Sportsbook SEO Specialist

Google Link Tracking

Sportsbook SEO — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 21:58:00 +0000

You know how Google always displayed fewer links to your site than say Yahoo or MSN? Well they are now giving us better information but not on the regular search pages for queries like link:mydomain.com. Now if you want to take a look at how many links Google sees (I don't think they still show us 100% of inbound links) all you need to do is set up a Google Webmaster account, verify the website, and then wait a few days and viola, you get a list of links that Google sees. Very cool.

Move over Google – Quintura is here!

Sportsbook SEO — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 20:46:00 +0000

There has been a lot of talk about latent semantic indexing but that is all there has been – talk. Then along comes Quintura.com. Not only does Quintura.com deal with latent semantic indexing but it also shows us how it works.

Go to the site Quintura.com and enter a single search word for any topic you like and watch how it offers many other topics on that search term. Place your mouse over one of the optional keywords that appear that interests you and then watch how it will further offer more options based upon the relationship between the other words. Once you have your cursor placed over any particular keyword, look at the result listings below to see if it offered the most appropriate website to your topic.

Now this system isn’t perfect but it is an exciting beginning for where search technology is going. The search engines we use today are generally based upon mechanical search whereas Quintura.com is based upon contextual search.

What is Contextual search? In effect, with contextual search, all relevant text and other data is automatically categorized and set in context. With mechanical search names of people, names of places, dates, prices and other related topics to the original keyword query are potentially lost to the searcher unless specifically identified within the original search query; now, they are related facts waiting to be exploited from within contextual search results.

The future of search is changing and I say that change is for the better and it is about time.

SEO – SEM Cold Callers

Sportsbook SEO — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 20:30:00 +0000

You know it never ceases to amaze me how these new SEO companies can send out emails offering to raise websites in the search engines without even doing the most basic research first. When I say simple I mean basic research like finding out the domain of the site they are emailing?

Here is a typical example of an email they send out:

“I’ve helped many well-known companies get the highest search engine placement for their website at the lowest cost, and want to do the same for you. If your interested, reply with the website address you want reviewed and how you would like me to contact you with the details.”

How can these people honestly think that they should be trusted to improve anything when they can’t even be trusted to look at the website prior to emailing somebody about their services?

If that were the worst of it that would be bad enough but when you go and review the site that sent you the email, to see if they have the ability to back up that claim, you usually come across some cookie cutter website that lacks any useful information. The most recent offer that came to me came from some site that was made up entirely in Flash.

I am not going to tell you what you need to do in order to successfully sign up new clients but I will suggest this… do some research first!

DOJ + GOP = Morality Police

Sportsbook SEO — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 21:26:00 +0000

As you can see by the dates of my most recent blog, I haven’t been blogging since the DOJ went after BOS (bet on sports). The reason for this has nothing to do with any kind of fear of prosecution for marketing gambling sites. The reason for the lack of the blogging has more to do with being too busy because of the bullshit prohibitionist stance of the GOP. Ever since these latest rounds of attacks by the DOJ of the good ole US of A I have been really busy consulting with worried American businessmen.

Now I do not have a problem with our American cousins enforcing their rules and laws as they are theirs to enforce. However, when their laws interfere with the lives and livelihoods of people who did nothing wrong according to the laws of their own lands, well I do have a problem with that.

Rather than interfere with American citizen rights for which the GOP knows they wouldn’t get away with due to ACLU clout, the GOP chooses to wipe out billions of dollars of global investor income instead. Nice. If what they are really trying to do is protect the US citizens then why make everybody else suffer? The answer is quite simple… because they can.

Damned ODP Interference

Sportsbook SEO — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 17:50:00 +0000

Tired of having the description from the ODP interfering with the on page description in your Google search results for your site? No problem as the good people at Google has put together a new Meta tag for us to use. Simply add the Meta tag of <meta name="robots" content="noodp"> to your <HEAD> content and wait for the GoogleBot to crawl your site once again. You can read more about this over on the Matt Cutts Blog, in case you don´t know who this guy is he is an engineer over at Google.

An eyeful a day keeps the doctor away!

Sportsbook SEO — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 21:39:00 +0000

By Jonathan Hayter

Someone sent me this article and I simply had to post it as I am a firm believer in the words it contains.**Editor**

Staring at women’s breasts is good for men’s health and makes them live longer, a new survey reveals.

