Online Casino SEO – Tactics that you shouldn’t use in 2020…
Natural SEO is one of the most impactful ways to drive new players to your online casino.
An organic search engine optimisation plan, when delivered well, can result in huge uplift in targeted search traffic, dramatically reducing cost per player acquired and increasing Gross Gaming Revenue.
Due to the highly competitive nature of iGaming, this has given rise to many SEO’s delivering black hat search engine optimisation tactics that may achieve a quick ranking uplift, but that may ultimately get you a Google ban = lost position, traffic and gaming revenue.
Below are a list of SEO mistakes and tactics that should really be avoided at all costs this year:
1. Keyword Stuffing your META Data and Content
A number of years ago this could work well for you, but Google has become much more intelligent, and simply trying to fit in as many Casino/gambling related terms as possible won’t win you any favours.
Keep your on-page content and META tags (Title/Description/H1-H6 etc) natural and don’t keep repeating the same words/phrases, because good META data helps your players experience by guiding them to the most suitable webpages on your site/platform.
Make sure that you content is professionally written and detailed, then you will start to rank for this content, when aligned with your keyword strategy.
In addition, many Online Casino website platforms have quite challenging CMS structures that can be very limiting when it comes to the creation of things like Game-level content for example.
2. Building Low Quality Backlinks
Google was founded back in 1998 on the foundation that if more websites link to yours, the more authoritative your website becomes, and you’ll rank better, pretty simple huh!
The problem was that many people caught on to this and started to buy links with poor quality content from toxic directories, spammy websites and link farms. Google started to then monitor the websites who paid for these spammy/toxic links and would simply ‘mark your website down’; in Googles view, you weren’t adding genuine value to your audience, you were simply manipulating the SERP’s and ranking falsely.
The way around this problem is to create a content marketing and outreach plan through writing unique and well-considered content for your target audience, that encourage engagement and high-quality backlinks. Then Google will reward your website accordingly and your casino / sportsbook will start to generate significant levels of interest, traffic, and players.
3. Overlooking Technical SEO Activities
When you run a large online casino and are generating good levels of traffic and player revenue, one area that can easily become overlooked is Technical Search. This is the practice of ensuring that your site/platform does not have any major errors that directly impact a) the User Experience and b) Google’s ability to discover your content and links.
Technical SEO includes things like Page Load Speed, Desktop and Mobile User Experience, META Data, Internal Site Structure, Navigation, and many more factors that directly impact your position in the SERP’s.
We have had clients experience significant ranking and traffic uplift simply by changing some META tags and speeding their website up. Granted, most others Online Casinos require a lot more work!
By early identification of Technical SEO issues and implementing these changes, this forms the foundations of your iGaming SEO campaign’s success.
4. Putting too much emphasis on generic Casino Keywords
The iGaming sector covers many thousands of search terms, some generic (“Online Casino”), many brand-based (“Betway Casino”), some long-tail searches (Play Rainbow Riches Slot Game) and so on.
It’s very easy to get caught up in simply targeting the high volume ‘Vanity keywords’ like “Online Casino”. But be careful here, because in doing so, you could miss out on the keywords that convert further down the player funnel, e.g. “Play Slot Games”.
We always recommend upon our initial keyword research/analysis, that you group your keywords together into categories then subcategories. This makes them much easier to target. Then you can set-up specific KPI’s based around 1) Ranking Uplift / Visibility, 2) Traffic and 3) Player Conversions. Then tailor your content and outreach campaign around these keyword sets.
A Final Thought…
Now for the good news… With a little bit of strategic planning, you can implement an iGaming SEO campaign that not only results in page-1 organic visibility, but significant new player traffic, and gross gaming revenue uplift, without breaking Google’s rules. This is achieved with great Technical SEO, the creation of great unique Content, and by encouraging high-quality inbound links from reputable websites.
Many SEO agencies will tell you “Content is King” blah blah whatever… Well that’s fair enough, but I double-dare you to build a terribly designed website with an 8 second+ load speed, hardly any internal links, poor outreach/low quality toxic backlinks, challenging navigation and sloppy mobile user experience, packed full of rambling duplicate content; let’s see where you rank. Feel free to prove me wrong!