Effective Targeting

[PlaySmart]

Hi,


We have started building an affiliate site and we want to focus on Arab countries.

We are undecided yet whether it is better to target our site to a specific country or a specific region.

We would love to hear your opinions, Or if there is a specific arab country that is recommended to focus on.

Thank you

[chaumi]

I'm not so sure it's a wise idea to do that, for a number of reasons....maybe my thought processes are flawed.

but....

If you go on ahrefs (or something similar) you can try out various terms you might be targeting, see what sort of traffic there is from different countries/regions (it probably won't be accurate, but might give a rough idea), see who ranks for those terms, who they promote/who they are, what the level of competition is...

....and all of that may start building a picture of what the possibilities and options are, whether they're viable/worthwhile, etc

[PlaySmart]

Thank you for your answer.

I just wanted to know if it's better to focus on one country or several countries?

[chaumi]

Well, i think that heavily depends on what you want to get out of it balanced against what's achievable.

To me, I'd have thought that if you could successfully target multiple countries on individual pages then it's a no-brainer to do that. But that's just going on my logic, which could be flawed.

Go look at the sites/searches that target Arabic regions now. If you see the same (ideally authoritative) sites/pages coming up for searches across multiple countries, then at least you know it's achievable (and maybe can see how they are doing it). You probably won't be able to tell if they're returning any money for the sites, but you could make an educated guess on that from the terms.

The other way to do it is with the research suggested above. Try and understand the regions and the propensity towards gambling/your subject across them, cross reference to search volumes/terms/difficulty, understand if there are monetization options that will (or might) work...and then you might be able to narrow it down to one or two specific targets that are worth trying for.

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The 'problem' with a specific (potentially) money-making question like this is.....the people who know the answer for sure probably wouldn't answer (understandably, though there will be exceptions in who may or may not)....so the best you can hope for is a pointer or two that will help you work it out for yourself. Maybe I'm wrong and someone will offer something more concrete and based on actual experience.