages?

6. Are my money/product pages easy to understand?

7. Do I have VERY defined CTA’s? IE Do user know what they are supposed to do?

Ok, so far we have posted mainly general SEO/SEM type info that is mainly useful for new affiliates of a year or less. After several requests I’ve put together a few tips and ideas that if you follow through on, will give you a great ROI. Some of these ideas will cost some money which needs to be viewed as an investment, others will just cost you some time doing research and trial and error. If you are serious about extending your reach in the online market, then you must be willing to commit time and money.

Quick note: I’ve been in Poker Affiliate for 5 years now, my first year and a half I just blew money, wasted time, and failed over and over again. So if you are going through something similar, then do not give up! Just by the fact you are reading this website, you must be serious about changing your direction. So stick to it, and we are always open to questions and requests for specific articles.

Webmaster Scenario #1 - Not Converting Traffic

You have a decent sized poker or casino websites, you are getting decent traffic, maybe getting a few signups but you still are not seeing the big money yet.

I have been in this exact spot, and I’m pretty sure most webmasters have as well. My head hurt trying to figure out how to get “over the hump” and start doing some serious numbers somewhere, somehow. I didn’t want to quit! You website needs some new goals and a new direction. What you have been doing isn’t getting it done all the way. Here are a few things you can do to get your website moving forward and making money.

#1 - Test Test Test - One area where I think all of us struggle is “Calls To Action” or “CTA’s” - These are the things that make our visitors click on a link or banner, so they go to a poker or casino, sign-up, and make us money. I’d say 99% of the webmasters and affiliates I know do not have a marketing degree. So naturally we do not have the insight we need to create a sales page that converts traffic. Now I suppose we could go back to college and take Web Marketing 101, but honestly I doubt that would do much good.

The Internet ages very fast, it never sleeps and everyday users get more savvy then they were a month ago. User are trained to be paranoid, not click links from sites they haven’t heard of. So assuming you have a website that looks professional and trustworthy, then the nest thing we need to figure out is our Calls to action.

Testing CTA’s is pretty easy, but must be tracked on a daily basis. In the early days of the net, banners with flashy test worked well and was all the rage. Now days people can block banners and flash easily and user will never know you have images or banners on your site. My sites have very few if any banners, they just do not seem to work well for converting players, so I use them as a way to convey messages more than anything.

Since our main goal is to get users to click to a poker room or casino (which usually embeds a 30 day tracking cookie) then your text links must have some type of Calls to action as their anchor text. Depending on the niche, I suggest you start of by trying to figure exactly what the goal of your visitor might be. I do a lot of rakeback poker sites, so some of my best converting anchor text links are:

Text Link Calls To Action

• Click To get Rakeback
• Click Here To Get Cake Poker Rakeback
• Get Rakeback Now - This one works great as a button
• Click To Get Your $500 Bonus Now
• Click For More Info Now!
• Download and Play Now!
  

Notice a couple things about the above CTA’s -

#1 - I’m telling the visitor exactly what I want them to do

#2 - I’m giving them an incentive to do what I want them to do

Also, keep in mind these can be text links or buttons with text. I’ve found they both convert about the same, so it just depends on your preference and making sure it seems to fit within the content. Now granted, there is nothing groundbreaking about the CTA’s above, but they are simple and effective.

One of the most common mistakes I see on websites is CTA’s that are too in your face or ones that are too subtle. Just because when you mention “PokerStars” in an article and it is a hyperlink, doesn’t mean anyone knows WHY they should click on it. You have to tell your visitor what they should do, and more importantly WHY they should do it.

Webmaster Scenario #2 - Hitting the wall

In this situation, you are pretty much in the same spot as in the first scenario but you have a little more money to invest. Your site is getting traffic, some signups, and some decent income. Basically you are making enough money to see the potential, and want a bigger piece of the billion dollar pie that is online gaming!

Now hopefully you have been investing some of your income into the site, and that is exactly what you need to be doing. Buying extra content, some press releases, blog reviews, ad space, etc. This is good ways for you to gain a foot hold in the market. I’m not saying you need to spend $1000 a month on these things, honestly you could write for links, write all your own content, do link trades with friends, etc. But just like any business, becoming profitable quickly plants the seeds to be profitable long term. For example maybe you make poker videos, in that case maybe you try some new games or new software or something. Either way you need to be investing in your business no matter what.

So, no matter what market you are in, I suggest that you consider having parts or even all of your main website translated into other languages so you can engage other parts of the web. Even if your traffic is 100% US (or w/e your native tongue is) then you need to ask yourself; Is my traffic 100% US because nobody in the EU or Asia is interested in what my website is about? Or is it because I am not giving myself exposure in these markets?

Usually the answer is the latter. You cannot expect people in Sweden to care about your website if you are not giving them something in their language to check out. Now without getting deep into Geo targeting and such, it is very easy for anyone to get some professional translations and add them to your website. I generally start with my home page and my review or money pages because that gives me the quickest ROI. Of course there is a risk that maybe you find that nobody in w/e country cares about the latest and greatest Full Tilt Poker Review or the Best Full Tilt Poker Bonus, but even if your new translated pages doesn’t turn you into a super affiliates overnight, I can promise you will start to see some new long-tail searches hitting your analytics. From there you need to expand on your content just like you do any other phrases you are stumbling upon.

