Poker SEO – White Hat SEO Or Play Chicken 10/24/11

Whenever we talk about Poker SEO, the first thought that comes to mind is SPAM. The reality is, poker websites, both historically and in the present, are still some of the most aggressively optimised websites on the internet. Unfortunately, it seems these SERP’s are still dominated by Grey/Blackhat techniques.
It appears that Google’s spam filtering technology likes to fall asleep when we look at the rankings for anything gaming/betting related.

Personally, I have spent some time working within this industry and have been attempting to prove the concept of white hat SEO within gaming.
The journey has been tough and often disheartening. Google is a sucker for the bad guys, leaving the good guys, 10 pages behind. In spite of this, I am still convinced that white hat will and can win.
Like many webmasters, I’m often shocked at what websites are getting away with; equally at what Google blatantly ignores.
It seems that a majority of European SERP’S are plagued with spam websites, regions where Google’s spam technology is clearly not as well advanced. We often see “1991″ spam style tactics still helping sites to dominate rankings.
A common question often asked in the Poker/Gaming SEO community is:

“Can Poker be too Competitive for White Hat SEO?”
Rand Fishkin asked and blogged about this question back in Febuary 2007. His findings showed that a lot of the established websites had a high volume of back links with a good portion of “white hat links”.

Having taken some time to investigate further into these “white hat links,” it appears that redirects and junk content networks pretty much hold up the majority of the sites we see every day. Equally, affiliate websites are also getting away with murder.

I have often described Poker SEO as “a game of chicken with Google; whoever dares to spam the most often is rewarded the most, with the ultimate risk of a penalty/filter looming.”

So what’s the future for SEO and Gaming?

At present Google’s anti spam technology appears to be the most advanced in the UK & USA SERP’s. No doubt, this technology will roll out globally over the next few years.
If we take a look at the UK and USA ranking results, it seems that the majority of the websites are bypassing this and easily keeping under the Google spam radar; the big G still appears to be handing out rewards for all ‘old school’ methods.
As for the near future for the UK and USA gaming SEO, it doesn’t look too bright for anyone attempting to use white hat methods to beat the competition, but I suggest you hang in there! As for the rest of the world, it looks like you have got a few years before you will catch up to technology in the UK/USA. I guess it’s up to you if you choose to play chicken or not!

Would, appreciate hearing your feedback on this.

Rav

This post was written by

Rav Sandhu – who has written 26 posts on Big Hit Media- SEO Blog.

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