Firstly we would like to thank you for this opportunity, we are really interested and I’m sure that all our readers are going to read this with huge interest.
Andy is a professional affiliate marketer and has been in the online gambling sector since 2006. He has extensive knowledge of this sector along with gambling related SEO and has been an EGR power 50 affiliate for the past 4 years. He has a number of top affiliates sites and is currently one of only 29 LRT Certified professionals in the world.
EEG: Tell us a bit about yourself, we want to know who Andrew Edwards really is, the main man behind Mad About Bingo. Where were you born? What was the key idea of developing this great bingo review site?
Andy: I’m 34 now, but shall switch to 35 on the 25th May. I have a black tag in Taekwondo and also study Krav Maga. I play the saxophone and love jazz and r&b music along with playing over dance tracks such a Klingande etc. I was born and raised in a small town just outside of Liverpool called Widnes, and I still live here to this day. I used to work for Home Retail Group the company behind Argos and Homebase which are big department stores and D.I.Y. stores in the UK. The money wasn’t great and there wasn’t much room for advancement within the company. So I look at ways to make some extra revenue and found affiliate marketing. I created Madaboutbingo way back in February 2006, as a way to make some extra money for me and my family.
EEG: Since their thousands of bingo review websites out there, where do you think MadAboutBingo.com stands now? What are its strong points?
Andy: The bingo market is very saturated but I still believe there’s room for growth if you develop a brand and one that visitors can trust. We were hit by every google penalty going, starting with Panda in October 2011, following by the unnatural link warning emails and finally the first Penguin. I have diversified the business and now have 8 sites instead of all my eggs in one basket with one site. I would strongly advice that other affiliates do the same. The site has unique features, bonuses and in-depth reviews which help attract good players and returning visitors.
EEG: As we know, you are among the few LRT Certified Professionals in the world. How does that feel and has the experience helped you in creating your business? Could you share a bit of insight?
Andy: This is a tremendous achievement and one that I am very proud of. Christoph C Cemper has created a brilliant SEO package in LRT and most big SEO companies use his software daily.
I have always known bits about SEO, but since getting my qualifications from LRT I’m know at a whole other level. I was able to get all the penalties removed from my own site and I have helped various other affiliates out with google penalties as well. I currently run SEO campaigns for a number of large Bingo, Casino and Slot sites as well provide link building services and link audits for gambling related sites.
EEG: Happy Birthday Penguin! Google Penguin Turned Three Years old on the 24th of April. As a “rookie” of the whole Panda/Penguin recovery, and I thank God for not being hit by those updates, could you walk our us and our affiliates thorough and narrow down the key elements and necessary steps in auditing a link?
Andy: SEO is now a science, gone are the days of buying 1000’s of directory submissions, blog comments and Press release. Google finally got wise and the SEO of yesteryear has come back to bit a lot of us on the butt.
If anybody wants any advise or help then feel free to get in touch as there’s a lot more to it than people realize, however here’s a quick check list of things to do below:
- – Download all your sites backlinks from: Google Webmaster Tools (GWT), Bing Webmaster Tools (BWT), hrefs and Majestic.
- – Put them all onto an excel sheet and remove the duplicates, your now left with all your backlinks
- – Run them through Link detox, and disavow the bad links
- – Submit your disavow list to google and wait at least 48 hours
- – Use link detox boost and force google to revisit the bad links to add the disavow attribute
- – Start clean white hat SEO and pray lol
EEG: Are there many sites that are fighting to recover from the update?
Andy: I’d be very surprised if there are still sites out there affected by Panda now, however saying that something as simple as poor site structure and duplicate on your own site is enough to get hit. Penguin is the main threat and I believe a lot of sites are still affected by it and don’t know how to recover properly.
EEG: Since Google rolled out it’s mobile-friendly update on the 21st of April, have you seen and huge impact on your mobile traffic? I now we have….
Andy: This hasn’t had the impact everyone was expecting to be honest I haven’t see much of a change yet in SERP’s. I think the majority of good affiliate and operator sites should now be mobile friendly. If not once you are and google reaches your site the algothrim will update your ranking.
EEG: What can you advise affiliates or affiliate programs that are looking to get that juice from mobile rankings? Can they still get in?
Andy: We are only now just starting to see mobile search take over desktop, so you still have a window to change your sites over to a mobile friendly theme. Mobile gambling isn’t set to peak till at least 2018 so you all still have time to get mobile friendly and benefit from this extra revenue stream.
EEG: There was another update that has been rolled out these days, it was the one targeting doorway pages. Have you seen any drops in pages that were using this technique?
Andy: I have been monitoring a few competitor sites, who I know use doorway pages to redirect visitors from the affiliate page to an operator page. Some have jumped and some haven’t. google sees doorway pages as a blackhat technique. You should be asking do you really need the extra JavaScript and loading page to redirect a visitor? Just mask you affiliate link with a plugin and have it open up a new window on click-through.
EEG: We know that you favour WordPress for any other CMS, could you tell us why?
Andy: WordPress is brilliant and furthermore its free. When I first started out I built the site using Dreamweaver, but soon realized when you need to change something on 50+ pages I becomes a nightmare. With WordPress, there are so many free plugins, themes etc that you can build a really good site for very little cost. I specialize also in optimizing sites, and I spoke about this in length at last years online bingo summit and wrote a 4 page article in IGBAffiliate Magazine.
EEG: Do you think there are going to be any major Google SERP updates this year?
Andy: Yes, as soon as the dust has settled with the mobile friendly update you will see another rollout of Panda and Penguin I reckon in June as the last time Penguin was updated was December.
EEG: As for know the readers have probably made an idea of who Andrew Edwards is and they certainly be looking to get started contacting you. How can they start and where can they contact you?
Andy: I can be contacted via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Google +. You can use my email [email protected] or if you are interested in link audits and recovering from penalties then send me a PM and fill in the link audit form on Link Research Tools and say that its gambling related and if I could help.
I will also be at the EGR Power 50 summit, and Igaming supershow in Amsterdam if you would like to meet in person.
EEG: Alright, here comes the fun part….favourite food, where would you like to travel in Eastern Europe, some part of the region maybe that you haven’t visited yet and favourite destination around the world.
- – Favorite Food is Indian, I love spicy food
- – I haven’t been to many places in Europe yet there’s a lot on my bucket list, however am looking forward to Berlin in October.
- – It has to be Las Vegas, I love playing poker. Play online a lot in MTT’s and cash tables usual NL Hold’em and PL Omaha.
EEG: Where you wouldn’t want to travel in Eastern Europe?
Andy: I haven’t traveled much so I would like to go to lots of different countries and I haven’t been anywhere yet where I thought I would never like to go back.
Thank you for this opportunity and have a great one!
