Michael Charalambous

So if you haven’t seen the first post, check it out here.

So I’ve had this one-pager running a while now, say about 3 months. Enough time for Google’s algorithm to re-index it a few times, follow all the 301 redirects and recognise that gatwickmeetandgreet.co.uk’s new owner is not a spammer and has put up a legitimate website. I’ve fired it one or two links to make sure it’s got a few credible and relevant links to help boost it’s rankings. That’s about all, I’ve done nothing practically.

Anyway, traffic was extremely low until I jumped into position 7 on Google – this got me ever so slightly excited and inspired me to add to the site. It’s time to make some real dollar!

To the updates; I’ve added 3 new pages to the website and will be adding 3 or so more in the coming days. The 3 new pages were designed with long tail traffic in mind. Below I’ve provided the page URLs with the top keywords I’m targeting and why:

• URL: http://www.gatwickmeetandgreet.co.uk/car-parks/
• Search Term: gatwick car parks
• Search Volume: 390

• URL: http://www.gatwickmeetandgreet.co.uk/car-parks/long-stay/
• Search Term: long stay car park gatwick
• Search Volume: 320

• URL: http://www.gatwickmeetandgreet.co.uk/car-parks/short-stay
• Search Term: short stay car park gatwick
• Search Volume: 91

Thesis

The above outlines just 1 of the terms for each page, if you have a read through each page you will find information on directions, entry and exit procedures, how it works, times and much more. With all this content I’m effectively targeting hundreds of keywords when you look at the larger picture – 100 keywords search only twice a month = 200 potential clicks + the main terms which already have high volume.

You may be thinking (after quickly checking if you can find better keywords on the keyword tool); why is he targeting such low traffic keywords?

Well the answer is simple:

• 1. The search terms I’m targeting are easy to rank for.
• 2. Their low competitiveness enures rankings quicker, resulting in results and conversions quicker.
• 3. They come with a lot of long tail extras – what I see as an untapped resource in an already very saturated market.
• 4. Lastly, long tail search terms often have unusually high conversion rates – this is because the terms searched are extremely specific to that users needs.

Even with this domain, it will be extremely difficult to get high rankings for many of the “big” terms. So I’m sticking to what i purchased, Gatwick Meet and Greet related terms with the addition of easy long tail terms.

I’m now in position 5 – I’ll keep you guys updated on my progress and make sure to inform you as much traffic and conversions begin to further increase.

I thought it about time i posted an update on how my company, Right Casino Media, is currently and has been up to as of my last post – LiveCasinos.co.uk, LiveGamble.com & LiveRoulette.co.uk.

So I have officially been working full time on Right Casino Media for 4 months (and after work and weekends for around 12 months). In the past 4 months the team have really been working together to tackle everything we have on our list. LiveGambling.co.uk & LiveBetting.co.uk were those next on our list of domain priorities, closely followed by our partner, Anthony Miles’ domain LiveCasino.co.uk. So we got to work…

LiveGambling.co.uk

LiveGambling.co.uk, the first to be released of the three new sites, has been one of the biggest sites we’ve built though deceiving to the eyes – it actually has nearly twice the amount of pages as most of the others websites; and still has room for a lot more expansion. Live Gambling has closely followed in LiveGamble.com’s footsteps with a huge banner in the middle, and a similar green theme. Content however, does differ hugely with regards to what we’re targeting – this site targets live betting, live casino and live bingo covering all angles of the live gaming triangle.

LiveBetting.co.uk

LiveBetting.co.uk, the second of the three new releases, is actually one of my favourites in our network of websites – probably because we came up with a background rotation idea which i immediately got working on personally. I felt accomplished. Live Betting purely focuses on “live betting” or “in-play betting” as Joe-public would call it. The basic principle of it is live odds, in real-time constantly updating allowing for a huge range of new betting opportunities. It was made famous by Bet365 with their huge campaign during the world cup of 2010 when they advertised live odds on TV during half time. In-play betting has exploded in huge way with the UK and we aim to be at the forefront of it!

LiveBetting.co.uk has information on all things live betting, ranging from sport to sport including; football, rugby, horse racing, greyhound racing, golf and more. The clever thing about our background rotation script is, your background will change for whatever page you’re on. For example, if you visit the football betting page here – you will see a football related background. Similarly, visit the boxing betting page here – and you will see a boxing related image. This does however compliment users with a larger screen as a lot of the action happens on either side of the website, but nevertheless it works, loads quickly and looks fantastic!

LiveCasino.co.uk

LiveCasino.co.uk, launched quite literally last week (14/06/2011), has got to be one of the most detailed of the sites; content wise. We have been in contact with our partner, Anthony Miles, for over a year and recently launched a website for him a couple of months back, LiveGamble.com. We have been in talks with Anthony about partnering on LiveCasino.co.uk too for a while, so when we heard – “It’ll be with you by Thursday” – excitement spread throughout the office.

I immediately knuckled down and built the site structure (we’d already done our keyword research :P) and worked out what content would be needed for our writers to get straight onto. With the help of my two close colleagues, David and Sam Merry, we quickly turned LiveCasino.co.uk around in under a week pulling late shifts at the office and working some of Saturday and Sunday. Similarly to LiveBetting.co.uk, we implemented a rotation script for the backgrounds on a page by page basis – roulette related pages spring up a roulette related background and the generic pages (homepage, reviews etc…) rotate between all images.

What Next?

Well that would be telling again right? We other domains we’re currently developing testing different templates and ideas. Right now i want to focus on ironing out any bugs we have already before shooting out another website – not that another is coming or anything…

We are also working on developing another template, hopefully ready to be rolled out in the coming months!

Rest assured, there is more to come and they will be coming soon.

