How Not To SEO a Poker Site: Two Plus Two

In the words of poker player Nat Arem:

Two Plus Two has been SEO braindead for years.

The Two Plus Two Forums are the most trafficked poker forums in the world. With hundreds of thousands of unique visitors a month, a dedicated (to the point of obsessive) crowd of regulars including top industry personalities, and deep stockpiles of poker-related content, no other forum even comes close.*

According to one ranking, Two Plus Two is the 39th most popular forum on the Internet. A generation of players have cut their teeth on Two Plus Two books, and those books have inspired forum discussions which have inspired yet more books. Many of the strategic concepts which are second-nature today were first formulated on Two Plus Two. So when you purchase a recent Two Plus Two book and read Greg Raymer's glowing endorsement on the backside...

I can say with full confidence that if it were not for Two Plus Two Publishing and their web site, I would not have the 2004 World Championship bracelet on my wrist.

...you can rest easy knowing it's not complete B.S. Two Plus Two really does have some great information, whether in book format or codified in their forums.

Which is why I feel so comfortable saying: if any site deserves to rank for the keyword "poker" that site is Two Plus Two. When people go to Google and type in "poker", Two Plus Two should, by rights, appear somewhere on the first page.

Want to know what Two Plus Two's actual rank is for that particular search?

#238

Which is almost funny, considering how richly deserving of search engine quan Two Plus Two actually is.

• The most successful poker publishing company in poker...
• The most trafficked discussion forums in poker...
• Home to some of the top poker theorists and players in the world...
• On the Internet for around a decade...
• Thousands of incoming organic links from every poker site in existence...

And yet...238.

Now it could be argued that there's no way Two Plus Two could ever compete, SEO-wise, against the well-funded online poker venues who dominate the "poker" and "online poker" keyword arena. In Online Poker: Too Competitive for White Hat SEO?, Rand Fishkin explains.

Some of the more established sites (PartyPoker, FullTiltPoker, Bodog, 888, etc.) have hundreds of thousands of backlinks, a good portion of which are fully white-hat. In addition, they've got history, good on-page optimization and the depth of experience in the field that would be tough for anyone outside of my panel cohorts to match.

So achieving a Top 10 ranking for those terms takes a lot of time, money, and expertise. Fine. Poker SEO is a bloodbath especially on the short tail. We know this. Yet there are hundreds of sites with less content than Two Plus Two that rank higher in the SERPs. Two Plus Two manages to get schooled, rank-wise, by some truly tangential stuff.

• Conjelco's poker glossary. Rank #57.
• Lady Gaga's Poker Face Lyrics. Rank. Rank #64.
• University of Alaska Geophysical Institute's Poker Flat Research Range. Rank #99.
• The Poker For Dummies book on Amazon. Rank #174.

It performs slightly...slightly...better on the long tail, where you can find combinations of words that summon Two Plus Two results:

• average player win rates PTBB/100
• online poker AHK macros
• absolute poker scandal

But what kind of user searches for those terms? A poker player who probably already knows about Two Plus Two, that's who. For those ultra-competitive poker keywords on the short tail, Two Plus Two's performance is abysmal. You could say that Two Plus Two is the 98-pound weakling of poker SEO.

Rarely will you find any website more deserving of rank getting so little of it. Nat Arem (in the above-linked article) points out a few reasons why:

• "HORRIBLE URL management..."
• "Lack of robots.txt usage, along with proper nofollow'ing..."
• "Lack of keywords in URLS..."
• "Not maximizing content..."

Some improvements have been made along these lines. But problems still abound:

• Terrible on-page SEO. Clutter. Poor keyword density. More clutter.
• Failure to promote high-value content (signal) over low-value content (noise).
• Failure to promote high-value content on the front page.
• Lack of coherent, easily-spiderable inner link structure.
• Link density is way too high in general; keyword density too low.
• No clear prev/next or left/right progression in multipage threads (at the markup level).
• Two Plus Two post archiving process breaks permalinks and everything gets archived eventually.

Now I don't pretend to be an SEO virtuoso, and I'm not affiliated with Two Plus Two in any way, shape, or form. My attitude towards SEO has always been try to create good or at least decent or at least halfway unique content and make it basically accessible to search engines. But what's appropriate for me isn't appropriate for a high-traffic Internet forum like Two Plus Two.

Two different animals entirely.

So setting the classic SEO aspects aside, let's surf on over to a Two Plus Two thread and click the venerable View Source button. Here's the XHTML markup generated for a page consisting of one question:

at a small stakes game or for any nlhe game   What is the usual standard open live and online? 6max and 9max nlhe  I hear it is 4bb+ 1bb per limper. Is this correct?

And one response:

Yes. You'll find that all over the NLHE forums here. It gives you enough fold equity to usually get it heads-up, which will get you into situations you know well (after a while).

