This was originally published at http://www.igbaffiliate.com/magazine/continental-shift

Asia has been a market of significant interest for many in the iGaming sector for several years. With growing wealth, internet connectivity and a long time gambling culture it seems as though there is great potential for expansion. This is of course true in many ways; however there are a unique set of pitfalls and challenges to operating in these markets. This piece could be seen as something of a crash course in the market place and sets up for future more in depth looks at the individual markets.

Well firstly I’d like to say that I’m not a big subscriber to the whole white hat black hat thing anyhow. Technically all SEO is black hat blah blah blah… I’m not going to get into that. I’m just using these terms for convenience sake so before somebody jumps on it that base is covered.

There is also a very clear reason for this post, and that is ionSearch. Now whilst I do agree with a lot of points made on the panel, it was not fairly represented. I’m a big believer that all SEO has a time and a place and probably fall into the border line camp of I’ll do whatever you want as long as you know the risks and are going to pay me.

But aside from Andrew Girdwood (LBI) that opinion probably left me as the most “white hat” member of the panel. That is not balance. And not entirely accurate or fair.

This was essentially a test to see what I could get away with on my own Google Plus profile, now it should be noted that I do use the email it’s connected with a lot and it is connected to a few blogs I write on etc. so it is possible that as an active Google account it was cut a bit more slack than an account you may set up off the bat.

Essentially Google Plus circles allows for mass adding and deleting to get your numbers up in a very easy manner being able to add over 500 people in a single click and delete them just as quickly is fantastic for this, just check one of the many public circle sharing groups and start adding. During my testing I was receiving about a 7% add back rate and much to my surprise a lot of these users interacted with my posts. Since I had a little success a few of the guys in my office have begun to replicate the idea with similar if not better results.

Spain is far from being the land of opportunity that it used to be; in fact it is clearly one of the more competitive markets from an SEO perspective, which is many affiliates’ bread and butter in terms of traffic. But, that is not to say that you shouldn’t really be looking at Spain as a legitimate area to expand your business.

The Market is Softer than the English Market

Based on internet world’s estimates, around 8% of the internet’s users speak Spanish as a 1st language, but according to w3 only 4% of web content is in Spanish. This ratio is essentially reversed for the English web, with 27% of users speaking English and 54% of web content being in English. Now of course, the benefit of English is that it is the global second language, but when it comes to logically targeting any market you will clearly have an advantage if you use the native tongue.