Researchers have discovered that a 10-minute ogle at women’s breasts is as healthy as half-an-hour in the gym.

A five-year study of 200 men found that those who enjoyed a longing look at busty beauties had lower blood pressure, less heart disease and slower pulse rates compared to those who did not get their daily eyeful.

Dr Karen Weatherby, who carried out the German study, wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine: “Just 10 minutes of staring at the charms of a well endowed female is roughly equivalent to a 30-minute aerobics workout.

Sexual excitement gets the heart pumping and improves blood circulation.

“There is no question that gazing at breasts makes men healthier.

“Our study indicates that engaging in this activity a few minutes daily cuts the risk of a stroke and heart attack in half.

“We believe that by doing so consistently, the average man can extend his life four to five years.”

**Editor**
Something gets extended anyway! But seriously guys “Get tit to stay fit!”

The Link is the Thing!

Sportsbook SEO — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 17:35:00 +0000

Natural linking, what is it and how do I get it? More importantly, do I need it? If you run an Internet web presence that you want others to find in the search engines then the answer to the latter is YES!

What is natural linking? That is an easy question to answer. Natural linking occurs when someone places a link to your site from another site. The reason that someone might link to your site is not really important, the fact that they placed the link is the only thing that matters.

Some of the reasons that someone might place a link to your site or to a page within your website are:

• Your site offers some information that supports a fact or reinforces    a position contained within another site.
• Your site offers some tools or resources that would be helpful to    others.
• Your site contradicts a common misconception that others want use    to validate their own views on that topic.
• Your site represents a controversial viewpoint that others might    want to showcase for their own purposes.
• Your site is just so very cool that others need to be made aware of    it and seeing as my website links to your site, my site must be cool    too!

Regardless of the reasons why someone might be linking to your site, these natural links are very important. Even if someone is linking to your site because they think it is a sad joke and they want others to see how bad your site is, it really doesn’t matter.

Knowing that these types of links are important the next question is, “How do you get people to link to your site?” There are several ways you can get people to link to your site with the easiest being, make a useful site. Easier said then done you are thinking eh?

When you think about it, creating a useful site isn’t that difficult, it just requires time. Time to find helpful tools to share with others, time to find sound advice regarding your site’s topic of interest and time to make your site ooze the “It” factor. The amount of time it will take is solely dependent upon how much effort you want to put in to it.

OK, so you finished your site, now what? How do you let people know that your site is ready to amaze others? There are several ways to let people know about your site. If you have a budget set aside you could set up a PPC campaign that may bring in some traffic. You could join groups or forums that share your interest or even better, that are totally opposite to your site’s message or theme. Perhaps one of the best ways is to write articles that others can use on their sites that are seeded with a few well placed links pointing back to your site.

One of the next big trends that is about to take off is, the “Bartered Link”. Bartered links are where you offer space on your site to host an article written by other webmasters, which contain text links to their sites in exchange for a one way link back to your site. Are bartered links considered to be natural links? If they aren’t then they sure do a fine job of mimicking them.

Regardless of the motivation behind someone linking to your site, even if it is because they think your site is bad or your opinion is wrong, just remember this… the fact that they did is all that truly matters as the link is the thing.

Ahhhhh - Go Google yourself!

Sportsbook SEO — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 23:54:00 +0000

Have you ever put your own name into Google to see what comes up? When most people put their name in Google they are lucky to not have anything pop up unless they are in an online business of some kind. The types of things that most people get might be governmental reports if they have ever gone through any bureaucratic red tape. These types of returns are only as bad as the red tape they were involved in.

For some people the results of Googling their own name could be a picture of some drunken indiscretion at a party. Every once in a while I like to type in the names of people from out of my past to see if what kind of results their names turn up. Rarely do I find any pictures but when I do, they are usually pretty good and potentially profitable but I won’t go into that here.

When I Google my own name I am pretty lucky for the most part as most of the results returned are for articles I have written, sites I am credited for and various other things that I have developed over the year son the Internet. Sometimes, however, my name gets used a keyword that leads to a site that is of a questionable nature. Nothing I can do about that so I don’t even worry about those unless I have to.

