Last week in London, I sat in on the organic listings forum, where myself, Dave Naylor, Greg Boser, Mikkel DeMib & Barry Lloyd fielded a slough of great questions. One exchange in particular stands out to me - the lone white hat on the panel (though I've certainly been accused of being at least a bit gray hat for my public views on link buying). It featured a question from the audience regarding the incredibly competitive niche of online gambling - poker in particular. The other panelists discussed how most sites ranking at the top of the SERPs for queries like "play poker online" and "texas hold 'em" achieved their positions; primarily by pointing low quality junk at slightly higher quality sites in an ever-expanding pyramid built largely on a base of spam.
I stood out from the crowd (and got a few chuckles from my fellow panelists) when I suggested that it might be possible to use only white hat methods - linkbaiting, viral marketing, building a better site, etc. - to rank for these terms. Luckily, none of my colleagues pointed out that while all of them had done work in this arena and, at one time or another, had clients ranking for these phrases, I never had. Thanks for keeping my inexperience under wraps, guys.
Of course, over the last 5 days, I've been pouring over ideas in my head of how to make a white-hat site actually rank well in an arena dominated by high-quality spam. The incentive to rank in this segment is overwhelming, with profits ranging from 7 to 8 or 9 figures in many cases. With this much expendable income for marketing and competitive SEO, is it any wonder that few of the sites in the SERPs I've linked to last any longer than a few hours or days?
Some of the more established sites (PartyPoker, FullTiltPoker, Bodog, 888, etc.) have hundreds of thousands of backlinks, a good portion of which are fully white-hat. In addition, they've got history, good on-page optmiization and the depth of experience in the field that would be tough for anyone outside of my panel cohorts to match.
So, what do you think? Is there a chance that a pure white-hat site could reach the top of the SERPs for poker and gambling terms in a reasonable period of time - say 18-24 months?
Greg Boser didn't share the answer? :)
It's pretty simple, buy hundreds gambling sites that went out of business and use their individual keyword strengths to boost the main site into the top 5 positions.
*See multiple site gaming*
As for the time period, I would say longer unless Google has tweaked it's algorithm even further to help those who do not obtain links at an unatural rate.
What is the natural rate of incoming links for gambling sites?
Well you get the picture...and you are lucky I am not from the dark side or I would own even your family pet. ;)
Realistically, not in 18-24 Months and not in this political/legal climate.
In my opinion, it would be cheaper to buy the #1 site than invest the resources to overtake it with another, new site.
Rand
Is this really a thought exercise or do you have a client?
A white hat campaign could definitely break the top 10 for some terms in 18 months (probably less if you buy an established domain) ...by thinking completely outside the box and finding highly creative viral ideas for attracting links.
The current legal issues in the US could actually work to your advantage because it has taken some of the attention away from this niche. US sites could help you rank for terms that are not directly related to online gambling.
Here's your hint: Poker is extremely popular at the moment, but few of the people who are part of the poker obsession actually gamble at online casinos. For example, my 16 year old son plays every saturday night with his step brothers and his mother. How can you appeal to that audience for links and authority?
Nope - no client, although you'd be shocked at how many people emailed me today asking if we were interested in taking on work in that sector :)
I actually understand that people in the industry would be interested in you taking on poker. Many of the authority SEO's often will refuse to even look at the gaming industry. I for one often wondered if you would be interested in this industry.
I'm not going to start a bidding war with Frank again am i? ;)
I think it is possible for a white hat to achive the rankings. All they have to do is hire a black hat ;-).
lol...this should be marked as "best answer"....
White hat can hang in that space.
Interesting. I got challenged to do exactly this (rank an established site at no. 1 in Google for online poker) at the SEO London.org do!
I was planning on turning it down, but I'm now starting to reconsider...
Think I should take it up?
Why not? Who needs common sense? ;-)
Smooth :) I think I may well be up for it...
*rubs hands*
Well it certainly is a fine chalange, will not be a boring year for you! :)
Rand,
Of course it is possible for a white hat site to achieve good serps in the online gambling sector. My main casino portal is 2 and a half years old and has been ranking extremely well for the money terms in google since October 2005, when it came out of the sandbox.
