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 PokerStars.com is the
largest online poker card room. There are several paths that can lead to such a title, and Poker Stars has gone down most of them:
debuted with a better product (software) than anything on the market at the time; having a guy with a cool name win the World Series
of Poker after qualifying on your site for $40; having the next two champions be regular players on your site; have your competition
be mostly clueless about search marketing while you are also clueless; gain a partial clue in time to dramatically improve your search
presence ahead of your competitors even while the overall poker boom cools off to a plateau of popularity.
For the first four and a half years of its existence this multi-billion dollar business titled all its pages (except one) the
less than scintillating "Welcome to PokerStars.com". The domain did not rank in the top 100 for terms like "Texas
Hold'em" or "poker rules", despite the domain having good content on both topics, and also being a destination
searchers would definitely be glad to find and consider a valuable search result.
As the poker boom leveled off in early 2006, Poker Stars actually did some search marketing, which lead to them not just
being the dominant cardroom in terms of players, they became the dominant poker room in terms of search results. A
destination site like PokerStars.com should also be a deep content website, covering all aspects of the niche they are in.
While they could screw it up tomorrow, Poker Stars is poised to reap the ongoing benefits from building a white hat,
authority domain in perhaps the most lucrative destination niche there is online. Even given that, the intimidating thing
for their competitors should be that Poker Stars network of supporting sites, like Pokerstarsblog.com and Fullcontactpoker.com,
are in poor shape search engine-wise. The 800-pound gorilla doesn't even know it is a gorilla yet... |
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