How to Avoid Common SEO Mistakes in Gambling Niche

Intro

Establishing and maintaining brand presence in the iGaming space is a tricky task. It might seem easy when you look at TV commercials or partnerships with sports clubs, but that’s not really the case. You have to remember that most of those brands are industry giants; smaller operators simply don’t have the same budget capabilities to invest in brand presence. For them, digital marketing and SEO tactics play a crucial role.

Given the fact that this market is teeming with gambling sites, operators need to make sure they leave a good first impression. The idea is to attract the visitor who is on the site for the first time and motivate that person to sign up and make a deposit. That’s where bonuses come into play, and players can find plenty of 150 free spins for $5 Canada deals through review sites. Promos like this are very effective as they immediately catch the attention of new visitors. Not only that, but they also allow them to get more value out of small deposits. So, this is an example of digital marketing done right, but our goal here is to point out SEO mistakes that iGaming brands should avoid. So, let’s get to it.

Overusing Exact-Match Keywords

Overusing keywords has definitely overstayed its welcome, and it’s painful to see that some businesses still use this approach. Diversifying your keyword phrases and expanding them semantically is a significantly better approach. If you look at the list of 2$ deposit casino Canada sites, you’ll see they are so much more than just low deposit sites. Some of them are low-wager bonus sites, or free spins for $2 deposit casinos, or simply crypto casinos.

In other words, for any of these brands, it would be unwise to simply target the keyword $2 deposit casino and overuse it in their description. For starters, they would miss out on potentially ranking for other search phrases, and second, if the content is perceived as spam, they would rank lower even for that one overused phrase.

Poor Site Structure

Even if your content is well optimized, it won’t do any good on a site that is poorly structured. To have a well-structured site, you should ensure all of your pages are loading fast and that there aren’t any broken links on your pages. Additionally, having a well-implemented internal linking structure and a full site map in Google Search Console will also improve the overall crawlability of your casino site. Finally, reduce redirect links to a minimum and don’t forget to use robots.txt to tell crawlers how and what to crawl on the website.

Neglecting Mobile Performance

Anyone who wants to have a successful site should make sure it’s well-optimized for mobile. However, for a casino site to a poor mobile performance is extremely detrimental. Since the majority of traffic comes from mobile users, businesses in this niche focus on a mobile-first approach. Once again, this includes eliminating the elements that negatively affect load speed and designing the UX so that it’s clear even on a smaller screen.

Not only that you should also partner up with software providers that have slots and table games fully optimized for mobile play. Many studios don’t have slots that fully expand when loaded on a mobile device. So players struggle to pinpoint the spin button and adjust their bet size.

Weak or Duplicate Content

If you are trying to save time and money by using and copying weak, generic, and overall useless reviews or descriptions, then you can expect the same results. You shouldn’t perceive written descriptions as a chore but rather as an opportunity to show that your casino is better.

First of all, it would be amazing if your descriptions and explanations started to appear in generic searches for how bonuses work, or how a specific game works. Second, you might be able to use some of those descriptions to naturally incorporate low-frequency queries and start to rank for those as well. Third, if your content is insightful, readers will stick around, which means you won’t get negative points for a high bounce rate. In other words, relevant, accurate and frequently updated content is the way to go.

Not Optimizing for Local Markets

All serious gambling operators are heavily focused on local markets. That means they have a fully translated site, support currencies and payment methods that are region-specific, and of course, tailor their content to appear for localized search queries (e.g. using the term pokies instead of slots for the Australian market).

Skipping Link Strategy

If you neglect to work on linking strategy or only rely on paid links, the site will be barely visible or even penalized. As stated before, interlinking alone makes the site more crawlable and easier to navigate. It shouldn’t stop there. You should work on building up its authority by having a link on niche-relevant and high authority sites. On top of that, your content should have outgoing links to other authority sites as well. This is all time-consuming, so a strong media outreach campaign is a necessity for those who wish to continue growing.