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.    

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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. 

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. 

Just to imagine HOW expensive… the numbers can reach $5.5 MLN. 

• Backlinking specifics for iGaming

• 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. 

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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. 

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  

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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 1.7 MLN 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:

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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…