The key is down to having frequently updated relevant unique content. Building up good link partners with authority sites in the sector and ensuring your site offers something for the visitors it receives.
This post helps a lot. I have a poker chip and gambling product site and even adwords wants nothing to do with this niche. I have bought links before but the quality is so low that abandoning that altogether and doing a manual link campaign is starting to look necessary. I'm not sure if any of the suggestions that the others made are going to help, but I will give them a shot. Thanks for a great post!
I think its possible. White hat can always achieve "black hat results", but using more brain power.
Hi Rand,
I SEO for littlewoods poker (#20 for poker in G), and WhichPoker (#6 for online poker in G) in a google.co.uk search and #9 on G US search)
Everything I or the team I run does is whitehat.
The easiest way for a site (related) to get 1-2 page quickly is by using subdomains from a related site. Check out the top 10 for examples.
By the way, I was the guy that gave you the funny look in the press room the first day of SES London. You were talking to a long haired gentleman in a suit.
Wanted to say hi (if just to hear another American accent besides ny own, but didn't want to interrupt. I've lived here for a few month now and its nice once in awhile.
(I knew I recognized you from somewhere...now I know it was your avatar. Mine is the lips from The Rocky Horror Picture Show intro.
Good job in the seminars.
GaryTheScubaGuy
It's probably possible....but imagine all the other sites you could get going in that same time frame, with the same amount of work that would pay out for a longer period of time.
I once went on the interview with a pretty popular online gambling company. They had a huge budget and were looking for an online marketing director. These guys had the budget and power to do everything possible to rank high.
They had a well known PR company working for them, creating the buzz. They even hired M. Tyson for few days to promote the website. I don't know if only "Black hat SEO" can rank these guys higher in Google. I think that those that we see in top 10 are not as little as many people would think.
They've got the money to go full out and not only depend on some black hat "trick" to rank them higher in search results.
Did I ever get that job? ..... no .... it required 80% travel. I never went on the 3rd interview.
The problem would be getting the right links. Getting top serps is relatively easy if you can get thousands of bloggers to suddenly link to the site but we all know bloggers won't link to gambling sites.
As soon as you start promoting gambling or p0rn you realise that some people just won't link even if you pay them.
"I think that those that we see in top 10 are not as little as many people would think."
Perform a search in google for 'Online Casino' or ' Online Casinos ' and 50% of those sites returned in the top twenty are operated by a sole individual and not a large company. With a large proportion of the affiliate sites being returned, actually being white hat sites.
I better not join the debate, although let me know if you want some help setting up as a PartyPoker affiliate ;)
I was wondering who would make the first affiliate offer.
Maybe I'm being naive, but I'd like to think it's possible. In theory I'm sure it is possible. mad4 has a good point in that general seo advice would be to not link to a site related to gambling so as not to associate yourself with a 'bad neighborhood.' Given some of the recent U.S. laws there might be even greater fear in linking to a poker site.
On the other hand the number 3 result I'm seeing for the 'texas hold em' search is Wikipedia, which would suggest you could reach the top with a pure white-hat site.
My guess is it's possible. The reason we don't see pure white-hat online gambling sites might have more to do with the type of personality that gets involved in the market. If you see yourself as purely white-hat you might be opposed to getting involved with online gambling.
I can't say I have any experience in this market though, and again maybe it's just me wanting to belive it's possible.
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.
It's probably possible - but would probably require a hefty marketing budget, long-term strategies - and be less efficient than cheaper blackhat methods.
At the end of the day, it's not the revenues but ROI that count, isn't it?
2c. :)
Well, have to agree with my friend Webzcas! It is definately possible to compete for white hats, infact we are both proof of that. Now hopefully noone will come in with the White hat Black hat argument, but it is possible by providing excellent content, regular content updates and obtaining backlinks. Having friends in the industry is very helpfull.
