Affiliate marketing sites, and the people who run them, are challenged with creating websites that function as both content providers and salesmen.
Maintaining a balance between those two functions, however, is a factor that will seriously impact the number of players you convert and the number of zeros on your bottom line.
If you’re serious about optimizing a website for maximum affiliate marketing firepower, we strongly suggest that you get acquainted with some very ground level web marketing concepts.
Learn SEO Best Practices
In a recent interview with CAP, AskGamblers founder Igor Salindijra weighed in on the perceived importance of SEO in the gambling affiliate business saying:
I’ve never seen an industry where the SEO is as big of a deal like in gambling. To some, SEO is the god almighty, some made their fortunes through it and that’s all they know and do.
SEO is a huge deal in this business which is why learning the basics, and keeping up with best practices, is a critical component of affiliate website optimization.
It’s also important to remember that affiliates are held to a higher level of scrutiny than other industries and many of Google’s frequent updates and SEO policies.
Sticking with SEO fundamentals and avoiding black hat shortcuts is the best path to successful optimization of affiliate marketing sites.
Offer Quality Content and/or Value
While Salindijra recognizes the importance of SEO in optimizing an affiliate website, he’s also very aware of the fact that SEO doesn’t do much if you’re not offering your players something of value saying:
If you ask me, people should pay more intention to their products, not rankings…Make good products, offer a good service and the people will notice and appreciate that. Everything else is just shortcuts that don’t hold on for too long.
Besides promoting quality partners, affiliates need to present quality content to their potential players. This means something significantly deeper than paper thin casino reviews that do little more than simply promote your affiliate partners.
Legitimate content provides value and the more value you provide to your readers, the more likely they are to become depositing players. (And that’s to say nothing of Google’s well-known views on the subject of quality content.)
Avoid the Hard Sell
Quality content, the kind that actually delivers on a value proposition, does not need a hard sell. While it’s perfectly acceptable to have a call-to-action early in a posting, you don’t need to hit your readers over the head with it.
Most online gamblers have pretty well-developed BS detectors, so there’s no point in trying to bamboozle them. Direct, truthful content will convert players better than hype every day of the week.
Embrace Change
The only constant in the effort to optimize a site for maximum affiliate marketing is change. Google’s Penguin, for example, showed how a practice that’s totally acceptable one day can turn into SEO poison practically overnight.
Affiliates who cling on to outdated SEO and content marketing techniques are setting themselves up for major page rank disappointment. Always be ready to embrace new techniques and to jettison ideas that just aren’t working anymore.