The only time I would be concerned about what my name turns up in a Google search is when a prospective contract or employer finds something he/she doesn’t like. Naturally, I can explain everything I have done online over the years and can back it up with copies of the work I have done so for me, I don’t really worry to much. For others though this could present a more significant problem, especially when looking for that new job.

So go ahead – Google yourself to see what comes up before someone else Googles you that could bring you down. Forewarned is forearmed.

Tagging or Social Bookmarking

Sportsbook SEO — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 19:29:00 +0000

Is social book marking going to gain in popularity to rival organic searches? I doubt it.

For those of you who don’t know about Tagging or Social Bookmarking I will try to explain the concept. Basically what happens is people go to a site like Del.icio.us that allows them to write a little tag line about the pages that they bookmark and it saves their bookmarks for them. When enough people bookmark the same sites these bookmarked sites rise to the top of the membership search site.

OK, perhaps that was too simple an explanation. If you want to read up on the concept in more detail, click on this Wikipedia link to go to their explanation on the subject.

Assuming that you now have a better understanding on the subject I offer my thinking on why I feel that tagging wont replace organic searches. The results would be too easy to manipulate. What is stopping some company from paying a host of underpaid employees to go to sites like Del.icio.us and bookmarking their targeted sites? Nothing - that’s what!

I have been hearing rumors that since Yahoo acquired Del.icio.us; Yahoo may be going down that road for their search technologies. While it may be true that Yahoo has lost focus on the search market I can not believe that they would be trying to get back into the search market by replacing their directory services with tagging or social bookmarking. I mean after all - it is better to remain a solid #2 than that other solid number that gets usually gets flushed down with the toilet water.

Google Products & Waiting Lists

Sportsbook SEO — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 17:50:00 +0000

Well Google rolled out yet another free product that you can’t sign up for. What is it with this company and their free services offers that you have to join a waiting list to sign up for? I mean they have to know that given the level of exposure that their service receives that they are going to have overwhelming responses immediately. Is it just me or does these tactics seem a little lame?

I never bothered with Gmail or Picasa seeing as I already had these types of services by other vendors. Yes, I use Blogger but I can’t recall how long ago I got it. I got the Site Map system without too much hassle and the Google Analytics set up on 3 sites prior to them shutting that one down due to overwhelming volume.

The latest service they have is called Writely. Writely is a browser based word processor that offers the ability to share documents instantly & collaborate in real-time. Seems like a good idea and worth checking out but hey guess what… you can’t because the system is overwhelmed again and won’t allow for any new sign ups.

You would have thought that the good and smart people at Google would have known ahead of time that this was going to happen – again and prepared for this eventuality. So once again I have asked to be notified when the service will be taking sign ups again so I can try this new novel idea out.

Hold it a second… come to think of it this new service kind of reminds me of an old Net Meeting feature called Whiteboard that has been integrated with Program Sharing. I suppose I won’t know for sure until Writely moves to a server that can handle the volume of users that Google brings or is it because Google is trying to figure out a way to stuff the program with Google ads?

Google in Court Today

Sportsbook SEO — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 17:44:00 +0000

Today is the day that Google goes to court to defend itself from the intrusion of the American government. The US Department of Justice had requested that the search engines provide information regarding search patterns and the like, in an effort to weed out pornography that children could access. As I understand it Yahoo and MSN, among some other search engines, had complied but not Google. Understandably, Google is interested in keeping their search technology secret as the release of the requested information could expose their trade secrets to the competition.

I am of mixed feelings on this one as Google has a right to secure the information that separates them from their competitors but, if the release of these search patterns is going to make the Internet a better, safer place for children to explore; then let them have the info.

I suppose that if the US government really wanted to access Google’s information for any other reason than the one that they stated, couldn’t the US government just have said they were looking for search pattern information in an effort to root out terrorists? Wouldn’t that then become a matter of Home Land Security with no recourse for Google other than compliance?

I for one will be watching and waiting for the outcome. If you are interested in this case you can learn more at Matt Cutts Blog.

MSN and Search

Sportsbook SEO — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 21:23:00 +0000

Well MSN is up to it again – trying to re-invent the wheel so to speak.

Soon after the launch of their search engine, or soon after taking it out of Beta testing, MSN has released a new search product that is in Beta testing. This search product is called Windows Live Search and can be found at search.live.com.

If you drop the search part of that URL and go straight to live.com the site look s like MSN is trying to break into the Web Portal business. Should Yahoo be nervous? I doubt it.