By expanding your reach into new and potentially fast growing markets, you have taken another step in adding real value to your website. Having a global presence is essential in the web, and you could easily see huge increases in traffic from not just google.com but google.se, de, nl, es etc - So you are actually getting into new google data centers which as you can imagine is nothing but a good thing.

These are two good tips that took me years to figure out, I thought I knew everything and the lack of money coming in told me different.

Now, let’s go make some money!

Today I wanted to write my thoughts on a question I see asked over and over again on the PAL Forums, and while reading a recent thread asking “How much Can I make as an Affiliate and the inevitable follow up question of “How long will it take for me to make money? Now for a new Poker Affiliate or even just a regular affiliate these are hard questions to answer. I think a couple years ago I would have said: “You can make what you put into it” and “It will take 6-12 months to make money”. However I asked my self this question today, and after some soul searching and giving this some serious thought, I think those answers are misleading. Let’s take these questions one at a time and chat about them.

How much money can I make being a poker affiliate?

On the surface these question seems simple and members usually give a canned response of “work hard and you will make as much as you want” or some silliness like that. Is that really the truth though? Let’s dissect this question for a minute. I do agree that if an affiliate works hard on their website, they have the potential to make an unlimited amount of money. But will simply working hard and adding content, a pretty design, getting some links make you the money? Of course these are all things we hear preached endlessly.

• Content is king
• Get Quality Linkbacks
• Know your niche
• Learn the basics of SEO

These are the 4 most common things I hear as advice for webmasters. Again this is good advice IF it is applied properly. The big problem is most webmasters can try and follow that path and still end up with a nice website, with lots of quality content, with some very nice linkbacks, and STILL not make enough money to pay for hosting. Now let’s go over some reasons why most poker affiliates and webmasters in general fail to make money even though they do what appears to be all the right things.

Content is King

Alright we have all heard this a billions times and we know what it means. Websites need to be more than banners and links to poker rooms. This is not the 1990’s and having a banner farm doesn’t work anymore (if it ever did) As webmasters we must provide visitors with quality content on a variety of subjects related to our niche. Affiliate site sin general need to become a resource to stand the test of time because the internet is littered with half finished or half assed websites that are of little to no value to 99% of the visitors.

Why you fail: So instead of randomly throwing up content you have seen on other poker sites, do some research or hopefully if you know your niche you will have a good idea of what visitors want to see. Try and do something better than other websites are doing. If they are doing articles explaining the GAP concept, then you do a article with a video. Take it up a notch and be something better.

Get Backlinks

This is probably the most mis-understood concept in the industry IMO. Ww rank well in the major search engines for competitive terms, you do need some links pointing towards your website. What you do not need to 1000 shitty links form porn sites, irrelevant websites, or banners farms pointing to you. I will take 1 quality link over 100 mediocre link any day and twice on Sunday. .

Why you fail: Lean in here and listen to me now, ’cause I’m only sayin’ his once: You do not have to have a ton of links to be competitive. Believe it or not, good content will get you some natural links eventually, and there is a million other poker webmasters out there that will do a LE with you. Just be logical when deciding what links you want coming to your website

Know your niche

This one should be simple, if you know about poker then you have some experience in that aspect. I see too many people try and do things they fail to understand. So don’t be that guy! Be responsible and know what you are getting into. Pretty simple eh?

Why You Fail: Once again, you either know what you are doing or you don’t. If your building a website about African Birds, then man you better know about Africa and what birds they have their. Know what I mean?

Basic SEO/SEM

This is a big one, not because you have to be some nerdy super genius to understand SEO or SEM, but because most people refuse, flat out refuse to get their butts in gear and actually try and learn SEO basic and Marketing basics. If you are going to do a job, then you should learn ever aspect of that job and not just the “fun stuff”. SEO is not Rocket science, there is some extra advantages that comes with experience and testing, but there is no super secret methods to get you to #1 in google in 3 days. It just doesn’t work that way.

Why you fail: I see this all the time and it reminds me of my first year of trying to be an affiliate. Webmasters try and be like the commercials they see and not an actual website. The content tends to be all the same; room reviews, strategy articles, a list of bonus codes, player profiles, and maybe some poker news thrown in. Now how is that any better than a million other websites? Websites with the same type content, same title tags, same approach. I know you are thinking; We that’s how these big websites are doing it, so it can’t be wrong. While it may not be wrong, what is special about YOUR website? What do you do better than Poker Listings? What sets you apart? 99% of the time the answer is a simple, nothing!

So instead of doing what everyone else is doing, you must try and fine something to add to the mix. Maybe you can offers your players some videos on strategy, maybe you tackle some event focused content or maybe you just try out some new things and see if it works. The point is that you must set your website apart from the million other poker affiliate websites to have any chance of making serious money. Remember we are in the marketing business, not the affiliate business

How long does it take to make money being a poker affiliate?

