TRAFFIC
it makes total sense to rank the websites
people actually want. Wouldn’t you?
The overall picture
Google can now interpret websites better
than a human being. They can understand
what an editorially justified link looks like
and they are using engagement as a driver
for rankings.
Once you add everything up, you’re
basically left with a couple of choices:
1. give up on SEO
2. build satisfying websites
I vote for option number two. Why?
Because if you build a website users want,
you’ll convert better, making more money and
as a collateral benefit, Google will rank you.
Change your mindset
Instead of asking ‘how can I game Google
to rank better?’…Perhaps you should ask
another question of yourself...
‘How can I satisfy users and make a
profit?’
Why change the way I think?
Survival?! If you’re an iGaming affiliate,
the economics of paid media don’t really
stack up in your favour. So, ultimately
you’re going to be reliant on cheap traffic.
And that comes from natural search or
social. Since social isn’t my thing, I’m not
going to go there.
How to be satisfying
It’s best to start from the top and work
one’s way downwards. The first question is;
‘what is satisfying?’
In the case of Google, the answer is
really simple. Somebody has a question
(search query) and they want an answer
which satisfies them.
If you’re an affiliate, there are different
groups of questions:
●●Transactional: ‘free bet offer’ / ‘online
casino’
“Google’s AI-driven RankBrain makes sense of
ambiguous search queries, meaning that websites don’t
have to be as well “on-site optimised” as they were in
the past, as Google can understand the inference and
meaning of content, much like you or I.”
●●Informational:
‘how to turn decimal
into fractional odds’ / ‘betting tips for
football league’
●●Navigational: ‘name of operator/
affiliate’ / wherever a user knows where
to go, but doesn’t have the domain name.
Transactional
Within these three categories of key
phrases, transactional is where the money
is. For those of you who know the site
freebets.com, you’ll see a superfast, but
rather ugly and basic website that just gives
free bet offers. It’s very satisfying to a user,
because it does exactly what it supposed to.
Another great example is bigfreechiplist.
com, which just has hundreds and
hundreds of casino-related offers.
If a user wants a free bet or a casino
bonus offer, these websites are extremely
satisfying.
Informational
You’ve heard about content marketing? It’s
not something I particularly like, because
I think a lot of it’s rather misguided, as
giving a user helpful information takes you
quite ‘far’ away from getting them to join
an operator.
However, so many affiliates are fixated
with the idea of giving comprehensive
reviews about particular offers. This is also
content marketing, because in theory a
user trusts an affiliate to give them helpful
guidance on joining an operator.
In my experience, users are a bit smarter
than we think. They don’t know that you’re
going to promote the bookie who pays you
the most money, but they do notice that
every single review kind of looks the same
and typically gives 9.5 stars out of 10 for
nearly half of the operators.
That’s not very helpful or satisfying to a
user. OLBG.com to their credit have pushed
the boundaries on content marketing further
than just about any affiliate. They are taking
a lifetime view on the customer, going from
offering a huge number of free bets through
to crowd-sourced and vetted tips to the
punter. The clever part is how they think
about lifetime value.
But not everyone is OLBG…
Navigational
In many respects, navigational searches are
very commercially driven. If a user does a
brand search and they are not yet registered
with that company, there’s an opportunity
for you.
Very often, operators don’t advertise their
free bet offers very well, and all it takes is
an enterprising affiliate to rank somewhere
on the bottom half of page 1 for a brand
phrase. A user doesn’t care where the free
money comes from, as long as they get it,
and affiliates are smarter about advertising
an operator free bet than the operator.
An affiliate can provide great user
satisfaction and make a load of money.
What would I do?
I am in an odd position. I am both a casino
operator, running a bitcoin casino, and an
affiliate, who owns clubcall.com
Clubcall is a sport content website and so
falls into the ‘informational’ bucket. If you
check out the site, you’ll see that it’s very
basic, but quick. We have a relationship
iGB Affiliate Issue 55 FEB/MAR 2016
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