7 Reasons Why Your iGaming Site is Not Ranking (And How to Fix Them)

Author Name: May Thawdar Oo

While the bigger players in the market may have a competitive advantage when it comes to resources, the beauty of SEO is that it gives lesser-known brands an opportunity to not just participate but perform well in this lucrative niche.

This is especially true when these smaller brands and iGaming affiliate companies align their SEO strategy and online casino affiliate marketing goals together. That said, it’s easy to see why many iGaming affiliate companies miss out on the opportunities to get a piece of the pie by not preparing a sound SEO strategy or by making common affiliate marketing mistakes that reduce the impact of their campaigns.

Without further ado, here are the top 7 reasons why most iGaming sites fail to rank – and how you can fix them.

1. Not Prioritizing Site Crawlability and Usability

iGaming SEO isn’t all that different when it comes to others as far as following the same principles for success is concerned. That includes making your site accessible, usable, and indexable.

 

Regardless of what niche you are working in within the iGaming industry – as a casino, a poker club, a sportsbook, or a good iGaming affiliate site – you’ll want your website’s visual elements and design to pop.

However, spiffing up your graphics can take a toll on your site’s usability and crawlability, particularly when you use JavaScript. This makes it hard for search engines to crawl your site pages, and worse, for your users to have enjoyable web experience.

HTML5, on the other hand, makes it easier for them to do so, which, in turn, makes your websites easier to rank.

 

 

2. Ignoring Mobile Compatibility

Consider this. Mobile phone internet user penetration in the United States in 2021 is projected to be at 92% – which means that 92% of mobile users have internet access on their devices.

It should, therefore, come as no surprise that online iGaming sites and iGaming affiliate companies should work hard to ensure that mobile internet users are provided with the same usability and web experience as desktop users are. Mobile-compatible websites are ranked well by Google because they know that user experience is being prioritized.

Not sure if your site is optimized for mobile devices? Use this handy little tool from Google to test mobile compatibility and gain additional details on possible page loading issues that may impact the way Google interprets your site.

 

 

3. Not Focusing on Localized Content and SEO

One of the most common mistakes iGaming or online casino affiliate marketing site operators commit is not optimizing their pages for local content and SEO. This is essential if you are focusing on drumming up business in certain locales, cities, and regions. Most search engines process local search terms differently from more global keywords.

 

Nevertheless, adding city/region-specific terms and keywords in your titles and meta descriptions is an excellent way to maximize localization for iGaming affiliates and websites.

One example of local SEO could be “£10 Arsenal Sportsbook Bonus” or “10 € FC Bayern Sportwettenbonus” depending on your target locale. Some countries and their advertising laws prohibit using these localized iGaming ads/SEO practices, so you need to find a way around it.

(Hint: write articles and reviews before upcoming and after last weekend’s matches. These football and sports reviews will work wonders.)

And secondly, we cannot stress enough how important it is to localize properly. Targeting readers in Colombia, for example, using Peninsular Spanish (the one from Spain) will turn them away in no time. Same goes for French and Canadian French as another example.

 

 

4. Slow-Loading Pages

It doesn’t matter if you have every other SEO best practice in your checklist done and dusted – if your site loads slower than those of your direct competition, you probably won’t outrank them.

 

Moreover, a great majority of mobile sites lose about half of their visitors during loading. That’s why you’ll want to test how fast your site loads with tools like WebPageTest, PageSpeed Insights and Think with Google to get a detailed analysis on what needs to be improved, what needs to be fixed, and what you can do about them. You can compare your results with your direct competitors to see how you perform against them as well.

Loading time generally depends on the number of requests that are sent to the server, how well put-together your scripts are in number and size, as well as the quality of your images and other visual elements.

 

 

5. Inconsistent Design Elements

Nothing will make your target audience turn away from your site faster than inconsistent design elements that don’t stick to your company’s branding – regardless of your target audience’s demographic profile.

In the end, your site is a visual representation of your business, and you won’t do it any favors by not sticking to your brand and visual identity – or worse, with slapdash, haphazard design.

This is especially important for iGaming affiliate websites where we continuously see a patchy mix of different design elements.

 

 

6. Creating Mediocre or Low-Quality Content

You will have probably heard of the saying that “content is king“. It might sound like a cliché, but clichés are such because they are true – especially when your site relies on blogs and articles to drive traffic.

 

Your website will suffer from high bounce rates due to mediocre content that doesn’t provide any value, or by baiting and switching your readers with misleading titles and content.

The most important thing to keep in mind for engaging, good iGaming affiliate site content is by providing relevant, valuable, and engaging content that is tailored to your target audience’s tastes.

 

 

7. Tailoring Content to Gain Good Backlinks

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that backlinks are no longer an important aspect of SEO that helps your site get ranked. The most important thing to keep in mind is to gain backlinks in the right manner, not by black hat methods.

 

If Google detects that your backlink quality is lower than what it defines as acceptable, it will flag your site as spam and will torpedo your organic traffic and ranking – which is a disaster you’ll want to avoid.

Influencers have traditionally not been keen on linking to iGaming sites due to their perception. This is why you should tailor your content to be loaded with as much value as it possibly can while being as accessible and shareable as possible. This will help you gain natural, relevant, and quality traffic that stays well within the confines of search engine guidelines.

Remember – just a handful of good links from reputable, authoritative websites can positively influence your ranking much better than hundreds upon hundreds of links from sketchy, poor-quality websites.

 

 

Conclusion

Getting your website to improve its bounce rate and search engine rankings rely on a wide array of factors. These seven tips will help you optimize your iGaming website to provide the best value, usability, and experience for your users and fix the most common issues that prevent it from reaching its maximum potential and visibility.

 

 

Header Image Source: Caspar Camille Rubin on Unsplash