SEO Tracker: 888poker leads the market as online poker interest spikes

With more people at home, online search interest in online poker has soared. But which brands are in a position to capitalise on that trend? And perhaps more importantly, how are brands in the poker market responding, amid very public scrutiny of the industry’s advertising practices?

888poker leads the way

The leading brand in the market is 888poker, with a visibility of 22,465 from the 98 biggest non-brand keywords in the market. That puts it significantly ahead of the next three brands in the market: 247freepoker.com, pokerstars.com and partypoker.com.

That position is driven largely by a position one ranking for the term “poker”, the biggest keyword in the market, but this isn’t reflective of a narrow SEO strategy that is just focused around a small number of high-value, volatile keywords.

The brand gets 79.5% of its organic non-brand traffic from this keyword but this is actually a low proportion in a market such as poker, where market leaders have often relied on this one keyword for in excess of 90% of their traffic. In fact, 888poker has a very broad keyword strategy, generating traffic from 106 keyword listings – with the brand enjoying a number of multiple listings.

By comparison, the second-most visible brand, 247freepoker.com, generates a visibility of 15,136 from 61 keywords. While the number of keywords that are generating traffic for the brand is smaller, it also doesn’t necessarily suggest a narrow strategy, with much of the brand’s traffic spread across a wide range of medium and long-tail keyword terms.

PokerStars.com and partypoker.com generate similar levels of traffic from a similar number of keywords, with PokerStars just edging that battle thanks to a stronger set of rankings overall. While partypoker ranks in third position for the term ‘poker’, one position higher than PokerStars, the latter has almost double the number of top-three rankings across the keyword set. In this case, it is a lot of small improvements that add up to make the difference in that head-to-head.

Online poker interest spikes as Britain locks down

Many have reported on the apparent spike in interest in igaming-related services as the Covid-19 pandemic forces many people inside their homes and restricts their movements not only in the UK, but around the world.

But it is striking just how the level of interest in the topic of poker has increased over the course of the last 90 days. Google Trends data recorded a spike in interest before restrictions on movements were announced in the UK, but these searches escalated following the announcement on 23 March.

Perhaps mindful that the lockdown has created something of a captive audience, regulators and law makers have been quick to highlight the danger of gambling operators taking advantage of the lockdown and the growing number of people looking for a form of escapism during it.

The ASA has stated that “the conduct of the online gambling industry”, including the nature and frequency of its advertising, was subject to “particular scrutiny” in light of the Covid-19 crisis. The European Gaming and Betting Association issued its own guidance while other countries, Spain being a notable example, imposed strict restrictions on the igaming industry during the lockdown period.

Many operators across the igaming industry, mindful of that increased attention from regulators, have themselves issued strongly worded guidance to their affiliates around any promotional activity related to the pandemic.

We’ve also seen, by the usual standards of the igaming sector, quite reserved strategies in terms of paid search, with no one brand being particularly aggressive in their PPC (pay-per-click) advertising approach.

We looked at the 10 biggest poker keywords in our paid search analysis tool, Defender, to understand how brands were approaching paid search. What we found is that no one brand is being overly dominant in the market, nor were there signs of brands being overly aggressive in their bid strategy.

Virgin Games has the largest share of voice in the market (a measure of the quantity and prominence of their PPC ads), but this is a brand that, according to our analysis, generates minimal traffic from organic search. Even then, the brand certainly doesn’t own a disproportionate share of the paid search market, with PokerStars, partypoker, bet365 and Playright.co.uk also taking more than 10% share of voice.

It is certainly rare for the leading brands to aggressively pursue traffic from PPC advertising, given the high click costs for the keywords we analysed and the risk of paid ads cannibalising their organic traffic, but the apparent unwillingness for any brand to really go ‘all in’ on paid search could well be a reflection of that looming regulatory attention.

With the igaming industry as a whole being at pains to show that it can self-regulate in recent times, amid increasing scrutiny over the ubiquity of its advertising, perhaps it isn’t surprising to see poker brands showing more restraint in their digital activity to date.