I wanted to write a follow up to our last article on Affiliate Money Making Tips, and all too often we focus on the big search engines; Google, Bing, Yahoo that we tend to forget that we are “Internet Marketers First” and “SEO’s” second. I am a regular on the Poker Affiliate Listings Forum owned by my good friend Jeremy Enke, and at least once a day a Poker Affiliate posts wanting to know why he is getting 100 visits a day, but not making money and often times not getting signups. This is a common issue and one where SEO will not help much. Obviously if you already have traffic, SEO is not your problem. The common issues for lack of conversions are:

• 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?