It is crucial to gain good positioning on search engines in
order to reach new customers for little outlay.
The main requirements for getting listed high in the most popular
search engines like Google these days is good site content and
reciprocal links.
Site Content
Now, this is simple to explain but, due to fierce competition,
difficult to pull off for a high ranking in the most popular
keyword searches, such as online casino and gambling.
Simply ensure that your site content is relevant to your topic
(online casino) and contains some instances of the keywords
you want to rank highly for. Don't be afraid of moving
the text on your home page around, rewording it and adding promotional
text. Just ensure that it isn't misleading.
Reciprocal Links
Again, this is a simple concept: Try to exchange reciprocal
links with other related websites on the internet. One great
site for this is
http://www.linkpartners.com/,
which works in relation with
http://www.linksmanager.com/.
It provides a semi-automated service which will assist in getting
reciprocal links.
Don't believe that reciprocal links are particularly important
for ranking purposes? OK, go to
http://www.google.com/
and enter a keyword. Pretty much anything... We'll
use "santa claus". Now, when the results come up, copy and
paste the url of the first result into the search box again and
put link: before it. Our example brings up http://www.northpole.com/
(on January 28th 2005), so you type in the search box link:http://www.northpole.com/
and hit Search. This brings up 491 sites linking to it.
That's a lot of reciprocal links!
While you're at it, check out the site itself. See the
number of times the words Santa Claus are used - not many!
Overusing the keywords is not going to get you higher in the
rankings - you need to get it just right. What is just
right? Ah, there's the difficult part - it can only be
gauged by experience. You will also
note that it is not used indiscriminately. The page has to make
sense for the visitor, otherwise they are going to think they
are dealing with amateurs and won't want to use your site.
You will notice that you have a page called links.html in your
casino file (not to be confused with links.js). This file
contains a number of links to start you off. Your site
will be listed on these sites soon after activation.
Meta Tags
In order to get a good position in these search engines you'll
need to optimise your site. Although not as crucial as
it used to be, META tags relevant to the online gambling world
can be set up. If you're new to all of this don't worry: we've
already set up META tags and TITLE tags in the site templates.
However, you may wish to change them for your site and this
can be done using something as simple as Notepad. There isn't
enough room here to go into how to code in HTML but it's a pretty
simple language to understand once you have a look at the code.
The code you need to change is at the top of the page and will
look a little like this:
<TITLE>Online Casino</TITLE>
<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="casino, online
casinos, gamble, roulette, slots">
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Play now and
win at Online Casino!">
The top line (inside the <title> tags) is what gets displayed
on the title bar of your browser and also appears in the users
favourites list.
Line 2 contains the keywords that some search engines look for
when someone types in a search. Find relevant keywords (such
as those typed above) and enter them one after the other, separating
each with a comma. Some search engines say it's best to enter
only 15 or so keywords yet a lot of websites list literally
hundreds of words. The best advice we can give is stick to relevant
keywords and don't overdo it.
The third and final line contains the actual description of
the site. Keep it short and snappy, this is what will appear
under your site name in many search engines. Ensure that
you also have relevant keywords in there too as some search
engines use them for ranking purposes. Using the above example,
your site would appear as follows in some search engines:
Online Casino
Play now and win at Online Casino!
For more information,
visit:
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/meta.html
www.webdeveloper.com/html/html_metatags.html
Search Engine Optimisation
Submit your site to the all the top search engines-- international
search engines as well as in your own community. E.g. You live
in Spain and have a Spanish version of your web site. You should
submit your site to all the Spanish search engines and directories.
You have a web site in two different languages - English and
Spanish. You should submit your site to all Spanish search engines
(including portals) and of course to the top English search
engines.
Our packages 1 and 2 come in a number of languages, so you may
need to optimise each one and submit to as many relevant search
engines as possible.
We provide a list of foreign-language search engines for you
HERE.
Search engine registration tips :
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/
Pay per click Search engines
Pay per click searches are becoming more and more popular these
days. Sites such as Overture.com and FindWhat.com are
providing results to the bigger search engines. A pay
per click search is one where the advertiser "bids" an amount
on a particular keyword. If their bid is the highest,
then they go to the top of the results and every click on this
result costs the bid amount.
Example:
Bob bids 50 cents for "internet casino", Richard bids 51 cents
and Charlie bids 52 cents. Charlie's listing would appear
at the top, followed by Richard and Bob. Every time someone
clicked on Charlie's listing, Charlie's account would be debited
52 cents.
This can be a source of good traffic and players to your casino.
There is no need to compete with the "Big Boys" - some keywords
are going over $20! If you stick to less used keywords,
such as "internet gambling casino", you should be able to get
near the top for a reasonable amount.
