“Online poker” SEO isn’t for the faint of heart. Besides the phrase “poker”, “online poker” is one of the most competitive, high-volume keyword phrases that someone doing SEO for online poker websites could try to rank for. At the same time, the rumors that it’s impossible to rank for high-volume, competitive phrases like “poker” and “online poker” without being a total blackhat are myths. In fact, I’d contend that whitehat SEO is more effective for highly competitive phrases like this, because these phrases are more likely to be scrutinized by Google’s quality raters.

In this post, I’m going to think aloud while I do some of the competitive research for “online poker” SEO.

Who does “online poker” SEO? Who does SEO for “online poker” websites?

The competitive research starts with looking at the top 10 results for the phrase “online poker” in Google right now, and I can tell that this is a highly competitive phrase just by the appearance of the title tags in the SERPs. Every site that ranks on the first page for “online poker” has either started their title tag with the phrase “online poker” or “poker – online poker”. (Only two sites are using that as the first phrase in their title tag. If you know the SEO reason behind that choice, give yourself a gold star.)

Of the 10 sites that are competing on the first page of Google in the “online poker” SEO space, 7 of them are online cardrooms. It makes sense that online cardrooms would work hard at doing SEO for their “online poker” websites, because they have the funds and resources available to work that niche really hard. And they also have the most to gain from ranking well in Google for a phrase like “online poker”.

Of the other 3 spots in the top 10 for “online poker”, two of them are held by the same poker portal. (PokerListings). One of them is held by Wikipedia. I also get a news story from Google’s new “universal search” at the bottom of the results. Based on this, I can confidently state that at least 3 types of websites are doing SEO for “online poker”:

1. Online cardrooms
2. Poker portals
3. Sites that want to rank for everything (Wikipedia or news sites)

What do the sites who successful do “online poker” SEO have in common?

When doing this kind of competitive analysis, I like to look at the title tags. We’ve already done that, and I don’t see a way of improving on what the top ten for “online poker” are already doing.

The next thing I like to look at is how many pages are on the sites I’m competing with. My theory is that if I can build a bigger site for a topic than the other people, I can outrank them.

The sites that are doing great at “online poker” SEO have this many pages indexed in Google:

1. 6160
2. 22,200
3. 51,900
4. 483
5. 809
6. 560
7. 62,200
8. 1060

I didn’t count the pages on Wikipedia, because there are too many to count. And I don’t put a ton of stock on any of these numbers, as some of these sites might have more pages than seem to be indicated because of additional domains on different TLD’s.

But I do draw a tentative conclusion about one thing that these sites are doing in order to compete for “online poker” in the SEO space.

And that’s publishing a lot of poker content.

Publishing lots of pages of content helps in multiple ways. For one thing, you have that many more pages to point at your homepage with anchor text of “online poker”. For another, every page of your content is something that someone else might potentially link to, which increases your PR. And finally, having lots of pages of content helps you to rank for multiple keyword phrases, so that if you fail to get traffic from your “online poker” SEO efforts, you’ll still have a source of traffic.

I also like to use Google’s link: search when I’m doing competitive research. I like to get an idea of what sites are linking to the top ten “online poker” pages. I know the tool is broken and doesn’t display all the links, BUT it does show you SOME of the links that Google knows about. And sometimes you can find commonalities and/or trends. For example, if a particular site shows up in the backlink search for all 10 of the results, then it might be a good idea to get a link from that site also. (And if a site is linking to multiple sites targeting the same phrase as you, the chances of being able to get a link improve.)

I also like to look at the pages that are actually ranking for the phrase to see how effectively they’re using on-page SEO techniques like repetition and emphasis for the phrase “online poker”. Chances are good that in a competitive query like “online poker”, SEOs are relying heavily on link power and link anchor text, but if you can get an edge using another SEO technique, you might not have to rely AS heavily on link power and link anchor text to compete.

Doing this, I notice that at least one of the pages ranking for the phrase “online poker” doesn’t use the phrase in the text of their page at all. Another site repeats the phrase 11 times, and another 17 times, and another 30 times. One page uses the phrase a whopping 48 times.

I don’t normally do this much competitive analysis when I SEO a single page for a single phrase. But if you’re trying to SEO for “online poker”, it might be a good idea to go into even more depth with your analysis than I have here.

When did the sites doing “online poker” SEO launch?

A lot of webmasters are convinced that the age of a site and/or a page has a lot to do with how well you can rank. This isn’t a big factor for me when I’m doing SEO, but if you want to do SEO for the phrase “online poker”, it’s probably worth looking at. Based on what I could find at archive.org, here’s how old some of the top ten sites are:

1. 8 years
2. 7 years
3. 6 years
4. 5 years
5. 8 and a half years
6. 7 years
7. 8 years

I think it’s important to point out that just because most of the sites who do well in “online poker” SEO are over 6 years old doesn’t mean that this is a direct cause and effect relationship. An indirect reason why older sites might do well would be that they’ve just plain had more time to earn links from other sites. That being said, I think if I wanted to rank for “online poker”, I’d prefer to try to do the SEO for “online poker” on a domain that’s a few years old, at least five years old, in fact.

Where would you start if you wanted to do SEO for “online poker” websites?

I’d start by finding an older domain to work on, preferably one with the phrase “online poker” in it somewhere. (One thing I noticed about the top ten is that NONE of them have the target phrase in their domain, and only two pages have the phrase “online poker” in the URL. I’ll take any edge I can get, no matter how small.)

Then I’d write a BIG page of content for the homepage there, and I’d use the phrase “online poker” in the title text and the body text.

And I’d start building other pages on the site.

And I’d start working on getting some links pointing toward my site.

How to do “online poker” SEO?

Wow. It turns out that you do SEO for “online poker” exactly the same way you do SEO for any other phrase. You write content, publish it, and tell people about your content, hoping that other people will link to it. Even though it’s one of the most competitive phrases on the Internet, the process for SEO in the “online poker” space is the same as SEO for any other space. Focus on doing the fundamentals well.

Why do SEO for “online poker”?

SEOing a site for the phrase “online poker” might not ever make you any money at all. You might fail. You might be able to make more money focusing on hundreds or thousands of other longtail poker phrases. So why bother with it?

For one thing, it’s a challenge. Ranking for “online poker” in Google’s top ten is the kind of long-term big goal that can change your life. It’s like training for a marathon. Even if you don’t win the marathon, even if you don’t finish the marathon, just by training and competing in the marathon you’ve become a different (and probably better) person.

For another thing, you WILL make money if you can SEO for “online poker”. Even if you don’t go the typical route of poker affiliate marketing, you can make money selling advertising on a flat rate basis once you rank for the phrase. You can get paid big money doing SEO consulting if you’re a good enough SEO to rank for “online poker”.  You can sell a website that ranks for “online poker” for a lot of money.

The possibilities are endless. Go for it.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 26th, 2009 at 10:12 am and is filed under Google, Poker Blog SEO, Poker Content, Poker Forum SEO, Poker Link Building, Site Reviews . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.