SEO Gambling Guide, Part 4: Keywords in Online Gambling

In this part, let’s talk about keywords in the online casino niche.

Keywods in the Online Casino Niche

There is neither much nor little keywords group in this niche. Hence, I advise you to pay attention to keyword analysis.

You can find all parts of the guide here.

First of all, you should learn to distinguish keywords that are likely to be converted, those that are less likely to convert, and those that cannot bring you money at all. Knowledge comes with experience, and there are always exceptions and some luck. Additionally, you should understand the keyword intent and offer users what they want. The casino niche is no different from others: the more specific the query is, the higher the conversion probability will be. For example, the keyword “buy sneakers” does not mean a person wants to buy them NOW. In most cases, he/she just wants to look through all available offers and the companies that provide them. However, when a person googles “buy Nike Air b1450 sneakers”, the probability that he/she is going to purchase them gets higher. The same process takes place in this niche. Generic keywords can bring you a lot of traffic. However, they are always competitive. So, you need either to be in the TOP 3 or should not count on a high conversion rate at all. The way out is to look for less popular but more specific keywords.

Now I am going to show you the main groups of keywords in this niche:

1. Online casinos + GEO. For example, online casinos New Zealand. It is often the most popular group regarding traffic, which is available in each GEO.
2. Online casinos + various additional options, characteristics, and features. For example, mobile online casinos (+ various types of devices), new online casinos, online casinos without a registration, instant withdrawal casinos, real money online casinos, live casinos, and casinos with a specific license. There can be a lot of them. I will not list them all because you just need to check out Ahrefs Keywords Explorer: insert the keyword “casinos” or “online casinos”, set the Word Count at 3-4, and you will see all the variety of long-tail keywords.

That is why I recommend learning how an online casino operates and what it consists of.

3. Online Casinos + game providers. For example, Microgaming online casinos. That is, people are looking for a casino that offers games from a specific provider. It is considered a very good cluster because these people are likely to know what they want.
4. Online Casinos + payment method. For example, PayPal online casinos. It is also considered a very good cluster that gives a good conversion.
5. Online Casinos + type of games. For example, online roulette casinos. It means there are as many queries as types of roulette games. It depends on the casino popularity in a country in general or the popularity of a specific game. People are looking for a casino with a specific type of game.
6. Online Casinos + bonuses. For example, no deposit online casinos. It means there are as many queries as types of bonuses. And there are many bonus types out there, which I have already covered in the first part.
7. Other. For example, new Microgaming casinos, PayPal Microgaming casinos, and live dealer roulette online casinos. You see, there is always such a category as “other” when we deal with data analysis or a large amount of categorized data. This “other” is often an important part, but it is difficult to understand what it is. There are a lot of similar types of keywords. You just need to understand the main part and then analyze and review it. The most important thing is to use these keywords on web pages and in anchors and optimize the website according to user intent.

!Important!

I have provided an example of the most important keywords for the main marker “online casinos”. However, the iGaming world is really big, and each type of game, payment method, provider, bonus, and even slot can be a separate planet. Therefore, I advise you to analyze as much as possible and collect options and examples.

The most popular markers are, of course, online casinos, games (especially slots), and bonuses.

Brand Keywods

There are such websites that are called mono brands. I will provide more info about them in one of the following guides. However, I would like to tell you a few words about brand keywords in the context of classic review sites. When you create casino review pages, do not skip research keywords for them because these pages are usually the first to appear in the TOPs and bring the first FTD.

Work keywords into your review texts and create keyword masks because they are really often of the same type. You can easily cope with this task. Take a top brand in your GEO, insert it in Ahrefs, and check out what other things related to this brand are searched.

It can be: login, mobile, registration, support, bonus, a certain type of game, a specific game, or a specific payment method. These are the keywords that most SEOs ignore because reviews are often generated or low-paid. Many people simply take reviews from their affiliate programs and don’t even check them out. Thus, the analysis of the keyword for a TOP brand can help you collect many additional keys. Then, you can simply include them in the text structure for this brand and create keyword/tag masks. For example, [brand name casino] + PayPal or [brand name casino] + No Deposit Bonus, where [brand name casino] will be the variable replaced with your brands. If a brand is new or not very popular, it may not have many keywords. However, it may appear at any time, or it may not be so big for analyzers to notice it.

Game Keywords

There are games, most often slots, that are very popular in a certain GEO. As with brands, people can search for a lot of things related to them. You should do the same. You take a top slot, see what’s there, and multiply. 

The Importance of Search Intent and Clustering

To perform better than most of the TOP 10 sites, it is important to correctly understand user intent and show on the page exactly what users are looking for. What should you do specifically? Work out the text structure, and waffle on to expand the text size and insert keywords only when everything really important and necessary has been described. Work on the casino tables and avoid indicating any false info in them because it affects both ranking and conversion.

A lot has already been written about clustering. There is nothing new here. However, I will add a very important comment. Perform clustering by intent rather than keywords similarity. You should create a separate page for each cluster, but there are exceptions. For example, the keyword “new Microgaming online casinos” should be on the “Microgaming casinos” page. However, you can make a separate small section with brands considered as new in a table. But if the volume of this sub-cluster grows, there will be someone who will create a separate page, and then several sites will follow the trend. Hence, the TOP 10 will change.

You should analyze the pages of competitors’ sites in the TOP 10 to understand what to show the site user and how to show it. You should analyze both old and new pages. Compare them, find the differences, and create your pages.

Search for Low-Competition Keywords

The best way to find low-competition and high-conversion keys is by asking your friends from the TOP to download them from their search console 🙂

All other methods of collecting a semantic core are well-known to you. There is no magic pill. Only your experience, time spent on analysis, probability theory, and testing in practice will help. Moreover, you should understand that companies with big budgets can deliberately let you use fake keywords, which have a big volume inflated automatically. This is a working practice for cutting off new players. Imagine that you have found very popular low-competition keywords. You spend time and money creating a site, filling it with content, and inserting links. And then, bang, it turns out there is no traffic.

A Good Life Hack

In some countries, there are several official languages or plenty of emigrants. You should analyze that. Additionally, you should understand the GEO you work in. Say, you know that the GEO market will soon be regulated, and the casinos will have to get a license, which will lead to gaming restrictions for players. There is a high probability that a new cluster will appear, associated with unlicensed gambling like “casino ohne lizenz” in Germany. It is one of the more or less new examples I came across. Do you know what the smartest of us did? They bought domains with this keyword. Hence, you should be able to predict the market or at least react to changes quickly.

You should understand that a successful and sustainable result in this niche is possible only if you delve deep into it. 

How to Collect Keywords Quickly

I do it effortlessly. First, I analyze general keywords, online casinos, casino games, etc. I define the largest categories of clusters and sub-clusters. I collect all this data, cluster it quickly, remove junk, and insert each cluster into Ahrefs. Then, I take the TOP 10 competitors using Traffic share by pages. After it, I download all keywords into one column, delete duplicates, and remove junk manually using filters and sorting. Then, I again insert them into Ahrefs or another tool for collecting KD and Volume. That is all. It is more than enough for starters.

Then I analyze smaller categories. I review categories that have a very low Traffic Volume and didn’t get into the general keyword research. 

Then, I determine the average value of clusters by KD, Traffic Volume, and sometimes CPC, even though it is not calculated at all times and correctly. Yet, certain correlations with it do exist.

A Final Mini Tip

I advise you to take the USA GEO and find major sites in various areas of online gambling: casinos, slots, other types of games, etc. Simply study them to understand what is happening in the online casino industry in the country where online gambling is a very popular phenomenon. The end.

The next part will be dedicated to the analysis of competitors!