The CAP Insider Advantage

The waters are getting rough in the gaming industry and as always it’s full of sharks and whales. What can you possibly do as an affiliate to compete with these guys?

With the big bankrolls behind corporate SEO and now PPC, the landscape is changing more rapidly than ever. The question is, what can you do to stay competitive in this market that the big guys aren’t doing? The answer – Google Geographical Targeting.

Nothing new you say? I beg to differ. Google has made it possible to use one website and effectively target every geographic region and every language. This worked in the past to a degree, but now the website owner now has control over it and it represents a huge opportunity for affiliates.

In the past you could create a subdirectory or a subdomain in the native language and Google would eventually sort out that the content is targeting a specific language. The results were very dodgy and unpredictable. In Google’s never-ending effort to delivery relative results they have come up with geographical targeting within their Webmaster Central console. Here you can verify ownership of a subdomain and get the option to target a specific country or region. You can also go a step further and host the subdomain within your target region and your ranking will significantly increase. The subdomain is actually seen as a completely different site and if you have good Page Rank on the maim website you can pass link juice through to the new subdomain site at get it ranking better as well.

In the United States Google goes as far as to look for addresses within the website content in order to determine the location, and will deliver a local website (in relation to the end-user’s IP) higher in the results than a non-local website. Especially if you have a brick-and-mortar business and the end-user is using Local Search. In the US version of this tool on Webmaster Central, you will have an additional step where it asks for your actual physical address.

Now for the complicated part.

I will do my best to try and explain why you get the results that you do when using these different regional Google searches and how the different language and regional based filters that they offer work, and how they affect your rankings. I’ll also attempt to explain the different attributes the algorithm and the human editors look at, and finally what the best solution is for you depending on your circumstances.

Keep in mind that in my testing this information applied about 70% of the time and did make a significant difference in overall traffic and conversions, but I think that when there is a lack of relative websites/pages that match the algorithmic parameters a different set of rules are applied either automatically via the various algorithms, or it is set aside for a human editor to rate. This could be good or bad depending on the quality of the site/page and the relative information that is present, and comparative websites in the same set of results.

Human Editorial Guidelines That Influence Google Rankings
A internal General Guidelines document produced for Google editors that was written in April of 2007 has recently been circulating in certain forums. In this document Google explains that there are two elements to consider when they are manually rating a website/subdomain/web page;
1.The Task Language (was a language-based filter selected on the search page?)
2.The Task Location (was a geographic-based filter selected on the search page?)

When one of the (assumed and widely acknowledged) 10,000+ University students/human editors come to your website or a page within your website, these are the examples that Google gives to manually differentiate or assign interpretations when the optional settings or obvious directories or a native languages is not present;

The following language based searches could inherently have two different meanings;

Query
Dominant Interpretation in the Task Location
[football], English (US)
The dominant interpretation is American football played with a brown oval ball
[football], English (UK)
The dominant interpretation is the game Americans call soccer which is played with a round ball

Query: [Java], English (US)
Dominant Interpretation:
The planet
Possible Interpretation:
An island in Indonesia
Possible Interpretation:
Coffee

And;

Query: [mercury], English (US)
Dominant Interpretation:
The planet
Possible Interpretation:
The chemical element (Hg)
Possible Interpretation:
The Car

This is only one single guideline under consideration when they are researching and understanding the query and subsequently rating/ranking the website/page. They will use these guidelines to determine the most relevant market to rate you for. When this is taken into consideration in soft markets you can dominate!

Algorithmic Elements That Affect Ranking
Beyond the obvious on-page considerations, different searches will deliver (in most cases) a different set of results. The results can differ greatly depending on several considerations;
1.The IP of the end-user
2.The server location of the website
3.Any geographically targeted settings in Webmaster Central
4.The relationship between the search filters and the resulting web pages (I.e. Did they search for Pages from [region] or Pages in [language]
5.If the end-user is searching a different extension than the defaulted engine (I.e.they manually enter Google.com searching for US or English results from a non-US region).

The other elements that will effect rankings will be back links;
1.Are the links from a TLD (top level domain) that matches the destination URL (I.e. .nl linking to a .nl website)?
2.Is the IP linking website located in the same region as the linked URL?
3.Page rank, linking anchor text, additional outbound links on the page linking to you
4.On-page relevancy
5.Language based meta-tags
6.Everything in the above 5 items relating to the linking website/page

So any one of these elements can give you a serious edge over your competition. If you can incorporate all of them the can dominate the results.

