iGaming SEO: Secret Techniques and Specifics [+ Audit Examples]
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Niche-specific SEO efforts are especially relevant when it comes to such a crowded vertical as iGaming. Even though some of the traditional SEO techniques are applicable to iGaming, there are challenges that you won’t face anywhere else. Meeting regulations, investing huge budgets, and beating high competition – these are the hardships of every advertiser willing to work in the iGaming industry.
Still, impossible is nothing, especially with our expert tips. We have talked to our SEO Specialist, Dmytro Bandurenko, and will eagerly share his professional insights with you.
iGaming SEO VS Traditional SEO
Of course, whatever niche you work with — be it eCommerce, Finance, Utilities, or you name it — smart SEO is a must. Keywords, link building, original content, and fast page loading work for any niche, and iGaming is no exception.
However, the devil is in the details, namely – the following aspects:
- Legal issues
Here you should be aware of GEO-specific regulations, since they do vary from country to country. Even if you build your strategy minding local GEO requirements, remember that they could change over time.
For example, a particular brand or game can get limited in the country you are targeting, which means that all the keywords relevant to this game and/or brand will get fewer search queries.
- Huge keyword volatility
Due to high competition, seasonality, and frequently changing legal regulations, iGaming keywords are extremely volatile. This means that yesterday’s popular keywords can lose their power tomorrow.
Taking seasonality as an example, we could refer to large games that happen once in a specific time period, like the Champions League or Euro championship. Of course, such keywords would experience a spike during matches, but they will lose popularity later on. And will come back again in a while. This is something you have to track constantly.
Unfortunately, in a situation with such volatility, getting ranked and reaching top positions in Google will take time and enormous effort. However, staying on top will most likely be short-term.
With iGaming, you always risk losing your positions. To decrease this sad chance, you have to optimize/refine your SEO strategy constantly, follow the hottest trends, and build entire website nets to stay aboard.
- Significant budget required
Another effect of high competition – iGaming SEO requires serious investments. Successful iGaming brands and affiliate sharks invest large sums in competing for large keywords, buying domains with top keywords, and usually can afford advanced SEO tactics and costly experiments.
“The keyword in a domain name (something like igaming-online.com) can give you a competitive advantage. However, such domains will cost you a fortune” – Dmytro Bandurenko
Just to imagine HOW expensive… the numbers can reach $5.5 MLN.
- Backlinking specifics for iGaming
“In general, backlinking strategies in iGaming are the same as in any other niche. Still, there is one significant aspect – if you want to locate your guest post or review on the iGaming platform with a large and active audience, get ready that such a collaboration can cost you about $5 000 – $10 000 per quarter. Well, yes, with iGaming, it’s all about money,” – Dmytro claims.
- Beware of dirty techniques
Too bad, but where there is the money, there are dirty moves, and you should be ready for them if iGaming is your dream niche.
“For example, modern practices for beating competitors include posting fake negative reviews and other similar strategies used by competitors to damage your brand’s reputation. Be ready that whenever your project becomes popular, you will have to monitor review websites constantly and dispute fake comments. Bad news: scammers usually collaborate with review site owners and may ask you to pay a significant sum to remove that content,” – Dmytro highlights.
How to improve your iGaming SEO?
Okay, now that you know the niche specifics, let’s discuss some tips on how you can improve your SEO strategies in general.
Keyword research
All SEO practices start with keyword research, and iGaming is no exception. Yup, use Semrush or Google Analytics to define relevant keywords and implement them into your content.
Of course, researching really huge keywords like “online casino” or “online poker” will be really hard to beat, but if you will check them in the tools mentioned above, you will get a list of relevant and easier keywords, as well.
Such tools show search volume (how many times users search for this keyword per month on average in a specific GEO) and keyword difficulty (how difficult it would be to rank on the search engine by this keyword).
Pro tip from Semrush blog: choose keywords with low and medium keyword volume and high search engine volume. Just make sure they are relevant to your specific product.
Original content
The golden rule also applicable to iGaming SEO is that your content should be unique and high-quality.
“The most widespread type of content for the iGaming industry definitely is entertainment content. Here, we can also mention reviews, predictions, match analysis, success stories, news, or regulations updates. Post fresh content 2-3 times a week. Add backlinks to reputable sources. Add keywords to the text itself, URL, title, description, images ALT text, H1, 2…” – Dmytro adds.
Technical SEO
All the strategies discussed above are on-page SEO, but you should also mind the technical side, which is mobile compatibility and page loading speed.
- Make sure that your pages look and work well on smartphones and tablets
- For better speed, compress images, clean code, and get rid of plugins you don’t use
- Pay attention to your CTA (call-to-action) buttons and make sure that their mobile versions are large enough and easy to tap
Poor mobile experience and low load speed will lead to decreased conversions, since your users will hardly want to deal with that and would rather leave for competitors.
iGaming SEO practically: basic audit of your potential competitor
Also, to make things even clearer, our SEO Specialist Dmytro has performed a small analysis of an iGaming website to show you what works and why.
So, we present some of his insights:
We took FanDuel, which is a fantasy sports platform.
This one is a great SEO-optimized project. It has a high authority score, almost 2M organic traffic/month, and a huge diverse backlinks profile.
In August 2023 organic traffic dropped from over 3 MLN per month to 1.7MLN in just one month. This could be caused by losing referring domains and backlinks starting from February-March, 2023. This is another reminder of the importance of maintaining a good and healthy backlink profile.
Their pages rank high on high-volume, high KD (keyword difficulty) keywords, like these:
iGaming SEO takeaways
Let’s sum up!
- Niche-specific strategies: even though iGaming SEO is 80% traditional SEO, there are niche-specific moves to mind. First of all, these are legal regulations in different GEOs, enormous keyword volatility, and reputation maintenance.
- It’s expensive: ranking in the iGaming niche requires serious investments. For example, buying backlinks from reputable sources might cost you $5 000+ per quarter.
- Long effort, fleeting result: be ready that your hard efforts, optimization, and financial investments can last for years, but even if you manage to rank high, this may last for a short while only.
Good luck with your iGaming SEO! And don’t forget that PropellerAds has tons of relevant traffic, so…
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