Congrats on starting an online casino! Now that you have games ready to go, it’s time to start driving more traffic toward your site to get more customers. Search engines like Google are an indispensable way to boost your overall casino website traffic and make money for you in the long and short term. Let’s talk about ways to earn a higher rank on Google.
Keyword Research and Target Keywords
One of the first concepts to understand when trying to improve your casino website’s ranking on Google is how to do keyword research and find target keywords. Thankfully, gamblers tend to be fairly transparent in telling Google what they want to see when they type in or speak phrases into the search engine, like “free online casino” or “online casino games for real money.” Many tools are also available to help you determine the most common keywords to pursue gambling, including Google’s free tools like Keyword Planner and Search Console.
Finding and choosing the right keywords to drive traffic to your site forms the foundation of search engine optimization. Having your casino website rank high is the next challenge.
Using Keywords to Help Searchers
We will preface this discussion about providing help to users and showing on the first page of Google by reiterating a very important word: help. When seeking help pushing your casino website up the ranks of Google, you’ll want to avoid any services that claim they’ll drive you straight to the top right away. These are often scams and could actually harm your website’s ability to rank on Google by trying to pull old tricks that Google punishes.
Quality search optimization starts with being useful to users. Let’s say you want to encourage gamblers to come to your site to play blackjack for real money. You could start by researching the tools mentioned and learning what keywords gamblers use when searching for the subject. Then, have a writing expert write a genuinely helpful page on the topic. For example, your casino website could have an article about strategies for playing online blackjack. This page would be full of real tips about how to play blackjack online and use some secondary keywords found in your research. You would also want to use those keywords in important parts of your page, like the description, website address, and other strategic spots.
Google’s algorithm for deciding webpage rankings is seriously complex, but we do know that Google loves it when your content offers sincere help to users.
Also, as a casino startup, you are probably an expert on business and gambling but not on website design or search engine optimization. Your best bet is to find a good marketing agency to help you write and post these articles to your casino’s website.
Building Trust With Backlinks
Writing helpful content is an excellent start to climbing the ranks of Google’s search pages. Getting authoritative websites and organizations to believe in you and link to your website helps Google establish the trust they need to show you higher. We call these backlinks, and they signal to Google that your website offers valuable things to their users.
The potential for backlinks goes a long way. You don’t need to get every casino and gambling website to link to you. Instead, you can focus on getting links from reputable sources, which often form through partnerships with news outlets, figures within the iGaming industry, and influencers.
Google Friendly URLs
Google looks at your website address for indications about the content of each page. If your casino’s website addresses are formatted oddly, you prevent Google from knowing what is there. A website address like MyCasino.com/Page10.html doesn’t tell Google anything about the page, while MyCasino.com/free-texas-hold-em-tips tells Google’s crawler and your website’s users what the page is about.
Make Your Website Mobile Friendly
Saying “mobile friendly” may be an understatement here, as you might be better off making your site mobile-first. What does this mean? Globally, mobile devices like smartphones and tablets account for 58% of online gambling. These statistics tell us to adapt websites for smaller screens, which entails shrinking down menus and reducing image sizes so they can load quickly. The same website will look a bit different on a desktop or laptop screen, and we recommend you look at your site on multiple devices and test everything.
Priority Pages
Content, fun pages, and a website that works well on new and old smartphones are all essential, but establishing trust with your customers is even more important—both for an online casino and Google. When seeing a new website for the first time, especially one where they might spend money, many customers will seek out your contact information and want to learn more about your casino.
For search engine optimization and customer safety, you ought to make your contact information and About Us pages complete and easy to find. When we say complete, we mean offering an email address and phone number and telling customers how long it might take you to respond. While not directly related to search engine optimization, you should also include an automated reply email just to let customers know that your message landed somewhere.
Conclusion
Succeeding at search engine optimization is a process that you can do well at with the help of an agency. Even the biggest casinos in the world started somewhere and now have loyal users who bring traffic and revenue to the site while offering an outstanding experience for gamblers. Get started by making your website ready for mobile gamers as you begin to provide helpful content that will earn you higher, more visible spots over time on the world’s most popular search engine.
