Casino SEO or search engine optimization has become increasingly important as more online casinos enter the market. Companies that operate in the online casinos market are faced with plenty of competitors, so they must find new ways to draw customers.
The best way to spread the word about your no wagering casinos or your biggest releases and bonuses is to run advertising campaigns. Such campaigns attract players and get results. You can also generate a high volume of traffic in another way. You can achieve this through search engine optimization.
Casino and other gambling websites have very specific SEO characteristics. It is a market with many geographical restrictions since many countries around the world still deem online gaming illegal. In addition, SERPs are very conservative when it comes to explicit attempts to promote gambling and casino-related content through their algorithms.
Nonetheless, with the right approach and a set of helpful SEO tips and tricks, you’ll soon start seeing an increase in casino traffic. The decline in land-based casinos over the past few years started shaping the whole online gambling industry. Since we are in 2020, online casinos are the most popular trend at the moment. Finally, they give people the chance to win real money with just a click.
Why Is an SEO Strategy That Important?
A strategic long-term approach is necessary for the online casino and gambling niche. You have to be patient and persistent to get your pokies casino to rank highly on Google for the most popular strong keywords even if you offer 200 free spins with no deposit. It may take a few days or months to see an increase in organic traffic and your business growing.
An online business cannot function without organic traffic. As per a 2019 study, 53% of internet traffic comes from organic searches. In order to grow your website and get an engaged customer base, it is important to implement an SEO strategy.
On-Page vs Off-Page SEO
On-page optimization makes up a large part of our SEO services for casinos. By optimizing each page of a website, you can rank higher in search engine results and attract more relevant traffic from search engines. This means optimizing each service that you provide to rank highly not only for search terms related to the business name but also for searches related to the services you offer. In addition to optimizing your meta tags titles and descriptions so they effectively communicate what your business does, you also need to tweak the URLs of your business’s web pages and optimize them as well.
Did you know that your company might rank differently in one location than in another when you search for it? Your Domain Rating plays a crucial role in that. This is a measure of the strength of your organic presence. Casinos use off-page SEO techniques to locate high-quality websites to link back to their websites. This link-building strategy ensures that your website is found in the top spots no matter where you are searching.
Online Advertising vs Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the most cost-effective way to generate traffic for your website. Advertising costs keep rising, but if you obtain a strong SEO presence, you will appear at the top of the Google Search results for a long time.
Online casinos that wish to generate massive traffic to their sites need to have effective casino SEO. Additionally, online advertising using Google Adwords and Facebook Ads is helpful in bringing more traffic to an online casino site, but it can’t match SEO for attracting traffic. With SEO, conversion rates are higher than with online advertising. In other words, people who search online for the keywords you rank for are more likely to use the online casino services you offer. When advertising online, your ads are often seen by people with no interest in what you provide.
There are millions of searches on Google every second. Search engine optimization can help you rank for these keywords and increase traffic to your online casino website. You can attract highly-targeted and convertible traffic with SEO, but if you do it wrong, you will miss out on this organic method of traffic generation.
Tips for Building a Casino Website
Putting your SEO strategy in someone who does not understand it could result in your website getting blocked by Google and other SERPs. For example, Google can track the overuse of keywords and is very strict with the gambling niche.
Investing in casino SEO is expensive. When it comes to getting backlinks from authority sources, webmasters must pay more money to publish it than to publish for other niches. Despite knowing the nuances of gaming, the highly competitive market, and the special nature of the business, some of them still refuse to include gaming-related links on their website pages.
In addition, try to stay away from PBNs or private blog networks. The creation of a PBN may seem like an effective method of driving traffic to your website, and some agencies may recommend it. Most people create PBNs in order to create several websites and stuff them with low-quality content. It is a waste of time and resources to go down this path.
The low authority websites will require more work to rank, so you could have to spend more time and funds with this method. It’s usually a good idea to go with a website that is at least a few years old, otherwise you risk being tagged by Google. PBN’s can be tracked easily by SERP authorities and flagged for penalties. Hence, all your money and effort might vanish in a flash in case your SEO techniques seem suspicious.
These are some of the most common mistakes online casino snake that affect their rankings:
- Plagiarizing content or reposting the same content
- Quantity over quality posts
- Posts without keywords
- Posts overstuffed with keywords
As an alternative, the following tips will help you improve your organic search engine rankings for your online casino. Here’s what you need to do instead:
1. Website Assessment
Content and technical analysis are one of the first steps to successfully incorporating SEO techniques. Know what are the current keywords used or where they stand on ranking. Also, analyze your website to see which are the weak versus the strong points. This way you will know which way to proceed with your SEO strategy.