This is a common question and I think a couple of years ago I would agree with everyone else and say “6-12 months is how long”, but really I think that time can be much shorter than that. I agree if you are a new webmaster that it may take 6-12 months to learn how to get traffic, and convert that traffic into real money players. But as you grow as an affiliate and a marketer, you learn what works and what does not. I recently started a new project with a decent domain, nothing super special and within the first month I was getting traffic and conversions from this website.

That is the most recent example, and I could name plenty more. The point is that there is no set time it takes to make a website profitable. We also must consider the implications of google’s new “Personalized search” which really needs a post all its own. Also I should point out that once you get more experience as a webmaster and an affiliate marketer, you avoid hundreds of the little mistakes new affiliates make so that does play a role on ROI timeline.

The Twilight website and craze has been a welcome addition to my web portfolio. About a year ago, I started a Twilight news and gossip site for my wife and family to play with. I set up a wordpress template, and let the ladies go to work. As my wife was adding content, I began to monetize the website with a variety of products including adsense, ebay, affiliate products, and an email subscriber list.

Things start to pick up, but other projects take precedence

After just a few short months, the site was getting good traffic. Some days it was getting 2-3k visitors. At this point, the site was doing well, generating a little bit of money each day without a lot of effort. Unfortunately, it ended up taking a back seat to some other projects. My main niche is the gaming niche, and I had a lot of gaming opportunities that needed attention just as the Twilight site was becoming established. My Twilight site began to fall out of favor a bit, but it continued to churn out a few dollars per day in commissions, with no attention being paid.

Besides generating a little bit of cash, I was also collecting a few email addresses per day. Back when I created the site, I had quickly set up an aweber lightbox form. The form was capturing a few leads per day. Even though the campaign was only capturing a few leads per day, the people that signed up were very responsive to any updates we were sending them. Each time I sent out a letter to the subscribers, a good percentage of them opened the email, and clicked on links that were embedded in the email. This consistently resulted in a few sales, as well as increased activity on the main site via linked articles.

Twilight: New Moon approaches

A few weeks before the second installment in the Twilight series was released, organic traffic began to increase on the site. I had my programmer install a new template that was more optimized for Adsense and the other banner ads on the site. This resulted in a 4x increase in adsense revenue per visitor, and a small increase in affiliate sales thru banners.

At this point, 1-3 people per week were signing up for my email newsletter per day. Being the lucky guy that I am, I had been approached a month prior by an old friend of mine in the gaming industry, Greg. Greg is working on his own sites right now, Airbender Gear and Steelers Gear, but he had not yet started those sites and was looking for something to do. He had just finished setting up an email capture campaign for me on one of my poker strategy sites and the campaign has been doing really well. I figured it would be a good idea to have him look at the Twilight site to see if he could jumpstart that email campaign. After looking through aweber for a few minutes, he wrote to me on skype saying that he “just wet himself”. I would soon find out why.

Start with a split test

The first thing Greg did was implement a split test. Originally, I had set up a quick lightbox (one of those fade-in popup thingies) with just a quick message and a signup form to enter name and email. That popup box converted at <.5%. In other words, for every 200 unique visits to TwilightGear, only 1 person entered their email. Greg looked at that and thought it was very low. The email campaign that he set up for my poker site was converting at nearly 25%, so we both thought there was room for improvement in the Twilight email campaign. (Side Note: The Poker email campaign converts so well because I targeted it at people who were looking for specific strategy information. I gathered some information that a lot of the people were looking for, and made it into an Ebook, which is used as an incentive for signing up to for the email newsletter. With the twilight site, we are running the campaign without incentive for now, which produces a lower conversion rate.)

We knew that it was possible to increase conversion rate, even for a less targeted campaign like the Twilight campaign. So I had Greg set up a split test. He made 4 different forms, and we let them run for about a week. One form was the original one, one was a slightly modded version of the original, one had a picture of Taylor Lautner, and one had a picture of Robert Pattinson. Every time a unique visitor landed at Twilightgear.net, it triggered a rotation of one version of these forms (This is super easy to set up in Aweber).

Results of the Split Test

After about 100k unique visitors, we had a clear winner. For whatever reason, unexplainable by us, the Robert Pattinson form converted 4x better than all the other ones. The other 3 forms In the split test maintained a <.5% conversion rate, while the Robert Pattinson form converted at 2%. We ended the split test, and let the RP form run 100% of the time.

Timely Implementation

Finding a higher-converting email signup form was something I’m glad I did, when I did. As Twilight: New Moon approached, TwilightGear’s traffic increased by nearly 10x. There were days where I was getting 30k uniques. I had to upgrade my server just to keep up with demand. The implementation of the new email signup form allowed me to take full advantage of the high traffic. The first day that I implemented the new form, over 100 people submitted their email address into my form. Even though the traffic has dwindled a bit over the past few weeks, and will probably continue to dwindle, I’m still seeing 20-30 people per day submitting their email address.

ScreenShots

Weekly New Subscribers

Weekly New Subscribers

Weekly Subscriber Growth

Weekly Subscriber Growth

Total Subscribers before Split Test (Oct 08 - Nov 09: 140) : 140

Total Subscribers after Split Test (4 weeks) : 1005

Subscriber Increase % from Nov 09 thru Dec 09: 718%

Lessons to Learn

If you have a site that is related to a big event, do some optimization and take advantage of the anticipated increase in traffic. For me, a new twilight movie means huge increases in traffic. I did some optimization before New Moon came out which resulted in big increases in my short term and long term bottom line. This can be applied to all sorts of industries besides movies. If you have a site about an NFL team, do some optimization testing before the NFL draft, before the season starts, or before the playoffs start if the team will make the playoffs. If you have a site about tournament poker, do something related to the WSOP before it starts.

