I recently read an article in the Telegraph that said that according to security analysts, terrorist networks use online gambling websites to launder money for attacks.  Being interested in anything to do with the Internet or online companies for that matter, I decided it was worth doing some research on the subject.

Here are some interesting facts that I found which I thought would be of interest to online companies in Gibraltar which may or may not already be aware:

• Online Gambling websites can be used to launder money by transferring illegal funds to an inside source and by playing until the target amount is spent.
• By programming online gaming software to identify certain passwords or usernames and to automatically deduct a percentage of the deposit amount and disguise it as a gaming loss.
• An online gambling employee could arrange to transfer illegal funds to a gambler by rigging the game until the targeted amount is won.

Other tricks that online gambling companies should look out for is to open an account under a false name with the online company and deposit the illegal funds. Then so that the online administrators do not suspect any dodgy play, they deliberately lose a few games and then request the account be close and withdraw the balance.

Another method that could be used is to open several online gambling accounts in various jurisdictions and deposit the maximum amount in each account and as above after a few losses withdraw the balance and transfer the remainder of the funds to a credit institution or back as legitimate winnings.

A Business owner in Gibraltar asked me the other day “Do I really need SEO?”

Honestly, some people talk about SEO as if they were out window shopping. “ Do I really need another pair of black shoes?”
If this is how you think then you are completely missing the point. SEO is not simply an additional accessory on your website. You need to ask yourself:

• Do you want more traffic on your website?
• Do you want to rank on the first page of Google?
• Do you want people to read about your products and services?
• Do you want people to find your website above millions of others?
• Do you want to constantly obtain traffic?

If your answer to the above is yes then you do need SEO.

In essence, with SEO you are making your products visible on the web to the right audience by targeting chosen key words. If you were a food distributer or sales agent and you wanted to market your products and you would carefully choose the supermarkets you want to sell your products in and convince the owners that your products are good. The first step would be to make your products visible in the supermarket. SEO is the same but instead of becoming visible in supermarkets you have to become visible to users on the Search Engines.

Google have recently updated the Pagerank for many websites at the beginning of 2010. It is a New Year Gift for us as the Pagerank of our homepage and many sub-pages have increased to 3. It is nice to see it increasing considering our minimum efforts towards increasing our Pagerank.

The previous Pagerank update before this one took place in October 2009. If you haven’t got an increase since last time, this is fine as it is always better to remain the same Pagerank since the last update than loosing points and going down.

We provide services to increase Pageranks as well as Rankings on Search Engines. Please Contact Us for more information.

Should businesses do Search Engine Optimisation themselves?

I would say only the firms that have a lot of time and money on their hands. It is probably something that a lot of companies in Gibraltar might consider as the most businesses in Gibraltar are fairly small and think Search Engine Optimisation can be carried in house.

Like everything else, anyone can do just about anything if they set their mind do it.  I would however not recommend ding SEO in house at all if you have no web development experience, or knowledge of how servers and search engine operate. There is a lot of information on the internet on how to do SEO yourself however be cautious as there are also a lot of outdated information and unethical techniques been circulated out there.

Another issue that occurs frequently with DIY SEO is that after reading all these information about SEO techniques, one can become very enthusiastic and start to implement all these techniques all at once on their website.  Remember that too much SEO can also result in loss of rankings on the search engines. SEO experts have all made these mistakes before so they know what to avoid, to look out for and the pace to apply the optimisation.

SEO has became so sophisticated that SEO alone will not cut it anymore. There are other numerous techniques that you also have to apply, therefore as mentioned above unless you have a lot of time and money, you should ideally outsource it to an SEO expert Company in Gibraltar.

If you do not have the skills to do it yourself, give us a call to find out how we can help you achieve better rankings. It might be a lot cheaper than you think.

Many people assume that major international gambling companies always dominate the main key words for gambling and that it is practically impossible for the smaller gambling companies to compete with the ‘giants’ and their massive marketing budgets. Well surprisingly it is actually the smaller gambling companies that actually dominate the main gambling keywords on the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). You may ask yourself why?

Here is why:

Timeliness of Execution:
In big companies any on-site SEO modification can take forever however minor. This is because most big companies have to go through lengthy internal processes, modifications have to be tested, approved, and approved again by different departments etc. Most big gambling companies also have various websites to update and this also adds to the delay. Whilst the minor SEO modifications are going through the various internal processes the SEO Manager at the ‘Small’ firm has already done the necessary modification and starts sipping his second morning coffee.

Content Writing Budget:
Big gambling companies are willing to pay extortionate fees for web content. The SEO manager at the ‘Small’ gambling company on the other hand will either write the content himself or contract domain experts who focus on SEO when writing the contents and who actually know what they are doing! Hence they write with SEO in mind or the content can be optimised quickly.

‘BIG’ Gambling Companies prefer ‘BIG’ SEO firms:
Big Gambling firms usually think that a BIG SEO company can always do a better SEO job that a ‘Small’ SEO company. Wrong, this is not always the case. Big SEO companies tend to have major gambling companies as their clients and have to divide their time with many clients and also focus on  many other areas of  advertising, SEO, PPC etc. The smaller ‘SEO’ firm has a small portfolio of clients and can provide a more efficient personalised service. For Example, the company’s SEO manager can simply attend a meeting go back to the office and make the SEO modifications on his content management system over a cup of coffee.

SEO Team:
The SEO teams at the ‘BIG’ gambling companies  more often than not spend the majority of their time solving SEO problems usually caused by web developers and the technical team. Also note that this usually happens because the technical team do not have in depth knowledge of SEO or they simply do not care. The ‘Small’ company will incorporate his SEO knowledge into every single task.

Developers do not always have sufficient SEO Knowledge:
Many BIG gambling companies tend to suffer from outdated coding which affects the website’s SEO performance whist small SEO companies always concentrate all the efforts to have a website which is SEO compliant in every respect.

Bogged Down by Corporate Governance:
SEO teams at BIG gambling companies have to keep on persuading everyone on the benefits of SEO.  Not just management and the board but the technical team to ensure they develop an SEO savvy website and the content writers so that they write SEO friendly contents. Moreover because senior management and the board of directors do not have an in depth knowledge of SEO it is extremely hard to convince them of the SEO benefits. Once and if they are fully convinced the SEO budget, modification etc need to be approved by senior management and then go to the board however the next board meeting might not be anytime soon. So as mentioned above, whilst all this convincing and approving is going on, the ‘Small’ gambling company just gets on with it.

Office Politics:
Like in most companies, office politics often gets in the way. There are many big gambling companies who are tied down to specific gambling software for various reasons. These Gambling Software Products, in many cases, are not SEO friendly and make it impossible applying SEO friendly content to the website. Moreover they probably have to liaise with the software company to make a simple modification. The ‘BIG’ gambling company may not be able to just ditch the software and replace it with another one that easily. The Pros and Cons have to be carefully considered by senior managers and directors who probably cannot grasp the negative effect of it on SEO in the first place so do not have it in their list of priorities.

Therefore can the ‘Small’ company compete with the gambling ‘Giants?’ The answer is ‘Yes.’

There are of course Big Gambling companies who have taken all this on board and are aware of the issues they face being a Big company however fortunately for the smaller companies there are still many out there who do not appreciate the importance of SEO or have not overcome all the above issues. Therefore the ‘Small’ firm still has an advantage to compete on the Search Engines and online marketing.