Any way, back to Windows Live Search report. From my perspective this new product looks pretty good although I have heard tell that it isn’t FireFox friendly. That’s OK by me because neither am I!

I like the fact that you can just keep scrolling through the results as opposed to clicking to the next page. Another interesting thing is the slider bar at the top right of the search page that allows one to select the layout of the search results.

Naturally, seeing as this is a Beta version of the product it doesn’t quite work 100% of the time but that can be forgiven. I tried the image search function but it always seemed to hang and being an Internet kind of person, I lost patience and soon moved on.

I can’t say whether or not this is going to become the new trend in search engine layouts but at this time I say I have to like it. I give it 3 out 5 crawls

Is Firefox Exploiting Volunteers?

Sportsbook SEO — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 17:33:00 +0000

It seems that the web browser FireFox is making millions of dollars off of the Google search box in their browser. Personally I am not against a company making money from paid searches but when that company’s product is developed from a host of volunteer work, I have to question that companies ethics.

An article by Antone Gonsalves goes into more detail on how Mozilla is earning these millions. I wonder if all of these volunteers would be so giving of themselves and their time if they knew that their efforts were generating huge amounts of revenue for Mozilla.

Does Mozzila offer them any form of compensation? Does Mozilla make any contributions to charitable organizations? Does Mozilla spend any of that money in an effort to standardize web browser technology? I sincerely doubt it.

SEO and Exclusivity

Sportsbook SEO — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 17:42:00 +0000

One of the things about clients I have never understood is their desire to enter into exclusive SEO contracts. While I understand the need to out perform the competition with regards to search engine rankings, what I don’t understand is how being exclusive is going to get a site to list in more than 2 positions in any given SERP (search engine ranking page).

Let me explain – If a search engine offers 10 results per page for any search query, the best any site can ever hope to achieve is 2 listings out of the10. If said site gets the two positions on a page in the search engine that still leaves 8 spots that you will not be able to rank for with the same site.

Now let’s say for arguments sake that you are working for a company that has multiple sites that offer the same products and or services, you could attain positions for that search phrase for each of those sites but then those sites would only be competing with the company’s own sites thus lowering the ROI for each of those sites. Sure you may be capturing the SERP for that search query (I have done this for a client in the past, 6 different sites capturing 6 out of 10 page one results) but is it really worth the extra cost for exclusivity to out perform your own sites?

In my opinion it is far better to spend the extra money you would have spent on exclusivity into making your site better for the people who use your site.

Yahoo Site Explorer

Sportsbook SEO — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 18:26:00 +0000

Yes, I know - it has been a long time since I last made an entry into my blog, I have been really busy as of late.

Have you tried the new Site Explorer tool from Yahoo? If you haven’t you should check it out. Not only does this handy little tool tell you how many pages Yahoo has indexed but it also lets you check on the links to your site.

Did I say your site? You know you can also use this handy little item to keep track on the competition too!

Speaking of competition, it seems that MSN Search is going to be releasing something similar as well in the not too distant future. I’ll keep you posted.

Original Content

Sportsbook SEO — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 22:31:00 +0000

Am I mistaken here or didn’t Google state (through unofficial channels) that their system is able to ferret out where content originates so that the right sites receive credit for their material? If this is the case then I have to say that they sure are slow in giving credit to where credit is due.

Without giving away any domains I will pass on some of my own personal experience regarding this topic.

A few years back I was working for a sports gambling site and I noticed that for a sports gambling site they sure didn’t have a lot of sports related articles on the site. Thinking to myself, that from a search engine standpoint, this omission was bad for business so I quickly remedied this by writing some articles covering the major sports. As I wrote these ‘league specific’ articles I felt that the information I was writing looked more like personal letters so I signed them as such.

The owners of the sports gambling site liked the name I penned them under so much that they encouraged me to write more articles using that persona. I agreed to give it a go and before I realised it had happened, I had developed a brand. The first few articles I wrote began to do exceptionally well in the search engines so I decided to take it to the next level by purchasing the domain for this new brand.

I took the articles and created a site around the material and continued to develop new articles on a daily basis. I also continued to post the material on the first sports betting site with another half a dozen sites or so adding this material as well. This relationship went on for about a year with the sites ranking well in the search engines for the articles. In fact the sports betting sites were doing so well that they actually all got bought up by a major player in the sports betting market.

