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Forex & Binary Options - Emerging Markets

Forex & Binary Options - Emerging Markets

There are some very exciting things happening in the Forex & Binary Options sector recently. Until recently you could be a Trader or you could be an Affiliate that drove traffic. More recently many companies are offering white-label sites. These are sites branded with your own name. They even furnish MT4 and 5 platforms as well as branded iphone applications.

Each has its own merits but the exciting thing I have been seeing is that many offer up to 50% commission. Now whether they offer this commission on deposits or actual profits, or they pay in percentages of pip for each trade (like 1/2 pip on the front and 1/2 pip on the back of each trade) is all in the traffic you can drive, but this is huge.

I operate primarily in the gaming sector globally and have always wanted to get into the Middle East/Arabic market (because I want to visit there more often) and this almost assures me of more travel opportunities as their culture basically prevents them from gambling of any kind, this will almost assuredly explode into a huge Affiliate market; and that's who I teach.

After being in the FX/BO sector for a couple years now, and doing what I do, I also see that it is a very soft market. Except for Google, most other Search Engines do not even offer a PPC opportunity in Arabic - not even FaceBook.

They do however offer organic search, which is free, and this market is very soft. SEO techniques I have used for years in the US & UK like subdomains with geo-targeting and other advanced SEO are not even in use on the currently top-ranking sites.

The only drawback to this unique opportunity is that you need to know Arabic, and much like the dialect in the rest of the world, there are many variations to learn in order to do effective SEO; especially if you are targeting long-tail terms. But don't let this discourage you. It took awhile but I found translators that knew the industry and what once seemed like a major hurdle, I don't even remember what it was like.

One more important detail tonote is to be very careful when researching white label offerings. Many fall short. Either they have less-than-attractive call centre support which will cause you to lose Traders, they don't offer the full package (like MT4), their commission structures are self-serving, or many other issues I have come across. Know what you are doing before you give your traffic to anyone.

I have done SEO or Search Engine Optimization for nearly 15 years now, primarily in the fiercely competitive gaming markets from the US (back when it was legal) to most of Europe. This consists of putting Gaming sites at the top of Google for terms like Poker. This also consists of managing PPC, (Pay Per Click) campaigns well over several million a month in the same sectors.

For the last 5 years though I have almost exclusively travelled the world teaching others how to do it themselves - for free. I chose to do this because their are a growing number of so-called SEO experts polluting the industry and I've been through this sort of thing before with self-proclaimed Webmasters - or someone that bought Front Page 5.0 and they immediately became a Webmaster.

I'm seeing this same thing happen in the Forex/Binary Option industry. At first it was rogue Traders giving bad advice for short revenue, then people selling robots/signal indicator subscriptions, now non-Independent Brokers selling themselves as such, when they are simply another level of Affiliate giving you a 'special deal' that's essentially just a sub-affiliate deal.

Although I see some incredible opportunities in this sector, and I am recommending all Affiliates (especially Gaming) look at this very carefully this is like any other online opportunities with the good, bad and the ugly.

If there is interest from enough readers' the Editors may be convinced to devote a section to SEO for Forex and BO and I'll help out anyone that asks, or you can email me at Gary@VanguardSEO.com

Quicksilver £1000 Snowboard Giveaway for posting a Twitter Follow.

Quicksilver Games has a  £1000 Snowboard Giveaway for posting a Twitter Follow.
Quicksilver

G+ and +1 for SEO

Social Media SEO - Google’s G+, +1 and SEO  

It has been over a year now since Google Plus was released and lots of juicy information has come out so I thought I would hit on the high-points for those that do not follow SEO or Social Media the way we SEO Freaks do.
Assuming this article will be read by a mix of people with different depths of knowledge about G+ and +1 and what it is all about I’ll briefly explain all you need to know.
I’m not going to go into the non-SEO elements like Google Stream or Google Sparks that are meant to follow topics of interest. I want to keep this article strictly SEO and tell you how these can be used to help increase your traffic and your rankings.
The concept behind G+ and +1 is simple; copy what Facebook did.
Google saw an opportunity as well as the growth of all social networks and decided to try and get in on it.
There are actually three distinct parts to G+ & +1;

Circles and other Social Media Elements

The first part is a more personal page like you see on Facebook, the difference being you create “circles” of friends and classify them into each group accordingly. When you come across an interesting piece of content you simply share it with individual circles (e.g. Friends, Family, or a custom group that you create)

+1 Button (this is actually a separate tool but I have added it here)

The second part of G+ is a "+1 button" to allow people to recommend sites and parts of sites, similar in use to Facebook's Like button. If you have the feature turned on you will see a little button at the end of each result when you are using Google to search, provided your pointer is hovering over the URL. If you perform a search and a site that someone in your circle has clicked the G+ button on you will see their name below the listing;


You will also want to add the +1 badge to your website. Google+ will gain more users and websites will integrate them more in the future, meaning that the information we share will be pushed to more and more people.  This presents an excellent opportunity to promote our websites, much in the way that Twitter and Facebook have done up until now.  