Split testing is very important. The most important word in the previous sentence is TEST. Like I said before, I had no idea that a Robert Pattinson form would perform better than a Taylor Lautner form. The only way to find this out, is to test. When people say stuff like “the key to internet marketing is to not give up”, this is what they are talking about. You won’t succeed every time you try something, but you will find something that works if you keep trying to make something work. Almost every traffic source has a combination of things that can be made to work with it.

What’s next?

I am writing a follow-up article based on the next step in optimizing this email list. The percentage of people who enter their email address into the signup form, then opt-in (confirm by clicking on link in email) is hovering around ~40% for the Twilight list. The poker strategy list opts in at more than double that rate; nearly 90%. What’s the difference between the two lists? The poker strategy list offers an incentive for joining; a poker strategy guide. The next step for the optimizing the Twilight list is to offer an incentive for joining. I’m not exactly sure what that incentive will be, but I’ll think of something, and then I’ll let you know how it goes J

Split testing and optimization based on data analysis is easy with Aweber.   There are tons of tutorials, and you can be up and running with a great autoresponder in minutes.  Go to Aweber.com and see what they can do for you.  If you have any questions about this campaign, ask in the comments below and we’ll get back to you!

]]> http://www.onlinepokerseo.com/700-increase-in-email-subscriptions/feed/ http://www.onlinepokerseo.com/poker-seo-radio/ http://www.onlinepokerseo.com/poker-seo-radio/#comments Sat, 12 Dec 2009 03:39:50 +0000 Randy http://www.onlinepokerseo.com/?p=135 I’m very excited to announce that we have now launched our Live Poker SEO Radio Show which is also available for podcast download and Itunes! We had our first show last night with a very special guest “Michael Martinez” of SEO Theory - Michael is well known in the SEO and SEM industry and last night he covered all the new Google Changes in regards to “Personalized Search” and “Live search“. Both of these issues have a far reaching impact on the world of search marketing, and thankfully Michael was there to explain it in a way everyone can understand.

First Poker SEO Radio Show - Download The Podcast Now!

About The Radio Show

I thought I should take a minute to let everyone know what this radio show will be. You can see on my “about” page that I have been active in the gaming business and SEO for the last 5 years and thankfully I’ve had some great mentors like Randy Ray and my Radio show partner Jeremy Enke.

The goal of this show is to provide a resource for fellow webmasters and gaming affiliates, to discuss SEO issues, and the bring on prominent guests in our industry and the SEO industry to shed some light on basic SEO and Marketing Theory and practices. Right now we are still working out the kinks and deciding on a regular schedule for the show, but to keep up to date on everything, signup for our RSS Feed and our Feedburner Email and Podcast updates. Any update son this website will come straight to your email for free.

Anyway, I hope everyone can find something on this website or int he radio show that helps them gain a betetr understanding of SEO and Marketing, we need feedback from everyone as to how we can make the site and Radio show better for you, so if you have any suggestions, please leave then in the comments below.

All too often especially in the online gaming market Companies (Poker Rooms, Casino’s, etc) look at us as a necessary evil or even as an employee. The reality could not be further from the truth. One of the first steps to negotiating the best possible deal for ourselves is to change the mindset that we are a “burden” or an “employee” and instead our main focus is to convince these Companies that we are in fact Partners with the very same goal in mind, making money!

There is a common mis-conception that only the PokerListings and PokerNews type sites have the leverage needed to get a sweetheart type deal. The truth is that weather you are a large webmaster with years of experience and a known brand name website or a new to the market affiliate, you can get a great deal by following a few simple guidelines. To that end here are a few negotiating tips that over the last few years has helped me get the very best deal possible.

Partnership Negotiating Tips

Tip #1 - Have a Business Plan

This first tip is one that will server you in well not only for negotiating, but will server you throughout your business career. You must have a plan regardless of weather you are trying for a better deal, or trying to build your online empire. You business plan should have specific details on your website(s) and within that plan you should have details as to how you will gain exposure in the market. Simply saying “I’m going to SEO my sites” will not do you much good. You need specifics!

You must be able to tell the poker room (company) how you expect to expose potential customers to their brand. This may include:

• Good CTA’s - Feature Ad Space on your website or network of sites, you need to have more than poker/casino reviews to stand out. Target additional area of their website like their major tournaments, major pro players, etc. These should all be in separate articles from your review. Anyone can throw up a $30 review, but not everyone will have a complete seciton about one poker room. Even notice how Poker Listings has 4-5 pages in each room? There is a reason for it. If you have a poker forum this may also be a great way to give new rooms good exposure.

