Advice For New Domain/Site About Racing

[MJ]

I recently purchased a domain I'm pretty excited about in "RacingBetting.com" - one thing I've always tried to do in this business is both set myself up for "any way the wind blows" and also look for domains operators may want down the road, and since horse racing betting is legal in the US (and elsewhere) I thought this to be a great brand to work with.

I have some questions though for some of our members familiar with the global markets:

1. Should I use a subdomain to seperate global areas like uk.racingbetting.com and us.racingbetting.com? Given that the tracks and wagers vary so greatly I'm not otherwise sure how best to accomplish this and I don't want to limit myself to one geo market.

2. Is it a bad idea to plan on including all forms of "racing" aka Indy, Formula 1, Nascar, etc? I have easy ideas on how to clearly section these things off, but I'd like opinions on whether I should go this broad or not.

That's about it, I'm anxious to hear others opinions - lord knows I have many other projects under my belt so this is a bit lower on the list but definately in our 2011 plans to at least get off the ground.

Any other hints on what punters are really looking for in this market also appreciated.

[opoker]

I can't say much about horse racing affiliate business since i mainly advertise poker sites but i will give you my opinion on the domain and website part.

First of all i think you purchased one of the best domains for that niche, it is short, clean and right to the point. To answer the first question i would say go with the subdomains if your project is big and the content of the subdomains will be different than the content of the root website (like different news, promos, tournaments, etc) and use subfolders if the you are building a small website and the subfolders will just be translations of your main website into other languages.

Subdomains: uk.racingbetting.com
Subfolder: racingbetting.com/uk/

For subfolders i would try them if my website is in english and i want to add a spanish or german translation of the content then i would use for example: racingbetting.com/es/

On the other hand, you can point the subdomains to different IP addresses on different servers/hosting accounts and they will have their own search engine rank, then make sure to backlink from the subdomains to/from the root website at Racing Betting | RacingBetting.com you will rank the subdomains much higher for the local countries/languages and all the extra inter-linking will boost the rank of your root website, it is also the most professional solution.

Hope this helps.

[pokerprop]

Personally I'd make the entire site about horse and dog betting. NASCAR betting is 99% fan driven, where all the other forms of racing are VERY small niches from a betting standpoint. Horse Racing is huge by comparison and these guys spend lots of time on it. I'd brand and market to them only, as most won't care one bit about the other forms of racing.

[faststeady]

ditto what prop says

i bet on everything , racingbetting says horses straight away to me

as far as different markets, aussie,HK, sing, NZ is good to group, uk, ire,fr another one , US by themselves cause they're different in so many ways to the other markets that have some sort of connection.

can i buy it from you

cheers
FS

[MJ]

Awesome advice thanks a ton guys, I have some interest in horse racing myself and do it for fun online and live - but I'm no expert and I have zero knowledge of the markets outside the us. I'll definitely be on the lookout to hire an expert to help.

[Ridge]

On the other hand, you can point the subdomains to different IP addresses on different servers/hosting accounts and they will have their own search engine rank, then make sure to backlink from the subdomains to/from the root website at Racing Betting | RacingBetting.com you will rank the subdomains much higher for the local countries/languages and all the extra inter-linking will boost the rank of your root website, it is also the most professional solution.

Great advice here and this will become much more important as this year goes on. Localization right now is int he very early stages with SE's, Google of course is in the lead, but they have already made several changes this year towards that end.

Now to be clear, I have not tested pointing sub-domains here and there by country, but I have done lots of other testing which had interesting results. Most of my traffic is non-us so this has been crucial for us as a whole.

[pomp]

Horse Racing is deff the way to go with it in my opinion.

Not only are there the daily race meetings globally but you also have some huge festivals and Classic Meetings ie Derby, Cheltenham Festival, Grand National,Royal Ascot,Arc De Triumphe, the list goes on and on.

There is also then the top trainers/jockeys at big meets

(How I know? Ex Ladbrooks Racing shop Manager)