Is it normal to have high clicks but virtually no registrations / FTDs?

[Elliot_FreeSpins]

Hi guys. As title says, I think some of my pages are starting to rank, and I've been promoting on socials too. Also I have an aged keyword match domain with some decent direct traffic. I can see that the aff link clicks are pretty decent for the stage it's at (some operators in the 100's of clicks), but registrations are very low (<10 across all partners, with one partner accounting for >50% of those) and FTDs are zero.

I know it's really early (going into the second month), and there's a lot of noise at this stage. But when should I be concerned that I'm getting clicks but no conversions?

Apologies if this has been asked somewhere else already.

[allfreechips]

Yes its normal and if freespins is the KW it will be that way between reg to dep as well. You are most likely seeing bot traffic at this point but you could track with a heatmap plugin to see better.

[Elliot_FreeSpins]

Thanks allfreechips! Yeah I expect it's bots, although right now the daily clicks are much higher than traffic to the site according to GA4, so it's a strange one!

[chaumi]

"I think some of my pages are starting to rank"

Rank for what?

You'll need to understand that so you can potentially double down and try to build on what it's ranking for (though at this stage, it would be a pretty big surprise if you are indeed ranking for anything).

And if you can work out what's coming from where (and how), you'll have a better chance of understanding the click dynamics.

But...even if it is real traffic...you probably have to get used to the idea that ftd's will be hard to come by. The site is about free spins...and players looking for free spins are (usually/exclusively) looking for free spins...not to gamble. It's likely you'll need some significant traffic...and work out how to present stuff to visitors that somehow entices them to look past the free stuff they wanted and take a risk.

"Also I have an aged keyword match domain with some decent direct traffic." Do you mean you think people are typing in freespins.casino? I'll suggest that's highly improbable, most 'normal' people are unlikely to even be aware that .casino is a thing. I guess if some people are seeing an unlinked mention somewhere, then it's possible they could go to the URL bar and type it in, but even that's unlikely.

[Elliot_FreeSpins]

Hey chaumi, thanks for the detailed reply. Looks like we're also from similar neck of the woods, except for my sins in a past life I'm from the West Midlands You are welcome to read the remainder of my post in Dudley accent!

100% agreed on the free spins angle, so I'll jump into the rest.

So, we're definitely already getting impressions and a tiny tiny amount of clicks for some very obscure search terms in GSC, and also around the same number of clicks and impressions on Bing according to their Webmaster Tools. As I say though, this is very low, and definitely doesn't account for the number of visitors we're seeing to the site.

For context our 28 day active visitors according to GA4 are 3.3k on month one, and we're seeing this tail off only slightly as we go into month two. But, like you, I'm very skeptical of this. It's my first casino affiliate site, but I've been a senior marketer for 8 years in fintech, and I've not seen analytics data like this before on a brand new site with next-to-no promo. So I fully agree, it's likely bot traffic. But here is where it gets weird.

They are often viewing multiple pages, clicking links, active users are steady, and event count is high. Not to mention the majority of the traffic is US + UK. So, I'm a bit stumped.

According to Wayback Machine the domain has never really been developed before. I also invest / flip domain names and have done for some years, and I'm always on the lookout for domains with a good backlink profile and decent DR, but this had neither (150 BL's, mostly trash, and a 0 DR). So again, this doesn't explain the traffic.

What's interesting is, before I decided to develop this domain, my plan was to just flip it. I won it at auction. It's still listed on 3rd party marketplaces, and the listing has quickly become one of my most viewed domains by a long shot out of 200+ names. So, someone is looking for the domain, even if it's not direct type in. (edit - meant to add, this reason alone was why I chose to develop it over all the other casino related .COM domain I have). It's very strange, because I agree with you on all points, it's an obscure TLD and it's not something you'd directly type in.

I think my next move will be as allfreechips suggested and get HotJar setup and see where people are clicking (or bots) and try and separate the wheat from the chaff.

Thanks for your detailed input and tarah-a-bit!

[chaumi]

Best laugh of the day, mate "You are welcome to read the remainder of my post in Dudley accent!" I did!

I'm thinking now, could it be domain buyer traffic clicking through. That might explain the direct traffic, assuming the listings aren't hyperlinked. Not my world - flipping/selling - so don't know if that sort of traffic happens, at any real volume anyway.

Anyway, yeah it'll all be guesswork unless you can see what's really happening. Intriguing from the way you describe it, but there will be an explanation.

[Elliot_FreeSpins]

Haha I've been out of the area for some years now but the second I open my mouth, everyone knows exactly where I'm from.

That could account for a small portion of it, but the volume of prospective buyers is normally super low. A few hundred every couple of months maybe? So probably accounts for a bit but not the visitors we're seeing. I'll get some more data and update the thread here.

Thanks for all the responses! Great forum so far!