Searching any of Google’s (non-US) datasets will generally return a variety of websites when no language or location filter is selected. These can include internal pages in a website, subdirectories (www.yoursite.com/french), subdomains (www.french.yoursite.com), and various TLD’s (top level domains like .com and .nl). All 11 of the above factors are present in the automatic algorithm.

The problem is that no one really knows which approach is best, or which algorithmic attribute is the most effective, so what can we do with this?

What we want to do is to look at the existing results using the available search filters, and the existing websites that are ranking high and determine which is the best strategy for your website. This takes deep page analysis of these competitors. Most sites that rank well using subdirectories and subdomains, or even have a language-based directory have no idea why they are ranking so well in this demographic.

The important thing to note is that there is a hierarchy between one and the other in terms of which is the best solution. Every website has its own individual solution based on their demographics, site mechanics and available resources. What you need to consider are;
1.Your target market?
2.If you need or don’t need geographical targeting?
3.If you need language based subdomains or subdirectories?
4.Should you move hosting?
5.Is it worth the time and money to do?
6.Can I afford to do it all?

How & When To Use Geographical Targeting
(keep in mind that this strategy is added onto what you are already currently doing so if you have a TLD these techniques will enhance your positions there as well)

Here’s what to do if you wish to;
Geographically target a region
1.Create a subdomain or a subdirectory in the native language and use Webmaster Central to geographically target it
2.Host the subdomain on a server in the native region and use geographical targeting
3.Build back links from similar TLD’s

Target a specific language?
1.Create a subdirectory in the native language (I.e. www.yoursite.com/nl/)
2.Build back links from same language websites and TLD’s
3.Do not use geographical targeting
4.Build SBM’s (Social Bookmarks) in the native language (I.e. http://www.mister-wong.es)

The reason that you do not want to use geographical targeting along with a language-based strategy is that if the end-user searches in the native language on Google.com, a site using content in that language will be stronger than the same site with geographical targeting in place. (this isn’t dependent on whether you use subdirectories or subdomains unless you hosted the subdomain in the target region).

The answer for me is that I want it all…and NOW!!
I’ve recently had subdomains rank with geographical targeting turned on and in the native language rank top 10 in 6 weeks. I’ve had brand new websites with the appropriate TLD’s (I.e. .nl, .de & .es) show up in 8 weeks. I’ve even had a .com hosted in the US without geographical targeting show up in the top 10 results for “Hollywood” terms when they had never been in results in the UK.

You can start with subdomains. Look at your logfiles to determine where the current traffic is coming from to tell you what to do first. Bounce rates can also tell you a lot. If you are getting traffic from Spain and the bounce rate is high, you should build a subdirectory in Spanish and you may even want to add IP identification and send the end-user directly through to the front page until you can verify that the bounce rate is coming into line.

Another example is; if your secondary traffic source is Germany and you have a high bounce rate, start with a language-based subdirectory, then maybe move onto creating a subdomain, hosting it in Germany, then set the geographical targeting to Germany in Webmaster Central. Then go back and start all over again using the region that has the next highest contribution.

Case Study
A secondary benefit to implementing this strategy is that you will start showing up on Google datasets everywhere. Take Bingo.com for instance. After 70 days a newly developed subdomain (es.bingo.com) is not only ranking in the top 10 result for their top keywords on Google.es, but they are ranking top 10 for their top terms in Spanish on Google.com;

And here are other Google engines (so far) that have picked it up;

Important Things To Remember!
TLD’s are the most effective strategy when targeting a regionTo target a language using only subdirectories do not use geographic targeting
You can target a language with both subdomains and subdirectories but if you have a top-level TLD (.com) use subdirectories versus subdomains.
You can use Google geographical targeting on subdomains and subdirectories but remember that a subdomain is considered to be a stand-alone site that can rank alongside your TLD listing. You can also host these subdomains in the targeted region and get better rankings.
Your title and content should be in the native language and/or use regional slang terms where they apply.
Use language-based meta tags whenever targeting language-based searches
Host subdomains that are for geographical targeting in the target region
When you implement the subdomain strategy, link to it from the original website
Create new xml sitemaps for each subdomain
When creating meta descriptions and content be sure to use native slang. (If you sold pants in the US and the UK. Pants are referred to as trousers. Sweaters are referred to as jumpers.
Get back links from same TLD’s (get a .nl link to your .nl site in the native language)
If you have a TLD (like .nl or .de) do not use geographical targeting. These domains are already associated with its designated region

