Foreign SEO

It is well known that the thematic niche of online casinos and gambling websites has very specific features. Firstly, it is a market with special geographical restrictions, as online gambling is completely prohibited in many countries and some US states. Secondly, search algorithms are very sensitive to obvious attempts to circumvent them by promoting content on such topics. Our specialists offer expert assistance in promoting websites abroad that specialize in gambling niches.

Currently, players are not looking for the nearest casino as often as before. Due to the pandemic, online casinos have come to the top of the search because they offer real money in one click. So, in this article, we share some important tips that will help professional gambling businesses in Western countries to expand their influence on the web.

Why is it so difficult to promote a website that works in the gambling niche?

As we have already mentioned, the online casino and gambling niche requires the development of a long-term strategy.

It takes time and patience for a business to grow from an unknown online casino to rank on the first page of Google for high frequency keywords. Do not expect organic traffic to grow in a few days or weeks, for example. It will take a sufficient amount of time, but once the goals are set, you can go for them.

Organic traffic is an integral part of any online business. According to a study conducted in 2019 , 55% of the world’s traffic comes from direct website visits, and 29% is generated through online searches. This underlines the importance that search platforms have in distributing and directing user flows.

Therefore, if you want the site to grow and have enough customers, you should never discount the importance of SEO strategy. That is why choosing an SEO agency is crucial. The integrity of the company will not be compromised, you are not wasting money.

What to keep in mind when promoting a website in the gambling niche

If you leave your SEO strategy in the hands of inexperienced specialists, the risks are too high that the site can be blocked by Google or other search engines. In particular, Google algorithms keep track of a certain list of keywords related to the gambling niche, as they may appear randomly in queries, for example, of children.

SEO for online casinos and other similar sites in the West is expensive. To get backlinks from reputable sources (for example, from information portals or blogs with a serious volume of traffic), you need to spend more money for publication than in other niches. Owners of such resources are aware of the specifics of the business, high competition, and some of them refuse to add any hyperlinks related to gambling to their websites.

And one more tip: avoid PBN (private closed network of blogs linking to the promoted resource). Developing such a network may seem like an easy way to attract traffic, some agencies may offer it. In fact, people create several sites and try to fill them with content, but, unfortunately, not always of high quality.

We strongly advise against doing so because it will be a waste of time and money. On the one hand, this is the easiest way to build backlinks. However, these web resources will have low authority, so you will have to work hard to increase their ranking. There is a danger that Google algorithms will track them down, as PBNs are easily detected by search robots. Thus, as in a get-rich-quick scheme, all the money and efforts spent can disappear in one moment.

Here are 10 tips on how to improve your online casino search results.

1. Work out the keywords

Keywords are necessary in any niche, and when promoting gambling websites, there are even more reasons for their deep research. The most convenient way to collect key queries is to use popular services such as Google Analytics, AhRefs and SEMRush. Carrying out such work is a real step forward to improving the ranking.

Pay attention to mid- and low-frequency queries, because HF keys such as “casino” or “betting” are likely to be inaccessible to beginners at first. It is best to focus on long key queries that are suitable for a specific target audience.

A snippet of AhRefs keyword examples related to casino online. Please note that poker near me has a large volume of traffic and low complexity for promotion, but casino online is more difficult to work with.

In the future, due to the unstable status of online search, it is important to set a goal to work on the most popular keywords in the niche. This is necessary because customer preferences change quite often. New sites appear and the competition for a place on the first page of Google search results is sometimes aggressive.

Since the topic of gambling makes Google and other search engines suspicious of the promotion of such resources, do not add keywords related to betting. When placing backlinks, try to make them as natural as possible and add URLs and brand names whenever possible.

2. Optimize the content

Many SEO experts argue that it is more important to spend time on updating old articles and keeping them relevant than on creating new content. The online casino and gambling industry is constantly moving: betting odds change, games are updated. Therefore, it is important to supplement your articles with new information. SERP will scan the site and notice that it has been updated, then its ranking will increase.

You can also update old materials with hyperlinks to new articles that have been created recently, to services or products that have been added. Make sure that there are no links in the articles that lead nowhere, no pages that are inconvenient for users. The easier it is to navigate between articles, the more likely it is that people will stay on the pages and come back to the site later.

3. Develop your resource

In addition to daily content optimization, you should prepare a content plan for the development of your site. This means that you need to decide how often new articles will be published. Regular updating of materials will be a signal to visitors that the business is not standing still, it is developing. If there are not many resources for daily publication of articles, choose the optimal interval, which indicates that the site is relevant.

Remember that quality is more important than quantity. Search engines prefer original informative content that is different from the rest. Do not try to increase the volume with empty words. If the texts offer information to the point, it will ultimately bring more benefits for ranking.

4. Pay attention to the reviews

One thing that sets the online casino and gambling niche apart from others is the importance of user reviews on websites. As in the hotel and restaurant business, reviews will influence consumers to choose your brand among several with the same rating.

If you place reviews about the company on the main page, it indicates the quality of services, and also helps the site owner to see what suggestions and criticisms the target audience has while viewing the content.

5. Respond quickly to user requests

There are 3 types of key queries: informational, navigational and transactional. The first ones answer the question “What is it?”, the second ones – “Where to find it?”, and the third ones find solutions to the questions “How much does it cost?” and “How to buy/use the service?”.

Search engines process the most frequently searched queries and it is easy to get this information. If you go to the main page of Google and enter, for example, online casino, you will immediately see a list of questions that people ask in this niche.

Bonus tip: to avoid conflicts with your own cookies and settings, use anonymous navigation (CTRL+SHIFT+N).

