Open Discussion: SEO, PPC, 2nd Tier Search

[Greg]

Getting traffic to an online poker portal isn't really that easy. There are a lot of good affiliates on this forum who have hit and miss for years before ever gaining some RMP's and moving forward into the affiliate business. These affiliates represent the top 10% of everyone who has ever joined an affiliate program - people who have received a payment

Honestly I wanted to share some after returning from Affiliate Summit East in Miami this month. There were loads and loads of people from various programs pushing all sorts of affiliate programs. There were your basics in attendance: clothing, medicine, diets, dating, travel and vacation and also some new fads like Halloween Costumes and hair care. Basically all these guys can do something we can - Google Adwords and 1st tier PPC campaigns.

Now since poker is really, really bad (thanks Google) and we cant do much on the mainstream side of PPC there are other ways we have to use to attract traffic to the sites. One of course is the ol' standard in marketing here...SEO. New sites have a hard time making progress quickly and the old standards dont really feel like giving you a main page 'Free Online Poker' anchor text link to your two month old freeroll site. So that leaves you with something else to consider when building a new site...Web 2.0 and the fun widgets that seem to be multiplying by the thousands. Honestly, in our industry it's going to be hard to go Viral (unless you are banging Melissa Midwest with a yellow MyPokerWebsite.com shirt on and it leaks to every media site online. Otherwise I would suggest making your site 2.0 friendly and start using some Digg and Delicious as well as feeds and the like. Check out some cool new SEO chat on WebmasterWorld and expand your thoughts a bit from poker and casino....

Feel free to discuss

[scrawnybob]

hi greg

can you let me know where I can get one of these magic yellow viral friendly t shirts ? they sound good

also who is Melissa Midwest ?

do people dig her ?

cheers scrawnybob

ps. on a more serious note - nice post and reading some stuff over at sitepoint while PAW was down made me realise there is some serious money to be made doing adwords for just random stuff - I mean seems like someone who knows what they are doing can monitize just about any site

also is it really only 10% of affiliates who earn anything ?

or 10% of affiliates who earn the big bucks / anything considered "worthwhile" ?

reading some of the PPC figures makes me feel like I set my sights way too low just as I thought it was all coming together in a small way

[Justin]

Originally Posted by scrawnybob

also is it really only 10% of affiliates who earn anything ?

Prolly just the 80/20 rule.... 10% of the affiliates are making 90% of the profits. It def. holds true in the affiliate world.

[Brandon]

Originally Posted by Justin

Prolly just the 80/20 rule.... 10% of the affiliates are making 90% of the profits. It def. holds true in the affiliate world.

100% true

[PKing]

In my opinion, in terms of SEO, too many people focus on the big keywords and ignore the long-tail keywords. If you are trying to optimize your site for "online poker", good luck getting traffic. If you just write interesting articles, the traffic will come. My biggest piece of advice when it comes to SEO would be, forget about SEO. Try to think of some unique article ideas. You'll gather a bunch of links and traffic over the course of a few months, and your site will be a monster one day.

PPC is incredibly lucrative, but certainly requires some start-up capital. Google Adwords is quite a tough nut to crack, but once you figure it out, the money will flow. If you are going to target a niche in PPC, create a site with articles that will generate "free" clicks as well. Have your landing page for your PPC campaign on this site. Google Adwords will reward you for having a fully-formed site, and not just a one pager.

I could go on and on about SEO and PPC. If you are looking to broaden your horizons, definitely consider getting into PPC.

[Jeremy]

Originally Posted by Justin
Prolly just the 80/20 rule.... 10% of the affiliates are making 90% of the profits. It def. holds true in the affiliate world.

Yes this is very true. So just strive to be in the top 20% and you will be be very successful.

What Greg is saying about web 2.0 stuff is very true though.

[scrawnybob]

hi guys

PAW is just such a great resource - I know I'd have given up without it and had no idea why I failed - so glad I've carried on - maybe not massive rev but a decent enough living can be made - If I can anyone can

I guess the 90% who dont make anything are the irritating F Wits who keep spamming forums with lame posts and affiliate links - do those backlinks even warrant the effort anymore ?

A friend has been doing adwords and PPC for a good while now and seems to make nice money - but I think you really need to know that secret formula from the off - time to get back on the research

the web 2.0 seems a bit like the whole do I do content or links - seems IMHO you need to do as much as you can of everything - if anyone has a "get 36 hrs out of a 24hr day" machine - 2nd hand is fine I'll take it

cheers scrawnybob