When the sites got sold the relationship between my branded site and the sports betting sites ended with no further articles being reprinted. It has been about 4 months since I last posted an article on any of the sports betting sites and yet, the sports betting sites still rank higher in Google for my old articles then they do for the newest articles on my site.

If Google has a preference for fresh, topical content and has a thought towards crediting the content originator, why is it taking Google so long to credit this author? Keep in mind that the site is named after the author and is not some keyword stuffed domain designed to manipulate the SERPs. Also, the site has a minimum of 4 new pages added every week and those pages are all within the theme of the site.

Now I would understand that if the older sports betting sites were still reprinting these articles, that given their higher PR, they would probably be receiving higher SERPs but as I previously stated, it has been months since they added any new material. Where is the freshness - relevancy filtering in this case, why aren’t they kicking in if they exist?

I am willing to wait to see how long it takes Google to give credit where credit is due but the longer it takes the more suspicious I will become of their results.

Google VS Relevance

Sportsbook SEO — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 18:29:00 +0000

I hope you all had a great holiday season with your friends and family. I know mine was exceptional once again this year.

Here it is the first full working day in 2006. As I sit at my desk looking over various Blogs and posts related to the world of search engines, I can see that 2006 is picking up exactly as 2005 left us… no surprise there. The same issues remain and probably will remain unresolved at good old Google.

Over the holidays with all of the football games being played I went to Google and did a search on the grand daddy of all football related search queries “Free Football Picks”, to see what the results would be. Not wanting to spend a long time going over the 1000 results that every search query should give, I used a string that gives 100 results per page as opposed to the 10 one would normally get.

At the time of this writing I see that Free Football Picks returns over 5 million highly contested results. The thing that is really interesting here is that out of the 5 million plus results, long before you reach the 1000 results limit you are gifted with this message…

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 283 already displayed.If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

Hitting the link resets the search and you can now go all the way to the 1000 results. Closer inspection revels that of these 1000 results there are hundreds of pages from football.about.com/ and coversexperts.com/ and to a lesser extent, a few smaller sites.
Now I understand that these two sites have status and I personally use them but, how is it that their old archived football information can out position new, relevant content from other sites to the extent that they do? I have not noticed this problem on any other search engine, only Google. Relevance my ass!

Reciprocal Link building – The Saga Continues

Sportsbook SEO — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 19:23:00 +0000

While it may not be possible to totally discount reciprocal linking as links form the weave of the web. Given the recent comments by some of the search engine people one can only deduce that the way linking is done between sites is being addressed. Since Google can’t toss out the baby with the bath water, Google and other search engines must try to find a way to deal with this, their mess. Some direct information would be beneficial but seeing as none seems to be forthcoming, then it is left to us, the people who constantly run various tests, to offer up our interpretations on what appears to be happening with the engines. Generally, we preface our findings with some kind of qualifier that suggests that the results could also be affected by things beyond our control and should be taken as such, a report on an experiment. How other’s take this information and perhaps generate articles is also beyond the control of the test originators. Rest assured that in most cases the testers are usually offering up their findings in an effort to be helpful and not to discredit anybody’s business model.

How can Google or any other search engine for that matter discern if websites are involved in a reciprocal link building program or not? To my mind there could be a few ways to be discovered as a reciprocal link builder with perhaps the easiest way being the involvement of third party web sites that facilitate the reciprocal link trading or RLT. Every free RLT site I ever joined had as part of their agreement to join, the mandatory link back to the RLT site which in my opinion, would give the search engines a third point for examination to help in the determination on whether a site is involved in a linking scheme or not.

For myself, I will be re-evaluating my participation with free RLT sites as I, like others, try to deal with an issue that really shouldn’t be one.

Google Analytics Part Three

Sportsbook SEO — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 21:03:00 +0000

It has been a short while since Google released their analytics program. Prior to the system becoming overloaded I was able to successfully add five sites into the program. Of those 5 sites none of them have ever offered satisfactory results that come close to being accurate when compared to other analytics. Not only does the system seem to be lagging behind by about 2 days but I have seen it go for even longer without updating.

While this is a new program that seems to be fraught with many problems I will be waiting a while yet before I make my final decision regarding how well this system works. Although I no longer trust the system on accuracy at this point, I will be checking up on it occasionally just to see if it improves.

