Gambling SEO: Lesser-Known tricks to improve your rankings
Gambling SEO is a challenge, a chore. You have to approach it from a different angle and deal with issues that you just don’t encounter with traditional SEO. As a result, it’s not easy to see the results you’re looking for and you need to get creative when it comes to both onsite and off-site strategies.
In this guide, we’ll look at some of the tricks and techniques that may help you when conducting SEO for gambling sites.
Casino SEO tricks
When it comes to gambling SEO, there are a few ways that you can get ahead of your competitors and attain the results that you seek, including:
Show players how to win
If you’re doing gambling SEO on behalf of an online casino or sportsbook, the last thing you want is to show your players how to win. After all, you must think about your profits.
But there is a method to the madness.
The problem with most casino SEO is that the casinos stick with the basics. They write about slot machines, card games, and games of chance. They talk about the history and the rules. These things are important, but they are also discussed by every other casino, affiliate site, gambling wiki, and forum out there.
In other words, the competition is fierce, and unless you have the best writers and create extremely informative guides, you just can’t compete.
Instead, you need to find ways to be unique—do what no one else is doing.
Oftentimes, that means writing predictions, talking about gambling strategies, and more.
There are good and bad ways to do this, though.
Firstly, predictions need to come from an expert, someone with proven knowledge in their field. Not only does it look good to the player, but it shows Google that your content has strong provenance.
More importantly, it suggests that the tips are independently created and are not there just to guide players toward the bets/games that are most profitable for you.
Secondly, you must think about the regulators as well, as this sort of content won’t be possible under certain licenses.
Focus on value, not formulas
SEO has become strict and structured. It has become formulaic and nowhere is that truer than gambling SEO. People are looking for the “hacks” and “tricks”. They want to find the magic formula that will give them the success they seek.
But all of this distracts from the real goal of Google and the real meaning behind its algorithm, which is to provide searchers with the most valuable, genuine, and honest content.
If you’re just ticking boxes and trying to trick Google, you will fail. But if you create content that readers actually care about and enjoy, you’ll be rewarded. Not only will readers spend more time on your site, but they will be more inclined to link to it, which is essential for your growth.
Forget about keyword density. In fact, forget about keywords in general. Just find the topic, make sure it’s something that people want to read, and then write the best content based on that topic.
If you’re genuinely doing that, you’ll cover all the keywords and important points, and you’ll do it in a way that is more genuine.
Link to other sites
You can usually tell good SEO from formulaic SEO by its links.
SEO experts like Neil Patel will link to their competitor’s websites if they feel that those websites have something valuable to offer. On the other hand, people who are trying to adhere to a formula—something preached to them by countless half-assed SEO guides—will only link to irrelevant .gov sites.
The goal is to provide your readers with the best experience possible. That’s what Google wants you to do, and its algorithm is going to a place where that sort of action is rewarded.
Imagine that you are brand new to gambling and you’re looking to learn about Blackjack.
You find a site that is wholly dedicated to the game, and you delve into an article that explains the rules, features, and quirks.
When it comes to a section about card counting, it skips straight over the important info (because it doesn’t want to be seen to be “encouraging” you in front of its affiliates) and it links to a nonsense study on a .org site that references something to do with cards and mathematics.
You’ll be pretty annoyed, right? You went there to learn all about Blackjack, and it just glossed over the details.
On the flip side, if that site goes into depth about card counting (but advises against it) and then links to content created by an experienced card counter while also embedding a video, you’ll be happy. Your questions have been answered, your needs have been met.
Your goal should always be the latter and never the former.
iGaming SEO challenges
One of the biggest challenges with gambling SEO is that no one wants to link to you.
Backlinks are clearly an important piece of the puzzle. They show Google that your content can be trusted and is good enough to be shared. But Google also penalizes sites that link to gambling content, and so no one is willing to take a chance.
At the same time, you can’t be seen purchasing those links, as Google doesn’t like that, either.
So, what can you do?
Well, the good news is that there are still sites out there that will link to content that has value.
For instance, if you’re writing an exposé that covers the dark arts of casino cheats and has an interview with a secret cheater, you’ll probably be linked by news sites, blogs, and countless other news-based platforms.
Once those links get out there, they will be picked up by other sites, and you’ll eventually reach a point where people are linking to you without knowing or caring that you’re a gambling site.
If you have good content, those links will come.
Of course, that’s not what you wanted to hear. But there is no trick, no easy way of getting results. Sure, you can force it, but it puts your business at risk, it’s expensive, and it also devalues your brand.
After all, if someone is willing to link to your gambling site for a fee, how many other sites have paid the same fee and gotten the same link? If Google sees that a somewhat relevant site is linking to you, and then learns that they are also linking to dozens/hundreds of other sites, it will have more of a negative effect than a positive one.
SEO for gambling sites: Lesser-Known tricks
Gambling SEO, like so many things in SEO, comes down to the quality of your content. Make it original, make it entertaining, and focus on the reader and not Google.
The moment that you start writing for Google and not the reader, you’ve failed, and it’s all downhill from there.
