Who doesn’t want to rank his online casino as the first result of Google’s top search results? According to Hubspot, more than 75% of internet users won’t even bother to check Page 2 of a Google Search. This means that if your rank is at Page 3 or 4, you are technically invisible to your potential customers.
While you can complain about people’s internet browsing behavior, you can instead find different ways to make it to the top of the SERP. DO bear in mind that there is no such thing as “The Golden Rule” to rank #1 on Google but if you combine all the right strategies, you will surely be able to see a positive outcome.
Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, has said it himself that there are more than 200 signals (which is a lot!) to determine the rank of a website but we will be covering the most fundamental steps in this article, to begin with.
(P.S. If you don’t believe us, watch the Google CEO talks about the ranking factors in this short video clip below.)
So, now let’s see how you can rank your iGaming website higher on Google…
1. Content
Length: There is no definite answer to how long an article (or a casino review for that matter) should be as it also depends on the intent of the content itself. However, there are certain statistics that can correlate the length of a post to its purpose and usage. According to the study by The Write Practices, you should write about:
- 275 words – for a short, discussion-based post to create more engagement and get comments on your blog post.
- 600 – 1500 words – for a medium-length blog post that can spark discussion among the readers and good for SEO. This type of post length can also gain more social media shares.
- 2500 words (approximate) – for a long blog post that has more promising traffic rate from search engines and potential to rank higher on search result pages. This type of blog post might gain relatively fewer comments and social media shares compared to a medium-length blog post.
Coschedule also conducted a research with its top ten performing blogs and revealed that every post that ranked on the 1st page of Google has over 2,000 words. This finding supports the data from The Write Practices that are mentioned above. This type of blog length allows space for more detailed facts and in return encourages readers to stay longer on that article.
But then, what’s the use of a long-form article if it can’t capture the reader’s attention?
Quality: Quality over quantity…every single time.
Yes, but what is high-quality content? Simply speaking, it is a piece of content that is engaging and fun to read while providing heaps of value in the context. This applies to the content of all industries, and that also includes a niche one like online gambling.
Good content quality usually includes the following points:
- Value – The most important factor of all. Write for the readers and not just for the search engines. If people find your articles valuable, it will reflect on your data too.
- Accuracy – This applies not only to the accuracy of the language and word usage but also to the statistics and facts that are provided in the context.
- Recency – Latest online gambling industry news, fresh sports reviews, and latest game release announcements are some powerful content types that can bring organic traffic to your website. You can also use Google trends to keep an eye on popular search queries for your niche.
- Visual Appearance – Articles with images and videos are more fun to read than plain text. It is even better if there is a consistent branding guideline to follow. Otherwise, avoid looking spammy and cheap at all cost. (like having flashy blocks of text, inconsistent formatting, outdated web design, having ads everywhere on the page, and this list could go on forever!)
Let’s say you have posted an affiliate article about an iGaming operator with approximately 2.5k words, aiming to beat your competitors and get more traffic from Google. But, the article itself looks spammy and is just stuffed with keywords – that just doesn’t provide any value to your readers!
Even if people stumbled upon your blog, they would quickly leave the page because they do not find it useful. In this scenario, your blog will backfire the initial purpose/goal set for it, resulting in high spikes in your bounce rate.
Good quality content is also crucial for iGaming operators. Generating your own high-value content means that you can drive promising organic traffic to your website and potentially increase the conversion rate without relying on third-party affiliate websites.
2. Speed
Website loading speed is the first thing your visitors will notice…if it is SLOW. Page Speed has been one of the many page ranking factors and the focus was solely on desktop searches until Google released an update in July 2018. It said that it would look into the mobile page speed to rank for mobile searches as a majority of its users access Google via mobile devices nowadays.
So, if you want to do a quick check up on the speed of your website, try some of these free tools like Page Speed Insights and Lighthouse.
Especially if you are operating an online casino website, you would want your blog pages to be loaded in a flash just like your games!
Here are some ways to increase the speed of your web pages (even if you are not a tech geek, you can still use this mini checklist to communicate with your developer easily):
- Optimize images: Compress high-resolution images in photoshop or any of your favorite software and save them preferably in PNG format (for graphics) and JPEG/JPG format (for photographs).
- Minimize the use of plug-ins: If you are using WordPress, plug-ins can take your basic website functions to another level. However, using too many plug-ins can slow down the speed of your website. So, think of the pros and cons before you install an extra one.
- Compress your files with Gzip: Gzip is a file compression software to reduce the size of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files that are above 150 bytes.
- Tweak your code: Optimize CSS, JavaScript, and HTML code and remove the unnecessary formatting to bump up the speed of your page.
- Reduce Page Redirects: Every time a page is redirected, your visitors have to wait for an extra time for the HTTP request-response cycle to complete. Having a lot of 301 redirections means that your page will load way slower than it should be.
- Use Cache: Browsers and many websites (with plug-ins) which can cache (store) the latest information of your website so that it doesn’t have to load the entire website all over again every time a user returns to the page.
3. Mobile-friendliness
Talking about mobile page speed, your website definitely has to be mobile-friendly (in case the previous Google speed update is not that obvious). It is wise to do so because approximately 52% of the global internet traffic comes from mobile devices during the third quarter of 2018, according to data from Statista.
For online gambling industry players, mobile gambling is a significant part of the business and it is utterly crucial that even the games (in addition to the regular web pages) should be optimized for mobile devices.
Apart from the statistics, it also impacts the user experience. A desktop version of a website can be difficult to view on a palm-sized mobile phone. Users will have to pinch in to view the content on the page and that itself is already frustrating.
So, how do we make a website mobile-friendly?
The ideal way is to transform your website into a “responsive” one. Responsive websites can show the same type of content with different arrangements by adapting to the display of the devices. This can be done by either buying a responsive theme/template for your website or hiring a developer, which is a more costly option.
Responsive Design is also said to be Google’s recommended design pattern because it is relatively easier for Googlebot to crawl and index such websites.
The other two techniques are Dynamic Servings and Separate URLs but we won’t go into details in this first article of our two-part series.
To check if your website will run well on mobile devices, try using a very straightforward tool called Google mobile-friendly test. All you need to do is to type in your website address.
Conclusion
So, the easy part is over and I hope you are all catching up with us.
We covered some of the most fundamental ranking factors to ramp up your Google ranking. You might find some parts to be quite technical, however, they are all crucial points to deliver a better user experience to your visitors. Because there can’t be any show without the audience.
Now, let’s move on to the second part (link to the second article) of our article where we are going to talk about keyword placement, website security, website architecture, backlinks, domain age, and authority.
Header Image Source: Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash
How did you like May Thawdar Oo’s blog post? Let us know in the comments if you have anything to add, have another content idea for iGaming blog posts, or just want to say “hello.” 🙂
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