Ranking in SERP's

[kaus]

I msut say the comments made about the article topic are very interesting.

Your comment on the personality of poker sites is spot on. The reason why you don't see it has to the with the mind set of the individuals in that industry. It's very similar to the pornography industry, chucked full of spam and black hat techniques.

[Randy]

There are plenty of spammers and black hatters in this industry. Most of them just suck at SEO. Some of them do well, but spam and black hat certainly aren't the only techniques that work in this industry. I don't see a pointless redirect anywhere in the top 10 for the phrase "online poker". But search for "online slots" or "online blackjack" and you'll find a bunch of garbage redirects in the top 20 almost every time.

[kaus]

I posted about that elsewhere. Looking through what I will now call legit casino sites I couldnt believe the amount of content that some of them have. But I had to look for these sites. Many times I do a search, hit the first few sites google lands me on go to it and am redirected with friggen pop ups that even the blocker can't stop. These sites are only 2-5 pages in depth and I couldn't understand how the banner farm made it

So how long can a site that is built around spam/blackhats last in the eyes of google. Do they not eventually get the boot?

I would think that google picks up on it somewhat quickly. I mean even small minor changes that I do with my site I can see the effect from it within a week or so.

[Randy]

The traditional blackhat strategy is to have dozens of these sites "waiting in the wings" so they can be deployed as soon as the other sites get booted. I'm not sure how long it takes Google to find them, but they usually seem to fall out of the SERP's over a week or 2. Seems like a lot of them are taking advantage of Google's love of old domains.

[Jeremy]

I also rank for 1 word phrases like "craps", "roulette", "blackjack", and "video poker", and I guarantee yo I don't spend anywhere near $10,000/month on any kind fo advertising.

That is pretty sick Randy, nice work.

[PPP]

Fishken just looked dumb talking about stuff he had not clue about. White hats rule the Google poker results. Black hats have some success in yahoo but that is about it.

[Notspot]

Wow, gotta say I was a little offended by what he had to say. My keyword areas are stuffed full of white hat sites. Although I've been looking at blackjack and that's another story.

As for Kaus's original question, as a newbie I thought I didn't stand a chance with some keywords but have been pleasantly surprised how easy some of them are to crack. I've got 3 keywords lists, the A, B & C list. I'm thinking long term and although I'm concentrating on the B and C lists for immediate results, that won't stop me chipping away at the A list. I'll still be here in 5 years time and hopefully by then a few of us here will be whooping PL's butt.

If you don't try - you don't get.

[Darko]

Originally Posted by Randy

You can guarantee yourself 1 thing by NOT going after terms like online poker, poker, casino, and online casino. You'll never rank for any of those phrases. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I did the SEO for a site that ranks and ranked in the top 10 for "poker", "online poker", and "texas holdem", and I don't think a huge linkbuying budget is necessary to rank for those phrases. I also rank for 1 word phrases like "craps", "roulette", "blackjack", and "video poker", and I guarantee yo I don't spend anywhere near $10,000/month on any kind fo advertising.

It's a long term project, and it's a difficult project, but to say it's impossible unless you have a huge budget is just untrue.

And even if you never rank in the top 3 for 1 of those phrases, there is a LOT of traffic to be had in spots 4 through 10 for those phrases.

Rand Fishkin also said that you couldn't compete for phrases like that without using black hat seo techniques, which is just completely false. Most mainstream SEO's don't understand the gambling SEO industry at all. Many of them will admit it.

hi, im sure you do rank no.1 for craps, blackjack etc but I was just talking about casino, poker, online poker........ and a guarantee no one will rank top 3 or even top 5 for any of those terms unless you spend $1000's

Also its a fact that the top 5 positions get 73.55% of the clicks (data from 36,389,567 search queries) - so the traffic for pos. 6 or more isn't worth that much (position 6 gets 3.99%)

Just look at the results for "poker" and "online poker" - going for these term ARE pointless imo.

and as time goes by, it will be even harder trying to compete with the poker rooms because most are getting on the seo bandwagon and using our sites as quality backlinks.

Just look at fulltilt, why do you think they included "Play Online Poker" at the footer of there banners ? There affiliate links then redirect to their homepage, so they get a backlink credit for every single affiliate link (apart from the people who redirect their links), just look at fulltilts backlinks and it will be full of poker portals portals, also its not just full tilt, most other poker rooms do the same and have even changed the way there affiliate links works so they redirect to their homepage.

This will become even more common as time goes by and make it even harder for any portal to compete

So how can any portal compete with that - they cant and wont.

I'd place a bet with anyone here that they wont get a top 5 position for the top terms like online poker, poker, casino and I'll give you 3 years to do it.

But I agree there are many many top terms worth going for and achievable but poker, casino and online poker aren't one of them and will be a waste of time and money if you put most of your resouces in doing so.

One of the most common newbie affiliate mistakes is going after top generic terms and im sure many here will even admit to that when they first started, including myself (my first casino site i had "Online Casino all over the place lol)".

I know "nothing ventured nothing gained" is mostly true for life - but in business it doesn't always work like that - you have to look at the opportunity cost of going after terms like that and not getting them - time is money and that time and money if spent elsewhere would be reaping the rewards etc.

Anyhow, this is all just my friendly opinion

[dbirider]

It's not impossible to do without a huge budget. It might be next to impossible with a standard poker info affiliate site, like everyone has these days, but if you come up with something new and innovative in the poker world, that everyone's going to want to talk about and link to, then it's definitely possible. You just have to be creative.

I'm glad Rand told all the SEO's not to go after poker terms. It makes our job less hard if everyone thinks it's impossible.

[kaus]

I don't think he ment don't go after them at all but the amount of success say for myself as an example going after the main keywords will be next to minimal for I would say at least 3-4 years. Even in 4 years time I doubt any affiliate who just started out would even make front page. Sure you may become strong in the furtuer, but by what comparison?

As far as coming up with something new and inovative that everyone will talk about that to takes money and enough of it if you don;t have it.

Nothing is generally free. I myself have an idea that I think could...let me rephrase I strongly believe it would blow up but again if you dont have the resources necesary to complete some kick ass info to make it work the way it should than where are you?

I don't think you can create something viral, that will be linked to and discussed amongst others longer than a week or two without a budget.