Online Marketing » Gaming Industry » Advertising Campaign » Search Engine Optimzation » Search Engine Marketing » Sports Betting

Over the past few years we have been hearing more and more regarding Semantic search. As more and more companies try to break this barrier we will undoubtedly see a lot of new beta testing site pop up. For example one of the most recent ones I have heard of, and tried out, is http://www.hakia.com/.

Hakia has released their beta version of “Meaning Based” search engine that is based upon proprietary semantic software. “Meaning based” search, an interesting concept and one that needed checking out so I went over to their site and performed some gambling industry related searches like sportsbook, sports betting and casino. What I received didn’t exactly thrill me.

The things I noticed right off of the bat were the results tended to be based upon having the search queries within the domain name and within the page titles. Also, I noticed a lot of low quality affiliate sites pop up which in my opinion is a step backwards in search.

Using single search phrases or queries was giving fairly standard results so I thought I would type my query in the form of a question so I asked, minus the quotation marks of course, “Which is the best sportsbook?” and again, the results were less than stellar. I received a whole host of sportsbook directory listings and gambling portal sportsbook pages. Seems to me that offering me a bunch of portal site’s opinions on what they think are the best sportsbooks falls a little short of offering me any kind of meaning. Granted, the same search on Google gives me similar results but at least I could find the occasional actual sportsbook within their results.

Bottom line here is that semantic search has a long way to go before it will threaten Google’s share of the search market. I am a firm believer in that the next evolution of search will be in the form of Semantic Search and that when this type of search is perfected it will be closely followed by a break through in true artificial intelligence.

When Google’s purchase of DoubleClick is finalized will Google do the right thing and close down or sell off the DoubleClick division of Performics? Myself I highly doubt it.

Will Google pass on insider information to their newly acquired SEO firm and give their client base an unfair advantage? Perhaps but I doubt it simply because it would be too easy for the new employees to distribute those secrets.

Does becoming a part of the Google family of services mean that Performics will be getting more opportunities with the larger SEO contracts? Probably… from a salesman’s perspective I would think this would be a great selling feature.

So does the purchase of an SEO company by a search engine constitute evil? Does anybody else smell brimstone?

SEO stands for search engine optimization (or optimisation depending upon which side of the pond you are on) and when done properly, is nothing more than accurately communicating to the search engines what any given page is about. Granted there are ways to artificially increase the “illusion” of what a page is about but that would go against the notion of “accuracy”.

Think about what each page is about and try to find the best keyword to describe the topic of each page and use those keywords in the TITLE tag.

Again, keeping in mind what the topic of the pages are about, write an accurate description for each page, keeping all hype slogans out, save that for the “on page” copy as search engines don’t care if you think your page is the “best”, “fastest”, “newest” or “cheapest”.

While most of the search engines no longer give a rat’s ass about KEYWORDS, some still do use them so for the ones that still do make sure that you only use words that are actually on your page within the KEYWORD tag.
There are some other things you can do to help convey to the search engines what your site and pages are about such as FORMATTING and LINKING but, if you start with the above mentioned you will be well on your way to accurately communicating with the search engines.

For those of you who do not know that the ODP or the Open Directory Project, can sometimes override the descriptions on your site in the organic search listings.

The reason that this could be bad for your site is that the editors at the ODP don’t take your SEO efforts in to account when they write their descriptions. While a link from the ODP can be good in terms of helping your ranking in the search engines this benefit can also hamper your conversion due to some less than flattering description of your site.

Myself, I have always tried to write decent descriptions that accurately describe what any given page is about so as to help searchers make an informed decision on whether or not to visit my site. To have those efforts thrown out because some search engine decided take a short cut and allow someone who doesn’t represent my site or products write about them has always been a bit of a sore spot within the SEO community.

It only took a few years for some of the search engines to catch on to this complaint and address it, Google being the first with Yahoo was soon following suit. With that little problem addressed it seemed that a similar situation might be happening with old Yahoo Directory listings as well.