• Know your traffic - Data on how other rooms have done with the featured ad space. I’ve never been a fan of being asked the question &quot;how many players can you send us&quot;. Mainly because it is so hard to guess, but you can also let them knwo some of the numebrs you do with other poker rooms or casinos

• Exposure to targeted traffic - If the room is a favorite for US players, you need ot educate the poker room on what percente of yoru traffic is US based, or EURO based etc.Maybe you have a rakeback site and the room you are negotiating with is known for rakeback.

• Press Releases - If used correctly on other gaming websites, news sites, or blogs then featured promotion articles could be a great way to give the poker room and your website great exposure.

• Let them know you want a long term partnership - Affiliate Managers and even Poker Room owners are bombarded with tons of webmaster promising the world and ton of players on a daily basis. Your first job is to convince them that you have a solid foundation to promote their brand in a way that will add players and value. You must emphasis that you want a long term partnership with them.

Tip #2 - Speak to the Affiliate Manager on the Phone

In today’s world of email and IM, we lose the personal relationship that is so very valuable in business. We have all seen the affect of people sitting behind the computer 12 hours a day. When negotiating a partnership speaking directly with your AM gains both of you a more personal relationship. It’s much harder for AM’s to say &quot;no&quot; when they are actually speaking with you. You will also be able to more accurately describe your business plans to the AM and avoid any confusion or delays.

Tip #3 - Make The Company sell to you

There are hundreds of poker and casino rooms on the web now. We cannot possibly promote them all and we don’t need to try. Your website is yoru real estate. It has value to your and will grow in value over time. If you owned some lake front property, you woudl be picky what you put on there, and this is the same for your website.

I often ask AM’s &quot;What do you have to offer my players?&quot; &quot;How will you be converting my players?&quot; These questions should have good answers that make sense to you. AM’s need to be able to sell ME on their business because if they can’t, how are they goign to sell to my players? The worst thing you can have on your website is a room that you send players too, and they fail to convert them. So always make sure the rooms you are dealing with are capable of converting the traffic you send.

Tip #4 - Be Creative

Negotiating a new deal is not all about %’s or straight money. I encourage you to analyze what the room has to offer, what their strengths are, and find an idea to highlight those strengths. Try and be creative to find other ways you can sweeten the deal for your self and your player. Things like a bigger deposit bonus, reducing or eliminating bonus deductions from your revshare or rakeback deal, private tournaments are always nice, and always make sure there is room to improve your share of the money. Again, let the room sell you on WHY you should want to promote them. Do not settle for &quot;Extra 10% commission for the first 3 months&quot; You want to find something that is long term and gives you the extra incentive to promote their brand.

Tip #5 - Be prepared to walk away

Whenever you enter a negotiation with a poker room you should always have minimum goals in mind. There is two quick deal breakers for me:

1. If an AM tells me he cannot authorize a better deal. If I hear this, I know I’m wasting my time and I let them know to contact me when they are ready to work out a deal we can both be happy with.

2. If I hear any demands from the poker room, I’m ready to walk away. I won’t make demands, and neither should they. I know of a few rooms that love to make demands of their partners, Titan is famous for this style of work. I’ve dealt with a few AM’s that insist they want to be at the &quot;Top of the page&quot; and to me this is really a turn off. How do they know which page converts the best? How do they know what section in the page works the best?

To me this goes back to the Real Estate Analogy. This is my land and my business! I will put a room where I feel they will do the best, partners have to have some trust in one another. So if I’m dealing with an AM that doesn’t understand that, I’m going to assume the rest of their business is filled with people that really don’t have a clue about how the industry works. Which of course leads to other issues, conversions, spamming, etc.

Above all, you have to have some goals in mind before you start negotiating with a room, and you must be prepared to walk away. I’m not saying if you don’t get what you want right away you should end the conversation. Just make sure you are communicating your desires clearly and you can justify why you deserve a better than average deal.

Sit and go’s seemed like the perfect niche – there wasn’t much competition, there was decent search traffic, and we actually knew a little bit about sit and go’s since we both played them often.

After building our site out and starting to see some traffic, we were disappointed to note that not many players were following our affiliate links and depositing. We chalked it up to needing more traffic, and continued acquiring links and adding content. After ten months or so, we were number #1 in Google for “sit and go strategy”, and the site was actually getting quite a few unique visitors every day.

However, there still weren’t many players depositing, or even signing up for that matter. The problem (as we later realized) was that players weren’t coming to our site looking to sign up at a poker room – they were coming to improve their sit and go game. Most of these players probably already had accounts, and weren’t interested in joining a new poker site as they were comfortable with their current room. Although our traffic was pretty good for a fairly new website, the site was drastically under performing revenue wise.

Once my partner and I realized this, we tried out some new methods for converting the traffic:

• We added a newsletter opt in form to the site, and offered players a free “sit and go report” in exchange for their name and email. In actuality, the report was just a compilation of the sit and go articles on the site, but I’m sure many players preferred it all in one document instead of scattered on a website.

• We then sent out emails promoting Clickbank informational poker products, including sit and go guides as well as multi table tournament guides. Eventually, we even created our own sit and go eBook that we sold on a separate domain.

• We added promotions throughout the site promoting Full Tilt Poker as the “#1 sit and go poker site”, and explained why Full Tilt had the best sit and go’s on the Internet. We really stressed why players should switch to Full Tilt Poker for their sit and go’s. We used reasoning like Full Tilt had a better sit and go structure, their tournament fees were less than Party Poker’s, and the competition was softer.

