Since Google is always on the verge of making a big algorithm update or change, the world of gambling affiliates is always freaked out. Especially when dealing with day-to-day SEO enhancements that might not be worth adding, since there is always going to be an update ruining your work.
But if you look at it differently, Google isn’t that scary any more. They either shot you down with a Panda or Penguin update but you haven’t noticed that many changes that were so dramatic in terms of penalties.
If you are involved in the online gambling affiliate or a binary affiliate industry, one thing is for certain, you are doing content marketing and search ranking and SEO make up the core elements of your work.
Since the major shifts and updates are almost implemented and completed in algorithm changes, mobile-friendly completed, Panda and Penguin are coming up, we start to focus on next years anticipated predictions for the SEO world in the industry
Since mobile has become a large and almost key source for search, it’s now shaping the future of SEO. Voice search is rapidly increasing and Google is focusing on direct answer queries.
These 3 changes are the key changes we are going to focus on, since in our opinion, they are going to impact your work and your websites in 2016.
Mobile, Mobile, are you the future?
You might find this interesting and you have probably already read this, mobile searches will surpass desktop searches. But when is that going to happen, or has it already? We think that this will happen even faster than anticipated and at the rate on which mobile search is starting to be used, it’s not going to be 2016, it will happen earlier, but it will most certainly impact 2016 in terms of SEO.
This means, your affiliate website should by now be mobile-friendly and of course responsive to all devices. Usually tablets are categorized among mobile.
All your content has to be focused to be reachable on mobile even before you post it. You should always consider this aspect when writing your content, focus on how it will appear on a smart phone before finalizing it.
You can put it like this, your affiliate website must implement a mobile marketing strategy, a mobile design, mobile search marketing, mobile advertising, mobile Customer Relationship Management, mobile coupons and of course local and social.
Try to create a simpler, more focused review page and keep only the features that are useful to mobile users. Prioritize your reviews of binary options, casinos, sports betting portals that are popular with mobile users. Not to mention, adding of mobile-only promotions.
Have your website present across Google Search, Maps and Google+
Did you know that 50% of the players that are looking to play in a casino, place a bet or invest money in trading visit only one website within a day of searching on a smart phone. It’s scary isn’t it? You most be on the top of the searches of have a really appealing Page title and description to convert that player.
This is why you should aim to have a complete and full description of your reviews, promotions and social reviews.
Calling all cars, Calling all cars, Where are you? – The power of Voice Search
The power of Voice Search is yet to be discovered but it will most likely be the next big thing in search starting from 2016.
Using Google Now, Cortana or Siri will make the difference and you should test it before creating your content.
With text-based search a player searching for a review of a casino game will type something like “Terminator Slots” and click on the link that comes up first. The future looks like this, the player will pull up his smart phone, activate the Voice Search and say, “Where can I play Terminator Slots?”
Let’s rewind, think about have the player made this search. Did he open a search box by touch or did he prompt the assistant by saying “OK, Google”.
The patterns on mobile search are changing and could be defined with some questions terms such as: Who, What, Where, Why, and How.
But, this isn’t the death of desktop searches. Desktop searches are still going to be used for in-depth content that can’t be answered in short forms.
You probably already know this but Google is launching voice recognition search features for Google apps.
Voice search somehow changes the behavior of players and traders by moving faster than type search, soon will be calling it outdated search. This change comes to embrace the increasing popularity of mobile search and to make the search engine more proficient. This can save the search user both time and effort.
This feature must be appreciated and will make searches more efficient making the process much easier for the time-pressed user.
How to Embrace this change?
You need to improve your efforts on local SEO. Search result depend on many factors, among them are full details about local promotions, geo-targeted reviews and of course customized content. All of these factors are important to be implemented to get your site ranking highly in search results.
Make your apps search friendly. Apps are becoming more and more integrated with Google search result since Google has started indexing app content as well. Accordingly, affiliates and operators can make sure their app appears in search results under web and applications, making it more accessible to users.
There is an important mix between SEO, marketing and content and it really is important to integrate your SEO strategy to your content marketing.
Long tail keywords are a powerful SEO strategy and you should consider it to stretch into six and seven words in length. Be sure to include question phrases and positives or negatives accordingly.
The use long tail keywords is a must and it will benefit your website in voice searches, users tend to stretch the question to get a better answer for their searches.
Structured data and direct answers
Direct answers are Google’s attempt to give you it’s best result and the exact answer to your search query at the top of the search page. At first there weren’t designed for mobile, but the requirements and restrictions of mobile search have pushed its growth and development.
There are some Good and Bad Google quotes that go like this:
“We built Google for users, not websites”
“If you are the answer to a direct answer then life is good”
You must adapt and provide structured data for everything you can. You have seen your competitors do it, why are you not adding it as well?
You have seen large casino review websites getting yellow stars, promotions or thumbnails in their search result listings haven’t you? That is structured data at work.
Structured data is just a way of tagging the data in your web pages so that search results can easily understand. These data element can be anything from promotions and availability to breadcrumbs and video.
Structured data can be considered and extra information that you see next to a website and meta description.
The bad side of structured data is that you need a web developer to manage this structured data and SEO. It is better to spend your time growing your business than trying to figure out how to implement it.
The other part of structured data is that it makes search results more attractive and it will increase your click through rate.
Brand awareness with structured data
The Knowledge Graph panel is your new digital business card and it is your brand’s first impression to the users. It is the box that shows up on the right side of a Google Search.
Gambling Operators, Affiliate Programs and Affiliate Websites can now customize their own data in the ‘Knowledge Graph’ by adding structured data mark-up to their official website. You may customize the following types of data: Company Contact Numbers, Social Profile Links and Logos.
To sum up the changes that are expected for SEO in the near future is to get better at your websites availability on mobile and voice search and implement structured data. Make use of these techniques and we guarantee that you will see more leads, depositors on your website.
