How to gain a competitive advantage by using a blog. What are the steps to take before setting up a blog to make sure content is both unique and targeted to the right audience before revealing how to convert this readership with specific tools and strategies that should be incorporated into every blog. Key learning points include: - Just having a blog is not enough to improve your SEO efforts - How to properly research content ideas that will create a bigger impact - How to bring in more traffic to your site - How to convert long tail traffic - What kind of CTAs to use on your blog to increase the right kind of conversions

1. Blogging With a Purpose
How to get more traffic and conversions
Aferdita Pacrami
CEO, 90 Digital
@ditapac

2. WHY?

3. If done right your blog can:
get new visitors to your site
make promotion easier
build loyalty
extend your brand reach
convert

4. Transactional searches are competitive & expensive

5. ~80%
of searches are
informational
source

6. “Phantom 2”
aka the Quality Update

7. What did it affect?
how to articles
click bait articles
thin articles
only a few paragraphs
low quality supplementary content
stacked videos
navigational queries
low quality user generated content
more info

8. The value of the long tail
high competition
low conversion
lower competition
higher conversion

9. Getting links is hard
(when you have nothing to offer)

10. Depending on Google for traffic

11. Building a brand = less reliance on Google

12. Affiliates can be their own brand

13. But first,
let’s get deep...

14. Why do you exist?

15. What are your business objectives?
Why are you blogging?
acquisition - get more traffic to your site
behaviour - build a community
outcome - get users to sign up to bookies through you

16. What is your USP?

17. Why you’re not a special snowflake
1. “unbiased” bookmaker reviews
1. top bookmakers
1. best sign up bonuses
1. latest sports news

18. Affiliate Blog
Acquisition
● create useful &
relevant content that
people want to read
(owned)
● rank for real questions
people have (earned)
● bid for cheaper less
competitive
keyphrases to drive
traffic to your content
(paid)
Behaviour
● establish a community
by getting people to
like/follow you on
social
● capture leads (emails)
so you can convert
users later on and
cross sell
Outcome
● helpful, personalised
information - users
use your affiliate link
to sign up to bookies
● they keep punting
● they sign up to more
bookies that are
relevant to their
interests
● they convert their
friends

19. Who are you talking to?

20. Who is your audience?
yougov.co.uk - Grand National

21. What are they into?

22. Where do they hang out?

23. What are they asking?

24. Finding the questions

25. What’s already out there?

26. What can you do?

27. Printables

28. Good presentation

29. Comprehensive

30. Stand Out

31. Structured Data
Semantic markup that helps describe elements on a page.
Schema.org
supported by Google, Bing, Yahoo!
compatible with microdata, JSON-LD, RDFa
standardised library
easy to use

32. Using Schema.org does not increase rankings
… (yet?)

33. 36.6%
Google searches include
Schema snippets
source

34. ...but, only
0.3%
of sites use Schema
source

35. Events

36. Articles

37. Videos

38. Breadcrumbs

40. Test, test, test
Testing Tool

41. Sharing is caring

42. Selection Sharer

43. CoSchedule

44. My Tweet Links

45. LiveFyre

46. Ignored Sidebars
Users spend 69% of their time on the left half of the
page

47. Banner Blindness
Heavy reliance on banners won’t get you the CTRs

48. Include CTAs within your content

49. Give people a reason to part with their email

50. Personalise CTAs

51. Usual affiliate relationship
AFFILIATE OPERATOR
affiliate link
Operator then handles:
● conversion
● upsell
● cross sell
● loyalty
● learns more about user
than you ever will

52. Instead...
AFFILIATE OPERATOR
affiliate link
1. sign up to newsletter (get email
address)
2. follow you on social (get demographics)
3. track activity on site (get interests)
4. send surveys (find out more about their
interests)
your users
● send promotions relevant to their interests
● cross sell to other bookies they’d be interested in
● refer a friend promotions
● turn them from a bonus hunter to a valued player
● let them know as soon as you get new bookies on
your site

53. Summary

54. Thorough planning
why, then how
1

55. Get to know your audience
demographics, what else they’re interested in,
where they hang out, what they talk about
2

56. Check out the competition
see what works and what doesn’t
3

57. Create something worthwhile
copying what others are doing won’t get you anywhere
4

58. Optimise the page
looks good on search, is easy to share
5

59. Convert and own your users
don’t forget the micro conversions
6

60. Thanks!
Aferdita Pacrami
CEO, 90 Digital
@ditapac