During my two years of experience working for SEO angencies, I’ve worked with countless clients in many sectors – one of which was Gatwick Airport. Gatwick Airport’s main request was that we focus on their parking, which accounts for around 30% of their total revenue.

Working with Gatwick Airport gave me insight into how much money their is to be made in airport parking. I decided very quickly, knowing that i was leaving within a few months, to check out the competition and give it a go myself as soon as i was off the account.

I did my research and found that even though the search volume was lower than other queries, “Gatwick meet and greet” has the overall highest average order value over any other service. As all the best domain names were taken i decided to contact the owner of GatwickMeetAndGreet.co.uk as i noticed they weren’t really using it. We came to a very quick agreement and i bought it from him for a more than fair price. It’s now been developed and in under a month i have arrived in position 15 on Google in just under a month – with no link building.

I’ve approached this from a slightly different angle to most car parking affiliates, as my company is involved in gambling I figured I’d use the same approach and design the site in a similar manner using “great offers, and deals”.

I’ll be updating you guys further on this as i climb the rankings and begin to see traffic grow. I’m confident my gatwick meet and greet website will prosper and earn my additional pocket money.

So, for a long time now myself and my colleagues David and Sam have been working towards getting our company, Right Casino Media, off the ground and into full-speed action. Over the last three months we have been planning our strategy and working out exactly what needs to be implemented for us to break into the UK Gambling industry.

Something we quickly realised is that no one else within the industry has that touch of quality we’re aiming to meet; with this in mind we designed and built what we believe is close to the perfect affiliate template for both users, search engines and casino operators. With this new template ready to be rolled out across our network of websites we all agreed it was time to knuckle down and implement it across some of our top domains.

So recently, myself and the rest of our team at Right Casino Media have been working all hours to launch our re-developed websites. First to come was LiveCasinos.co.uk with LiveGamble.com and LiveRoulette.co.uk following closely after all within a 29 day period.

LiveCasinos.co.uk

This was the first to be rolled out, which also meant it took the most time and also had the most bugs. We quickly ironed out any bugs which included the Navigation bar and several other small elements. This website has taken off with huge effect and has quickly gained rankings for many live casino related terms – we’ve had some really positive feedback and are still looking to update and grow it wherever possible.

LiveGamble.com

LiveGamle.com ‘The department store for live gambling’ is a joint effort from the Right Casino Media team and a close partner in the gambling industry, Anthony Miles. We are delighted to be working with Anthony and have enjoyed every minute of it meeting up regularly to discuss the website, current options and future expansions. Though we specialise in the live gambling industry with the UK market, we are looking into making this website accessible in many different languages – I will keep you updated on further developments though this is longer-term plan.

LiveRoulette.co.uk

LiveRoulette.co.uk is the only website we have re-developed which was already a major competitor within live casino field, with live roulette players being the main audience. LiveRoulette.co.uk has been amongst the top 3 in search rankings for around a year and it’s been our aim to claim the number 1 spot. With the launch of the new website and some major SEO fixes and Link building – we have done it.

This already highly converting website has been optmised for both users, search engines and casino operators. With LiveRoulette.co.uk’s re-launch, in just a few days we have already seen improvements in conversion rates and is exceeding our prior expectations. This too, along with the previous sites will be undergoing constant maintenance, updates and expansion.

What Next?

What are we pulling out the bag next? Well… that would be telling. Unfortunately due to the nature and competitiveness of the industry we are in, offering others a heads up on what websites are coming next could be detrimental to our SEO plans.

Rest assured, there is more to come and they will be coming soon.

So, some SEO talk, let’s do it!

Let’s be honest, everyone is way too excited about anchor text links. Everyone’s all like – “Yeah, I got exact match anchor text links, I’m cool” – the fact is, you’re not cool. So, the point of this post is to show you that anchor text isn’t everything. It’s more about where that link is coming from, regardless of what it says!

Anchor Text

Informs the search engine of a links destination topic – Helps a website rank for that particular query.

Domain Authority

Authority which is passed from one site to another, regardless of the anchor text – Helps a website become more “authoritative” (powerful basically).

Theory

See, now my theory is…it doesn’t matter how many anchor text links you have, if you don’t have any “Authoritative” websites/domains pointing to your website, you will never, ever, ever, ever rank for a competitive search query.

Anchor text within a link only informs a search engine for what the destination is! Just because 1,000 sites say a website is about “car insurance” it doesn’t mean it’s true; what if all the incoming links are from spam ridden sites? It all counts for nothing!

Personal Example

Back at my first agency Greenlight Search, we really struggled to gain good rankings for certain terms, for a particular client. Now, I wouldn’t say that we had a bad strategy though it wasn’t great either for this project. What I quickly realised was the websites continuously outranking our clients website were authoritative within the industry; for example with regards to Gadgets and Tech, Mashable.com, Techcrunch, Engadget etc…

After some backlink analysis – “Hmmm, not one link to their site/page containing the relevant anchor text”

So, sure, they didn’t have any anchor text links; why are they ranking for that search query and others alike? They have countless links from other highly authoritative websites in the industry and Google knows when website “x” says something about product “y” – it’s a credible source of information and ranks it highly.

To be noted: There were SEO elements helping these websites too; optimised titles, header tags and text content also played a significant part.

So, What Next?

I’m not going to turn this into a link building post now – as much as I’d love to – however, a basic example would be to remember that when link building, it is better to acquire a link from the BBC website displaying “http://www.website.com/” over “Optimised Anchor Text” from any Joe-random website.

Spend time and put the effort in. Cheap, quick, accelerated anchor text tactics don’t work too well.

Don’t get me wrong though, relevant anchor text links are useful, but the quality of them is more important!