What's your strategy after Penguin?

[Mr-AJ]

Hey guys, I'm still wondering how to adapt properly to Penguin. There were "only" two of my money sites that have been hit hard but it's enough to make me think about my strategy. So far I've been working on EMDs with standard linkbuilding, yes I varied anchors but not enough as it seems. To be honest, creating a brand involves so much time and work (I was only able to create two real brands in the gambling niche and it took a few years) but simply buying EMD and do standard linkbuilding doesn't work either as it seems.
Do you guys now focus on just a few sites and try to develop brands? Do you change your strategy at all?
I was really thinking about buying micro niche EMDs and do zero linkbuilding and SEO for them. I've seen so many junk sites without backlinks on top of the SERPs just because of a strong EMD. This is not what big G wants me to do but with Penguin they showed that they don't want to improve search results but only punish webmasters that are over optimizing or spam the web. What do you guys think?

[OnlinePokerReport]

Well, I definitely think that the "zero seo / link building EMD" strategy isn't going to be sustainable. That situation is just a fluke and - even if it somehow isn't - it's so easy to pursue the strategy you're describing that the strategy would be done to death within weeks.

[Matt Geer]

This isn't all targeted at the OP btw, just more/less in general.

But why does the argument always have to be:

EMD vs. Brand

Shouldn't it be more like:

Build a Sustainable Business vs. Everything Else

Not to downplay the fact that people were hurt financially from the update(s), but
maybe people should start asking how to build a business that helps people and that
other people (your visitors) actually give a shit about. Then you might not need
Google as much.

Instead of asking:

* How can I game Google today?
* Should I build a mini site, medium sized site or super sized site?
* What anchors should I use?
* What link building tactics should I use?
* How do I fix a penguined, ottered or sakied site?

Maybe ask your visitors what they need help with. If you have a Facebook page (not full of fake Fiverr users), maybe message them and ask them some questions. You could start with their name, that's always nice. Then ask what they games they play and why. Ask them if they're profitable, and if not, if they'd like help.

What you get from helping people on that level will far exceed any retarded (short term) strategy that people give you to fix your problems.

If I were you OP, I'd determine whether or not I could live ok on the income I was receiving. Assuming the answer is yes, I would then proceed to find something that I enjoy doing and/or could help someone with. Then I'd figure out what problems there are and how to solve them. Then solve them. Then package these solutions up in such a way that your visitors find the most helpful. Then charge them for it and get paid.

Build a business, not a saki proof, mini micro site about the best poker sites for 6-handed 7-card stud sit n go's on the Merge network.

Like these guys.

/The End

[Prop]

Build a business, not a saki proof, mini micro site about the best poker sites for 6-handed 7-card stud sit n go's on the Merge network.

Like these guys.

Can you link me to their Stud SNG Merge site? I'd be interested to take a look

[Prop]

There's so many after Penguin Strategies available. Here's just idea #1 and idea #2

Idea #1 is Fast ROI. If you're going to add 10 pages to your site the ROI should be quicker. If you're going to build a mini site take it slow and earn profit, putting some in safe investments, putting rest in riskier but should get quick ROI. Basically much less of $20,000 on a domain and $15,000 on content, and $8,000 on links because this will pay off huge over several years. Thinking quicker profits, however that applies.

Idea #2 Invest in making yourself known, and invest in making your partners known, and invest in making your writers known, and invest in making your sites known. I won't elaborate on specifics but there's infinite possibilities within that idea. I haven't used it much to any great extent but think I could. I'll say it as imagine you knew within 80% accuracy if you sat down thought it out, researched it or had staff do same, you could come up with something that would get 500 visitors in 24 hours from posting and would get at least a couple conversions, a couple links, and might also get future search traffic. Imagine you did this in gambing, but then it hit you I could do this even bigger in other niches? Imagine also you had an exciting life, were fun, and people liked to read your random stuff. Other blogs just linked to your enjoyable personal posts. Imagine your writers had interesting stuff to share as well either on their blog, facebook or twitter. Imagine people linked, retweeted, shared their posts as well. Imagine down the road everything keeps growing you have 10 sites, with 40 writers, and your all just having fun, traffics coming from different angles, different topics, occasionally you have conversions posts, you skim back through what's getting traffic, give a better affiliate link or chance to convert on that page. Everyone's just having fun and cashing checks. Occasionally, at half time of the major sporting event your watching from the expensive lounge seats someone gets a good idea for a profitable post, run it through a few people, it gets 10,000 visitors 30 players, 20 links, etc. then you do more on small scale, it grows, your having fun and even photo shots of having fun get comments, links or whatever. IMO this = SEO.

