Author: May Thawdar Oo
Every single angle, each itsy-bitsy-teenie-weenie SEO element, the one single thing that your competitors aren’t doing could be enough to give you a much-needed edge in the iGaming SEO race.
The benefits of rich snippets for iGaming SEO strategy could easily be overlooked, but most definitely shouldn’t be, and here’s why.
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What is a Rich Snippet?
Rich snippets are structured data markups that site operators inject into their site’s HTML code. They give searchers a visual element when trawling through the standard text-heavy Google SERPs. A rich snippet could look like this:
The above example is taken from the superb casino.org, a well-known and much-respected affiliate site.
And the best news? If you are a casino operator, by implementing a rich snippet strategy, you’ll be doing something that pretty much no other casino is doing.
The benefits of rich snippets for iGaming SEO strategy is seemingly completely overlooked by online casinos. And with Google rolling out major updates every now and then, you most definitely shouldn’t underestimate even the smallest technical tweaks.
The Difference Between Featured Snippets and Rich Snippets
Yeah, Google could probably put a bit more effort into differentiating names here. The difference between rich snippets and their similarly-named cousin is that featured snippets appear in position zero – above paid ads.
A featured snippet looks like this:
They can be pretty similar-looking but if you’re still having trouble figuring out which is which, if you squint a little, at the bottom of the snippet, you’ll see an “About featured snippets” button underneath. Problem solved.
(Oh, and if you’re interested, here’s our article on the Ten Most Prestigious iGaming Awards.)
The Different Types of Rich Snippets
Rich snippets come in different forms, with some more suitable for the iGaming industry than others. They take the following forms:
1. Business Information Rich Snippets
Used to display information about your business which could include opening times, phone numbers, directions, and a map of where your business is located.
Business information snippets are integral to portraying your iGaming business as one of complete legitimacy. You can look pretty suspect without one.
Here’s one from our friends down at 888 Casino:
Looking good. To create a detail-rich business snippet on Google, you can use Google’s guide on how to set up your company page correctly.
2. Event Rich Snippets
Casino promotions are fast, furious, and most importantly, frequent. The fact that we are unable to find an online casino that utilizes rich snippets for promotional events is just plain crazy.
Event snippets are ideal for any operator that has a carousel of promotions and want them to be seen. Rich snippets for events are most definitely the way forward for iGaming operators. You can learn how to create event snippets, here.
3. Video Rich Snippets
As attention spans dwindle faster than your chiplead at a loose aggressive poker tournament, video is seen by many as the future of content.
More and more online operators and affiliate sites are employing video to engage audiences that are more visual learners, rather than people who prefer words on a page.
To create your listing with an embedded video clip to display as a rich snippet, you can use Google’s guide for video schema markups.
4. Product Rich Snippets
While casino products will include casino, live casino, sportsbook, and bingo to name but a few, individual reviews on these products aren’t supported by third-party review sites such as Trustpilot.
This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t incorporate reviews into your rich snippets, but just be aware that this will be a generalized overview of your online operation, rather than your individual product verticals.
Rich Snippets – Do They Actually Improve your SEO?
Not directly, no. Having a rich snippet display on SERPs will not straight up improve your SEO, but as an organic approach to driving traffic, it’ll increase CTR and (hopefully) dwell time, decrease pogo-sticking, and be an extra string to your off-page SEO bow – an essential element of SEO for iGaming content marketers.
Rich Snippets: The Controversy
Playing devil’s advocate a little, there are two camps that vehemently disagree that rich snippets help at all, and some say they may in fact decrease CTR. When it comes to searcher intent, users are looking for the most convenient way of answering their query and answering it fast.
Should a user be looking for a simple nugget of information and the rich snippet provides this, they in fact no longer need to click through and this, in turn, decreases potential site traffic.
The pro-rich snippet team argues that rich snippets provide a comparatively large visual space with more information that lends legitimacy to the page and encourages clicks.
Both have their points, although here at Translation Royale, we tend to support the rich snippet approach as a part of one of our iGaming content marketing strategies.
Okay, Okay… But How Exactly Do We Optimize Content to Display as a Rich Snippet?
Firstly, you need to decide what kind of content you want to display as a rich snippet, and then you can get down to the nitty-gritty of how to optimize iGaming content for rich snippets.
Popular forms of content that can be utilized for rich snippets in iGaming include:
- Articles – particularly useful for affiliate sites
- Game description landing pages
- Event pages – ideal for upcoming onsite promotions
Every business differs so how you actually apply your rich snippet strategy for your content won’t take an off-the-rack approach.
Google has this excellent tool called Structured Data Markup Helper that helps you mark up elements on your web page, and it looks like this:
Once you’ve chosen the page you wish to display as a rich snippet, you’ll need to paste your URL into the Google structured data markup tool and be guided swiftly through the process.
It really does have an awesome interface and makes creating rich snippets a walk in the HTML park.
Creating Microdata
This is where the fun really starts. Well, perhaps we’ll use the definition of ‘fun’ a little loosely here.
By using the Google data markup helper, you have the option to mark up the following page elements:
- Author
- Date published
- Image
- Article section
- Article body
- URL
- Publisher
- Aggregate rating
- Rating value
- Best rating
- Worst rating
- Count
The Google structured markup data looks like this:
The Google markup helper also gives you options to add further tags that will indicate via HTML what information to display in your rich snippet.
So, you’ve identified all of your on-page elements – what happens next? Click on the ‘CREATE HTML’ button, and you have all the code needed for a pretty sweet edge to your iGaming content marketing strategies.
If you’re running an online casino – this is great news as very few operators are actually using schema markup to stand out from the competition, for now at least.
Strike while the proverbial iron is hot while you now know how to optimize iGaming content for rich snippets for your site.
Tagging Content with Microdata
Most of the leg work has now been done, you have your HTML prepped and ready to whack into your CMS of choice. Google suggests that this HTML is pasted into the “head section” of your chosen CMS.
The Hubspot knowledge base has an excellent article on exactly how to add code snippets to the HTML of a web page and how to do it well.
It’s Time to Test
The importance of testing your content for rich snippets is easily done as the ever-helpful Google team has a tool designed for testing rich snippet content.
This is imperative in your rich snippet strategy; ensuring that the big G can successfully read your markup data and whether your rich snippets are appearing on SERPs.
Patience is a Virtue
Google bots spend most of their time leisurely sipping espressos and complaining about the bay area’s overpriced housing market, so it takes them a bit of time to get to crawling your site and indexing your pages and rich snippets.
Expect results within a few weeks of going live with your content, the bots need time out too, you know.
Conclusion
In the heady world of iGaming, things move quickly and in an ideal casino environment, we’d have rich snippets for every possible on-page element, clearly displayed with an aim of increasing traffic to our iGaming website.
As we all know, due to restraints that include budget, lack of personnel, time restrictions, and a potentially stressed-out head of content, we can’t always bring our A-game to the rich snippet table.
Finding an SEO iGaming content writing service provider who understands not only the importance of localization and translation but also the significance of giving your iGaming business an SEO-based advantage over the competition is key.
SEO used to be a bit of a struggle – then Translation Royale happened.
Header Image Source: Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash
How did you like May Thawdar Oo’s blog post “Rich Snippets: Boost up Your iGaming SEO Strategy”? 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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