Back in late February 2007 the Yahoo search blog posted this information regarding the their own directory Titles and abstracts…

We’re adding support for the Meta tag called ‘NOYDIR’ that will complement the ‘NOODP’ Meta tag, which we already support. If you’re unfamiliar, the ‘NOODP’ Meta tag is basically a way for webmasters to indicate that Open Directory Project (ODP) titles and abstracts will not be used in search results for their pages. While we continue to pull from various sources to provide the best title and abstract for a given page in search results, we realize that webmasters may still want the ability to exclude titles and abstracts from the Yahoo! Directory. So, as promised, we’re providing support for ‘NOYDIR’ which will recognize the following Meta tags on your pages:

META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOYDIR”

or (don’t forget to add the “<" and ">” to the meta tags)

META NAME=”Slurp” CONTENT=”NOYDIR”

For pages with this tag, we will not use Yahoo! Directory titles or abstracts for your URL in web search results. This will grant webmasters the ability to participate in the Yahoo! Directory Submit program and benefit from inclusion in the Yahoo! Directory, while maintaining control over URL titles and abstracts in search. This will not have any effect on the Yahoo! Directory Search experience, which will continue to use the Yahoo! Directory and title abstract information.

We are re-indexing content on the web to launch this change, and you should immediately begin to see the changes on Yahoo! US, Yahoo! Japan and Yahoo! Korea. (Other regions will roll-out in the future.) This will be accompanied by the usual ranking changes and page shuffling that is typical of weather updates.

If you have any questions, please refer to our webmaster resources page or visit the Site Explorer Suggestion Board.

Thanks!
Priyank GargProduct Manager, Yahoo! Search

Thanks Privank and here is to hoping that this little tag may help fix some issues that I have heard complaints about over the years!

by Les Romhanyi

There has been a lot of talk over the past few months, even more so with the latest Google update, about the value of linking. What types of links are better, which types are still seen as value added to a website. Well if the truth be told, the only people who can tell us are not saying anything. I am speaking of the engineers at Google and the other search engines, the very people who are the one who determine the value of all linking.

According to some people at the various search engine optimization companies, reciprocal links are no longer being considered when determining link popularity for a website. Just like so many of the other theories search engine optimization, outside of the engineering labs, no one really knows for certain. I have read some of the reports that have been issued on this topic and these reports are far from conclusive, offering little more than contradictory examples taken over several days of testing.

So aside from a wait and see what happens next stance what can we do? Rather than adopt a reactive position to this uncertainty I feel that it would be far better to move forward and be proactive by changing my linking strategies. As long as there is any kind of controversy regarding reciprocating links, there really isn’t much point in relying on them to help build link popularity.

Personally, I still place a value in reciprocating links as a valid means of trading traffic and will continue to utilize them however, as more and more misinformation gets spread over the Internet it will become increasingly more difficult to exchange links with quality sites. So what is a webmaster to do now that this style of linking seems to be on its way out? Simple – adapt or disappear off the search engine radar. Well Google’s radar anyway.

For my consultation clients I am going to suggest that they be extremely selective on who they link with now. Spend more time evaluating the potential linking partners. If the site measure up to their standards of web development and the theme of the linking site matches their site in some manner then, go ahead and trade links.

Before they trade links with any site they should make sure that the partner site is placing their link on a page that has some “on topic” content rather than a page that contains just random links. If possible only trade links with sites that employ some form of directory system so that all of the links contained on any given page share a similar theme. I will also be suggesting that they set up their own directory style system broken into categories and every page in each category should contain a topical block of text that ties all potential links together. Setting up their own system like this will make linking with their site more desirable.

Another strategy I will be advising my clients on is the use of 3 way links. For those of you who do not know what three way links are here is a brief, simplistic description: Site A links to Site B, Site B links to Site C, Site C links to Site A. Pretty straight forward eh? The process is pretty straight forward but the application often is not. The only way three way links work is when all the parties involved are honest and are willing to maintain those links.

Recently I tested one of my sites and discovered that approximately 80% of the sites I traded links with were not honoring our agreement. Now I fully expected that there would be some shiftless webmasters out there who would be less than trustworthy but, I never expected the number to be so high.

