As I’m sure you’ve heard, good rolled out a new Algo update a few days ago, which they are calling the “Freshness update”. According to google this new update will affect 35% of search queries, and is based on their caffiened update. As the name implies, this update is aimed at providing search results which pull the most current information on a topic.

I had to take a couple weeks away from posting my thoughts and tips. Thankfully, the family (6 Teenagers) and my wife Durana had an awesome vacation in Branson, MO – The last few years we have leased this condo on a beautiful golf course. Branson is a great place for a relaxing family themed vacation. We needed the rest more than we even realized lol.

I wanted to throw up a quick post to let everyone know that our newest Ebook is now available FREE to download. This book has been months in the making and I want to give a big shout out to my boy Greg for all his hard work on this project! This Ebook is titled “Breaking Into a Niche” and takes you step by step and shows you what it takes find a niche and dominate it!

If you are in the Poker Affiliate industry, then you know that 2010 has been a wild wild year for the Poker Affiliates. We have the good, the bad, and the ugly in our industry. Although Online Gaming and specifically the Poker Industry is still a young market compared to Casinos and other Online Marketing Verticals, 2010 had pushed our industry to do some “growing up” so to speak. Before we get too far into where I see the Affiliate Market in the coming 1-2 years, let’s look at some of the good,bad, and ugly over the last 2 years.

Ok so let’s face it, its not as easy at it use to be to make money online weather it be from websites, blogs, forum communities, or anything else. the competition is tougher, google is smart, and scariest of all the average internet user is more educated. Browsers make it easy for people to block ads, images, and pop ups. Even if you can get past those walls, people are now banner blind. When is that last time a banner made you want to click on anything???

We wanted to continue our recent articles theme of “Affiliate Money Making Tips” and today we are going to cover one of the most common questions we get asked by clients and new affiliate marketers; “How can I find profitable keywords?” Now I would like to be able to say this is an easy process, but honestly sometimes it is just trial and error which can be time consuming and tedious. Now usually when people hear this their first thought is “Long and boring” and depending on your approach you may be right.

I’m very excited to announce that we have now launched our Live Poker SEO Radio Show which is also available for podcast download and Itunes! We had our first show last night with a very special guest “Michael Martinez” of SEO Theory – Michael is well known in the SEO and SEM industry and last night he covered all the new Google Changes in regards to “Personalized Search” and “Live search“. Both of these issues have a far reaching impact on the world of search marketing, and thankfully Michael was there to explain it in a way everyone can understand.

I figured I would just get this post out of the way, I keep hearing these same tired ass arguments and theories about “white hat SEO vs black hat SEO”. The truth of the matter is that if you own a website, give a shit about making money, and work hard on it then you are not even close to a white hat SEO. Here is why:

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS WHITE HAT SEO!!!

I hope that is clear enough, because some people don’t seem to understand it. I guess its all relative, but honestly if you have ever done link building, bought links, targeted “off limit” keywords etc, then you are at best “slightly shady”. In the poker world we all use tactics which are more than just writing content, basic SEO, and link building. If you don’t yet, you will son enough or you will be moving on to an easier niche to work in.

I’m not saying you cannot have a great website by just adding tons of content and getting organic links, but why would you limit yourself to that? I’m not going to? the bottom line is that there is a HUGE difference between advanced SEO and all out link spamming, cloaking, and such. Make no mistake, you are not a white hat SEO and you never will be. So do not limit yourself to thinking you even fall into one of these categories. It puts hand cuffs on you and limits your potential.

Here is a few funny statements I’ve heard over the past few month when it comes to SEO and general SERP rankings

I won’t target those terms because those don’t benefit the user” – This comment was made int he context of chatting about targeting Poker Room Bonus Codes like – Cake Poker Bonus Code, Full Tilt Bonus Code, Aced Coupon Code, etc. Now that is great if you don’t want to target these terms, great for me that is Because if people search for it, I’m going to give it to them. You should too, what possible reason could you have for not wanting to rank for it?

“I don’t worry about SEO, because as soon as I SEO my site google will change something and I’ll have to start over” – Ok this one goes down int he hall of fame, I really didn’t know how to respond to this, so my response was “yeah google sucks”

“I just throw articles up and add keywords, see what sticks on the wall” – Yeah I guess that is one approach

I don’t have time for SEO because I’m too busy building new sites” - This one as funny as it is, really shows how dumb some people are.

Anyway, now is the time to get things done and stop messing with new ideas. Get off your asses and make it happen today! I’ll try and post something more useful later, but for now you just need to make it happen!

The other day, my buddy “Kevin: who is a successful young poker affiliate made a post at PAL where he shared his latest project of building a simple and well planned out poker affiliate site. The new site is Best Poker Site – Now, on any given day I would guess there are 100 new poker portals going up around the world. Hell, it maybe as many as a 1000 a day or more, who knows. What I do know is that 99% of them will never make money, and be abandoned within the first few months.

Finding good tools to help with link building, analyzing stats, and finding good keywords is essential to having a successful website.  There are several very handy tools that seasoned webmaster use daily when focusing on their website. These tools are all free, and will give you a leg up on your competition.