A while ago I bought the domain name http://www.london-2012-games.com with the hopes of starting up a simple site about the London Olympics. Yes… the domain name is kind of lame. It’s spammy and I know it but it has the keywords I want without using the term ‘Olympics’ which might get me into trouble down the road.
As you can see, I haven’t done a thing with the site beyond a couple of lame posts. Despite looking neglected, the site is high on my agenda for development. So far, according to Google UK, there doesn’t seem to be too much competition for my target keywords ‘london 2012 olympics’. There are some obvious sites on the main page including the official sites, official blog, Wikepedia and some unofficial sites too. There are also two BBC news story pages which I am pretty sure could be bumped if I build a good site and am smart about my SEO.
I tend to be able to rank on the first page of Google, often at number one, for terms I specifically target so I’m pretty confident in my SEO abilities. Of course, those terms probably aren’t nearly as competetive as the ones I’ll be targetting for the London Olympics, so I might be in for a nasty surprise.
I plan to keep people updated on the progress of this site and what I will be doing to sneak it up the SERPs. I’m still not sure if a blog or a static site is the way to go, though. I’ve never had much success ranking with blogs, but there are many advantages and the interactivity of a blog is attractive. On the other hand, I have done well with ranking static sites and, given that I won’t necessarily want to spend a lot of time interacting with people on this topic, maybe throwing up a static site will be the way to go.
I plan on getting started this week so feel free to check in on the site and explore. I will be using this site as an SEO case study type thing and will tell all in an effort to see what works and what doesn’t and to share ideas with you all.
It’ll be my first time attempting to play with the big boys and target what will become a mega popular search term in three years but I think getting in early and being smart about SEO will pay off in the end.
Good luck with it. I would be happy to offer some advice if you want it based on my experience with Beijing.
I’m trying to do that same with my new site. (Link in signature). It’s a tough keyword but I think I can do it. I saw a lot of the top sites and no one really has the good keywords like I do. So I am hoping I can get that and some of the subpages to rank high!
I recently purchased some SEO software that makes finding links a billion times easier. SEO elite? real nice.
What do you do to get ur links?
I think the free loving Olympic movement has banned the use of the term London 2012 to anything without a sponsorship deal.
Dont think it will stretch to the web, but some East London butcher got in trouble for calling his sausages ‘London 2012 bangers’ or something like that!
Absurd, I know.
I remember a lot of people making good money during the 2004 games by blogging like mad in the few months of run up to the games and also during the games. It was big stuff on some webmaster forums at the time.
If it were me, I would probably build an informational site then add a blog on a directory. As the games get closer you’ll probably have more to blog about. It’s good to get going now and build it up with content, backlinks and age. I can guarantee you that there will be tons of short sighted people who start 2012 Olympic sites less than 6 months before the games and they’ll be working furiously to take a bite out of Olympics related traffic.
Why did you want to avoid the “olympics” in the domain – purely a copyright issue?
Oh and PS Mike – where’s that ebook on how to do develop an Olympic blog?