GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 34 - February 2016

The solution to online poker’s traffic woes? Bring back the “Real Deal.” Are you a full-time affiliate? If not, what else do you do for work? I wouldn’t con- sider myself a full-time affiliate. Four or five years ago I was a full-time affiliate and SEO specialist, but as I was building my first affiliate site I had to learn CSS, PHP, JavaScript, etc. This then led to me to another 4-5 years of training in website design. I’m still learning all the time, but I credit my affiliate beginnings to me now operating my own website design agency. If I hadn’t gotten into the affiliate busi- ness, I would have never learned CSS, PHP and Java. Talk a little bit about your professional background. In addition to running af- filiate sites, you have some experience as a freelance SEO consultant, correct? I was trained in SEO for around three years before becoming active in the affiliate in- dustry. At that point my primary source of income and expertise was in SEO and I decided to create my own affiliate sites, optimize them and see what the return on investment would be. A few years ago you were offering SEO services on the GPWA message boards. Did you ever get any work out of that offer? Yes, I did offer my services on the GPWA forum for SEO and yes, I did get work out of that. I’m still in touch with a few people that I worked for on the GPWA that I would now consider my friends. It was never easy offering SEO on the fo- rums as most people think you are either spamming or not very good as I charged — and still charge — reasonable prices for SEO work. It was difficult trying to ex- plain why a small affiliate website needed a budget of $99-$299 a month, when big- ger companies were charging $699+. The reason a small affiliate site needs less SEO is because they require fewer hours spent on SEO. For example, a small affiliate site with less than 10 pages would have fall- en into the $99 bracket, as I would only need to work on the site for 6-8 hours each week or month. I’m sure there will be some that disagree with this statement, but I’m pretty sure it’ll only be from SEOs charging too much for their services. When did you launch your first affiliate site? How long did it take before you re- ceived your first affiliate check? My first affiliate site was built way back in 2008 be- fore I knew how to design a website, and I built it with the absolutely awful “webs” website builder. At that point I was a total beginner and one year into learning SEO. I’m glad that site’s no longer with us to- day, and it does make me chuckle when I think about it. The worst part of it all was using GoDaddy as a hosting company! My first affiliate check was from one of my old affiliate sites, pokersponsor2-0.com , and came from a poker site no longer with us which was called “Real Deal Poker.” It was the first site I promoted. They had me- chanical dealers with real decks of cards which you could watch shuffle live. I loved the innovation and that it didn’t rely on an RNG. It truly did have a unique selling point; however, it never seemed to be mar- keted correctly and was shut down. How important is SEO for affiliates? Is there still space for affiliates in SEO? SEO is vital for the success of virtually any site, in my opinion. Yes, there are other ways to get traffic through SEM and advertising, but the most economical way is definitely SEO. Depending on keyword competition you could rank organically for 6-12 months before dropping -2 posi- tions with SEO. SEM and advertising are continual costs, and I believe that any small affiliate should be looking at SEO primarily due to return on investment. In my opinion there is definitely still a place in the world for SEO, and it is vital for any website to be successful regardless of industry. There is, however, a very big difference in how to promote an affiliate site compared to when I first started. I re- member the days when PokerStars.com wouldn’t even show up first for the key- word “pokerstars bonus code,” and these types of keywords were the gravy train for most affiliates. Today poker rooms, sportsbooks and casinos all show up first for their own name plus “bonus code,” thus making it pointless to optimize for those terms. Today, affiliates should be building content-worthy sites that are of use to the end user. A poker news website or a USA poker room site would be good examples. You need to offer something unique, useful to the end visitor, and if possible, a semi-competitive market. GPWA AFFILIATE INTERVIEW SERIES PokerSpnsor2-0 Richard G. AGE 30 HOMETOWN Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, U.K. LIVING IN Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, U.K. FAVORITE FOOD Lasagna MUST-READ BOOK The Hobbit , by J.R.R. Tolkien SITES (WORKED ON) www.pokernewsreport.com Rakeback4.me SITES (OWNER) www.online-poker-bonus-codes.com (still active but no updates for a long time) pokersponsor2-0.com GPWA Affiliate Interview Series