TRAFFIC
AGAINST
THE ODDS
How I built white hat gambling links, by Sam Miranda, Head of Content Strategy and Marketing at
Right Casino Media.
“GAMBLING’S CRACK COCAINE:
They’re the disturbing new face of
gambling – betting machines that enslave
the poor and earn bookies BILLIONS”,
reads the Daily Mail’s latest indictment1 of
roulette machines.
This sensationalist rhetoric is part of
a relentless smear campaign against our
industry. Psychologist and gambling
authority Dr Mark Griffiths provided me
with an explanation for such headlines.
“Editors believe stories of misery and
addiction sell newspapers. We as human
beings like to compare ourselves to other
people – it’s called social comparison
theory in psychology terms. When you
read about the misery of somebody else, it
makes you feel better.”
The media’s hostile stance presents
a massive challenge for gambling
marketers: how can we execute PR and
content marketing, build links and drive
shares when there is such a stigma
attached to our industry?
For those marketing ‘hard gambling’
– a term attributed to high-frequency,
high-variance casino and slot games – it’s
especially hard. Sportsbook and poker
boast a strategic, social element, but casino
games rank behind only pornography and
pay-day loans as the Internet’s biggest
taboo. For years, gambling affiliates gorged
on black hat methods to manipulate
rankings: spamming article directories and
paying for guest posts with over-optimised
anchor text. But Google’s 2012 Penguin
Update penalised these tactics, reducing
rankings and slashing traffic.
These developments demand a new
approach to link building – something
the gambling industry is finding difficult
to digest. In iGB Affiliate’s December/
January issue, Nick Garner, CEO of 90
Digital, qualifies a good link, but not a
risk-free method of obtaining one. Whilst
distancing himself from some of the
black hat tactics of old, he still advocates
paying an editor “£50 to £70” to place a
link. This is a violation of Google’s Quality
Guidelines2. Returning to risky practices,
especially given the hard work that goes
into disavowing toxic links and overcoming
manual penalties, seems reckless and
unsustainable.
I hope to outline a safe and effective
strategy for acquiring white hat links.
Step one: lead generation
Before any campaign, you need leads –
websites that will be happy to host your
1
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2533538/Gamblings-crack-cocaine-Theyre-disturbing-new-face-gamblingbetting-machines-enslave-poor-earn-bookies-BILLIONS.html
2
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en
3
http://www.seotakeaways.com/10000-search-engine-queries-for-your-link-building-campaign/
content. Search engine queries3 such as:
keyword + intitle:’write for us’, are good
ways to start identifying guest posting
prospects. Gambling has a lot of crossover
with entertainment and travel (Las Vegas,
Macau, etc), so these are useful niches to
plug in. I highly recommend using ‘lists’ as
your keyword – they’re fun, digestible and
websites love them because they provide
more page views and impressions. It’s easy
to incorporate gambling-related content
into a list – I got an article entitled “Top
Ten Ridiculous Wagers Through History”
on ListVerse.com, which has a powerful
Page Rank 6. Search engine queries can,
however, produce undesirable leads. Sites
that advertise ‘write for us’ or ‘submit a
guest post’ are often run by SEO-savvy
webmasters who know you have an ulterior
motive and will charge you upwards of £150
for a contextual gambling link.
This is why you shouldn’t be afraid
to target bigger, more respectable
publications. Their content is often in the
hands of journalists and editors, rather
than webmasters and SEOs. They don’t
understand the value of a link, and are
more likely to accept one if it credits a
source and furthers reader understanding.
I’ve had success targeting major sites such
iGB Affiliate FEBRUARY/MARCH 2014
17