I am not sure how much any of us can complain seeing this is a free service but haven’t we all come to expect a certain level of expectation when thinking of Google products?

Google Analytics Part Two

Sportsbook SEO — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 17:18:00 +0000

Google went public with their new Analytics program and after about 1 week the system seems to have stalled. Some 200,000+ Analytics accounts were created with possibly over 200,000 additional profiles added to those, Google has went from tracking zero to almost half a million in their first week. Apparently this has overloaded the system and they are no longer accepting any new sites or allowing current account holders to add any more profiles.

If you haven’t gotten your account set up yet just be patient as this beleaguered analytic program should be up and running again very soon. While the down time may be creating some bad reviews of the system I would suggest that you give it a little more time before you buy into anybody’s review of the new, free system.

Myself I was able to get a couple of accounts signed up almost right away. I have to tell you that once the system is able to cope with the huge demand of resources required to operate the Google Analytics program, it should be another Google success story. Although the preliminary reporting has been a bit dodgy at first, I for one am willing to wait to see how it all turns out. If you are interested in this program I would suggest waiting a few weeks before even trying to sign up.

Google Analytics

Sportsbook SEO — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 17:39:00 +0000

Google has come out with another great new tool and it is free. I am talking about the Google Web Analytics program. This powerful tracking tool offers some of the same great features that other Premium Web Analytics systems provide with the only real difference being cost. Although this tool is designed to help people fine tune their Google AdWords campaigns but technically all you need is an account. The one down side is that your site can’t have more than 5 million page views per month. If you get more than 5 million pages views per month then you will have to pay for the service but hey… if your site gets more than 5 million page views per month then I think you can afford to pay for this service.

I think that there will be some pretty pissed off Web Analytic Software providers out there.

Hyphens and Domains

Sportsbook SEO — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 20:13:00 +0000

A few weeks ago I wanted to run a test on how the various search engines reacted to site architecture styles. Not knowing how the engines would react I wanted to use a throw away domain just in case my tests fell outside of the guidelines. I searched the hundreds of registered domains owned by the company I am with and came across one that was perfect as it also let me test the multiple hyphen issue. I won’t give out the domain but it goes something like this;

Dubya dubya dubya dot keyword hyphen hyphen hyphen keyword dot com

After a few days the new site was indexed by the big three so I went in and checked to see how my tests were working. I am happy to say that in one of the big 3 search engines, all of my tests worked just fine as I was receiving top 10 placements for a goodly portion of my targeted keywords. As far as the indexing goes well, that is a completely different story.

MSN and Yahoo both indexed my site just fine but Google on the other hand sure doesn’t seem to like the spammy use of the hyphens. In fact when using the site:DomainCheck for this site it always seems to return a similarly named site that only uses the one hyphen.

Dubya dubya dubya dot keyword hyphen keyword dot com

Conclusion: MSN doesn’t seem to care about the amount or use of hyphens in the domain. Yahoo will index but at this stage seems to apply some form of penalty. Google seems to be a lot pickier about the placement and amount of hyphens used in the domain. As for the use of hyphens in file names all three seem to be fine with them but I did restrict my search to a max of 4 hyphens used per file names.

To Blog or Not To Blog

Sportsbook SEO — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 19:47:00 +0000

For any of you who have been reading my Sportsbook SEO Blog I am sorry for not being able to add anything for the past couple of days. I have been quite busy conducting tests and analyzing the data. I was pleasantly surprised to discover another site conducting a similar test so I have been able to add their data to my own. This has greatly improved the time it would have taken to see some results in Google for my own test. I have expressed my thanks to the company running the parallel test and am waiting to see how they respond to my sincere gratitude.

I am also currently working on another article regarding the latest Google updates. I have made some very interesting observations and am going to share some of them with you in this new article and on this Blog.

Naturally, if you ever have any questions feel free to email me and I will answer them as best I can and as quickly as my schedule permits.

Keywords Meta Tag

Sportsbook SEO — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 18:41:00 +0000

It seems like ages ago now but when you think about it it really wasn’t that long ago that the Keywords Meta Tag was an important element in the optimization of any page. This powerful tool was so badly abused that it didn’t take too long for the search engines to discount the value of the keywords Meta tag. Spammers, in their effort to manipulate the search engines, began stuffing non-relevant keywords into the tag thus biting the hand that fed them.