That's 341 characters total. And here's what the Two Plus Two servers spit out:

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            #<a href="http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=11953722&amp;postcount=1" target="new" rel="nofollow"

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                <a class="bigusername" href="http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/members/168706/">thaman</a>
               
               
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            <div class="smallfont">centurion</div>
           
           

           

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                &nbsp;<br />
                <div>Join Date: Mar 2009</div>
               
               
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                <strong>Standard Open</strong>
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            at a small stakes game or for any nlhe game   What is the usual standard open live and online? 6max and 9max nlhe  I hear it

is 4bb+ 1bb per limper. Is this correct?
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            Today, 05:46 PM
           
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            &nbsp;
            #<a href="http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=11953756&amp;postcount=2" target="new" rel="nofollow"

id="postcount11953756" name="2"><strong>2</strong></a>
           
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                <a class="bigusername" href="http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/members/49532/">fabadam</a>
               
               
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            <div class="smallfont">old hand</div>
           
           

           
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                    &nbsp;<br /><a href="http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/members/49532/"><img

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                &nbsp;<br />
                <div>Join Date: Feb 2006</div>
                <div>Location: Haarlem, Netherlands</div>
               
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                    Posts: 1,203
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                <strong>Re: Standard Open</strong>
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            Yes. You'll find that all over the NLHE forums here. It gives you enough fold equity to usually get it heads-up, which will get

you into situations you know well (after a while).
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<option value="52" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Mid-High Stakes Shorthanded</option>

<option value="22" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Small Stakes Shorthanded</option>
<option value="60" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Limit--&gt;NL</option>
<option value="109" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Heads Up Limit</option>
<option value="7" class="fjdpth0" > PL/NL Texas Hold'em</option>
<option value="19" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  High Stakes PL/NL</option>

<option value="56" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Medium Stakes PL/NL</option>
<option value="39" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Small Stakes PL/NL</option>
<option value="69" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Micro Stakes PL/NL</option>
<option value="117" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Medium-High Stakes Full Ring</option>
<option value="96" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Small Stakes Full Ring</option>

<option value="78" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Micro Stakes Full Ring</option>
<option value="58" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Heads Up NL</option>
<option value="8" class="fjdpth0" > Tournament Poker</option>
<option value="23" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  MTT Strategy</option>
<option value="36" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  STT Strategy</option>

<option value="87" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  High Stakes MTT</option>
<option value="61" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  MTT Community</option>
<option value="65" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Tournament Circuit/WSOP</option>
<option value="144" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Tournament Results</option>
<option value="9" class="fjdpth0" > Other Poker</option>

<option value="44" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Omaha/8</option>
<option value="38" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Omaha High</option>
<option value="20" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Stud</option>
<option value="21" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Draw and Other Poker</option>
<option value="10" class="fjdpth0" > General Gambling</option>

<option value="138" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Backgammon</option>
<option value="25" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Probability</option>
<option value="26" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Psychology</option>
<option value="40" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Sports Betting</option>
<option value="31" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Other Gambling Games</option>

<option value="77" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Entertainment Betting</option>
<option value="11" class="fjdpth0" > Internet Poker</option>
<option value="28" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Internet Poker</option>
<option value="49" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Internet Bonuses</option>
<option value="51" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Affiliates/RakeBack</option>

<option value="45" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Software</option>
<option value="12" class="fjdpth0" > 2+2 Communities</option>
<option value="34" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Other Other Topics</option>
<option value="63" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  The Lounge: Discussion+Review</option>
<option value="79" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  EDF</option>

<option value="108" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Las Vegas Lifestyle</option>
<option value="62" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  BBV4Life</option>
<option value="119" class="fjdpth2" >&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  omg omg omg</option>
<option value="13" class="fjdpth0" > Other Topics</option>

<option value="46" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Sporting Events</option>
<option value="150" class="fjdpth2" >&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  Fantasy Sports</option>
<option value="151" class="fjdpth2" >&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  Single-Team Season Threads</option>
<option value="41" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Politics</option>

<option value="118" class="fjdpth2" >&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  Economics</option>
<option value="30" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Business, Finance, and Investing</option>
<option value="92" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Travel</option>
<option value="47" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Science, Math, and Philosophy</option>

<option value="137" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Religion, God, and Theology</option>
<option value="85" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Health and Fitness</option>
<option value="93" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Golf</option>
<option value="67" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Student Life</option>
<option value="140" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Chess and Other Board Games</option>

<option value="75" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Video Games</option>
<option value="59" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Puzzles and Other Games</option>
<option value="76" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Laughs or Links!</option>
<option value="48" class="fjdpth1" >&nbsp; &nbsp;  Computer Technical Help</option>

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                <a href="http://www.twoplustwo.com">Two Plus Two Publishing LLC</a> -
               
               
               
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Where do I even begin?

It may well be the case that Googlebot and other spiders will index up to 500KB or more of the content on a single page. But if your markup looks like the above, SEO is the least of your worries. When the ratio of boilerplate HTML to actual content starts to approach like 100 to 1 or 500 to 1 or worse, as it does on Two Plus Two, SEO is premature.

You still have a half-finished website.

I have no idea how much traffic and money and other Internet goodness Two Plus Two has squandered over the years by failing to produce a search engine-friendly website. I'm inclined to say millions of dollars but we'll never really know. Whereas forums like StackOverflow and even the reviled ExpertsExchange manage to court search engines with shallower link structures, appropriate keyword densities, optimized presentation of content, and permalinks that stay permanent, Two Plus Two's approach is more like search engine kryptonite.

And for a site with mountains of rich content operated by the guys who currently own the #1 Google result for the phrase non-self-weighting, that's a little ironic. ;-)

* - There are, however, lots of great forums out there, including PokerAI.org and CardsChat.com as well as some of the forums maintained by the poker sites themselves such as the forums at Full Tilt.

Tags: SEO, 2+2, online poker, poker

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