Although reciprocating linking isn’t too difficult of a task it does require a certain amount of time and effort. To have some unscrupulous webmaster cheat you out of your back link in your reciprocated deal is bad enough but to have one do that to your site in a 3 way link deal is even worse.

You see a 3 way linking deal requires slightly more effort due to the necessity of documenting all of the information regarding this agreement. If you are going to go through all of that effort to set up a three way linking agreement you certainly do not want one of the partners to sour the deal by dropping one of the links without notifying any of the other partners.

The extra work required to establish a successful 3 way linking agreement isn’t too difficult, it is all about record keeping. After you have researched the two sites that you think would make good candidates for your three way link swap, you are going to need to contact them and invite them into the exchange. More than likely you are going to have to lay out the plan and explain to them why a 3 way link deal is good and make sure that they understand that the only way it works is if everybody involved is open, honest and up front about everything.

As part of the research for the 3 way trade you are going to want to make sure that all three sites are in some way related. Not necessarily in direct competition with each other but connected in some way; much like the way a restaurant site would be similar to a hotel site and the hotel site might be similar to a pub site. Pretty simple really as a hotel can contain both a pub or a restaurant, it isn’t too much of a stretch to think that these 3 service based businesses could be related somehow.

Once you have the three sites picked that you would like to trade links with make sure you research them thoroughly. The things you want to be checking for are:

* Page Rank
* IP
* Quality
* Age of the sites
* Current link popularity

Page Rank

When checking Page Rank you are looking to make sure that everybody is of a similar PR. Don’t get greedy and automatically suggest that your site should be linked from the site with the highest PR. In fact it might be a good idea to suggest that the higher PR site should link to the lowest PR site. Doing this may make the deal seem a little sweeter.
IP

It would be best if all 3 sites were on different IP addresses. Sites that are all residing on the same IP may be misconstrued as being part of a link farm strategy. Why take the chance?
Quality

This one should be a no brainer. If the site isn’t of a quality that you would recommend to your friends or family to visit why would you want to risk the credibility of your site by suggesting that other people go to it? Rule of thumb here on quality is this; if you wouldn’t bookmark the site for yourself, don’t link to it.
Age of the Sites

The age of the site is important because of the alleged age delay sandbox effect in Google’s algorithms. If the site is too new then you may have to wait for the site to mature before any weight is given to the out going links from that site. You should try to make sure that the sites you include in your 3 way linking are at least 1 year old or more. No guarantees that sites over a year are going to be mature enough but at least the odds are better.
Current Link Popularity

The reason you will want to check out the current link popularity is more about the investigation into their linking history. Do they currently trade links with sites that may be considered as being from a bad neighborhood. Do they link to gambling, porn or FFA sites? If they do and they are not part of the gambling or porn world and your site isn’t either then DO NOT link to them.

Three ways linking in this manner revisits the days when linking was more natural. This type of linking will demonstrate to the search engines that you value your linking recommendations and therefore the search engines should value them as well. If the search engines trust your site to make these recommendations then there is no way that the applied due diligence will get you in trouble with the search engines.

About the Author
Les Romhanyi, Port Coquitlam, BC. Canada
les@bigjuicemedia.com

Les Romhanyi is an SEO specialist with many years experience placing websites at the top of all major search engines. Big Juice Media is a Sports Betting Marketing company based in Canada.

Yes I know… beating a dead horse here. Sorry about making another entry in the blog on linking. I am still working my way through the first site (4 days so far) and I am still averaging about 30% in honored back links.

Now I understand that over a period of time some of those back links are going to become dead or in active due to changes to site, the site going down etc. but really – 70%! A high percentage of these sites are doing this by design or purpose. Trading links with sites whose sole purpose is to promote something; you have to go into it knowing that it isn’t a quality trade and expect these links to go dead in a short period of time. These ones are not the problem.

The ones that bother me the most are the sites by supposedly reputable Search Engine Optimization companies. I am not going to list any names or URLs here but these people should know better. Not only is it a problem trading links with some of the SEO sites but it is also a problem that they pass on to their client sites. Now whenever I get a link trading request I am going to be looking to see which company is providing the service and if that SEO Company is on my list I will NOT be responding.

The bottom line here folks is this – verify your back links and do it frequently!