The three changes we made allowed us to build up a sizeable mailing list of poker players, and we actually made quite a bit more money by promoting the Clickbank products and pushing the “best sit and go sites”. The website still wasn’t a huge earner, but the income was much better than before.

Where Am I Going With This?

This post may seem like a random story from my early affiliate days, but there is an important lesson here: you should always put yourself in your visitors’ shoes, and imagine what they want to see. Instead of building your website with only your own thoughts in mind, you should think about what type of visitors will be showing up at your website, and what the best method is for making money off of them.

If visitors are showing up looking for poker strategy, get their email in exchange for a free report, and send out a mailing later promoting a private tournament at a new poker site. This will convert better than trying to shove a generic “Top Poker Sites” list down their throat.
If you have a page ranking well for “Roulette Odds”, don’t just give them the odds – explain why players should be playing European roulette (less house edge), and tell them where they can play European Roulette online (Bodog Casino).

If you have a site about “Poker Rules”, teach the visitor how to play poker, and then encourage them to practice on their own at an online poker site. Stress that online poker rooms are 100% free, and the easiest way to learn poker is to play poker.

A lot of this seems like common sense, but often times I will find myself creating content and adding in promotions blindly, without considering what the visitor really wants. By putting yourself in your audience’s shoes, you can increase your conversion rates as well as helping your visitors get the info they want.

Before we get into my “Top 20 Poker SEO Tips” I want to encourage everyone to read through some of the other posts on this site like the “Give Yourself a Plan” post and the post on “5 SEO Mistakes“. Remember you do not have to be an SEO expert to make a good useful website, but you do need to make sure you are providing a resource for visitors.

Keep in mind as you are reading,t hat doing proper Search Engine Optimization for gambling is not much different from doing SEO for a Fishing site, bowling site, or a movie site. The same principles apply and nobody has magic SEO dust to sprinkle on a website to make it rank #1. It takes good hard work, testing, more testing, and reasearch!.

Poker SEO Tips

1. Plan your website before you build it - This tips seems simple enough, yet all too often I meet new webmasters that have just decided to make a website and throw up banners and links in the hopes of being the next Poker Listings of the world. Do yourself a favor and plan your website BEFORE you build it. Decide if you want to be a Poker News Website, A Poker Bonus Guide Type website, a Rakeback Provider website, Poker Strategy, or all in one type website.

Although I would not encourage the last one, mainly because as a new webmaster your plate will be very full, and as with any task it will be easier to focus if your site is in a defined niche. If you plan your website properly, you can eventually make your website the next “one stop shop”.

2. Think like a visitor - This once again relates to the planning of your website, you website should be able to give the visitor what they are looking for. If they find your site and cannot find what they are looking for, they will hit the “back” button and move on. Some of the other tips listed here will get into greater details on how to accomplish this task, but for now just remember to think like a visitor/customer

3. If you choose a niche, own the niche - Over the last year or two, “mini sites” have become the “in” thing to do. The disappointing thing is that most webmaster think a 4-5 page website covers a niche and then they move on. To me a mini site is a site with less than 100 pages and revolves around a few select topics.

Example - I am working in covering the SE’s for all things relating to Double or Nothing Tournaments, from that one topic I can think of dozens of articles to write about. Double or Nothing Strategy, DON Tips, DON Mistakes, DON Bubble Strategy, etc. I’m sure you get the picture. Just remember, if you are going to do a mini site, make sure you own the niche!

4. Write content that makes sense - This is another common issue I come across, everywhere you look when reaearching and trying to learn SEO, you see and hear over and over that KW density is crucial. The results is webmaster stuffing Keyword sin places where they don’t appear natural. Remember your content should be for the visitors benefit and not for the SE’s

5. Get a good domain name - A choice you have to make early is if you are going to have a brandable domain name, or a KW domain name. Obviously you can sometimes have both, but some of the combo domains are very pricey. I recommend that if you are going to have a poker news website, you try and get a domain with that in it, same for rakeback, bonuses, etc. If you decide to go more brandable, which is a great choice as well, then make sure you get a .com, and make sure its not super long Randybestpokerbonusawesoemness.com <—- way too long obv

6. Plan your URL structure - This is another area of Poker SEO which is either ignored or over done by Poker webmasters. You website should have a good structure which will be friendly to SE’s and visitors. I recommend sub folers for various sections of your site. Example - website.com/pokerstars/ (Bad) website.com/poker/reviews/pokerstars/ <– Good. Example #2 website.com/bonus/pokerstars Also notice this gives you another opportunity to expand your content which will gain you more KW’s and more Longtail search traffic

7. Title Tags - As I hope everyone knows already, your title tags are very important in Poker SEO. Make sure your pages have a proper title tag which is descriptive of the page, and is the main Kw’s you are targeting for the pages.

8. Meta Description and KW’s - I keep hearing that since google said they didn’t pay attention to these anymore, then there is no point in using them. I think too many people overlook that #1 Google is not the only SE and #2 Google at times DOES use your Meta Data as your page description in the SERP’s.

