Apr 08 2009
London 2012 Olympics Site Launched
Here it is, over three and a half years ahead of schedule: my London 2012 Olympics site. It’s far from being done but it’s done enough to get it out into Google’s radar. All of the links should work, most of the pages are up and I mainly have some content writing work to do along with the creation of a few tools to help people plan their Olympics trip.
Timing
I believe that Google gives preference to older sites so getting my Olympics site online over three years early has been done specifically to start the ‘aging’ process for Google. I expect a lot of sites on this subject to be launched and getting in early will, I hope, give me a bit of an advantage down the road.
Search Engine Optimisation
Everything is always an experiement with me. I have hunches about what works and what doesn’t as far as Google goes. As I’ve said before, I think domain name keywords are huge, and think I’ve got a pretty good domain for that purpose. It’s sort of crap for type in or word of mouth traffic because the hyphens and word order can confuse things, but my main goal is to get traffic through Google.
I’ve paid pretty close attention to optimising for my main keywords across the entire site using H1 and H2 title tags, page titles, page descriptions and meta tags but I plan to do more optimising of the in page content. Some of my pages don’t even have content yet so I will attempt to cram keywords in and optimise as much as possible. I don’t want to go crazy with the keyword placement but I will cram a few more in than I normally do and see how it works.
I’ve added a few inbound links, one from a quality living in London type site, and the rest from my own sites, including Travoholic.com which always seems to get my new sites ranked quickly. If I find London or Olympics related sites that appeal, I will propose three way link swaps with any of my other sites. I have a few ideas of my sleeve for resources that will hopefully get me some natural inbound links.
Competition
I can’t compete with the official Olympics sites, nor do I want to. I do want to be the highest ranking unofficial type Olympics site, however. There are a few unofficial sites out there but I think I can out do them and that’s the goal. As I see it, Google’s front page is currently up for grabs for the major keywords and I aim to be somewhere on that page.
Niche
I’m not interested in reporting daily Olympics news or even in posting a medal count once the Olympics are underway. My aim is to educate Olympics visitors about London so that their experience in the city during the Games is as good as it can be. I want to be a resource for practical planning: accommodation, transportation, venue location, dates and timing of the events.
Minimal Work
My goal is to finish building the site within a couple of weeks and then continue to update it from time to time when more information about venues, tickets, event times etc comes available. I expect to have it complete well before the Games start and then I’m going to mostly leave it to fend for itself with minor updates here and there. Like I said, I have no interest in being an up to the minute news source. There are plenty of major players already doing that and I plan to be spending my time enjoying the Games rather than at my computer.
Monetising
It seems like a lot of people are attempting to cash in on accommodation during the Olympics. There are already a bunch of homestay type sites up that will eventually match homeowners with people looking for temporary rentals. I’m not sure how I could make that work for me but even if I can become affiliated with these sites, I could potentially make some money. Adsense is obviously prominent at the moment but I’ll keep my options open. I will also have hostel and hotel affiliates and there are lots of tourism-related affiliate offers out there for London.
I just wanted to give you all a glimpse into what I’ve been working on and the sorts of things I’m thinking about. I think starting a site for a one-time event can be a bit risky because once it’s over, there’s very little interest. But if the event is big enough and I can earn enough leading up and during it, then it will be worthwhile. I’m not sure yet what that amount will be but I am at least hoping to earn enough to cover my own London 2012 Olympics trip including loads of tickets, accommodation and plenty of party money.
Any feedback on the site keeping in mind that I’ve still got a lot of work to do? Would any of you ever consider building a site for a one-time only event?
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
The Olympics site looks great! Just keep building links and you should be all set to rank for all kinds of keywords. This blog is great by the way I enjoy it very much.
hey kirsty, got to say great looking site (as usual) and great idea but I have one suggestion….
Why don’t you use a more generic domain name? One that can be used beyond 2012, because if you site is a big success, gets loads of backlinks etc, it will be a shame that after the event you won’t really be able to build on it further.
I’d go for something along the lines of ‘games city guide’, etc because looking long ahead you could use that for 2014 etc…you could even make a section for Vancouver 2010?
Just my opinion.
I think the ability to recycle the domain name far out weighs the benefit of the name you have. I even believe that having ‘london’ and ‘2012′ impedes on the Olympic movements trademark, but I am not 100% on that.
Good luck either way. Hope you take some notice beause its taken me ages to type this as I am pretty drunk!
Hey Nate, glad you like the blog and thanks for the encouragement.
WN the reason I’m borthering doing a site for the 2012 Games is because I know I can do it well based on my knowledge of both London and the Olympic experience. I’m not sure it’s something I would want to repeat for cities I don’t know anything about. Plus I really think that keywords in the domain is huge based on my experiences and had I not gotten a decent domain, I probably wouldn’t have bothered either.
As for the ‘London 2012′ thing, that’s true. I’m sort of pushing my luck but there are other sites out there that are worse offenders that are still up after a long time. They use ‘Olympics’ and even the logo. There’s an article about the whole issue that I read and it seems like sites that aren’t selling anything (tours, tickets, merchandise) will be ok. My site’s aim is to help people get around London, plan their trip etc rather than sell them stuff so I’m hoping I’ll be ok. Time will tell! That’s another reason I’m not willing to put a crapload of time into this site.
