How to Avoid SEO Penalties in the iGaming Sector

Intro

The iGaming sector is particularly prone to SEO penalties due to its highly restrictive and competitive nature. Not only do online gambling businesses need to meet country-specific regulations, but they also need to make their content outrank the high level of competition. This often leads to iGaming businesses taking risks which almost always results in SEO penalties.

If you’re in the iGaming sector, here’s our tips on how to avoid SEO penalties:

Provide excellent user experience

User experience (UX) is the most important factor you have to consider when it comes to iGaming SEO. If your site isn’t easy to use and fast loading, customers are definitely going to look elsewhere for online gambling.

In most industries, user experience is limited to page speed, navigation, and general web design. However, when it comes to iGaming, there is a specific UX aspect you must fulfil: withdrawal times.

Ryohei Kiriyama argues that smooth withdrawals are of the utmost importance when it comes to selecting an online casino. Players are far more likely to choose an online casino with fast withdrawal times than one that comes with complicated withdrawal conditions.

While withdrawal time isn’t a ranking factor like quality content and backlinks are, it is a vital aspect of providing a quality user experience overall. Ensuring that every aspect of your iGaming site operates quickly is a surefire way of avoiding SEO penalties.

If your site has slow page loading times and significant withdrawal delays, Google is definitely going to take notice and penalize your site as necessary.

Focus on mobile-friendliness

Sports betting, online casinos, and other forms of digital gambling now mostly take place on mobile phones. While some people still use desktops for iGaming purposes, the convenience of mobile gambling makes it the preferred option in 2024.

According to Statcounter, mobiles currently hold 60.61% of the market share, while desktops own 37.23%. For this reason, your SEO strategy must focus on mobile gaming over desktop gaming.

If your iGaming site does not perform technically well on a mobile or tablet, you’re missing out on the majority of the iGaming market. Mobile customers will simply look elsewhere for digital gaming, as your site is clearly better suited to a desktop.

Mobile friendliness is an important aspect right across the board - not just in the iGaming sector. Both Google and Bing use mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal, meaning that they order mobile SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) in order of mobile compatibility.

Should your page not meet Google’s mobile friendliness standards, it will receive a penalty. This would mean that your competitors could easily outrank you simply by making their site more mobile-compatible.

On the other hand, if you provide sufficient mobile-friendliness, your site will have a lower bounce rate. Gamers will quickly see that your site is suitable for mobile, and will therefore use your gaming facilities. The lower your bounce rate, the more Google favours your site over your competitors. Overall, mobile compatibility is a guaranteed means of climbing the SERPs.

However, don’t totally neglect desktop-friendliness. Creating an adaptive site will make your iGaming platform accessible to both desktop and mobile players.

Write relevant and appropriate content

Rule 101 of SEO is that content is king, which applies to all businesses. If your content is not factual, helpful, relevant, and authoritative, it will not rank.

Specifically, Google judges content based on the E-E-A-T rule, which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. While the search engine has never explicitly stated that these categories are ranking factors in their own right, it’s definitely how it establishes the value of a piece of content. So, including each category in your iGaming content is essential.

Another essential component of writing iGaming content is making sure that what you’re writing is appropriate to the gambling audience. This doesn’t just mean that your content should relate to gambling, although that’s essential as well.

It means that the content should only mention concepts and use language that meets regulatory standards. For example, you can’t talk about strategy or skill when it comes to games that are based entirely on luck, nor can you mention the idea of ‘luck’ and ‘good fortune’ too much, either.

On top of this, you should be mindful of your +18 audience. Don’t state that “everyone” can play, given that only people of a certain age can play.

Instead, you should write authoritative and less promotional pieces on gaming instructions, casino reviews, crypto gambling industry news, and so on. As long as it's relevant to the iGaming industry and the specific gaming content of your website, it’ll make good content.

Not only will this help you avoid SEO penalties, but also penalties from your country’s gambling regulatory body.

Use keywords strategically

As with most of the tips we’ve discussed in this article, keywords are a massively influential component in SEO right across the board. If your content isn’t based on a target keyword, such as “best table games”, it won't rank for much.

Keywords are essential in informing search engines of what your content is about. It indicates the general topic that your content will cover, which search engines can then match up with common search terms. Basically, keywords link your content to your desired audience.

You can use tools such as Rank Tracker’s Keyword Finder to establish what keywords to target, what keywords your competitors are ranking for, and which keywords to avoid.

However, once you’ve established a list of keywords you want to target, you mustn’t overstuff your content with them.

In the iGaming industry, there’s a big tendency to fill every inch of content with keywords. Terms like “free spins” and “sign up bonus” get thrown in so much that they can make the content incoherent and messy.

Not only does this make your web content appear overly promotional, but it can also result in your content getting penalised by Google.

To avoid this, try to use keywords strategically, i.e., once in the H1, once in a H2, and a few times in the main body. This will make your content appear natural, rather than keyword-stuffed.

Avoid duplicate content issues

Lastly, make sure that each piece of content featured on your iGaming site is original and not a duplication of another piece you’ve already published or a page from another iGaming website.

Duplicate content issues can be harmful to rankings as Google only wants to rank pages that have original and distinct information.

Having two identical pages confuses Google, resulting in it ranking neither of them. On the other hand, if your content has copied the content found on another site word-for-word, Google will penalise your site more severely.

At the same time, you need to make sure your content is high quality, and not simply a rewording of another webpage. Try to add original and first-hand experience where possible to make your iGaming content stand out from the crowd.

Overall, make sure each piece of iGaming content you publish is 100% unique.

Final Thoughts

SEO for the iGaming industry is similar to standard SEO with some key differences. For example, slow withdrawal times could lower your UX while failing to cater to the largely mobile-based iGaming audience could prevent your site from ever ranking. Overall, it’s important to abide by general SEO rules, while also keeping the needs of your iGaming audience at the forefront of everything you do.