- Elliot

[TheGooner]

One of the biggest sources of (unwanted) traffic at the moment appears to be the AI bots - especially the ChatGPT bot.

We are producing about 20 new pages per day, so there is always something to scan which may be why we attracted them initially, but they're voracious little b@st@rds and we are getting around 10,000 bot hits per day and as many as 1,000 hits on the same item in a day

They'll typically run through the site reading any and all news posts and old linked items.

They come from hundreds of IPs, over several different countries but UK and US are common - and they'll follow most links recording clicks.
For the most part behave like a hyperactive group of visitors.

We've banned them via user agent now giving them a 429 response (too many requests) ... but still they pop-up at 4-5 per minute.
There seems to be no way to tell OpenAI or any of these bots to f@%k off - I mean what point is there to hit the same page 1000+ times per day?

At peak (earlier this month) they were responsible for 70-80% of our daily requests.
Check your control panel and find the visitors section and look over the User Agents - you'll quickly see whether it's bots and which ones.

[Elliot_FreeSpins]

Hey TheGooner, that's very interesting/frustrating and I expect I'm experiencing something similar.

Have to hold my hands up and admit to just discovering a major mistake on my part. Affiliate link clicks through to partner operators had inflated the last few days as discussed above... but it's because I turned on Ahrefs 'always on' site crawl, then we also turned on PrettyLinks for all our aff links - and as they now use our domain URL + '/operator', Ahrefs was treating them as internal and crawling / 'clicking' them too

That's one mystery sorted. But still doesn't explain the traffic to the 'new' site. So I expect you're 100% right Gooner and it's bots. Just got Wordfence setup so should have some data on that shortly.

Thanks and appreciate the insights! Very keen to cut through the noise.

[wonderpunter]

Hi guys. As title says, I think some of my pages are starting to rank, and I've been promoting on socials too. Also I have an aged keyword match domain with some decent direct traffic. I can see that the aff link clicks are pretty decent for the stage it's at (some operators in the 100's of clicks), but registrations are very low (<10 across all partners, with one partner accounting for >50% of those) and FTDs are zero.

I know it's really early (going into the second month), and there's a lot of noise at this stage. But when should I be concerned that I'm getting clicks but no conversions?

Apologies if this has been asked somewhere else already.

Even getting registartions after month 2 is a big sign, most people wait monthgs sometimes a year to pickup, however.... Free spins almost never convert especialy when compared to real money keywords. it'll get you lots of sign ups but you will need mass volume to see any kind of result and even then the time you spend on it might be better spent on other converting keywords. either way you can use the domain as a jump ship to more valuable pages in the future.

[OnlineProxy]

yep,it’s normal at first to get a lot of clicks but few registrations or FTDs.However,this could be a red flag depending on the quality of your traffic and how your funnel is set up,if you’ve sent 300-500 clicks to an offer with almost no registrations,you should check for issues like mismatched landing pages, unclear bonus terms, or low trust signals,social and early SEO traffic often attracts people who click but don’t convert,make sure your CTA goes straight to the bonus,your offer terms are clear, and the page builds trust quickly,it’s still early,use this time to optimize and test a lot,you’ll start to see better results in 1–3 months

[MaksRoad]

This is what happens when you start getting "no deposit bonus" traffic
https://freeimage.host/i/Kf3CeAG

[Elliot_FreeSpins]

Thanks everyone for the input! We definitely have some dialling in to do on our stats and traffic sources, as well as rethinking our keyword targeting as it seems it's a low conversion game on the free spins side of it.

Will keep you updated!

[eenzoo]

Actually one of the best advice i got 20yrs back ... "follow your plan, skip watching stats for 6 month ..."

[FairCasinos]

Now many companies make their own parsers, bots of which are not on the rejection lists. Therefore, you can see many clicks that do not lead to registrations and, especially, to deposits

[Elliot_FreeSpins]

Had our first, incredibly modest commission today. Buzzing. Thanks for all the help everyone.

[allfreechips]

COngrats! Thats a giant step forward!

[Cash Bonus]

Yes, of course it's normal. There are some casinos in which I have really high traffic (clicks, impressions, downloads and registrations/signups) and yet I still never get any new FTDs.

[slotsdudes]

Lots of clicks can be crawlers to ?

[TopCasinoScout]

Even getting registartions after month 2 is a big sign, most people wait monthgs sometimes a year to pickup, however.... Free spins almost never convert especialy when compared to real money keywords. it'll get you lots of sign ups but you will need mass volume to see any kind of result and even then the time you spend on it might be better spent on other converting keywords. either way you can use the domain as a jump ship to more valuable pages in the future.

I've been listing free spin offers on our site, and also relatively new now. Would you advise not advertising free spins at all for new sites. its really good information and thanks for sharing your expertise.