Many of the poker rooms actually pay for backlinks and this has been going on for years. That is why you will find that pokerroom.com has been ranking #1 for the most competitive term 'poker room' for the past 3 years without once being bumped of. The buy relavant backlinks from the industry! Although difficult to compete against them it is not impossible, but they have been using whitehat techniques to get there and that is exactly what have kept them there for a long time and make them difficult to get rid of. If they used blackhat techniques it would have been a different story.
I think it is possible but it would be one hell of an achivement. Top 50 in that time period is more realistic. You'd have to leverage the news to create a cultural phenominon (to escape the sandbox early and give you a little extra boost) which would require further human engineering/great marketing to get the SEO momentum going on that... all without appearing to be doing it for SEO.
I think that if you offered a site that gave a much better experience than the current ones you could do it. But if the site sucks or is even average I don't think it would fly.
Promotion to the poeple is what would make this work... multiple promotions... each one a bit bigger than the last. You'd have to make the masses drool over whatever is coming next and really talking about it.
Think: Seinfeld goes casino. It has to be water-cooler talk. And it has to be a media darling.
The down-side is there would probably be consumer burn-out after a while. You'd be forcing a fad instead of a trend. But I think you'd get your top placement before the fad burned out and the emulators came running.
Of course this is just speculation on my part. I've never tried anything that big.
...yet.
Igor,
I disagree. Many one man operations who use white hat techniques rank very well in the gambling sector. Yes a bigger budget will no doubt get you to the top quicker, but if you know the industry and are half decent at white hat seo, you will start to rank and compete directly with the big companies and the black hats given time.
Webzcas ... so where do you disagree? Did I say that only black hat big SEO companies win the online gambling industry SEO?
I shared my experience with you about a big gambling company and I think most of them have pretty deep pockets. Does that deserve a "thumbs down" ?
You're certainly right about that. It is definately not our intention to "game google." Rather than having 100 small sites, we have developed about 10 which we have many employees working hard on. I believe that if you deliver a quality product, Google will recognize that and rank you based on relevance.
There really is quite a bit of spam hitting the gambling zone though. Search for keywords like "pacific poker" or "full tilt poker" and you'll find multiple sites with misleading redirects to Mansion Poker. It's really hard to beat these guys out just because of their sheer number of black hat sites. I'm confident that white hat sites will prevail though.
I am curious though, as to what you exactly meant by "increase the size of your network." Could you please explain?
Its surely possible to rank in highly competitive keywords too eg. Wikipedia.org has ranked in almost every keyword! (keyword with only one word)
Generally, people dont do whitehat mostly because it takes time! And secondly, blackhat/greyhat/bluehat seo is kinda fun and adventurous! And its fast and furious too!!!
Whichpoker certainly has some great rankings. You do a good job, but are you the only SEO for them?
I assume so.
ps. I just started littlewoods 4 months ago and they were buried around page 50. But I also do bingo, iva's, debt consolidation, a major uk airline, a top 3 mobile phone company (#2 for mobile phone) and a dozen other sites so it needs a little more attention, I just backed off for 2 months to let it settle.
Plus manage a ppc staf of 6 doing 5m a month in ppc management. Need more qualified people over here in the UK!
There are plenty of qualified staff in the UK - they are just doing their own thing ;)
Online gambling is illegal in US, It is better move hosting to UK and rank well there.
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To be honest. I hope so. I do only whitehat with my pokerblog. Exchanging articles, do guestblogging, lots of facebook postings etc.
I try to get good links and related links.
Somehow I still have the feeling it doesnt pay off -.-
I am running one of those sites (www.superrake.com). We started out last october. I have to say there are a lot of "tricks" around this affiliate business, and not all of them are nice to find out.
However, I also believe its possible to go clean and get good results. Like in any other business.
As of today I start to be pleased with the results i get on Yahoo (nevermind Google).
It definetly can be done & I am on my way there.
This industry is not worse than any other.....there are just a couple of guys too eager out there to make fast bucks.....and they mess up big time. its a pitty.
All the best,
Isabel da Palma
Hi Isabel. Nice to see another Portuguese voice around!
Hey Nuno, glad to see another Luso around ;)
Part of the challenge may come from how much of a playing field you have to work with in regards to marketing, whether that be in gaining links or in promotion.