9. Use Htags, scanable content - Try to include your most important keyword phrases in heading tags on your page if you can but keep in mind it doe nto have to be exactly same as title of your page. You can use (H1 H2 H3, etc) tag for specifying anything important.  To reduce size of heading use CSS. This is also a great thing for your reader, it makes your content scanable and saves reader time and allows them to quick look over your content which gives you a chance to grab their attention!

10. Use a real nav menu instead of script or images - With the web 2.0 or 3.0 (w/e they are calling it now) I’m seeing very design heavy websites with way too many images. Be sure and use a nice simple menu that is well organized

11. Don’t Use the anchor text “home” all over your website - Home is a horrible anchor text for any website, there is better alternatives to doing this, and keep in mind interlinking between your pages to essential for visitors and SE’s love good structure. Feel free to test out different anchors.

12. Don’t make a website that takes more than 5-7 seconds to fully load - Again this is great for some sites or hobby sites. Generally if a visitor has to wait more than 5 second that chance of them hitting the back button increases greatly. Graphics are great, but make sure the images are optimized to load fast. There are tons of tools to help you check your site’s loading speed and also to help optimize your images. All the Poker SEO in the world won’t help if your visitors leave before you can sell them on anything.

13. Vary your Keywords for different phrases - As you can see in this article, sometimes I use the term “Poker SEO” and Other Times I say Search Engine Optimization. Apply that same tip to your website. Poker > Texas Hold’em, Hold’em, Hold’em Poker, etc

14. Use the Image ALT tags - This is not as big of a deal as it was a few years back, but be sure and use the “ALT” tag in your images and name them something specific that related to the page it is on.

15. Use Google Webmaster Tools - These tools are free to use and will give you a ton of info such as, Page Error, missing URL’s, you can upload a sitemap, check for site links, crawl issues, etc. Don’t ignore free information!

16. Include The Keywords you are targeting on the home page - This is one that seems almost stupid to mention, but time and time again I look at people website and they think they are targeting Rakeback or bonuses, and yet the actualy KW is only mentioned once or twice on the entire page. To seriously go after a KW you need to have content about it, not a 100 page, you need 1000 words on the subject. Example: If I have a website about rakeback, I’m going to talk about the best rakeback offers, what rakeback is, how to get rakeback, why you should get rakeback, etc. Seems simple, but make sure you are including info on yoru home page for what you are targetting.

17. Try and get some links from fellow webmasters - There will always be a big debate among the Poker SEO experts about the important and the nessecity of tons of links pointing to your website. Personally I would rather have 10 quality links (Quality has nothing to do with Age or Page Rank) then 100 spammy forum sig links, blog comment links, etc.

A great way to get links is to just ask. It can really be that simple. Also remember that you need to offer links as linking out to quality websites will not hurt your Poker Search Engine Strategy. Contributing to webmaster forums like PAL, GPWA, or AGD will put you in contact with other webmasters and everything will fall into place form there.

18. Create a Solid Resource Page - As I mentioned above getting quality links back to your site is important. I never recommend buying links and trust me when I say that it is necessary. A great thing to do is to create a solid “Poker Directory” section on your website in place of the more spammy looking “Links Page”. Make sure this page is content rich and is an actual resource rather than a page with 50 links on it which will nto do anyone any good.

19. Create a Section on your website that will be update often - Getting visitors from the SE’s is great, but you also want something to keep visitors loyal. You can accomplish this by have a small weekly news article, a weekly strategy article, a bonus of the week section, etc. Give the visitors something to come back for. Pages like this will also get you some good links form visitors posting it in forums if the content is good enough ot be passed on.

20. Use the K.I.S.S Method - In case you don’t know, KISS stands for “Keep it Simple Stupid”. This one should explain itself, don;t try to be fancy, don’t try and game the search engine, just create good content that you think will be valuable to other people. Do not worry about having 13% KW density, or how many spam blog links you can hustle. Just keep it simple and do good honest work and you will reap the rewards.

Most Webmasters are broke!

I’ve been getting a ton of topic requests and first off I want to thank everyone for reading and supporting this site. There is literally tons of topics relating to poker websites and “Making Money with Poker Websites” that need to be covered. The point of Poker SEO is to get your website ranking in a competitive position to get “Valuable” traffic that will convert. This seems like a very simple concept but my guess would be 95% or more web masters fail at no only ranking well, but ranking well for terms that will make you money.

What I think most webmaster miss is a few key things:

• If a term is easy to rank for, it probably isn’t worth anything
• Most internet searches are in experienced and you have to tell them what to do
• You don’t need or want to copy what someone else is doing, if you cannot offer anything new, find a new niche

1. Terms worth ranking for: Let’s start with he first one, we have spoke before about keyword research and finding keywords you want to target. But do you know WHY you want to target these phrases? Are you sure they convert well? Will they make you money, and better yet will YOU be able to convert this traffic? I’m positive that with little effort you can rank for a term like “Stupid Poker Room” because nobody SEO’s for this term and there is little competition. There is no competition because either nobody searches for that, or the traffic isn’t valuable. Simple enough?

