Another great article, brought to you by ArcadeAdmin.Com.
This is an interview with Dom, The owner of GamesButler.Com. Thank’s Dom for taking part in this interview! We’ve had interview with Andy, Owner of Av Arcade and an interview with Brad, Owner of Arcade Trade Script, But this interview is different as its looking at the management of an arcade.
Dom has some interesting points about new methods of SEO, So make sure you take note of some of his suggestions! GamesButler.Com for example has an Alexa ranking of 56,165 so he must be doing something right!
The Interview
Are you able to give us a short insight into your background?
Of course. I started dabontv.com when I was 16 as a way to bypass my schools server and play games at school. I started to get traffic from google and I was hooked! From there I taught myself html,css,sql,php etc. and went to an Art school for Web Design. I started GamesButler.com when I was 18 as a school project and launched it almost exactly 2 years ago when I was 19.
What do you do in your spare time?
I like to hang out with friends, read, run, drink tea and of course play video games (Been hooked on StarCraft 2 lately)
How did the idea of GamesButler come to you?
I knew I wanted to start a site that had a secondary focus on game help and walkthroughs so I played around with different domain names until I came up with GamesButler.
What was your biggest challenge getting GamesButler to where it is now?
I think just keeping up with everything has been a big challenge. Going on vacation and coming back to 1,000 emails isn’t very fun
Do you own any other script/sites
Just dabontv.com and gamesbutler.com
In the history of GamesButler which date stands out the most for you?
Well November of last year I launch the member section to the site and things have taken off from there. March 2010 was a huge breakthrough moment as well (For traffic and revenue). I just launched a new version to the site last week so hopefully I can look back and think that was a huge breakthrough as well.
How do you think Google, and the way it indexes site affect the way Arcades operate?
Google traffic is huge for any arcade. I tend not to focus to heavily on seo anymore and just try to drive traffic to the site. I’ve learned that links come naturally and that will improve your google position.
With the creation of so many different arcades, where do you think the industry will be in 5 years time?
It’s hard to say but I feel that the system will be more closed. Big sites will release more games that are exclusive to just their site, and there will be a lot more rpg and mmo games that focus on micro transactions.
What are your top 5 SEO tips for beginners in the arcade world?
I personally feel seo (as we know it now) is slowly dying. I’ll post my new way of doing seo, then how I used to do it:
–new way–
1. Focus on driving traffic to your site, links will come
2. Original content, links will come
3. Focus on sharing links to facebook and twitter (and buzz)
4. Keep the site light and page load times fast
5. Strong internal linking, meta tags, logically page hierarchy, don’t
make the site look cheap/spammy–old way–
1. Link exchanges
2. Submit links to do-follow bookmarking sites
3. Strong internal linking, meta tags, logically page hierarchy
4. Buy links on gaming blogs (never on other arcades)
5. Game plugs (still do this but more in an advertising sort of way)
For the Online Gaming industry what do you believe is the greatest challenge going forward?
Greatest challenge is to stay unique and different. With so many different sites and games it’s hard to make something that stands out. Also it’ll be interesting to see which platform will become dominate (flash, html5, unity)
What do you believe are the key points to run a successful arcade?
Do something original. Don’t try to be like a huge arcade site.
I used to think ‘How can I be more like Kongregate, ArmorGames, MiniClip, ect’ but you should really think ’What can I do better then these sites, what can I do different then these sites’
What, in your view, is key to retaining gamers on an arcade site?
That’s hard to say. There really isn’t a right way. My goal is to build a community and site people want to use and hopefully users will want to come back.
With the use of game sponsorship, do you believe that it works?
Yes it does work. Even if you lose money you still gained more traffic, links to the site, brand awareness and a bunch of other things. In the long term these are the things that’ll make you profitable.
So what are your thought’s on some of what he has said guys?