To counter this search engines lowered the value of the tag to the point of almost being an unnecessary element in the HTML document. Did you notice the use of the word ALMOST? The keyword Meta tag still carries a little weight when used properly by some of the engines.

The way to properly use this tag is actually only use words that actually appear in the content of your page. If the words and phrases are used on the page then you should include them in the Meta tag. Don’t use too many as there is a limit to the number that can be used. Select the words that are important to the content of the page and only add them once to the Meta tag. If you’re content changes spend a few minutes to update the keywords Meta tag so that you don’t loose the weight on words that are still active in the content and Meta tag.

Granted that the weight of this Meta tag has greatly diminished over the years but it does still carry some weight and weight is weight. The nice thing about weight is that it is cumulative and the little bit you gain from the keywords Meta tag could mean the difference between showing up on page 1 or page 2 for your keywords/phrases.

10 Marketing Strategies for Sports Betting Sites

Sportsbook SEO — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 19:22:00 +0000

So you have a new sports betting site and you were hoping to compete with the established sports book sites, how do you go about letting the world know the site exists?

In the old days new sports gambling sites would simply just start aggressive Pay Per Click campaigns. With today’s Internet the search engines no longer allow gambling sites to advertise and that includes a ban on search engine PPC. Removing this type of advertising forced the online gambling providers to come up with other ways of increasing their popularity.

There are a number of strategies you can try in order to attract potential members to your sports betting sites.

Optimize your site for higher ranking in the organic searches. This is a tough one seeing as the competition is very steep. Don’t use questionable tactics, just be honest with your SEO and optimize the pages for the content that is actually on each page.

Generate topical content well in advance of the sporting event that you would like to promote. Generally speaking, search engines can take 3 to 12 weeks to find new pages so unless you are really up on how to get the pages indexed quicker, give new pages plenty of time to be discovered by the search engines.

Allow other sites to use your topical content in exchange for a text link back to your site. Doing this allows you to gain extremely valuable one way text links that will help to increase your link popularity. Just make sure you choose the text for that link carefully and the site posting your article maintains credit to you as the writer.

Post articles from other sites. Make sure that the article you post on your site is full of keyword rich text and optimize the page that contains that article for the contents of that article. When done properly this can greatly improve your chances of being found in a search engine for that articles topic.

Add a Forum to your site and create categories that promote the events that your site specializes in. For instance, if your site is based out of Europe you might want to make a bunch of categories based on Soccer such as Soccer Injuries, Soccer Trades & Rumors etc. Doing this will generate keyword rich, topical pages that eventually will be indexed by the search engines. The more active you’re Forum, the greater the chance of creating countless pages that the search engines will love.

Join forums on other sites and actively contribute to them. You see when posting to other forums your signature is added to the bottom of your post. In your signature you have an opportunity to place some text that could be used to promote your site. Also, some forums will allow you to place text links within the signature. Be respectful and do not stuff the signature with too many text links.

Add your site to as many directories as you can. Some directories can take a long time for inclusion, the DMOZ for instance, so you should apply to them as quickly as you can after launching your new sports betting site.

Reciprocating links can be helpful as long as you carefully search out potential linking partners. Make sure that the sites you are linking to are quality sites that you yourself would actually spend time on. A good rule of thumb is this – if you would bookmark the site others would probably bookmark it as well and therefore, the site would be a good site to trade links with.

Offer affiliate programs to other webmasters. If you offer affiliate programs make sure that you actually pay your affiliates in a timely manner. You would be surprised at how many sites actually don’t treat their affiliates very well. Treat the affiliates like the limited partners that they are and that level of respect will more than likely result in your banners and text links gaining better placement on the affiliate’s websites.

Purchase banner space on sports related websites. This can be an expensive proposition so you really need to take care in selecting the sites you want to buy banner space on. Don’t base your decision on Alexa ratings alone as these can easily be skewed. Also be wary of sites stating Hits and Impressions as their verification on traffic. The best stat to base you purchase on is monthly unique visitors and don’t take their word for it, use an independent third party tracker for unbiased results.

Just like everything else in life there are no guarantees but if you adopt some or all of the above mentioned marketing strategies, your site should see improvements over a short period of time.