There will always be a lot of discussion by affiliates about the percentage of traffic that they convert. I have found real money player conversions (from your site to real money players) has a lot to do with keywords. There are definitely other site factors including calls to action, programs you are promoting, banners used…etc. But in the end, I think if you have the best keywords (online poker, online casino) you will convert more traffic than the most optimized free casino/poker site.
I think most people realize that “free” is a really low converting keyword but there is a lot of traffic for it. So how bad can it really be?
I created a site to target a “free” (casino/poker) site and here are the stats so far:
Clicks: 719
Unique Downloads: 35
Sign-ups: 30
New Depositors: 0
Yep, no conversions…This doesn’t mean that later down the road there won’t be any real money conversions as this is a small sample size of time and players. Though, I can definitely say that “free” keywords aren’t a get rich quick type of keyword. Also, the program that I was sending the traffic through has done really well in the past with converting players so I don’t think it’s the program…Although, I may try sending the traffic to another program to see if I will get better results.
Recently, I found a keyword that I wanted to target and decided I would check to see if the domain was available. Of course, the .com was taken but the .net and .org were available. I don’t mind developing domain names with either of these extensions but since it was a two word keyword, I also searched to see if putting a dash between the keywords was available. The dash .com was also available. The last domain name option would be to add another keyword to the domain to get the .com.
The basic problem with .net, .org and dash is you you may lose traffic to the .com.
Using a domain with an added keyword makes the domain harder to remember and you may not get as much search engine benefit of having the exact keyword match.
I have used all of the above domain buying options except using a dash. So I bought a dash domain name and will report on how it goes. I may buy a couple more to get a general idea on whether the search engine benefit is as much as you would get as if you used .net/.org counterparts.
I run into this question quite often and haven’t decided which type of domain name I prefer. I usually end up picking one and then the next time I have the problem go with a different option…I figure it can’t hurt changing it up because long term no one knows how google will rank extensions and dash domains but if anyone has any evidence or thoughts on which is best currently…let me know.