The G+ Page

And last but not least, the best element from an SEO’s standpoint; The G+ Page.

In the beginning it was only made available to non-business related applications and Google even went as far as to shut down pages that were obviously there for business related reasons. Even Sesame Street fell victim to Google’s wrath.

Google finally released its features to everyone a few months after its original release and the dashboard lit up. 

Okay so you are saying, “So how can I use this in terms of SEO?”

After excruciatingly testing various aspects of G+ and +1 I determined that in terms of actually boosting your search engine rankings G+ and +1 have not yet been integrated into the algorithm. An example of this is taking one of my ranking sites, adding the G+ badge, then going to Fiverr.com and buying a bunch (100’s) of G+ votes over the period of a few months and from different networks. Nothing.

Then I tried setting up a network of unique IP’s and over the period of about 60 days each of these hundreds of individual searches ticked the +1 button that showed up in the search. Nothing.

In terms of the SEO benefit from either the +1 or the G+ buttons it’s a matter of the size of your network. Those sites with the G+ badge or those that have received a ‘vote’ or +1 click from someone in your network were featured more prominently as seen in image 2. 

Additionally, Google pulls in data from other social networks. So let’s say you or someone in your circle did a Twitter post. Google may even show that in their results if you are signed in to your Google account.

I’m curious to see over the next 12 months what Google’s long term plan will be with G+ and +1 as they both parallel Google’s other tools nicely. Although I wasn’t able to identify any real effect on rankings while testing the thresholds of G+ and +1 for SEO, I think Google will definitely be using this as a metric in the future. After all, they are already allowing it to alter the way their results appear and losing real estate at the same time. Oh, plus there’s this that they let slip a couple months ago;

Google is encouraging web publishers to start adding +1 buttons to their pages, and the message in this meeting was clear, “Put a Plus One button on your pages or your search traffic will suffer.” Interview with Google Guys  Posted on August 18th, 2011 on Forbes site (just before they removed it)

My thoughts at this point is better safe than caught behind the eight ball. Prepare for everything.

I would (at the very least) add a multiple choice Social Bookmark bar onto your sites. At the end of the day Social Media as a whole benefits your rankings and your traffic to an extent. I have tested Twitter and Facebook to see if they enhanced search rankings and both definitely did. This leads me to believe that Google just hasn’t turned on the tap yet and better things are yet to come.

On a side note there are some great programs that can automate your Facebook and Twitter account. TweetAdder and Facebook Adder are two, but shop around. They are cheap and very functional.

You can contact me at garythescubadiver gmail

Gary R. Beal is the Head of Search at Blueclaw Media in Leeds, UK. He has been in the Search Engine Optimization field for 12 years. He attended Ohio State University in the US and holds a Masters Degree in Biometrics and Mathematical Statistics. He specialises in SEO for very competitive markets; primarily in Gaming, Dating, Travel, Insurance and Financial Industries. He has spoken at many SES, SMX ,CAP, AAC, EIG, G2E, AIG, GPWA, CAC and A4UExpo conferences around Europe and has also been on dozens of expert SEO panels. Gary has written specialised articles for multiple online marketing publications and Moderates on 3 separate Affiliate forums and as an Affiliate has great insight. He is known best for his free 1-on-1 sessions during conferences and his non-commercial, plain talk delivery. The online world knows him as GaryTheScubaGuy and his Top 12 SEO Tips.
Gary can be contacted at Blueclaw offices at 0113 234 3300

Blocking Bad Back Links and blocking IP's or Bad Neighbourhood Links

Blocking Bad Back Links and IP's


Here is the process I mentioned yesterday to block bad back links;

The problem; Google bowling or bad SEO created multiple bad back links from porn sites but you can't contact (or don't want to spend the weeks it could take) them to get them removed.

The Solution; Download the back links from Majestic SEO. Run them through the bulk URL check at SearchMetrics. Isolate the url's that you want to block.

If the site is on an Apache server you can build the block into the htaccess file from the cpanel. I believe you can also configure a mod rewrite for this but haven't done it myself and you would only want a 403 to be returned for specific IPs.

If you have control of the server you can use pre-built GUI programs like PG2, Peerblock or ProxyBlock

Last option is to contact the ISP (like with domains that will not allow cpanel/backend access) directly and ask them to block the list of IP's. This is a bit more difficult because the last time I went through it (4 yrs ago) many of the tech guys didn't know how to do this without detailed instructions.

I have also built the htaccess file with bad IP's already in it and sent it over with simple instructions to look it over and then upload it and this seems to work if they understand what you are doing it for.

You can find more tips From an SEO Company at www.BlueClaw.co.uk. We are located in Leeds, UK.