The Casino Affiliate Convention (CAC) took place last week in Amsterdam, a thoroughly enjoyable affair.
A goldmine of ideas and knowledge was brought back by those who attended.
One session that raised eyebrows, was a panel discussion on Black Hat Vs White Hat SEO techniques.
SEO is becoming more and more important to gaming affiliates, as PPC channels are no longer viable for the mainstream affiliates, the debate and the opportunities have opened up.
The notion at the conference that 80% of traffic generated to casinos, poker and bingo sites is through Black Hat techniques surprised me to an extent, whilst some on the panel namely the knowledgeable Jason Duke of Strange Logic , stated that SEO is a question of Morals. Others did resign to the fact that creating a new ‘gaming’ related portal via white hat methods almost certainly was not a particularly viable solution in the short to medium term. A comment backed up by event the affiliate managers on the panel. Interesting, the power some affiliates have in this sector.
The debate however is ongoing; though where do things stop? Is it resigned to people who attempt to ‘steal domain names’ through devious means or people who upload their affiliate links / client links to .edu sites through ftp software loopholes? Or are we all guilty, as in anyone who attempt to deviate from G’s webmaster guidelines jump into the big bad black hat!
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Back in 1999 I founded affiliates4u to facilitate relationships between members of the affiliate marketing community. A community which helped shape the industry in a positive light.
Starting like many affiliates at home, by building a vast array of websites in sectors including gaming, finance and retail, I partnered with a number of freelancers which help to build value –add websites, often working through the night whilst juggling jobs, ranging from customer service at Orange to the local abattoir!
My work included organically listed SEO driven websites which were listed well within both Google and MSN search engines. We were once listed no.1 for the terms ‘shopping’ ‘loans’ ‘flights’ ‘computers’ and ‘finance’.
Through partnerships with those who complemented my skills we also developed in-house paid search technology to facilitate automated Google Adwords activity way before the Google API was established.
After dabbling with consultancy for start-ups in Affiliate Marketing, where I helped establish the first dedicated telephone tracking solution to stop leakage in 2002 and driving affiliates sales for one business to over 70% I founded Existem Ltd in early 2003. By the end of that year we moved into serviced offices in central Bristol.
Here we developed more technology driven websites within the loyalty sector and have steadily and organically grown the team to eight in our Bristol office.
In 2006 we established our affiliate marketing agency, Existem Affiliate Management. Later that year we partnered with Mark Russell and Bruce Clayton and still hold a good investment and involvement.
In 2007 we invested a six figure sum in the launch of a4uexpo.com, Europes very own Affiliate Marketing Conference & Exhibition. We still organise local networking events across the UK and Europe for the community, and look forward to exapnding these to Europe and possibly further afield.
As an entrepreneur and Managing Director I look after the talented team at existem who continue to develop value add websites, and are currently expanding our social networking sites across many niche verticals.
Company: Existem Ltd
Matthew Wood has written 61 articles
This is very usefull information by Black Hat Vs White Hat SEO.
Thanks
John Smith
http://www.place1.in
For other search engines such as MSN then blackhat methods can be quite successful. But how long will it be before MSN catches up?
Blackhat marketing is fine as long as it is done totally separate from your main whitehat efforts. The two can never be connected in any way. Domain ownership, DNS and footprints to name a few.
If you are happy with bending the rules and can take your efforts being wiped out at the click of a mouse then thats fine. Most blackhatters know this and simply build mores sites on a daily basis. When one site dies another is born.
I still think there is a place for blackhat though the clock is ticking as the search engines get smarter. I personally prefer to build an affiliate marketing business on solid foundations that reap benefits long into the future.
http://www.gamblingaffiliatemarketing.com
One example would be posting huge numbers of comments in forums purely to get links up in the signature and create vast numbers of back-links. It seems fine, but one day google may see this differently. They may also see link=exchanges as black het at some stage, only recognising one-way links - who knows?
I was at the CAP euro a couple of weeks back and some prominent website owners say that they no longer do anything for SEO other than produce content. Not sure about that, but very Interesting nonetheless