Poker Keywords and Gambling Keyword Research

by Randy Ray

Webmasters on poker and casino webmaster forums often ask the question, “What keyword research tool should I use?” or the other question, “How do I do keyword research for a poker website?”

Poker Keyword Research Tools

My answer to the 1st question is a short one: the best keyword research tool for a poker webmaster to use is your brain.

Most new poker webmasters launch websites that are 10 or 20 pages long. Some of them never add more pages than that, while some of them understand that part of the secret to doing well in this business is to launch lots of pages. (Hundreds of them.) You don’t want 1 page that generates 50 visitors a day; you want 50 pages generating 1 visitor per day each. That way if a page loses its ranking, your site still has 49 other pages driving traffic to it, and you’re still in business.

But these new webmasters with the 10 and 20-page websites…why do they need a keyword research tool? If you know what your website is about, aren’t the keyword phrases obvious?

Poker Bonus Codes Keyword Phrases

Suppose for example that you’re developing a poker website aimed at a niche of “poker bonus codes”. Your main keywords for each page would be pretty obvious, wouldn’t they?

• “Poker Bonus Codes” (for the homepage)
• “Party Poker Bonus Codes”
• “PokerStars Bonus Codes”
• “Ultimate Bet Poker Bonus Codes”
• “Absolute Poker Bonus Codes”
• “Full Tilt Poker Bonus Codes”

And so on, until you’ve covered 10 or 20 poker rooms. Usually, when I build a page, I target one primary keyword phrase on it and 2 more secondary keyword phrases.

Coming up with the secondary phrases is easy too. Just target variations of the primary keywords in your main keyword phrases. Coming up with the secondary phrases takes only a little bit of thought:

• “Poker Bonus Codes – Poker Signup Bonuses and Promotions” (for the homepage)
• “Party Poker Bonus Codes – Party Poker Signup Bonuses and Promotions”
• “Pokerstars Bonus Codes – PokerStars Signup Bonuses and Promotions”

And so on…

So now you’ve got a 10-page website targeting multiple keyword phrases per page:

• poker room name + bonus codes
• poker room name + signup bonuses
• poker room name + promotions

That’s 30 keyword phrases

And if you wanted to build a big site on this topic, there are dozens of poker websites with names that you could use listed on PokerScout.com. Even a 60-page website targeting 3 keyword phrases per page is 180 keyword phrases. If you get 1 visitor for each keyword per day, then you’re getting 180 visitors a day. If you can make $1 per day per visitor, then you’re making $180/day or $5400/month.

So I’ve just given you enough keyword phrases to build a respectable 60-page website, and you didn’t have to pay for Wordtracker, KeywordDiscovery, or any of the other tools that people are selling which are supposed to generate keyword phrases for you.

Using Search Engines to Brainstorm Keyword Phrases for Poker Websites

Poker Keyword Phrases from Google

If you go to Google and search for “poker” and scroll past the top 10 results, you’ll see a list of links called “Searches related to: poker“. On my computer, I get 8 results:

• strip poker
• absolute poker
• poker news
• poker tables
• poker sites
• poker no download
• paradise poker
• Bodog

You can take any one of those phrases and with a little bit of brainstorming come up with enough topics to launch a 100-page website about the subject. (Although if you decide to focus on the “strip poker” niche, your conversions might be better if you’re promoting something besides online poker rooms.)

Poker Keyword Phrases from Yahoo

Yahoo offers something similar. Do a search for “poker” there, and Yahoo offers suggestions at the very top of the search results. I get this: “Also try:”

• free online poker
• full tilt poker
• Texas Holdem poker
• poker stars
• more

When you click on the link for “more”, you get additional suggestions:

• party poker
• poker superstars
• absolute poker
• poker games
• show all

Clicking on “show all” generates even more suggestions:

• free texas Holdem poker
• world poker tour

Poker Keyword Phrases from Bing

You can do a “poker” search at Bing too, and they’ll offer you a list of “Related searches” too:

• Full Tilt Poker
• Free Online Poker
• Free Poker
• Poker Rules
• Online Poker
• Absolute Poker
• Poker Hands
• Party Poker

Poker Keyword Phrases from Ask.com

Even a “poker” search at Ask will give you additional results:

• Poker Rules
• Poker Hands
• Free Poker
• How to Play Poker
• Free Online Poker
• Poker Chips
• Poker Games
• Poker Hand Rankings
• Official Poker Rules
• Party Poker
• More

Clicking on “More” gives you a nice big list of more keyword phrases:

