Over the past couple years, blogging has become main stream in the poker affiliate market. Almost every large poker site has a blog of some sort. In fact many poker affiliates are using blogging software such as wordpress for their main sites.

Having a stand alone blog or incorporating a blog into your website can be very beneficial to your overall business. A blog is a great place to establish authority in whatever niche you are promoting within. Plus if you’re running a blog alongside your main site, you can leverage it to feed link juice and drive traffic to areas or pages deep within your site. This is very beneficial when trying to rank for certain long tail phrases.

Search engines love blogs because the content is always fresh and constantly being updated. In fact, the search engine benefits of having a blog cannot be overstated. When you are a blogger or have a blog on your site, getting links and doing link exchanges also becomes much easier. Remember, almost all bloggers link and exchange links with other bloggers.

Here a few practical tips for poker affiliates thinking about utilizing a blog in their marketing efforts:

1. Have useful and unique content - Of course we are all in the poker affiliate business to make money, but nothing is worse than seeing a blog that contains 100% marketing posts pushing offers or bonus codes. When making new blog posts, always think about your readers first. People come to blogs seeking information or entertainment, not to be sold something. The goal should be to get people to bookmark or link to your blog because they see value in it, or you provide great information, knowledge, or entertainment. If you get enough readers or stickiness, you can then incorporate more subtle calls to action or promotions to encourage click throughs or sign-ups through your affiliate links.

2. Use a blog to build your brand – One of the most powerful aspects of having a blog is that you can use it to build either your websites brand, or even your personal brand. Whether building a personal brand, or your website brand, you want to be known and remembered for something. The beauty of having a popular blog is that many readers will to subscribe to your RSS feeds. This means that every time you make a new post, you will be in front of your audience via their RSS readers, even if they do not visit your site.

Because of this reason, it is critical that your message or personality remain consistent. As mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, you can link to other areas of your website from your blog posts. Aside from the SEO benefits, this is also a way in building the brand of your overall website.

3. Treat Your Blog Like A Community - A common misconception in the marketplace is that the only way to have an online community is by incorporating some sort of forum software. A well written blog can actually be much better than an online community. To do this however, you need to engage your readers and get them commenting. COMMENTING IS KING when running an online blog. If you’re readers are actively commenting, this means you are doing a good job at engaging them. Likewise always keep in mind, motion creates emotion. If new readers see that there is a great deal of comments in your blog it gives the proper perception that your blog is an active one. It will also add a great deal more depth to each of your posts.

Often times comments will help you in building community and visitor loyalty as readers will return to your blog simply to see the follow up comments. One of the often overlooked keys to increasing the conversation in your blog is that your involvement shouldn’t end after you publish the post. You should always respond to your readers comments and work to actively keep the conversation alive until your next post. Here’s a few tips about comments; Ask questions, Answer questions, play devil’s advocate, promote conversation, don’t allow trolling or stupidity in the comments section.

4. Be Yourself – Unlike most traditional static websites, a blog is the one area on the web where you can truly be yourself and show your unique personality or thoughts on various subjects. Being yourself is one of the main elements in “building your brand”. For the most part, blog readers are looking for personality. If not, they would be reading Wiki type sites and not blogs. If your regular readers feel as if they “know you”, they will be more than likely to continue to be loyal readers for years to come. Being yourself in your posts also engages new visitors much better than generic writing with no personality.

5. Link Out, Link Out, & Link Out Some More - One of the best ways for poker affiliates to gain exposure to their sites and get new incoming links is to link out to other popular bloggers or websites. Almost every webmaster checks their visitor logs on a monthly basis. If they see you linking to their site with a compliment or story of interest, there is a good chance they will reciprocate and link to you. Not only will this give you the value of new links, it will also provide you with great exposure in the poker affiliate and blogger world. If you look at the top 10 poker blogs, it is clear that they are all constantly linking out to other sites. As a blogger, you cannot be afraid if you’re traffic clicks out to another website or blog, this is all part of the game.

In another article we discussed web design and hosting. For the purpose of making sure you do not make the same rookie mistakes many new bloggers have made in the past, we will briefly discuss some considerations to keep in mind when choosing a blogging platform.

Whether you are starting a blog as a main site, or simply as an addition to an existing site, there is one piece of advice that I cannot emphasize enough. Host your own blog on your own domain! Sure, there are free services out there such as Wordpress and Blogspot that allow you to create new blogs with any available sub-domain. This may sound attractive, but down the road you will probably regret it.

By hosting your blog on your own domain name you will have much more flexibility. Likewise you will never have to worry about accidentally violating a platforms terms and conditions in respect to advertising gambling. There are so many obvious reasons to host your own blog; if nothing else just for backups and security, not to mention the inability to customize and add plugins. The bottom line though is that when you host your blog as a sub-domain on someone else’s platform, you are not in complete control. If you’re simply setting up feeder blogs for link juice, then fine. But if you’re setting up a serious blog where you wish to grow loyal readers, don’t do it. Many webmaster have had to learn this the hard way.

Many new bloggers can be lured into setting their blog up with a free service because it seems extremely turn-key and easy. It is, but anymore if you set up a cheap hosting account with a Cpanel, blog installation is as easy as a couple clicks of the mouse. The easiest to set up, and powerful blogging platform currently on the market is by far wordpress. In Chapter 5 we discussed the benefits of wordpress over any other platform. Here they are again:

1. It’s Open Source and Free - How can you beat free? And being open source, it means there are literally hundreds of easy to install plug-ins that will allow you to have a fully functioning CMS up and running within a day or so. Did I mention the part about it’s absolutely free!
2. It’s Easy To Use - Forget about all the php and coding confusion you may have just read about. Although wordpress is a php content management system, it can be installed with a few clicks of the mouse. Once installed it is also very easy to manage your content and make changes.

1. Customization & Plugins - Because the platform is open source with so many plugins, building a site with wordpress will allow you to customize your site in a variety of ways. Although there are several free wordpress design templates, you can usually get a custom designed poker template for around $100. Some of the plugins that are available will amaze even the most savviest of webmasters and designers.

1. Search Engine Friendly - Another great feature of wordpress is that the code is very search engine friendly. And if that is not enough, you can even install a plugin (with the click of a mouse) that will allow you to edit your keywords, title. And meta information for each page. Most poker affiliates have found that when using wordpress as a cms for their site, they are indexed and rank very quickly in the search engines.

In closing of this chapter, there is really no downside in having a blog. It’s an easy way to publish content and build your brand. It also provides you with an SEO friendly platform where you can drive traffic while establishing an online following and community. Blogging allows you to interact on a much more personal level with your visitors. In the interactive 2.0 world that we live in, this can be the difference between your site taking off, or becoming another dud in the market of poker websites.

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