So in a nutshell, I recommend that if you already have an existing website with a TLD like a .com or .cu.uk, and those are your target market, do not use the geographical targeting option. Start building subdirectories using the top native language determined by looking at Google Analytics or your log files. Identify your top referrer language. If the languages are close, as it the case between the US, UK, New Zealand and Australia, use native slang in the title, metatags and content. Build a new xml site map and manually submit it through all the main search engines.
The next step is to create a subdomain and get it hosted in the region that you are targeting. Build content in the native language and get back links from other domains with your same extension. Put some links on the primary TLD and point them at the new sudomains.

By implementing this strategy, you will have a significant advantage over most of your competition (or a little less after this article is released ). Whether the search is initiated in the region or outside the region, whether your site ie located in the region or just hosted there, or even if they search in the native language or manually enter a specific Google engine like Google.com.mx or Google.es, you will have better saturation. If the end user uses the built-in filters, you will also have better saturation.

So in closing I mention that it’s the small things, the details, that can get you higher in the Search Engine food chain. This may take quite a bit of work on your end, but the markets are generally soft for language and regional based searches in the gaming industry. This the time to start implementing these techniques to give yourself an advantage and a head start in the European gambling landscape.

Gary Beal has been in SEO for 12 years and after moving to the UK from the states over two years ago has worked as Head of Search for Stickyeyes until going freelance in 2009. Gary speaks at all of the gaming conferences worldwide and is considered to be a SEO Gaming Specialist. He has put many of the top 10 gaming sites on Google into the top 10 and specialises in SME’s and Affiliate with nominal budgets. Gary has written many articles for CAP Magazine, iGaming and is a moderator on the CAP Forums and SEO Chat. He is well known in our industry for offering his free advice so if you have a question just walk over and ask him! You can also reach Gary at gary@garythescubaguy.com or at 07872 447 452.

Almost every one of us has played a free game online. Internet has all kinds of free games which range from arcade to word genres. One of the most popular online gaming genres is casino games. Free online casino games are very popular among people from all walks of life.

Most people think that you can’t make money while playing free casino games, but it’s not entirely true. There are some online gaming portals which give you opportunities to make a lot of money. You must try your luck at these casinos as who knows; when the lady luck smile at you?

Free online casino games are developed by operators in Internet casinos to attract people towards their online casinos and encourage them to join it. That’s why; these websites provide you full access to the game rooms and provide the visitors a real virtual gambling experience.

In order to up the ante on their competitors, many online casinos offer free games in which you can win real cash winnings. But as the free games are often limited, you must know how to take full advantage of free casino games. Many casinos encourage their players to play games for a long time by allowing them to play free games without any initial deposit.

Most online casinos have slots machines as they are the extremely popular among all gamblers. Most such casinos offer free slot machines where you don’t need any money to play. But there are some online casinos which offer prize money, if you reach a certain amount of winnings in the game. This not only increases the fun of playing the game, but it also gives you a motive for playing on the same machine for a long time.

Some online casinos also organize online tournaments in which you can take part for free. This is a great way to earn money playing free casino games. Such tournaments are most often organized by portals which are solely devoted to slot machines.

Besides, some online casinos also offer free chips for all the new players in their casinos. You can use these chips to play your favorite games like Roulette, Video Poker or slot machines and win money. The casino will automatically credit your winnings to your bonus account which you can use to play further. In short, if you are lucky enough, you will never have to put your own money in the casinos account.

Apart from slot machines, Blackjack is another very popular casino game that you can play for free. Many online casinos organize free Blackjack tournaments which are a fantastic opportunity to make some money.

Playing free casino games can be much more fun than most people imagine. But, you must know the right place to play them. Find an online casino that provides you good free casino games and offers you opportunity to make some money also.

Don't lose it - Bookmark it!