Let’s say you’ve just created a website to talk about your passion: the hottest online games at the moment. Your content is awesome, your website has a great design, and it uses every keyword in the book related to your subject. Yet, your website appears way down the list, even for people looking specifically for your content. With time, you become a reference, and some websites begin to include links to your content on their page.
These are called backlinks. The more backlinks your website has, the higher it’ll rank on searches. Enter link building: the process of getting more external links leading to your website. Follow our guest post specialist, Chris Haagensen, to learn more about link building in gambling websites. Here, you’ll understand how it works and how to do it best.
Building Influence
In the example above, we explained link building and how it can boost a website’s popularity in search engines. However, things work differently for online gambling websites. Collecting backlinks isn’t enough for online casinos; they must build trust among their users and search engines. It’s possible by getting high-quality references. The best Norwegian casinos are listed at the beste casino Norge, which is a top-quality backlink.
Back in 2012, Google implemented new policies to curb poor link building strategies, creating new criteria for natural link placement. Additionally, the search engine clamped down on black hat SEO practices. Black hat SEO practices were created to cheat search engine algorithms by flooding your content with specific keywords. Search engines know better now; the website is placed down on the result list when such practices are identified.
Now, link building is a more complicated process, but it’s still a doable one, nevertheless. Above all, it’s still one of the best ways to increase traffic and, consequently, conversions. Here’s what the main operators in the industry are doing.
PR/News Campaigns
Here, casino sites get news outlets to refer to their websites. One of the most common ways is writing reviews of other casinos and even about their own. When placed on high authority websites, these links help casinos score better on searches.
Link Swaps
One hand washes the other. Link swaps are simple, cheap, and effective. In this case, two or more websites agree to reference each other. Link swaps or link exchanges help increase authority and trustworthiness. Be careful, though: new Google policies frame “excessive” link swaps as a violation of their link scheme.
Paid Links
Paying for backlinks is one of the easiest methods for link building. Here, gambling sites pay for placing backlinks on other websites. However, buying links can also be tricky. If you place your links on spammy or lowly reputed websites, their bad image might hit back at you. Bad links can decrease your authority and lower your position in searches.
White Hat SEO
As opposed to black hat SEO tactics, white hat SEO tactics abide by the search engines’ T&C completely. Playing by the rules also often means a much longer link building process. However, it’s the most reliable way of making progress. Sites that use black hat SEO tactics can suffer from updates, while white hats remain out of trouble. Here are some of the main practices allowed by Google, Bing, and other search engines.
Forums
Creating posts on specialised forums is a simple, effective, and rule-abiding link-building technique. Gambling websites use this tactic extensively by posting their links in multiple gambling-related forums.
Guest Posting
Create a post on another website as a guest, and include your backlink in this post. This will be considered a high-quality backlink, according to Google’s standards.
Social Bookmarks
Social bookmarking are online platforms where users can store online content they’d like to revisit later. This service allows users to store and share links when the backlinks come in. These are also considered quality backlinks by today’s standards.
Magnifying the Magnifier
Let’s be clear: black hat SEO isn’t illegal. Still, it can be unethical, depending on how it’s used. It’s OK to want to be the top cracker on the package, as long as it doesn’t hurt other businesses. If you’re inflating your SEO with black hat tactics, you can also damage other websites by paying for links on your page. Anyway, the white hat tactics mentioned above are safe and sound link building methods.