If you once relied on safe SEO for traffic you might agree with me that the iGaming affiliate niche is in crisis. I’m going to say it, as I think it is.
*It's in crisis!*
Right now, I am struggling to name a top 50 in terms of iGaming affiliate websites. I’m currently looking at data for UK affiliate slots, casino, bingo & sportsbook search visibility. There used to be a top 50 in each of those four verticals of iGaming.
Now I can barely name 50 websites across all four. I can see 50 affiliate sites in the top 100 pages of Google results. But to give any one of those sites the accolade of being a top affiliate in those searches is a struggle.
Some affiliate companies have pivoted away from single static web assets to a more dynamic approach with rolling churn and burn projects or risky media partnerships. But otherwise, if you rely on a stable website, then we’re in a perfect storm for the general affiliate reliant on historically safe organic traffic.
Unprecedented levels of spam links have caught Google off guard and they’re falsely punishing sites. AI search projects dominate the Google production pipeline so there are fewer targeted search updates. AI search systems seem not fit for purpose in our niche (or perhaps require more years of training data) and thousands of spam sites have been let in the back door advertising the worst of the worst black market brands.
So the organic affiliate channel that was once the backbone for lead generation and in some cases the only channel, is now falling apart in front of our eyes. The knock on effect is causing operators to panic, instead of supporting the sites that helped them grow, they’re talking about consolidating partner programs and shutting accounts. So yes, this is a crisis.
Is SEO dead? (No – but we need a rethink)...
This is not an SEO is dead article. Just my account of what's playing out in front of us right now. SEO certainly is not dead. SEO is currently the driving force behind a thriving spam industry. It's thriving so much that I’m seeing international SEO agencies on podcasts openly describing their reliance on old-hat SEO practices to dominate the SERPs.
Now in a lot of those cases, we don’t know who the clients are. We don’t know if the clients know that the current strategies are old-hat, so we don’t get to see the long-term results. What I’m more concerned about, is the willful admission that their organic SEO strategies are going rogue and I know that's not safe for any affiliate (or operator) banking on long term search visibility.
So what? What does it have to do with me how they run their businesses?
Well, I’ve been here before, Penguin 4.0 2016, when the link spam had got so prevalent Google released a sweeping update to their most punishing algorithm, before rolling it into core updates.
Buying and selling links was mainstream back then. But updates that affected link profiles came few and far between, so you had to wait for the next penguin update to see if you were at risk of a penalty.
Some link agencies would use these grace periods to show off the growth they could achieve with scaled link schemes. I don’t know if they were predatory or they simply believed what they were doing was bulletproof.
But along came Penguin 4.0 suddenly links were devalued, affiliate sites started to disappear and subsequently a lot of these link agencies shut their businesses down. If you attended any of the mainstream iGaming affiliate conferences between 2013-2018 you’ll know some of the agencies I’m describing.
Yet hell, we’re back there all over again. The link sellers are pouring into the conferences and struggling affiliates are desperate for a solution to waning traffic. We’re trying to scale our way out of this current crisis and that's not the right thing to do.
Why simply adding quantity is not the answer
More is not the answer right now. For me, more has sometimes been an SEO's way of validating their place within an iGaming organisation. We need more pages, more paragraphs, more FAQs, more internal linking, more backlinks.
I don’t think I’ve ever sat down with an affiliate company who asked for stability, or were impressed with my net neutral ROI recommendations, so I’ve lost out on a lot of contracts.
Google will catch the spam eventually. I’ve spoken to some of the “spam prospectors” who agree they don’t know how long this period will last, but that it will more than likely end at some point.
But here we are. An entire industry scrambling for visibility, fire-fighting the perfect storm with the same old do-more growth tactics, and I believe that's the wrong approach.
When the spam algorithms run, affiliates who dip their toes into the old-hat strategies, affiliates that try to look authentic, to preserve their organic business prospects while falling for the risky schemes. Those are the sites that feel it most.
There are signs of this happening already with a number of these scaled affiliate sites disappearing. I know what my top 50 should look like and who should be in there, but some of them have vanished from the SERPs in the last few months!
Why sustainable SEO should not scare affiliates away
Stability for me is about the tactical side of strategy. Sustainable SEO as a phrase is sneaking into conversations and forum threads. The sentiment is correct, we all need sustainable SEO, but for me it's a bandaid for bad strategies.
But what does that mean? Well, if we go back to 2016, I can pretty much relay what we were talking about after Penguin 4.0 rolled. Build your brand, nurture a customer base, pivot your products and pages to be customer serving not commercially weighted, give your link strategy a sanity check, answer real world questions, don’t chase big-money keywords, work on converting your true traffic.
We’ve drifted so far away from those principles again because Google opened the door for spam, for riskier tactics and everyone piled on. Unfortunately good projects that got caught up in that hype of “do what works” or were misled by SEOs and agencies are being impacted as well.
The SERPs that we see right now are a product of the perfect storm theory. It's an absolute mess! But if like me you believe it will improve, you have to sit tight, dig in and think about net neutral ROI from your SEO – because I know for many it's all negative right now.
Keep the channel clean and talk about how you intend to use SEO to build stable traffic funnels that convert. If you’re still pushing for more content, why was it not there already? If you think you need more links, what onsite SEO hasn’t worked for you and if you’re chasing traffic have you got the best conversion rates on the pages that already rank?
That's sustainable SEO, let's not be afraid to challenge those scaled strategies. We need to get back to building healthy websites that are more than old-hat aggressive growth projects. If you don’t think that's cool, let's see where your site is in the next five years!