• Rules Playing Poker
• Poker Hands Order
• World Series of Poker
• Poker Instructions
• Winning Poker Hands
• Best Poker Hands
• What Beats What in Poker
• Video Poker
• Poker Sites
• Hand Rank in Poker
• Poker Tips
• Basic Rules of Poker
• Poker Odds
• Texas Holdem
• Paradise Poker
• Bunny Poker
• Hoyle Poker Rules
• Pacific Poker
• Poker Supplies
• Poker Stars
• Poker Chip Tricks
• Poker Terms
• Poker Websites
• Poker Table Plans
• Personalized Poker Chips
• Poker Room
• Poker Variations
• Poker Cards
• Adult Poker
• Poker Hand Rule
• How to Build a Poker Table
• Dog Playing Poker
• Custom Poker Chips
• Probability Poker Hands
• Poker Sets
• Poker Probabilities

Brainstorming More Poker Keyword Phrases

So now that you’ve got these big lists of keyword phrases, what do you do with them?

For one thing, you can replace words with synonyms and related phrases to come up with more topics for pages, and more keyword phrases to target. Let’s take “poker probabilities” for example. If people are searching for that, then they’re probably also searching for:

• texas Holdem probabilities
• seven card stud probabilities
• five-card stud probabilities
• Omaha probabilities
• Omaha hi lo probabilities
• poker probability
• poker odds
• poker statistics
• poker math
• poker mathematics
• poker arithmetic

That entire list just came from a little bit of thought based on one suggestion from a list I found on Ask.com doing a “poker” search. Why on earth would anyone need anything more than a thesaurus and a few search engines to brainstorm keyword phases?

And you can also look at the keyword phrases other people are using in their title tags, and brainstorm variations on them.

How to Determine How Competitive a Keyword Phrase Is

Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) and Why It’s Bogus

The next trick is to figure out how competitive it is to rank for these keyword phrases. You want to find phrases that are reasonably easy to rank for. Wordtracker uses something called KEI to measure the “keyword effectiveness index”. It’s a ratio of how many results are in the search engines versus the estimated number of searches for a keyword phrase. I think it’s a bogus measurement because the only real competition is the top 10 in Google anyway. Being in the 11-20 range might send a tiny bit of traffic, but pretty much everything beyond that doesn’t matter.

Look at the Sites Ranking for the Keyword Phrase Now

So the 1st thing to do when determining how much competition you have for a keyword phrase is to search for it in Google and see which sites rank in the top 10 for that phrase. Let’s use “poker arithmetic” as an example, just because I suspect that it isn’t competitive at all. A search in Google for that phrase brings up:

• A page on Titan Poker
• A page on deltastate.gov.ng that looks like a message board post
• A page about pot odds from Lou Krieger’s website
• A page from math.sfu.ca called “Poker Computations”
• A book listing from Amazon.
• An article from PokerPlayerNewspaper
• An article from Poker Magazine.com
• An article titled “Online Poker Tactics” from betandchat.com
• A post from the LasVegasVegas blog
• A page with random text on it from ethicmacklin.com

Your results will vary, but it’s pretty easy to see that if you want to rank for the phrase “poker arithmetic”, you won’t have much trouble beating this competition. None of these websites are exactly powerhouses in the search engines.

How Many Sites Are Using Your Poker Keyword Phrase in Their Title Tag?

Another thing to look at is how many pages use the phrase in the title tag of the page. By typing “allintitle:” in front of your search phrase, you can limit your results to just the pages that use that phrase in the title tag of the page. Since the title tag is the most important on-page factor affecting how you rank in the SERP’s, this will give you a pretty fair idea of how competitive a phrase is. Putting the phrase in quotes will narrow it down even further.

When I do a search for allintitle:”poker arithmetic”, I get exactly 1 result, from a page on canadianpokerplayer.com that doesn’t even rank in the top 10 without the allintitle and quotes. (That tells me their page is no competition.) So I could probably build a page about “poker arithmetic” and rank in the top 10 for it by doing the simplest and most basic of optimization: including the phrase in my title tag, including it in the description tag, using it in a couple of header tags, using it in the body copy and bolding the phrase, using it in the alt text of an image.

I was right. “Poker arithmetic” is a no brainer to rank for.

Where’s the Money?

I know what you’re thinking now though. You’re thinking, whoopie, Randy, I’m going to make a lot of money from all of the “poker arithmetic” searchers out there. But here’s the thing. That’s just one phrase on a page that you’re going to optimize for at least 3 phrases. And that’s just one page of 1000 pages you’re going to launch. If you get 1 visitor a day to that page, and 1 visitor a day per day to all of those other pages, then you’re getting 30,000 visitors a month.

And you can make money with a poker website getting 30,000 visitors a month.