Poker Blogging Guide – 10 Great Resources For Poker Bloggers

Top 10 Poker Blog Resources – Must Have Tools And Tips For Poker Bloggers

Poker blogging is already massively massively popular – and new blogs are being created every day. The top 10 poker blogging tools and tips below will help you to ensure that your blog is a success, whether brand new or long established there is something for every poker blogger here.

Quick Note: If your poker blog benefits from the tips below we’d very much appreciate an entry in your blogroll! Use our homepage URL http://www.sitandgoplanet.com and (even better!) our title tag-line ‘Online Poker Tournament Strategy’ – thanks!

Best Poker Blog Tip #1 – Google Analytics

This online tracking system shows you how many visitors your blog gets, where they came from and even what keywords they searched for when finding you. A great tool and very easy to use – simply sign up for an account at http://www.google.com/analytics and then install a tracker in the template of your blog.

Best Poker Blog Tip #2 – Claim Your Blog At Technorati

Technorati is a mix of ‘Social Bookmarking’, Blog Directory and Tracking Tool. Once you ‘claim’ your blog (by signing up for an account) you’ll be able to see any time another blogger links to you – either via their blogroll or in the text of an entry. Based on the number of links your blog is assigned an ‘authority’ by this site. Check them out at http://www.technorati.com

Best Poker Blog Tip #3 – Major Blog Directories

Listing your blog at some of the biggest and best directories actually has 2 advantages. Firstly you will get a small but steady stream of traffic from your listing. Secondly the major search engines ‘crawl’ these directories regularly – meaning your new content gets indexed faster. Here is a complete list from Google: http://www.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs/Directories/

Best Poker Blog Tip #4 – Pinging Services

There is no faster way to get your blog content indexed by search engines than pinging! This is free and updates your entries at the major directories (and technorati) as mentioned above. Get into the habit of ‘blog and ping’ and watch your content hit google fast! Ping-o-matic will fulfill your pinging requirements: http://pingomatic.com

Best Poker Blog Tip #5 – Social Bookmarking

There is a lot of hype surrounding ‘Web 2.0’ and social bookmarking is an central component of this. The idea is that you share your favorite bookmarks with others. Try signing up to a few services such as delicious, netscape, digg, Redit and stumbleupon. Next put a link to these sites at the bottom of every post with a line of text inviting your readers to bookmark you. Not only will you see traffic – the search engines love these links and will rank your content better accordingly. For more information see this wiki entry and associated links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_bookmarking

Best Poker Blog Tip #6 – RSS Readers

RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. It is a way of keeping track of the websites that you like by installing a reader which shows you when there are updates at those sites. What happens is that your subscribers will see that you have updated your blog and read the heading + first couple of lines. They can then click in the reader to come to your blog and read the full post. An excellent way to retain a loyal blog following, and very easy to install. For more info check this guide: http://www.redcardinal.ie/search-engine-optimisation/15-12-2006/really-simple-guide-to-rss/

Best Poker Blog Tip #7 – Monetizing Your Blog

A blog full of big banner adverts to poker sites will turn off potential readers very quickly. However writing about the poker rooms that you know and including a couple of small adverts or text links can help to bring in a few dollars. Make sure you display a ‘bonus code’ where available, or you will lose credit for your signups (bonus codes replace the link-only referrals).  Finally, not all poker sites ‘convert’ well, two of the best are FULL TILT and for non-US players TITAN.

Best Poker Blog Tip #8 – Search Engine Optimization

There are too many ways to optimize your blog to write about here. A little effort could easily see you on the first page of google rather than the 3rd. Ensure that you ‘tag’ all posts, use keywords in your titles and make wording which may be searched for bold in your text. For a complete bloggers SEO checklist try this excellent guide: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/08/15/search-engine-optimization-for-blogs/

Best Poker Blog Tip #9 – Linking To Other Blogs

Much of your traffic will come from blog links – and the search engines love a site with lots of inbound links too. Don’t sit and wait for others to link to you… go and ask. The best way to do this is to start a blogroll of your favorite blogs then go to those bloggers and ask for a link back. Most bloggers are happy to exchange and linking to them first makes this experience much simpler.

Best Poker Blog Tip #10 – Poker Blog Directories

There are a large (and growing) number of directories specializing in poker blogs. Many will require that you link back to them in order to be listed. There are simply too many to list here so we suggest searching on Google. Once you have signed up for a few you can monitor the inbound traffic via Google Analytics and remove any that are not giving you any hits.