Note: This is the first in a series of articles which cover some very simple tips which will help you expand your affiliate business, increase conversions, and enhance your exposure in the major search engines. If you have any questions or want some specific areas covered, pelase let us know in the comment seciton. Poker SEO skills is a must have for any webmaster, and as with anything, practice makes perfect

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!