Kris Harrison provides his guide to the SEO essentials every new entrant needs to have in place to hit the ground running.
EO is the most important marketing channel for internet gambling affiliates. There are hundreds of thousands of affiliates battling for Google search visibility for high-value online gambling keywords, and as a new affiliate trying to enter the space it can appear a daunting task. This article will detail tips on how a new affiliate can enter the competitive and hugely profitable online gambling space using these search engine optimisation tactics as a blueprint.
Do your keyword research
If you launch an affiliate site and are looking to target the online gambling niche, you’ll want to enter with an SEO roadmap. The genesis of this should be your keyword research. Some people are naive enough to think they can successfully launch a site with no keyword research and roadmap. Sadly, they are mistaken. Prior to launching a new affiliate website into the igaming space, you will need to do a deep dive into the particular niche you choose to focus on – let’s say online casino.
To understand the online casino market, you should create a roadmap of each sub-niche (for example, online casino bonuses, online casino reviews, online casino games) of the market you intend to target. You should extract all the related terms, searches and questions (i.e. what users ask Google) for this using an SEO software such as Ahrefs and SEMrush and compile them into your keywords research roadmap.
Why are we doing this? Simple: to attain a blueprint for when you begin to create pages/posts and video around these search terms for your new igaming affiliate website. Having a robust keyword research roadmap will assist in populating your copy with the correct keywords to give your site a chance to rank for long-tail keywords – all while your site builds authority to rank for high-value keywords further down the road.
Affiliates who do their keyword research and find the long-tail keywords will find success faster than those who do not put in the hard work. The reality is that 99.9% of affiliates who do the minimal amount of keyword research before launching an affiliate site are not going to last as the online casino niche is a grind, and ranking for top-level terms in the first six to eight months is nearly impossible.
Did I mention content?
Now you’ve done your keyword research you are ready to build the copy for your affiliate site. For this, you must have a goal in mind. The best strategy is to ask yourself the following question before posting every piece of content: is this providing something useful to the end user? Put yourself in the user’s shoes. If they are searching for a “real-money online casino” are you providing them with the information needed to make a decision to sign up and deposit at a real-money online casino?
Your copy needs to take your keyword research and expand on the topics you created and make it relatable and informative to the user. This is no easy task. If you’ve done your keyword research and then outsource the copy to someone for whom English is a second language you are not going to find success.
The copywriter must understand the igaming market and write in a pure manner that is relatable to the user. The keyword research should give the copywriter a roadmap of the topics to touch upon while the headings and meta titles can be tweaked to better cater to your target longtail keywords.
But the copy must be natural and informative – any keyword stuffing will have a negative effect in the long run.
Creating great copy is no easy task. Each page/post submission should have a clear plan of the target keywords and the particular niche you plan to focus on – and it must be executed in a natural manner.
Link-building time!
Now that we’ve got the copy created and the site has been indexed in Google it’s time to build links! This is the most difficult part of being an affiliate as you’ll find no website ranks at the top of the search results without strong domain authority. How do you build your domain authority? By attaining high-authority links pointing to your website, either through outreach or by creating amazing content that high-authority websites will add a link to.
Time to get started
If you are on the fence about taking the plunge and creating an igaming affiliate website, the best advice we can give you is to fully commit. Igaming is not the market to enter if you are not willing to put in the work as you’ll find yourself with little to no return in the long run. But by doing your keyword research, creating great copy around that keyword research and building an effective link building strategy, you can achieve success in the market. Good luck!
Kris Harrison is MD of JumpSearch.ca. A veteran search engine marketing professional with a diverse business background, Kris has owned online media entities in North America, Europe and Asia.