A website is evaluated from both a negative and a positive perspective. It should also be evaluated by comparing it with competitors. You are better off preparing your website if you know who your competitors are. As a result of considering all of the factors, one comes up with a list of things that need to be corrected or added.
2. Don’t Forget: Content is king
In regard to SEO for online casinos, and any SEO at all for that matter, it is always best to write for the reader rather than for Google.
There’s no way to trick Google’s algorithm, and even if you could, your efforts would be undone when the next update comes out. It’s smart, and it’s smarter every day, and content creators need to think ahead in order to appeal to it.
A high ranking for well-written, informative, and authoritative content is Google’s ultimate goal. So, the most effective content is created by casino copywriters who know what they are talking about and know that accuracy and error-free writing always take precedence over keyword stuffing and link spamming.
In order to be successful with iGaming SEO, a writer must be able to write original content, understand the industry, and write content that gambling enthusiasts want to read. A balance of evergreen and topical content should be maintained by including original opinions and facts.
3. Optimize Your Content
Many SEO experts say it is more important to keep old articles fresh by updating them and republishing them over creating new content. As online casinos and gambling change constantly, as betting odds and casino games update, it’s important to update your articles with new information. After your website has been updated, search engines will notice that it has been updated and it will be ranked higher.
If you’re updating old articles, you can also link to new articles you’ve written, or to new products or services you’ve recently added. Verify there are no dead links or pages that aren’t user-friendly on your website. Your consumers are more likely to return to your website if you make navigation between articles and pages easy.
4. Be Consistent with Publishing
It is not only necessary to optimize your casino content every day, but you should also lay out a content plan for the site. So, you should know how frequently you can post new articles, in order to maintain continuity throughout your website. In the absence of adequate resources, posting articles every day is not a huge concern. The key is to show your users you are updating your website regularly with high-quality content which is relevant to them.
There is more value in quality than quantity. Google gives priority to informative and original content that is different from all the other content available on the web. By addressing the questions and the theme of your article and by avoiding filler words and fluff content to lengthen the text, you will eventually reap the rewards you seek.
5. Conducting Keyword Research
Regardless of the niche, keywords are essential and in a niche as competitive as casino and gambling, thorough research is even more important. The best tools you can use are Google Analytics, SEMRush, and AhRefs, which can help you discover keywords for which you can rank.
Instead of the high-demand keywords like ‘casino’ or ‘betting’, which may be out of reach for beginners. Consider targeting long-tail keywords that match the needs of your targeted audience instead of going for the most popular options.
Since the competitiveness of online searches is unpredictable, it’s imperative to keep up with the latest trends. Consumer preferences tend to change frequently, which means new websites will get their chance. Achieving a high ranking on search engines, such as Google and Bing, is highly competitive and almost impossible when you start. Hence, keyword management needs to be done on a regular basis.
Moreover, since gambling has the nature of making Google and other search engines suspicious of its intentions, you should avoid stuffing your articles with gambling-related keywords. If possible, post backlinks with naked URLs and brand names if you can.
6. Make Your Online Casino Assessable to SERPs
You must ensure that your site is search engine-friendly before taking any of the steps mentioned in this article. Every day, Google, Yahoo, and Bing scan the internet to find new content. The Google search engine will take some time to index your new website. You can, however, follow a few pieces of advice in order to have your website indexed promptly.
It is important that you update your ‘About Us’ and ‘Contacts’ pages first. Your contact information and professional information on your website confirm to Search Engines that your site is legitimate and is not operated by a bot.
Additionally, you should place a link to your website on authority pages that are already included in Google search results. You will be indexed faster by using high-traffic sites to place backlinks. Backlinks from high-quality sites give you more credibility and authority.
Let’s not forget to mention Google Analytics and Google Search Console tools, as you will need to have access to these two if you want to do good SEO. By using its crawl analysis functionality, you will be able to find out how many visitors you have. Additionally, you will be able to see how recently your website was crawled.
7. Mobile-Friendly Online Casino
These days, most traffic is generated by mobile devices. As a result, in the second quarter of 2020, 51.53% of all traffic worldwide was generated by smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. You might be losing half the audience you could be reaching if you fail to optimize your website for mobile use.
