Our comprehensive guide to building links for casino and iGaming websites.
The casino and iGaming industries are some of the biggest and most lucrative online niches.
In saying that however, it’s no secret that Google views casino and iGaming websites in a light of their own.
The industry is infamous for the role it plays in scams, fraud and spam.
Chances are if you’ve come across a website that bombards you with spammy pop-ups, it’s been full of bright flashing lights of a casino website.
For website owners and affiliate marketers looking to build quality backlinks, this creates an extremely challenging work environment that for optimal results, must be navigated with the help of an expert.
Not only do you not want to be viewed by Google’s algorithm as spammy, or even worse a fraudulent scam, but you want to be viewed as a credible online business.
In order to mitigate risk and improve the quality of your domain in the eyes of Google, building a web of high-quality inbound links from trusted, relevant sites within the casino niche is key.
With that in mind, let’s dive in and take a look at the best ways to build links for casino and iGaming websites.
How to build casino backlinks
When it comes to building links for affiliate casino and iGaming websites, there are primarily three methods at our disposal.
- Outreach and paid links
We can’t preach how important it is for your casino website to avoid looking like spam in the eyes of Google.
What is the best way to look legitimate?
We *bet* you’re not going to expect this answer, but it’s to actually be legitimate!
By building a legitimate, varied profile of backlinks from trusted domains within the casino and iGaming niche, you are using their good reputation to vouch for you.
When it comes to outreach, always start by building new and nurturing existing relationships that you have with others in the industry.
In reality paid agreements will stem from these relationships, but always start completely white hat using outreach and go from there.
We acknowledge that backlink outreach within the casino industry can be challenging if you’re just starting out and don’t have any existing relationships to lean on. This is why having a workable process and experience link building team at your disposal is highly recommended. Especially if you’re intending to run any type of PR campaign in parallel.
- PBNs
The next way to build backlinks for casino and iGaming websites, is to lean on a Private Blog Network or PBN for short.
This method is a little bit more risky than using outreach to build relationships or partnerships with external websites and when it comes to the added scrutiny that Google applies to websites within this industry, the risk vs reward must be weighed up.
If you have an existing casino related PB at your disposal, then go for it. But building a PBN is time consuming and if not done correctly, can be both high risk and costly for little results.
Remember, it’s not 2010 anymore and Google can easily define and ban poor PBNs, especially if they are linking to a niche that raises red flags like casinos. In order to take full advantage of PBNs you’re going to need a team and modest budget to manage the link building work.
- Tiered link building strategy
Tiered link building is a strategy that allows you to manipulate the power of your backlinks and essentially push all the value where it will be most effective for SEO. In short, tiered link building involves creating backlinks for your backlinks.
This will ensure that the optimal amount of link juice is passed from your backlink profile to the pages on your domain where you can get the best results.
The way tiered link building works is like this:
- You have a tier 1 backlink pointing to your primary page
- Then a few tier 2 backlinks pointing to a backlink on tier 1
- Finally a few tier 3 backlinks pointing to each backlink on tier 2
It offers your domain a natural link profile, but with an element of gray hat about the strategy, it certainly doesn’t come without risk.
When building backlinks for casino and iGaming websites using a tiered link building strategy, it’s imperative you or your team knows what they’re doing and has a budget to back it up.
Where to focus your outreach for casino affiliate links
With outreach considered the best way to build links for casino and iGaming websites, we need to now talk about where to focus your time and energy.
We have already established that Google views websites within the casino and gaming niche as high risk, but there are a ton of low-risk related niches available for building links.
Let’s take a look at some related niches that we’d recommend focusing some of your outreach attention within.
- Sports
When it comes to promoting a casino, it’s not a far jump across to sports.
Many casinos feature sports bars and with the deregulation of sports gambling across a large section of the world, many have integrated sports betting platforms. Digging a little deeper into the sports niche, the explosion in the popularity of eSports has seen underground gambling go mainstream. Receiving casino backlinks from sports and especially esports websites is a low-risk, lateral play.
- Travel/Lifestyle
A brick and mortar casino business will always feature an in house hotel, bar and a myriad of entertainment options for their guests. As such, the casino and travel/lifestyle industries go hand in hand – A relationship that can be capitalized on when building links for your casino website.
Once you consider just how broad this related niche can get, you will see just how many options you have at your link building disposal.
- Business
It’s not that much of a stretch to make the link between business and gambling. At the end of the day, both industries are in the business of making money after all!
When you tie in the entire trading and investment space which many jurisdictions consider to be gambling in itself, there are a plethora of outreach opportunities for savvy link builders in the casino niche. Just be extra careful building links from trading websites because Google places this niche under the same intense scrutiny as your own.
- Technology
A final related niche that is worth considering is the technology space.
Casino and iGaming establishments are known for employing the latest technology within their entertainment suite and as link builders, this can be taken advantage of. Anything from software companies, virtual reality and even all the way to blockchain/crypto tech is fair game.
Final tips to tie your casino backlink strategy together
As a website within the casino and iGaming niche, getting your link building strategy right is going to be the most important aspect of your entire SEO effort.
While it will take expertise and budget to get right, the results will speak for themselves when you deliver.
Before we wrap up, here is our list of 3 final tips that will tie your entire casino link building strategy together.
- Ensure you have budget: The fact of the matter is that link building within the casino and iGaming industry is going to require a relatively modest budget. You get what you pay for and there is no use taking unnecessary risk by cutting corners.
- Enlist professional help: Don’t be afraid to enlist professional help from agencies or professionals when building links within the casino space. In this niche, you’re always one silly mistake away from being blacklisted by Google. Again, why risk it?
- Diversify your link profile: When it comes to building casino backlinks, we’ve listed the 3 primary strategies available. But the key here is diversity. Also, keep an eye on link velocity and the anchor text of all inbound links. Diversify!
Final thoughts on building quality links for casino and iGaming websites
While we may be at risk of repeating ourselves, let us conclude this guide by once again stressing the extremely challenging work environment that conducting SEO within the casino niche presents.
Due to the industry’s perceived scammy nature, Google places casino and iGaming websites under extreme scrutiny. As such, there is no room for cutting corners when it comes to sourcing high quality casino backlinks.
For optimal results, this niche needs to be navigated with the help of an expert and have a reasonable budget behind any of the link building strategies that we’ve talked about above.
In the casino niche, it’s a lot easier to find yourself on a Google blacklist, than it is to remove yourself from one.
If you need help with your own link building efforts within the casino and iGaming niche, then click here to get in touch with one of our team’s experts today.