Of course the obvious question that comes up is: How do I know which KW’s make money? There are a few tools I use to check on KW’s and competition. The first and most trusted tool is Google.com. Yup, google is the best way to check the SERP’s and see what is goign on with that term. Simply search, that’s it, nothing special. See what the competition is for that terms, see how many sites are going after it and how hard. The next tool I like to use is Google Insights, this tool gives you search volume goign back to 2004 and will also show you trends to see if the volume is increasing or decreasing. These two tools alone will get you started, and form there you can follow the bread crumbs.

2. I’m a huge nerd: The second key thing that most of us forget form time to time is that internet users for the most part are not savvy. They have to be told what to do. I recently read a neat article posted here: You are a nerd, visitors are not this is something we must understand. Another great example is my buddy Nick. Nick is a smart guy about my age and plays a lot of poker. The other day he called me wanting a good Rakeback deal at Full Tilt Poker. I sent him a link to one of my websites and told him to signup there. After about 10 minutes he called me back because he had no idea how to signup properly.

To me the pages we easy to follow and at first I was totally confused how he could not understand it. So I questioned him about what was confusing about it, and as a result of that conversation I started rebuilding all my signup pages. It seriously never occurred to me that the signup process was confusing. Now I’m pretty sure it is better than it was. The lesson here is to make sure you have very defined calls to action so as long as the person can read, they can get signed up.

Many webmaster (including my) continue to overlook this crucial issues. It is not enough to get a visitor to your site and wanting to signup, we must ensure all possible questions are answered easily on your page. If not that visitor will hit the back button and find someone who has done a much better job than you at converting them. It is not enough to get visitos to your site, you have to be able to sell them on whatever they were after. If you have a site with good traffic but it isn’t making nay money, then you are either targeting the wrong terms or you are failing to convert them.

3. Same tired shit: This is what I’m really tired of seeing, new and old webmaster doing stupid shit is getting old. I guess it is the nature of the net, but for god’s sake do something original. Webmasters need to try something new to make some serious money. You of course can make money doing the same tired bonus sites or strategy sites. The question you have to ask yourself is if you are really offering anything to a visitor that they can’t find on 1000 other sites. Poker News sites are a dime a dozen now, and having run a successful one myself I would never do it again. Although I made money I knew I would never overtake pokernews.com or cardplayer.com simply because I couldn’t justify trying compete with them. My time was better spent working niches I could dominate so I sold the site and I’m glad I did

The main point though is that if you are a new webmaster, or a webmaster trying to take your business to the next level, then you need to start thinking in terms of “trend setting”. There are still a several ideas I have for new poker related niches that I will one day try. If I can think of several new ways to make money on poker, then I’m sure you can too. There is no reason you have to be a Poker News, Poker Listings, or a 2+2. There are a 100 easier ways to make money in the poker business. So don’t limited yourself to the same old tired shit!

First off, if you are not collecting good stats, then you need to start now. This may seem silly to some webmasters, but I’m always amazed when I’m speaking with a webmaster and they are not collecting data via Woopra, google analytics, or some other stat program. If you are not collecting and review your traffic stats, then you are failing at your job!

Imagine owning a store and completely ignoring customers when they enter a store. They look around and maybe they are looking for something specific, can’t find it right away and leave to go to another store. What happens then is they find my store, and I give then attention and show them exactly what they are looking for. Essentially websites work the same way.

Almost every stat tracking program allows you to get custom reports right into your email. So there is no excuse to not have this data. So, what kind of things should you be looking at? Let’s take a minute and go over a few very important things you must know about your website.

1. Search Queries - How Customers (Visitors) found your website

This is essential, if you don’t understand how they found you and what they were looking for, then how do you know if you HAVE what they are looking for? Most webmaster focus too much attention to their main keywords, when in the reality of 2009 search savvy user, they use actual phrases to find what they want. Now I’m not saying 2-3 letter KW’s are not important, but longtail keywords pay the bills just as well.

Assignment #1 - When you are ready to take this step, you need to compile a list of search queries hitting your website. Pay close attention to these phrases and think of ways to expand on each of them. Example - On one of my websites I get a lot of searches for phrases like “How Do I get out of running bad at poker” This is a popular search for my site and depending on the exact phrasing my visitors will land on one of 3-4 strategy articles or forum posts that discuss this topic.

I first saw this search about two years ago, and at that time I have a strategy article that focused mainly on “Staying off tilt”. After I saw this search a few times, I added a full 1000 word article discussing “Tips for running bad” and articles of that nature, and we also started a discussion in the forum about this topic. So as you can see I expanded on this topic to cover my bases. I gave my visitors several options to choose form and made sure they found what they cam for. I also interlinks these articles to make sure they had more than one resource. I gave them what they came for! I would have missed the extra 25-30 daily visits if I had not been checking my stats and thinking of ways to improve my visitors experience.

This simple strategy can be used over and over again until you get into the habit of doing it to find new ideas for content on your website. this cannot be a one time thing, or again you will start ignoring the customers when they walk in the door. there is never a shortage of data to check out, longtail phrases, simple keyword searches, and even organic backlinks all tell you a story of how people are finding your website. Do nto let this information go unused. Because if you do, someone like me will find a way to take those visitors/customers form you and you will eventually go out of business.