Since I started this site I get daily requests to look at people’s websites, blogs, and portals and they always seem to have a few things in common. The first one is universal, they think their site is the next Poker Listings or Card Player. The truth is that most affiliates will never reach that point with their sites, and the exciting truth is they never have to and can still make high 6 or 7 figure incomes a year.

I wrote a post on my Arkansas Poker blog in which I asked affiliates if they were ready to work for nothing. Because for the first 6-12 month you probably won’t make much money and will probably spend more money getting your online business going. That is alright because the rewards are very sweet once you get to the point that you make money while you sleep!

One of the most important things you can do while you are building your poker site is do research and find out whihc keywords you want to rank for. Of course we all want to rank for “Online Poker“, “Poker Rakeback“, “PokerStars“, etc. While these are all great money making terms they are super tough to rank for and will take time and money. There are literally millions of other keywords you can go after and millions of keywords you can easily rank for that are “low hanging fruit”.

Now you may be thinking “Yeah Randy, that is all well and good but how do I find these easy keywords? Easy, there is a ton of great SEO Tool where you can look up keywords and fond some you can attack. One of the easiest and most commonly used is our big friend “Google”. Yup, Google is a great research tool for you. Using Google you can search around, check out the competition, get new ideas for keywords, and decide on which ones you want to go after.Here is an example of an easy way you can use google’s info:

I did a simple seach for a big term “Poker Sites

As you can see this is a keyword that produces 17 million results. Now let’s try and narrow our search down a little bit, as a keyword with so many results will be tough to break into right away and make money with. Now let’s try “US Rakeback Poker Sites”

Ah now as you can see we found a search term with much less results, which means it will most likely be much easier to rank for. I say most likely because this is a A LOT of new affiliates make a crucial mistake. They say “hey, this is a keyword with some easy results, that will be what I go after. But just because you can find websites that rank for a term in google, does not mean it will be a good term to go after.

So, let;s move onto the next step and use another google tool and see how many search these terms get. Because unless someone is actually searching for a term, its useless. So let’s go to one of my favorite Poker/Gambling Keyword Tools – Google Insights

Ok now as you can see, not only did our secondary term not even register in search volume, I entered a third search term which I thought would be a decent low volume term, and again it didn’t register in our search. Now this is just an example but this is the general process you need to start with when choosing which keywords you want to try and rank for. Be cure and choose a keyword that 1. Get’s actually searched by people 2. Is a keyword you can actually rank and compete for 3. Make some money off of when you rank for it, and get visits for it.

So, although this is a very broad example, it should give you some ideas on how you can research and define which keywords you need to go after. This is a very important step when you are planning your website.