Is it better to be worldwide, or county specific?

[baldidiot]

I have a site that deals in multiple gaming products (sports, casino, poker, bingo etc..) and the original plan was to not directly target a country, but now their are more and more problems springing up with various countiries makes me wonder if it would be better to focus just on one country, specificaly the UK.

Obviously there are SEO benefits to this (plus being able to advertise in press), but a reduced target audience.

I'm at a turning point now where I could go either way. What do you think, go local or stay global?

[thepokerkeep]

I'm going to assume the site is a .com domain. If so, why not go both ways? Set up sub-domains or hub-pages to target specific countries or regions.

I would not geo-target a top level .com domain - it just limits your potential marketing reach.

[baldidiot]

Interesting.

I have the .com and .co.uk, so could in theory set up the uk site and then expand. I like the way you think, Mr Pokerkeep!

[MichaelCorfman]

Our online.casinocity.com is worldwide in coverage, but uses the ip address to set a geographic preference and the brower language to set a language preference. We then serve up online gaming site information only available to players based on the geographic and language preference we have set for the visitor. We let the player know how we have set their preferences and allow them to be modified if the player wants something else. This was fairly straightforward to do and not very expensive. We use maxmind as the geolocation database for ip addresses which can be either free for the lite version or for a modest fee. For most portal sites the lite version is probably just fine.

Michael

[nico84]

Good question and great answers. In my case i consider myself as new in the market, so i dont have the necesary experience to say what is better.
I´m focused in an specific country, trying to be the first site that players from my country consult before choosing a casino. I now my country is small but i live here and i now the potencial it has. I want also to have a worldwide site that can be like the principal brand, and from there build links to other local sites.

I think the best way should be what PokerKeaper sayd, using both ways. But been very local with the country you choose.

[casinogod]

One thing you should bear in mind if you are targetting UK visitors is that you should only promote casinos that are licensed in British Gambling Commission White listed jurisdictions. This is especially the case if you are based in the UK yourself.

[TheGooner]

You need to be both specifc and global.

CasinoGod has pointed out a good example where specific country information is required, and other countries like Germany, France, Spain and of course the United States have similar legalistic issues.

However, I would struggle to understand why any ONLINE affiliate selling a virtual product that can be consumed globally would restrict their marketting and revenue base to just one territory.

According to Google analytics, we get visitors from over 175 different countries and territories on a monthly basis ... and you can be certain that we've aimed something at visitors from EVERY country. Our two biggest visitor bases are the US and the UK - but each of them is only around 18% of our total readership. That means 64% of OUR readers come from somewhere else.

As MichaelCorfman mentioned, the most profitable approach is to customise for your readers local use, offer only white listed products to UK visitors, and French licensed products to French visitors ... but think global in your market reach with your .com domains - otherwise you are leaving a lot of cash on the table.

[baldidiot]

Thank you all for the input!

I have one further question that's come out of this. The site I'm about to launch has a search feature which allows you to identify sites by country, language etc...

When a player selects 'United Kingdom' I have eliminated all of the non UK whitelisted sites from the search results. However if that player were to search without a country (eg: just by language, payment method etc...) those non whitelisted sites would should up.

Is this sufficient as I am not directly targeting UK visitors with non white listed sites, or does the country need to be geo targetted and the option pre-selected so that they will *never* see a non white listed site?

[buyonaut]

If I was you I would go global on .com and make special section for Uk players that will take them to co.uk - off course both domains should be nicely cross linked!

This way you will have both domains nicely working and picked up by SE's.

[thepokerkeep]

Thank you all for the input!

I have one further question that's come out of this. The site I'm about to launch has a search feature which allows you to identify sites by country, language etc...

When a player selects 'United Kingdom' I have eliminated all of the non UK whitelisted sites from the search results. However if that player were to search without a country (eg: just by language, payment method etc...) those non whitelisted sites would should up.

Is this sufficient as I am not directly targeting UK visitors with non white listed sites, or does the country need to be geo targetted and the option pre-selected so that they will *never* see a non white listed site?

Why not make the search function inoperable unless they select a Country? That covers your ass best doesn't it?

[baldidiot]

Why not make the search function inoperable unless they select a Country? That covers your ass best doesn't it?

Unfortunately that's not possible. I have a bunch of seo'd pages for various search options (game, payment method etc...) with the results coming from the search. Requiring a country would break that!

To truely never show any non white listed sites to UK users I would have to remove them from the site entirely. Which leads us back to the country specific site...

Either that or just eliminate them when the user searches. Technically that's the only time I'm targetting UK users so the rest of the time the site is just like any other non-uk facing site. The company I have set up is in the UK though, so I think I need to be veeeery careful about this...

[baldidiot]

FYI, I've actually just shot the Gambling Commision an email about this. I'll post their response here when I get it for those of you in a similar boat!

[baldidiot]

If any of you are interested I received a response from the Gambling Commission today. I've started a seperate thread for it, here:

http://www.gpwa.org/forum/response-g...on-189879.html

[RadiusVP]

I have to say that global Targeting is tricky yes but WELL worth the effort. As long as the traffic is high quality

All we worry about is delivering laser targeted traffic

-at the end of the day the further any company can extend its reach the more stable and secure it's brand becomes. We work on a global basis. If you need help hit me up