A person who does not already know of RHP would not search for "red hot pawn"; "play chess online" is a generic search phrase which should return results listing RHP (among others). Russ needs to do some fine tuning with search engines.
A change of site name (a rebrand) would help enormously with SEO. Something I have considered for this very reason so many times over the years - but that would be a very contentious option.
I do have a plan to mitigate the problem somewhat though.
@Russ Found rhp on the 7th page from my android phone this am.
I wonder if we could improve the ranking somewhat ourselves: Perhaps we could access rhp by googling “play chess online” finding rhp, and following the link to play chess.
It is not something an individual could change. Further links out on the web to RHP are the one thing that REALLY helps with search - particularly if they are well ranked themselves on similar search terms.
@russsaid It is not something an individual could change. Further links out on the web to RHP are the one thing that REALLY helps with search - particularly if they are well ranked themselves on similar search terms.
@Russ There are companies which, for a fee, will improve your ranking in order to drive more visitors to your site. But, I suppose you know that.
I typed in Chess Sites in google then 10 best sites from list and redhotpawn came up 7th on the list one behind Gameknot. I think showing up in the top 10 is excellent. It is always about "what" you type in your search