Not only are you potentially having to work around legal issues, but also any potential stigma associated. Certainly US promotion will be very challenging. But even if you had a very positive site and you weren't having to dance around legal constraints, it would probably still be very challenging to get links from some sites simply because they wouldn't want to risk the association.
Sounds like much of the promotion efforts happen within the community.
The challenge may be how much budget you would need before you see results.
The Companies you mentioned Rand, have been online for quite a few years. I would say is possible if:
- You have a considerably marketing budget
- You have the right connections in the Poker Industry
Perhaps 18-24 months from now - given slicker algos - perhaps it will be possible to white hat some success 18-24 months after that.
That would also give the industry time to nail a few legal issues and settle down a bit.
Maybe kick a project off to little cost for the purposes of aging - monitor the industry in general and wait for the spammier efforts to fall away. Then perhaps slotting in behind the top 5 might become a realistic white hat proposition.
It's not a bad idea to put a few 4 year plans in place if the market & potential algo directions demand/allow it. Think of them as pension plans.
In terms of "grey hat" for link buying. Why is this even a method that needs a 'hat' name?? If the 'value' is there and the link is implemented correctly and the content being linked to of requisite quality then the seller deserves remuneration and the link should be perfectly on topic. What's grey about that?
If you check my results you can see its not easy at all!
SEOs dont do white hat mostly because it takes time so we bit them with 110% pure white SEO on our gaming site
[Link removed by editor.]
I came to this post researching the question of whether poker sites are considered bad neighborhoods because they're related to gambling or not.
I have a regular reader of my blog who has an online poker site. I am a proponent of dofollow and offer keywordluv and commentluv on my site; however, I am on the fence regarding allowing links from sites like hers.
Does anyone have some wisdom they can share on how a non-gambling related dofollow blog should handle poker-related links? My thanks in advance for any insights you can provide.
Given plenty of time and money, almost anything could be done.
Is it possible to do it in lilly white hat style? If link-buying is still white, when combined with the right link-baiting campaigns (gotta be plural here)...sure.
The biggest problem a white hat will encounter in these hyper competitive industries is that combative spam can kill your site so very, very quickly. Awall has a good piece on how to leverage scrapers -- something that would be necessary if you decide to give a go at it. Be prepared for some jerks to try to hijack and in some cases port-scan for security holes.
Good luck; it's definitely more difficult than hard money loans, but you can do it if you spend enough time and effort dissecting and out-gunning.
Cygnus
I think it could be done eventually. But what about the legalities of online casinos in the US? Is the industry still going strong? It would suck to finally rank for the terms when the online gambling industry is out of business in the U.S.?
I think that personality of people involved in online gambling might be only partial reason for current spam pyramid situation. IMHO it's mainly marketing strategy of gambling companies who are promoting themselves on junk sites - and if they don't, then their affiliates do. I couldn't beleive where I say 888.com link the other day...
Back to main question - with many estabilished gambling communities it's certainly possible to get high number of quality links - especially with applying some of the suggestions Solomon gave us (really like the naked women on webcam one :-). Gambling is massive market with even white-hat SEOs playing online, like it or not, and any "unique/clever"ish idea would do really good on digg type sites!
Hey pal, how can you speak of ethical SEO when even your profile picture is stolen from my site?
https://onreact.com/ethische-suchmaschinenoptimierung.php
It's a pretty tough job that's for sure. For some terms there are more blackhat one-day wonder sites appearing all the time that even when you're optimising you are moving DOWN in the SERPs, it can be that bad.
The ones who dominate those particular searches you gave above are the actual poker sites themselves... they have a much larger reach than an affiliate site and get natural links daily just by offering a good service. They also have the added benefit of all of their thousands of affiliates linking to them, and them being clever by using those links (301'ing them) to give them added link value.
In general though, the poker arena is pretty damn solid and saturated, although there have been a few "big" newcomers in the past 6-8 months.
short comment here, i know.
i work in the field and it is definitely achievable using white hat, 99% achievable, maybe 100%. :)
With all the online communities and link bait – absolutely anything is possible with only white methods. The main problem is that if the site has any type of regular marketing message, you would loose out to the enormous resources you're up against. You would have to create an "idea virus" or some type of unique distribution (stylized delivery) that would enable you to get the highest quality trusted links that even the big poker sites can't get. So you'd have to go really sensational, or really unique.
