GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 14 - October 2010

Converting your poker affiliate traffic to depositing players By Jeremy Enke B uilding a successful forumor online community can be one of the most challenging and difficult things for an Internet marketer to accomplish. In the poker affiliate market, it is even more difficult due to the number of established poker forums that are already successful. As Internet marketers continue to go so- cial, community building remains a hot topic. In this article I hope to share some tips and advice on the best way to launch a successful poker community. In the poker affiliatemarket, there are a plethora of keywords and long tail phrases you optimize to drive new traffic to your Web site. Unfortunately, no matter how much traffic we drive, as poker affiliates, we only earn commis- sions when this traffic converts to real money players. And when you drive a great deal of traffic, raising your click-through and conversion rates can significantly increase your monthly revenues. Many poker affiliates are excep- tional Web designers and coders. However, sometimes we forget that developing strong calls to ac- tion, and not cute graphics, is the key to increasing conversions. Think of yourWeb site as a virtual salesperson. Visi- tors need a reason to actually click through from your links or banners – and your vir- tual salesperson has to close the deal. The first step to converting traffic to real money players is having a comprehensive understanding of your traffic. You should know what search terms are most often being used to find not only your Web site, but also your pages with the most traffic. Converting real money players becomes much easier when you have a general snapshot of your traffic. For example, if you are ranking well and being found for “play online poker in the U.S.” it would be highly advantageous for you to have a very noticeable section and call to action about poker rooms that accept U.S. play- ers. This may seem like common sense, but you’d be surprised at how many con- versions some affiliates lose by not pro- viding the specific information their visi- tors are seeking. Although there are many ways to ana- lyze your traffic, one of the best tools out there is the suite of Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics. The amount of information you can drill down and extract about your visitors is amazing. Another helpful tool when determining where to place your “calls to action” on each page is Crazy Egg (CrazyEgg.com). This gives you a comprehensive over- view with an easy-to-read heat map of exactly where your traffic is clicking on your Web site. In essence, it allows you to visualize your visitors. With all of this information at hand, you will be able to increase your conversions by optimizing each page specifically to its traffic. I probably sound like a broken re- cord when I speak about “calls to action” (CTA); however, I cannot overstate their importance. Look at the homepage of any of the top online poker sites. You will see that their CTAs are very strategically placed. As an affiliate I appreciate the at- tention to detail in respect to conversion strategy that many of these rooms have. Overall, in the poker affiliate industry we do a great job making pretty sites with an extraordinary amount of content. We do an even better job with search engine optimization. In fact I’d argue that this is one of the most competitive industries in regards to SEO. However, many poker affiliates often take their on-page optimization and con- version strategy for granted. An example of an optimized call to action would be as fol- lows. Let’s say you have a page that ranks very well for the term “Omaha Poker Tournaments Online.” Obviously your content on this page is more than likely about Omaha poker, whether it be rules of the game, strategy or maybe even news about a tour- nament. Knowing, however, that your traffic to this page is primar- ily looking for Omaha poker tour- naments online will allow you to have strategic calls to action. Sure, your page might be about a recent Oma- ha poker tournament, but your visitor is more than likely looking to play Omaha poker tournaments online! Armed with this information, you can create content and CTAs that will increase the possibil- ity of conversions. In this instance, one thing you could do would be to place something very bold on the page above the fold that states some- thing like “The Best Weekly Omaha Poker Tournaments On The In- ternet – Play Right Now By Click- ing Here!” I would then add in some specific examples of rooms and tourna- “Think of your Web site as a virtual salesperson. Visitors need a reason to actually click through from your links or banners – and your virtual salesperson has to close the deal.” 16 Converting your poker affiliate traffic to depositing players