Another nice site Kristy : )) Are you going to draw a cute mascot for this site? My suggestion is to take down the Adsense for now, build an image that you’re doing the site solely for the sake of promoting the Olympics and raising awareness for it, create a nice looking badge for people who support the London Olympics — It will be a HIT with the Brits for sure!
That will be tons of backlinks to be harvest! Good luck in the site Kristy!
Kirsty,
Looking good so far! I plan to use your site to get as much info as I can for the Olympics. I hope you can write some short articles on how to eat and sleep on the cheap! I’m looking forward to London!!
Hi Kirsty,
Site looks great! I’m new to your blog but really enjoying your open, honest and transparent approach to sharing all this information - it really is the best way to learn about this stuff.
I’m interested in home much time you spent to get the site to where is is now, as something I am always interested in measuring is time spent versus income.
Keep up the good work,
Chris
I think Working Nomad makes some good points, but the way I see it. This ship is underway. I would continue with your plan of gaining links and building content. I think you can still transition this site into a moneymaker after the Olympics. All the built out infrastructure will still be a draw well after the Olympics. For example, the apartments where Olympians stay will be turned into flats, etc. The Olympics in Barcelona were a draw for years after. I also think that after the Olympics, you can use this site to help drive traffic to a new site that might be tangentially related.
One last thing. I have to disagree with pktan. I would put Adsense on right away. Even low traffic sites are great for Adsense income. Not sure why people think having Adsense hurts a sites image. In my experience it doesn’t.
It depends on how you want to brand yourself when link building. There are sites that I will put on Adsense immediately definitely, but in the case scenario I was saying for the Olympics site, I have to go with the nay to pennies.
I too would take Adsense off for the moment - its easier to get up the rankings without monetisation - and until you have the traffic you won’t make much anyway.
I can see why you would do a site on London specifically but I still think you may regret it after the games.
Even if it stayed just as a London site with lots of info about the city you are still going to have that ‘2012′ in the domain which might stunt future growth post 2012 and could put visitors off thinking the info is going to outdated, which would be a shame after all the work you are going to put into it.
Having keywords in the domain might help a little (with MSN search anyway) but if you make great content that’s useful, then you could use any domain name and still call it London 2012 etc etc
I cannot see any other advantage to that domain name.
One vote to leave Adsense on. Why not start making money from today? No-brainer really.
Passive Income: Adsense has no effect on rankings whatsoever. I will point out though, that Adsense on a page, will ensure that Mediabot will spider the page and Google relies on Mediabot for indexing as well as Googlebot. If for some reason a page is not indexed by Googlebot, it will be indexed by Mediabot due to Adsense.
Looks nice. I wish you luck with it. I’m sure you’ll go over it again and again before it starts getting a lot of traffic, but I spotted several typos you might want to correct.
Great site Kirsty looks very good probably the best I have seen of your sites, it is clean, professional, & easy to navigate a real gem.
Adsense or not on a new site is a difficult call as long as it is not overly monetized “more than 1 ad block per page “IMO”" I see no negative affects I have a bias to keeping Adsense of home pages but it’s a hunch thats all.
As to the Domain looks great to me as you are after natural traffic, what has not been mentioned is a 301 redirect to a new site will pass all links & juice after the event no need to go broad that phrase is already getting a load of traffic.
My only thought to the contrary is I would have the domains phrase in the header “London 2012 Games” rather than “London 2012 Olympics” your chances of ranking #1 for “London 2012 Games” are pretty good compared with little chance for the other term..
Keep us updated great work!
The Adsense will be staying mostly because it would be too much of a headache to take it down. But interesting to get all of the opinions and I didn’t know that about the Mediabot stuff.
Neale that’s a good point since those are my target words at the moment. I’ll make the changes and see what happens. There are plenty of searches on those keywords, even now, so hopefully I can get myself ranked!
I notice you say “no up to the minute news of results” or similar, and that is good tactic I think, it’s too labor intensive during the games. But afterwards, to keep the traffic, you could archive of as much news as possible with links and copies (webcitation.org) when those links die.
Imagine you are a lazy student of sports history in 2020, what info would you like to find on-line about the London games of 2012?
Quote “Imagine you are a lazy student of sports history in 2020, what info would you like to find on-line about the London games of 2012?”
Now thats thinkin outa the box & long term
Love it
Looks good, Kirsty. Best of luck with the Big G and your SEO efforts.
Good idea Kirsty
I’m a fan of your nerdy lifestyle, hoping to become a working nomad someday.
As i understand you try to educate Olympics visitors about London ……. fine but what about a design that fits a little more with the theme Olympic Sports?
I don’t know how that relates to your goals but some design would not hurt and it builds more trust and could encourage visitors to return more often to the site.
Ya WJM, interesting idea and one I will take on board for sure.
Allards the site that’s up now is mostly finished as far as design goes except for the header which will be something sporty and Olympics-y. Whenever I get around to it, I think it will make the site’s appearance a lot more appealing. I don’t plan on doing much more in the way of design besides that, though.
I’ve always been into the design side and I think it’ll be sporty enough. The most important thing as I see it is having a clean, clear site with an intutive navigation system.
@Kirsty I agree that a banner will do for this informative site, it’s still a big space to work with. I dislike “bloated” Olympic sites, looking for information should be plain and simple.I hope the site will get noticed over time.