Therefore, make sure that your website is compatible with all screen sizes and all mobile devices. Before you launch it, check that all the pages and links are functioning properly on Android and iOS.
Apart from having a mobile-friendly website, it is also imperative to have an app that allows your customers to browse odds, live scores, casino games, and other assets on the go. Some users prefer the app experience over the mobile web browsing experience. If you develop a betting app that is easy to use and offers a great experience to your customers, your brand and website traffic will increase.
8. Make the Site Load Faster
It’s vital to decrease loading time in a highly competitive market, like the online gambling industry, in order to set yourself apart from the competition.
An estimated 53% of users will leave a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load, as per a 2018 study. Therefore, tracking how fast your site loads is crucial since first-time visitors are likely to look for another operator if your site is loading slowly.
You may also want to check out Google’s Page Speed Insights app. The tool helps you evaluate your loading time as well as give you some suggestions for improving it.
Choosing to upload your videos in MP4 format and images in JPEG is also recommended. JPEG files are lighter and take less time to load. Ensure that any unnecessary cache is deleted.
9. Concentrate on KPI’s and improve CPR
Content Performance Rate and Key Performance Indicators can be used to evaluate the performance of your website. Content quality is measured by CPR, but KPI measures other aspects of a website besides content quality, including traffic, bounce rates, and conversions.
There is no question that content is the most important factor, including traffic. CPR, on the other hand, measures things such as titles, meta-descriptions, and alt-texts for images, while KPI measures your website’s effectiveness based on numbers and stats.
Tracking these indicators with the right tools, including Google Analytics, AhRefs, SEMRush, and many others, is extremely important. Alternatively, you can install the WordPress plugin Monster Insights if your blog is powered by WordPress.
10. Reviews Are Important
There is something that makes online casinos and gambling different from other niches: customer reviews. As with other online businesses founded on customer loyalty, reviews influence consumers’ decisions between two similarly ranked casino brands.
Review sites are most frequently used by consumers to compare two or more operators. Having reviews of your business on your homepage will attest to the quality of your service and allow you to see what suggestions and criticisms your audience has during their visit. This will help you address the facts most of your customers find problematic and help build a better relationship with the loyal players.
11. FAQ Section
It is possible to get the most frequently browsed query questions from search engines. When you search on the Google main page ‘How casino’, you are immediately presented with a list of questions related to that topic. Keep in mind that your own cookies and browsing preferences can affect the outcome. This is why it is always a smart thing to open a new incognito window when searching. Moreover, if you want to target a particular region you should use a VPN.
F.A.Q. pages are a simple, straightforward way of answering the questions that people search for when they are looking for your niche and service/product. Some of the questions you can incorporate into your FAQ section are:
- Which payment methods does your casino offer
- How to make a deposit/withdrawal?
- What is the gambling age limit?
This enhances your chances of showing up on SERPs’ first page, especially if you give a straight-to-the-point answer.
12. Marketing through Affiliate Programs
You can also choose to promote your online casino business through affiliate marketing. Revenue sharing is basically a win-win situation where everyone benefits. Clients are what keep this system running. The affiliate promoter and the original source get a share of the sale when the consumer clicks on the link. Basically, you place your website on other high authority blogs, and both you and the advertiser get a percentage from potential customers who decide to deposit funds.
In the gaming and betting industry, affiliate marketing is among the most effective ways to grow your user base. You can establish a name for yourself and give credibility to your brand by partnering with blogs that have a large number of subscribers.
13. Get an SEO Agency to Help You
Having read all these tips, you might think you’re now ready to conquer the search engine rankings all on your own. Google may rank you on the first page of the search results anytime now – if you have beginner’s luck and if you are able to master all the above-mentioned steps. Unfortunately, achieving that won’t be as easy as it sounds. This is why the last tip is to consider investing in an SEO agency.
The reason SEO agencies exist is because of this. While you are busy making your services and products the best in the industry, such agencies can perform quality service, give you the necessary guidelines, and research keyword phrases for your website.
Conclusion
As an online casino and betting site owner, you should be aware of the factors that make this niche unique. You must be smart and honest about your intentions in order to grow your business in the market, not only because of the competition but also because search engines are suspicious of online gambling. Hopefully, these SEO tips will help you get on the right track and take your online gambling business to the next level.
