When you sit down to develop an SEO strategy for your casino affiliate sites, what’s your real intention? Are you looking to maximize conversions; or just increase page rankings?
If you’re just applying SEO because you think you have to, without any real end-game in mind, you’re probably leaving money (and customers) on the table.
In a recent blog posting on SearchEngineJournal.com titled, Four Schools of SEO Thought, contributor Brian Lofrumento, laid out some SEO end-games web publishers should keep in mind.
Here’s a summary of his four main groups. Which one are you in?
Improved Ranking
Everyone knows that the sites on the first page of results catch the lion’s share of traffic, which is why so many web publishers follow them with a religious fervor. The bigger question here is how effective those page rankings actually are?
Lofrumento rightly points out that:
Fifty #10 rankings can be more valuable to your bottom line than two #1 rankings depending on the keywords, consumer preference, conversion rates, and search volume.
Beginning SEOs should always keep in mind that quality traffic trumps quantity every day of the week.
Increased Organic Search Traffic
The more you get into SEO from the affiliate perspective, the more you appreciate the value of organic search traffic. After all, when customers are coming to you from this direction, it sends a clear message that your content marketing efforts are probably paying off.
Increased organic traffic is definitely a good sign, but it’s a measure of success that’s more akin to a first down than a touchdown. Once you’ve got those visitors at your site, you need to dig into the analytics to find out if those folks are sticking around and/or being converted.
Increased Overall Site Traffic
By most measures a jump in site traffic is considered a good thing because, at its core, sales is just a numbers game. If you can get your material in front of enough eyeballs, sales and conversions are bound to follow, right?
Sort of.
This is another case where the quality, and origin, of all that traffic is something you’ll want to determine. If you’re getting lots of traffic but not much engagement, it’s likely that you’ve got a content problem.
Of course determining where your new found readers are coming from can also validate, or repudiate, your overall SEO strategy.
Increased Conversions
Here’s where the rubber really meets the road. A site that doesn’t really get a lot of traffic won’t really need a lot of traffic if it gets lots of conversions. That’s a best-case-scenario, but it speaks to the value of high quality traffic.
Now how you define conversions is an entirely personal matter and you may wind up having more than one type of conversion. Whether you’re looking for depositing players or newsletter sign-ups conversions are the gold standard of SEO metrics.
Lofrumento warns that the only danger in using conversions as a measure of success is that your qualified lead pipeline will need continuous re-filling. That may require studying one of the other SEO schools.
Repeat as necessary.
Which school of SEO do you belong to? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.