TRAFFIC
MAXIMISING
ORGANIC SEARCH
PERFORMANCE
In the face of new regulations and Google updates, affiliates need to focus on doing the basics well
if they’re to seize opportunities presented by shifting user behaviour. Andrew Moody gives us the
lowdown on SEO growth
THIS HAS BEEN a big year so far for
the industry, with various mergers and
the opening of the US market, as well as
the challenge of new regulations in an
increasingly competitive global environment.
Some of the new rules have created
issues for many affiliates but they have
also driven the industry to improve its
marketing, not only to be more effective but
also to think more carefully about the end
user. It is this focus on the user that will
define future organic SEO performance.
But let’s take a step back for a moment.
It was a particularly good year in 2017 for
the online gambling market, with several
channels seeing strong growth. That was
reflected in the first half of 2018, with the
UK market welcoming new regulations
and seeing growth within several channels.
With the market continuing to expand,
it is important for gaming brands to take
advantage of growing search volumes and
make sure sites are performing to their
greatest potential to maximise FTDs.
A technical checklist
Technical SEO is the backbone of any site
and can make a massive difference in its
performance. To maximise opportunity and
minimise risk, there are a series of checks
that we run at Blueclaw across all clients.
These include:
HTTPS – At this stage moving from HTTP
to HTTPS is a case of gathering the will to
just do it. Google has announced that any
non-https site will be marked as ‘not secure’
in Chrome, with implications for customer
trust as well as search-engine performance.
Page speed – At the start of July,
Google released its speed update.
Any improvements you make to key
commercial pages and the site will benefit
your organic rankings. We monitor
performance with our own page-speed
testing tool, available at blueclaw.co.uk/
market-scout/site-speed-tester
Internal links – We have recently been
reviewing all of our clients’ internal links
to identify quick wins. Keeping authority
focused on the most commercial pages
is vital as part of an ROI-driven SEO
campaign but it does take discipline
and a co-ordinated approach.
Broken links and 404s – This is basic
but necessary stuff. There’s no value in
Google crawlers wasting time on a 404
or broken links. Google’s bot will be on
Figure 1: Seasonality in UK gambling-related searches. Sports betting and lotteries are the most
popular types of gaming in the UK
Source: Google Internal Data, Gambling searches, 2017. Growth calculates Jan-Dec 2016 compared to Jan-Dec 2017
iGB Affiliate Issue 70 AUG/SEP 2018
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