I’ve not written a lot about “poker SEO metrics” here. I’ve written about improving the ROI on poker sites, but a lot more can be said about measuring poker SEO success. (Looking over that article about improving a poker website’s ROI, I notice that I hardly mention “poker website analytics” or poker SEO metrics, which should have been one of the first things mentioned.)

How do you measure poker SEO success?

One way to measure poker SEO success is by looking at your increase in search engine visitors over time. You might measure your poker SEO success by increase in search visitors week over week, month over month, or year over year.

Here’s a look at this particular poker SEO metric for a tiny niche poker site:

• March 2009 – 419 search engine visitors
• April 2009 -  367 search engine visitors
• May 2009 – 536 search engine visitors
• June 2009 – 360 search engine visitors
• July 2009 – 404 search engine visitors
• August 2009 – 365 search engine visitors
• September 2009 – 519 search engine visitors

These poker site metrics are for a site that I don’t work on consistently.  I started working on this site consistently in September, and the increase in content in the month of September resulted in a corresponding increase in search visitors.

Another way to measure poker SEO success is by looking at the number of different search phrases that send traffic to your site. I don’t want to operate a site that gets 500 visitors a month for one keyword phrase and 100 visitors a month for 10 other keyword phrases. I want to operate a site that gets 1000 visitors a month from 1000 different keyword phrases.

Here’s a look at those metrics for that same tiny niche poker site:

• March 2009 – 180 keyword phrases
• April 2009 -  196 keyword phrases
• May 2009 – 208 keyword phrases
• June 2009 – 193 keyword phrases
• July 2009 – 235 keyword phrases
• August 2009 – 244 keyword phrases
• September 2009 – 284 keyword phrases

If you measure poker SEO success by just looking at visitor volume from the search engines, you’d think the results of my SEO work are more or less flat. But that methodology ignores varying demand for certain search phrases.

I might rank really well for the phrase “World Series of Poker”. While the World Series of Poker is actually going on, I will see an increase in visitor volume just because the demand for that phrase is higher.

Six months after the World Series of Poker ends, the search volume for that phrase will be lower. That doesn’t mean my poker SEO efforts haven’t been working. It means that keyword demand in the search engines has decreased.

On the other hand, if the number of keyword phrases that you’re being found for is increasing, month over month, then you can expect an eventual increase in traffic as compared to demand. Being found one month for 284 keyword phrases instead of for 180 keyword phrases is an increase of over 57%. That’s SEO success, even if the total search volume only increased by 23% during that same time period.

Poker website analytics and poker conversions

The hard-nosed poker affiliate webmaster wants to measure his/her success based on an increase in poker conversions. But even the best poker SEO strategy can’t increase poker conversions month in and month out, because poker SEO isn’t the only factor affecting conversions. Demand matters.

For example, suppose you’re referring 30 depositors a month to Party Poker in the year 2005.  When Party Poker stopped accepting USA-based players in 2007, you could have expected your conversions to drop to maybe one a month. But that didn’t mean that your SEO campaign was a failure. That just meant that business conditions have changed.

Diversification and poker website ROI

Suppose you had an exclusive deal with Party Poker and you were receiving a $100 CPA based on volume and exclusivity. You were making $3000 a month, and now you’re making $100 a month.

Assume another webmaster had six poker rooms on her site, and she was only getting $75 CPA from each of them. And she’s also sending 30 depositors a month, but they’re divided up among these six poker rooms. So she’s making $2250 a month in 2005. But in 2007, when 3 of the poker rooms she’s promoting stop taking US players, the other 3 poker rooms continue to convert. So her revenue drops to $1500 a month, which is a distinct drop, but it’s not the kind of life-changing income drop that going from $3000 a month to $100 a month is.

Having multiple affiliate relationships provides diversification. You might make less money per deal, but you trade that money for a more predictable income.

The same point about diversification applies to your poker SEO strategy. If you rank for 100 different keyword phrases, and demand for 50 of those phrases disappears overnight, your income is cut in half. But if you rank for 500 different keyword phrases, and demand for 50 of those phrases disappears overnight, your income is only cut by 10%.

Poker SEO and trends versus traffic

You should be more concerned about trends than about specific numbers. Trends are comparisons made over time.

If you know that adding a 5 pages of content every week results in an average increase of 5 visitors per day month over month, then over 12 months, you can increase your traffic by 60 visitors per day just by using that one poker SEO strategy.

If you know that getting 5 additional links per month results in an average increase of 5 visitors per day month over month, then over 12 months, you can increase your traffic by 60 visitors per day just by using that one poker SEO strategy.

Knowing these trends, you can budget and plan accordingly. That’s how efficient business do things. They budget and plan according to trend analysis. (Most poker webmasters don’t do it this way, but they should. As the niche grows even more competitive, only the efficient will survive.)

You can combine these two poker SEO metrics.  If you get 5 links per month and make 20 new pages of content each month, you can increase your traffic by 120 visitors per day in a year. But…

By combining both strategies, you might see a geometric increase in traffic rather than an arithmetic increase in traffic.

Adding the content by itself results in a visitor increase. Adding the links by themselves results in a visitor increase. Doing both might make both strategies more effective resulting in a greater net increase than either strategy would by itself. You might be able to improve traffic by 240 visitors per year instead of 120 per year, because effective poker link building improves how well your new content ranks.

Using poker SEO metrics and poker website analytics

Poker SEO experiments are useless unless you measure the results. And measuring the results is useless unless you adjust your strategies to improve your business. Michael Martinez explains over and over again at his SEO theory website that the SEO method is experiment, evaluate, and adjust. Poker SEO metrics and poker website analytics are how you “evaluate” your poker SEO efforts. If you’re experimenting and adjusting without evaluating, then you’re not doing a very good job of SEOing your poker site.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 3rd, 2009 at 7:44 am and is filed under Metrics, Poker Content, Poker Link Building . 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.