no such thing, and when you see the listed “Pros and Cons” it was clear that nobody had actually gambled at any of the sites they reviewed. They were explaining things incorrectly and some of the gambling “strategies” they described would make you laugh if they didn’t make you cry. BUT… they were getting more hits than us? Unbelievable. At the end of last year an SEO specialist was assigned to my team. His name is Nikita Ivanov, and he is incredibly good at his job. He started writing specifications for the text he wanted to be written, in the way he wanted, with the keywords, and key phrases that he wanted. It was not things I thought anybody were interested in, but, regardless, myself and my team began writing them in earnest. Nikita went through the site and told me to change the meta tags and titles, and a whole load of other things that I did not think mattered or knew how to do at that time. I did exactly what he asked. I have been doing my best to keep the quality of our content up. Here’s an example of one of the things I do not understand. We have a “Top 20 Tennis Bookmakers” list, even though I thought five would have been enough. Apparently, it isn’t becauseGoogle ranks a site more highly the more there are, and some competitors have between 10 and 15, so we need 15 to 20. I did not know this before. And … it hasworked! When we view the Google Analytics statistics you can see pretty much exactly where the site got optimized. The affiliate accounts are also showing signs of life; we have regular FTDs and growing turnover at many different sites, and not just two or three, Imean a lot. am the manager of a website. At least that is the title I have. “Andy Heaford: Legalbet U.K. Site Manager.” I wonder sometimes what definition of “manager” we are using here, though. Perhaps other people reading this will understand what I mean. How much do I manage this site or is the truth of the matter that we are all just working for the Google algorithm nowadays? I am just about old enough to remember the internet “BG” (Before Google), when email addresses were either @hotmail or @AOL, when there was no YouTube and no social media (yes, that’s right, no Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, or IG!). Once upon a time, (2006 to be exact), I did manage a gambling affiliate site and back then there was no (to my memory) such thing as an “SEO specialist.” I remember using Google, but a quick bit of research tells me in 2006 Google accounted for 37% of search engine traffic, but Yahoo! was not far behind with 32%. MSN had 15%, AOL 10%, and good old Ask Jeeves 6%. Sure, Google was important, but it was not (yet) God! Fast forward to 2022 and 92% of all search engine traffic is from Google, and I think that figure could be lowballing it. Google, which reorganized itself under a new umbrella called “Alphabet” in 2015, is not just a search engine, it is Google Maps, YouTube, Blogger, DoubleClick, and Android, just to name a few. Google’s spread has been unstoppable and it now dominates (some people would say it “is”) the internet. Can youmake it as an online companywithout feeding the Google algorithm? It appears not. I used to believe that the content was king, so we spent a considerable amount of time researching what we write. When we rank the best bookmakers, we look at the odds that they really have. We don’t just randomly pick the Big 5. We have actually visited each bookmaker. We enter the relevant data for their odds on a range of markets for the Premier League, some major Europa League, and some other minor leagues around the world. With those actual, real results, we have our ranking of the best odds bookmakers. As far as I know, nobody else does this, and the other categories (fastest withdrawal sites, etc.) are similarly tested by our team to get empirical data that is true. The problem? Our content wasn’t being read! It was hard to look at some of our competition and see their success while knowing for a fact that the advice was, at best, less than optimal and often it was actually just wrong. They would list the Top 5 this and the Top 5 that, which clearly were Fast forward to 2022 and 92%of all searchengine traffic is from Google, and I think that figure could be lowballing it …Google’s spread has been unstoppable and it now dominates (some peoplewould say it “is”) the internet. 21 G P W A t i m e s . o r g
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