[Prop]

15 hour time zone difference analytics to affiliates stats. This is however for anyone who thinks referral traffic, social media and twitter are not profitable: the power of one good post.

Sites Traffic:


Clicks to a Gambling Site:


RMP Stats:


there's so much BS about social media, referral traffic being low value. Same applies to strategy doesn't convert. This is all false those saying it are just doing it wrong. 2 or 3 extra RMPs? What's big deal? It's one post. 600-700 more people have visited my site now as a result, several have linked to it, and it will increase due to search traffic. It took a couple hours.

[Matt Geer]

Can you link me to their Stud SNG Merge site? I'd be interested to take a look

Build a business, not a saki proof, mini micro site about the best poker sites for 6-handed 7-card stud sit n go's on the Merge network.

Like these guys.

/The End

That's what I meant.

The best poker site for 6-max stud sngs on Merge? Just speaking from personal experience...

[Prop]

That's what I meant.

I know . A while ago I made a post asking for members to support a white house petition to bring the bases prop back to Pinnacle. All I got was serious responses. Guess I'm not always funny, but I try.

[Prop]

In December, I got 22 RMPs on a site hardly even indexed (to the point I think Google penalized it initially, for getting links too fast and I didn't buy a single one). There was a single www.sitename.com in post linked (no CTAs) the majority of the sites traffic came from twitter. How many affiliate leveraged the fact not all Bodog players were going to like Anonymous poker? Having seized the opportunity, my guess is 1 (me). Too bad i didn't have a monetized poker site at the time but it was good for 22 RMPs anyways. Unfortunately player value sucked and only earned $500 ish from that - would of been nice if I had real poker affiliate accounts and multiple options to work that off of.

How quick did you change your websites to say Bovada everywhere the second the brand was known?

Does the word moneybookers appear anywhere on your websites these days other than (formerly moneybookers?) because there's a hell of a lot of long tails involving Skrill starting and will grow and would make sense to have a LOT of those words already used.

How many links do you have that bring at least 3 visitors to your site everyday?

How many wikipedia links have you added? How many have appeared without your effort?

How many tweets did you get in May? How many were from people you don't know?

How many times did your name or site name appear on forums?

Could go on and on, but there's a hell of a lot more to SEO than buying links and head terms. Start with: Why would someone like my site? Generally it's not because it looked the nicest or had the easiest to click ads.

[OnlinePokerReport]

Interesting thread.

1) I like prop's ideas and respect the points he makes about social media. However ... the truth in my experience is that conversions from social / referral are minuscule. It's also nice that you have an example of an article that shot traffic up, but how many articles did you have to attempt before you wrote the one that got the surge? Good content takes time and effort, and getting it distributed takes luck. Developing the network you describe takes time and effort and - let's face it - most people are just not good at both the content creation and the networking.

2) There are only so many hours in the day, and that number probably seems lower than 24 for most full-time poker affiliates. All of the ideas in this thread sound good and have merit, but they do represent an extreme opportunity cost. No one likes to talk about that.

3) A lot of the advice in this thread is good for people starting out, but the reality for many people on this forum is that they already derive some or all of their income from their current portfolio of sites. That income may also be used to varying degrees to support others (like a family). It's not practical for these people to pivot from one strategy to another over night.

4) Finally, some people want to know about the best 6-handed stud SNGs on Merge, if it's only to find out that all Merge rooms have the same SNG lobby (and very little stud traffic). While it's easy to deride such sites, they (when done well) obviously meet a need in the market, so there's nothing embarrassing about or wrong with running them. They are a "business" just as much as any enterprise the provides a product or service for compensation and simply don't deserve to be derided on face.

There's no "right" affiliate model besides the one that makes you the most money with the least variance. It may help your ego to feel like you run a "real" company, but that and $5 will get you a scratch off ticket at the 7-11.

To wit - you could answer no to all of prop's questions in the last post and still be making a boatload of money running websites about poker / gambling.