I wouldn't use the acronym SEO to describe all the tasks that would be required to successfully accomplish that objective, you'd have to do a lot of very creative Internet Marketing . If all they gave you was a poker site and said SEO this and you didn't have a huge budget, then there is very little chance, but on the other hand if they said "We've got this great poker site, but we need to know how to market it online can you help?" and they worked with you to brainstorm and figure out a way to pitch a story that would have the potential to grow like an idea virus, you may have something.
Here are some quick ideas that come from my mind. (I'm not a poker player or a pornographer, these are just ideas on how to market a poker site online without spamming)
On the dirtier and sensational side of things (still white hat as in no spam), you could create a site that mixed poker and pornography. One membership gives you both, that would probably be original enough to get you a bunch of online pr and links. You could even get a sensationalist hook by having a section where you "pay" women to play naked on webcam. That would probably get some mass exposure and do very well on digg. Maybe release a poker type version of a girls gone wild style video online for free when that section was launched.. That would for sure get some free links and start an idea virus.
Other less dirty ideas could be using video different then all your competition, maybe have lot of video blogs that give tips on how to play and highlight interesting poker games that took place on that site. That one if less "sexy" or "sensational", but if spun correctly could still work.
Another potential hook would be humor. You could launch a "Play poker nude" theme site with a lot of poker humor and maybe have some really funny original comics and some free stand up comedy that somehow has to do with poker (that would be difficult to find, but if executed right could work really well)
There are many MANY MANY MANY angles, my mind is buzzing with about 20 at the moment, but I need to get back to what i'm doing, but to answer your question YES, I think you could definitely market (and rank) a poker site online using only white hate methods, but you'd have to compensate with some great marketing.
I 100% agree with SR:
Having backing and decent marketing and R&D budget, then something like this surely is possible. Of course with the right resources, is there any niche that is untouchable? Not really.
Going viral when opening a new property is probably how this barrier-to-entry is eventually going to get cracked.
Rand, great post...this one makes you think. I think it's definitely possible, but I think it would take longer, and require more work than Black Hat methods, since this particular field is dominated by Black Hats. I would venture that most of these sites don't want to wait 18-24 months to get to the top. In that case they might need Black Hat techniques. In my opinion, anything can be done by White Hat techniques, it's just a longer, tougher road.
"this particular field is dominated by Black Hats"
How did you work that out...?
Nick0r,
Um, did you even read Rand's post?
I'm talking about your comment, not the article. The gambling arena is not ruled by blackhats at all, far from it, especially in Google.
It most certainly IS possible! I should know, I own the Mac Poker Network, which is a very successful network of online poker sites including MacPokerOnline.com, IMacOnlinePoker.com, HighStakesReport.com, and many others.
Most all of my efforts (yes MY, since there isn't much of a team here) have been pure whitehat. We have done zero black-hat SEO, but believe it or not, spammers will pick up our link and post them in bogus blogs that are made by software programs or whatever. We have done a very small amount of link buying, MUCH less than our competitors whom you see posted all over every poker blog and site out there.
To give you an example of our success, search Google for "poker online" and you'll see that MacPokerOnline.com is on about page 3 (in the top 30). Of course, we are #1 for many other important keywords as well, but a keyword like "poker online" is such a pinnacle keyword.
Anyways, feel free to comment all you want, I'd be VERY delighted to hear any feedback about my comment. I'll bookmark this page and check back tomorrow. Also, if anybody thinks they have what it takes to boost us to the top ten for "poker online" let me know, LOL.
You use the word "network" of poker sites.
You said:
<blockquote>To give you an example of our success, search Google for "poker online" and you'll see that MacPokerOnline.com is on about page 3 (in the top 30).</blockquote>
Increase the size of your network because Google is doing nothing about those who game them using multiple sites. Watch that 30 hit top 5.