A simple and clear way to answer the most frequently asked questions related to the thematic niche and the services/products offered is to fill in the FAQ page: “From what age can I register on an online gaming site”, “Is it possible to play online for real money”. All this increases the chances of appearing on the first pages of search results.

6. Make the site available for search results

Before performing any of the steps mentioned in this article, you need to make sure that the site is available for indexing by search engines. Every day, Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines crawl the Internet in search of new content.

If the site has just been recently created, it will take some time until it is indexed. Here are some tips on how to quickly index a web resource:

• first, you should update the “About Us” and “Contact Us” pages. Placing contact and professional information on the site for search engines is a sign that you are not a robot, that the site functions legally;
• secondly, try to place a link to your resource on an authoritative page that already appears in Google search results. For example, there is a site with a significant amount of traffic. Using it to place a backlink will increase the credibility of your resource and it will be indexed faster.

In addition, get access to Google Analytics and Google Search Console tools. With their help, you can analyze data on the number of visitors and when the resource was last crawled.

7. Improve CPR and focus on KPIs

CPR (Content Performance Rate) and KPI (Key Performance Indicators) are two main tools for evaluating how a website is performing. The first measures the quality of content, taking into account the hierarchy of titles, meta descriptions and alt texts for images. KPI focuses on numbers and statistics that help to evaluate the effectiveness of a web resource. It includes several indicators, for example, traffic status, bounce rate, conversion.

It is very important to monitor these indicators using modern services offered by Google Analytics, AhRefs, SEMRush and many others. You can install the WordPress Monster Insights plugin if your blog is running on WP.

In a 2021 survey of search engine optimization (SEO) professionals worldwide, 24.6% said that content accuracy was one of the most important factors affecting search rankings this year. 32.8% of respondents emphasized the importance of meta tags – titles and descriptions, putting them in the first place.

8. Reduce page load time

In the highly competitive online gambling market, reducing loading time is one of the key factors for promotion.

More than half of users leave a website if the loading takes too long. People prefer to go to a competitor rather than just wait. That is why it is important to control this indicator.

We recommend installing Page Speed Insights. This is another program from Google. The tool helps to estimate the loading time and offers tips on what you can do to reduce it.

Another tip: upload videos in mp4 and images in JPEG. These formats are lighter, they reduce the loading time. Also, make sure to remove unnecessary cache, which can slow down the site.

9. Use affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to promote online casinos. In fact, you tell about your business on other resources with high authority, while each of the parties receives a percentage.

In practice, due to this revenue sharing, all participants benefit in terms of profit. As with all transactions, this system is launched by the client. How? When a consumer clicks on a link and makes a purchase, the affiliate promoter and the original source receive shares.

Due to the “sensitive” nature of casino and betting related sites, affiliate marketing is one of the most interesting ways to increase your customer base. By establishing partnerships with other trusted resources that have a large number of subscribers and steady traffic, you increase the chances of making a name for yourself and building brand credibility.

10. Make sure that the site is adapted for mobile devices

Currently, most traffic comes from mobile devices. In the second quarter of 2021, 61% of global traffic came from mobile phones, tablets and other gadgets.

This means that ignoring mobile compatibility on a web resource will lead to the loss of most of the audience that could become yours.

Make sure that the site has all the necessary settings. Test it on Android and iOS devices before launching. Make sure that all pages and links work in the correct mode.

In addition to adaptation for mobile devices, it is very important that websites operating in the gambling niche are coordinated with applications that allow users to comfortably view odds, current results, games and other resources. The development of an accessible application that gives customers the opportunity to place bets will increase brand loyalty and traffic to the website.

Why should you contact an SEO agency?

After reading our tips, you may think that now leading positions in search engine rankings will be easy to achieve. You might even expect your site to be on the first page of Google tomorrow or next week. We have sad news for you: it will not be easy to achieve this.

But not everything is so scary, and working with the agency you have many times more chances to achieve your goal. We provide partnership services for the promotion of web resources, provide recommendations for promotion, and take a responsible approach to collecting keywords for your site. Below are just a few reasons to entrust the progress to a team with relevant experience.

Reason 1: Saving money

We mentioned earlier that SEO is not cheap. Most analysis tools (AhRefs, SEMRush, etc.) are paid. To access all the features, you need to purchase Premium packages. When promoting yourself, you will have an article with separate costs that you could save on. Due to the nature of our work, we always select new software that increases the value of our services.

Working with us, you save money on access to all the services that you would probably use only once or twice. You pay only for our services.

Reason 2. Saving time

As they say, time is money, and we know how much our partners value free minutes. Working with a professional SEO agency, you delegate tasks to a team of experts in this field, leaving yourself time to do other things.

Remember that quality takes time. So be skeptical when you see someone promising cheap and very fast results.

Reason 3. Achievement of the set goal

The common mistakes when launching an SEO campaign are trying to get immediate results and striving for unrealistic goals. If you expect to see 100 thousand users per day in the statistics next week on your website that you launched yesterday, then you should know that it is unlikely.

Some freelancers may tell you that they achieve very high results in a short period of time. However, do not forget to ask how they manage to achieve this. SEO is a science. It takes time, experience, many attempts and experiments that may or may not work properly.

Cooperation with a successful SEO agency is an individual approach to your project. We first define the goals, explain how the whole process is lined up. We set realistic tasks to increase traffic and subscribers, as well as to improve KPIs in general.

Besides, we already have experience in the gambling niche. We know the specific details that characterize the progress in it.

Instead of imprisonment

If you want to develop your gambling project, you should know what distinguishes this niche from others. Besides competition, search engines are suspicious of online gambling, so you should think carefully about your intentions to develop your business in this market.