Can Casino Affiliates Benefit From Risk Management?

Because we live in a world of uncertainty, how we see risk is vitally important in all aspects of our life. When making a business decision risk must be considered.

To different people risk means different things, depending on the context and how they feel about taking chances. A student might perceive it as failing an exam. For a retired person, risk could mean the likelihood of not being able to live comfortably on his or her fixed income. Or an owner of a portal casino might see it as not getting the desired traffic or players to his site.

It is often said ”Nothing is certain except death and taxes.” Webmasters of portal casinos might extend this adage: ”Nothing is certain except death, taxes and Google.” In this article I’m going to discuss the various forms of risk that we as casino affiliates face, how to reduce it and when all else fails, sell or redirect your current site to a new one.

What Is Risk?

To put it simply, risk is a condition in which there is a possibility of an adverse deviation from a desired outcome one hoped for. Applied to a portal casino, this specifically pertains to poor quality content, negative SEO and a site that does not operate within the ambit of Google’s quality guidelines. When it comes to operating a business on the Web, business risk can be divided into market risk. This form of risk is associated with the uncertainty of an investment decision.

If a new website has just been launched it’s placed in Google’s sandbox. Why? It must gain Google’s trust within a certain period, normally after 6 months. The reason why the search engine does this is to stop unethical sites from gaming the system. Also, the extent of the competition within a specific niche must be taken into account. It goes without saying that the online gambling market is over crowded and fiercely competitive.

Risk Management

Risk management’s sole aim is to preserve the assets and earning power of a business. It can be divided into four steps.

Identify Risks

You can’t wait to get your new website online, but before you do so you must be aware of the the risks that it faces. To reduce the chance of overlooking important risks, you must adopt a systematic approach. How do you go about it? Hire a quality webhosting company, understand the benefits and impact the various Google algorithms can have on your website, which online casinos convert the best and so forth.

How to evaluate risks

Once you’ve identified the risks, they must be evaluated in terms of the potential size of each loss and the probability that it will occur.

Implement the decision

The time has come to manage your site’s risk, your decision must be followed by action. Let’s have a look at the hosting company you’ve hired. If your website experiences a fair amount of downtime, not only will you lose potential players or traffic but Google will start penalizing your site. Then there’s also the risk of negative SEO. Regrettably this is a reality since Penguin. If your site starts ranking high in Google, the competition or internet trolls as I call them will build thousands of poor quality back links to your website. If you’re not on top of your game your site will be severely penalized. Make sure you use Google Webmaster Tools and disavow any links that appear circumspect. Failure to act or even procrastination could result in a hefty penalty.

Evaluate and review

It’s essential that you continue to evaluate your site’s progress in the serps. New challenges arise and old ones disappear. When you review earlier decisions you may identify mistakes you made previously.

Personnel Risks

Personnel-orientated losses occur through the actions of employees. Employee theft is a major concern of many gambling sites. A disgruntled employee might steal player databases and sell them off to the competition. Or the employee might run his or her own portal and approach them with more lucrative offers. To me this is a conflict of interest and should not be allowed.

What are the three primary types of employee-orientated risks?

1. Dishonesty of current employees

Create an employee screening program that will weed out potentially troublesome candidates. Do criminal background checks on potential employees. Administer a standardized paper-and-pencil test that will indicate the respondent’s level of integrity. At the end of each working day lock up laptops, cell phones and other valuables.

2. Competition from former employees

It’s hard do find good employees and even harder to retain them. When one of your key employees leave they often take valuable knowledge and business with them. This is why it’s important that you require your them to sign a water tight contract that stipulates that they must not disclose any information that could be used against you.

3. Loss of key personnel

Any successful portal casino has one or more key employees. They could be lost through death or head-hunted by rival businesses. If you cannot replace your key personnel your business may suffer a loss.

When To Call It Quits

You tried everything with your site by adding loads of quality content, targeted money keywords using whitehat SEO only, social media campaigns, all to no avail. Your site still fails to rank in Google. You decide to do a proper site audit and discover that you’ve been slapped with a severe penalty by Penguin. Penguin’s job is to find web pages that had been optimized beyond the ”tolerance level”.

If you were engaged in any blackhat SEO, excessive link building and over optimization of keywords. You have three choices. You can redirect your current site to a new domain, delete all the thin pages with bad links pointing to them or you can disavow all the shoddy links.  I’m not a fan of Google’s disavow tool and I feel that it must be used with discretion.

Conclusion

Running a portal casino is no cake walk, you must take a myriad of factors into account holistically. If you want your site to be successful, the content on it must be meaningful and accurate. It must provide a great user experience and forget about trying to manipulate Google, those days are long gone.